The SEC charged Countrywide Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo with securities fraud. He is accused of "selling his Countrywide stock for nearly $140 million in profits while knowing that Countrywide's business model was deteriorating."

Countrywide's Mozilo accused of fraud

grigory writes "GameStop's business model depends on a healthy flow of used games: incredibly '[GameStop] enjoys a 48 percent profit margin on used games.' Game publishers do not see a cut of the secondary sale because it falls under the first sale doctrine. Now, some publishers and manufacturers want a piece of the pie. 'One marketing executive, who did not want to be identified for fear of angering GameStop and other retailers, said the used game sale market is still depriving publishers of money because it gives consumers an all-too-easy alternative to buying a new game.' Interesting picture of companies fighting for your business, and (suprise!) complaining about being left out of the money stream."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I have to admit that, while I became a fan of Twitter a while back, it jumped up to a new level when I started using a client-side app called Tweetdeck. While the app has many problems (it is still beta), it allows you to make use of Twitter in a very different way -- laying out a series of groups and searches in near real time, such that it turns the stream of information into a series of very useful flows. From the perspective of trying to stay up on certain types of news, it's become the most important app on my desktop. There are many, many things I wish they would improve upon, with a big one being memory management. It sucks up memory like crazy. However, my solution was to go out and buy some more memory for my laptop. Apparently, the NY Times has gone in the other direction. Mathew Ingram points to an internal memo at the NY Times where it says that due to Tweetdeck's memory issues, the paper is asking employees not to use it anymore -- though, to their credit, it doesn't appear to be a demand, but a request. On top of that, the NY Times suggests that other apps can do the job. That may be true, but I've tested a bunch of different competing apps (hoping they could get over Tweetdeck's other shortcomings) but I'm back on Tweetdeck because those other apps have even more problems, but Ingram again explains the better solution: "I agree that Tweetdeck can be a memory hog, and can sympathize with the NYT-- but the solution is buy more RAM, not exclude Tweetdeck."

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I've always been fascinated by origami, but never had the patience for learning it. If you think you do have what it takes to model the world in folded paper, here's an opportunity to get a free copy of a unique origami book. Our pals over at Dover have given us three copies of their new Paper Yachts book to give away to MAKE readers. Authored by origami masters Nic Compton and Nick Robinson, the book has origami models of four famous racing yachts. You get sixteen water-resistant templates of the four models that you can use in the tub, in a puddle in your backyard, or other miniature waterway.

If you'd like a copy of one of these books, tell us why in the comments, tell us some of your origami experiences, making paper boats, or related tales. Link to pics if you have them. Next Friday, we'll choose three winners.

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xzvf writes "A disgruntled Clemson University staffer shows how US News and World Report college rankings are manipulated. Techniques include bad-mouthing other schools, filling out applications from highly qualified students that never intended to apply, and lying about class size and professor salaries." The school, naturally, denies that anything unethical went on. The New York Times has a more detailed article, which links to this first-person account of the presentation.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Libelium, a European distributor of Arduino and Arduino accessories, holds an annual project contest. Winners are picked based on "novelty, ease of replication, and level of documentation." Check out this year's winners at the Arduino blog. The video above is by Francisco Reinoso, who took first place.

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In this Ignite rap, Hillel Cooperman talks about his, and other adults', Lego obsession. Caution: Mild adult themes and the ol' F-word is dropped halfway through.

You can subscribe to Ignite:
iTunes: http://bit.ly/ignite
ORM Show: http://feeds.feedburner.com/oreilly/igniteshow

Ignite

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Rob Hyndman points us to the news that a Canadian "victims advocacy group" called Victims of Crime has put out a report on how the government should deal with "internet-facilitated child sexual abuse." You should recognize that the recommendations are ridiculous by the way they describe the problem: "internet-facilitated child sexual abuse." Notice that they're including the internet as a part of the problem, rather than just a tool that's being used. The report starts off by making a bad assumption: that the internet is responsible for an increase in child sexual abuse by stating: "internet-facilitated child sexual abuse is growing at an alarming rate. Between 1998 and 2003, the number of charges for production or distribution of child pornography increased by 900 percent...." Now, that could mean that there has been an increase... or it could mean that more resources have been put towards lawsuits or (perhaps) that the internet has enabled law enforcement to collect more evidence to bring charges. In other words, you could easily interpret that evidence to mean that the internet has been an amazing help in bringing justice to those involved in such evil acts.

But where the report gets really troubling is the suggestions on what the government should do:

• introducing legislation to make it mandatory for Internet service providers to give law enforcement basic customer name and address information upon request;
• requiring internet service providers to keep data and internet surfing records for longer periods to ensure that evidence is not destroyed; and
• making it a criminal offence to refuse to give law enforcement a password or encryption information during an investigation.

In other words, throw all privacy rights out the window, don't require any evidence of wrongdoing or a court warrant and massively increase the costs for ISPs. And do they not think such laws would be abused? If police can simply request detailed information with no oversight, how quickly will it be abused to seek out anonymous detractors? Law enforcement and politicians have tried to seek out anonymous commenters many times, but usually a court is there to try to protect the right to anonymity and privacy. Yes, it's no doubt that child sexual abuse is a horrific crime and we're all for law enforcement doing whatever they can to crack down on it. But throwing out all privacy rights or due process is likely to have many, many, many negative unintended consequences.

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(Bill Gurstelle is guest blogging here on Boing Boing. He is the author of books including Backyard Ballistics, and the recently-published Absinthe and Flamethrowers)

Hydroxatone is so effective, it was given away in gift bags at international film festivals!

- advertisement for Hydroxatone, a very expensive wrinkle cream flogged constantly on late night cable television and talk radio stations.

Allo! I am Marcel, zee scienteest in charge of gift bag quality control at ze large internationale film festivals. Every day, I am faced with ze daunting task of carefully evaluating the products of the thousands of companies eager to put free samples in the gift bags of Hollywood stars.

But only the best products, like Magic Jack or Almighty Cleanse make it through our rigorous, film-festival gift-bag quality control.

As hard as I try to safeguard ze integrity of our gift bags, sometimes the unfortunate occurs. One time, during a screening of Rochelle, Rochelle at Cannes, and against my better judgment, I allowed Kevin Trudeau to place inferior quality promotional ball point pens in ze gift bag. One of them leaked ink on Halle Barry's cashmere sweater. If Angelina Jolle had not taken the Shamwow from her gift bag and blotted up ink, mon Dieu, I would left be sweeping streets in Marseilles.

Sean0michael writes "Australian scientists have restored the sight of three human test subjects using stem cells cultured in contact lenses. All the patients were blind in only one eye. Two were legally blind, but can now read the big letters on an eye chart. The third could read the first few lines, but is now able to pass a driver's test. The University of New South Wales reports that these patients all had damaged corneas, and the stem cells came from each person's good eye. The best part: the procedure is inexpensive, raising hopes for being able to push this to the third world sooner than other, more expensive medications."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kasper Hauser, the comedy group that wrote the supremely funny parody of the SkyMall catalog called SkyMaul: Happy Crap You Can Buy From a Plane, has a new book out called Obama's Blackberry, which the Iranian media seems to think is some kind of terrorist hacker document. Jesse Thorn says:

The Iranian State-funded english-language TV network Press TV is currently reporting that Kasper Hauser, the noted "virtual reality 'terrorist' group," of "cyber hackers" have plans to "circulate President Barack Obama's private text messages."

Press TV wrote:

American publisher Little Brown has decided to circulate President Barack Obama's private text messages after cyber hackers cracked into his Blackberry.

The publisher announced plans to expose the president's messages on June 8.

"Virtual reality 'terrorist' group Kasper Hauser" hack into Obama's Blackberry

The mad Ukrainian leather-artists Bob Basset have a pair of claw gloves to go with the claw shoes from earlier today. I sense a theme (especially when combined with one of their smashing Cthulhu fetish masks).

Paw for hand. ???? ??? ???

The beautiful thing about Maker Faire is that you often get a sneak peek into designs folks have in the works but that are not available yet. One of my favorite prototypes I saw was the Treehouse Designs Skate Deck Chair. From their site, the chair is a "prototype for a furniture line in kit form constructed of reclaimed skateboard decks and CNC-milled color fin ply." I, for one, can't wait until this kit is available because I have 6 old decks waiting for a new life. You also gotta love that the design team on this project is father/daughter duo Lance and Amanda Glover, coming up with a styley and functional use for Amanda's old skate decks.

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In this BBC news video, a reporter with all the necessary documentation tries to visit Tiananmen Square with a cameraperson, only to find himself surrounded by umbrella-wielding goons who use their unfurled bumbershoots to block every shot the camera-person tries to catch.

Media banned from Tiananmen Square (Thanks, Nat!)

sgt scrub writes "I've never thought about sniffing my CDs before buying them but that is all about to change. According to this Yahoo! news article, dogs can be trained to tell the difference between a legit copy of a DVD and one from those pesky pirates. From the article, 'A DVD-sniffing anti-piracy dog named Paddy has uncovered a huge cache of 35,000 discs in Malaysian warehouses, many destined for export to Singapore, industry officials said on Wednesday. Paddy was given to Malaysia by the MPA to help close down piracy syndicates, which churn out vast quantities of illegal DVDs. The dog is specially trained to detect chemicals in the discs.'" We ran a story about anti-piracy dogs being trained in Ireland a few years ago.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's an interesting article by NPR's ombudsman, noting that Planet Money's Adam Davidson apparently went way over the line in a recent interview with Elizabeth Warren, who's in charge of watching over the TARP program to make sure it's not abused. Apparently a ton of people complained. Davidson apologized and NPR says that what he did was wrong and that: "It's important for journalists to treat whomever they are interviewing with respect -- and to keep their opinions to themselves. Davidson did neither."

The thing is... when I heard the original broadcast that caused the problems... I actually really liked it. Davidson is a smart and knowledgeable guy who's spent an awful lot of time digging into issues around the economic crisis to get to the bottom of them, and he had a reasonable point that he was trying to make, based on all of that knowledge -- and he challenged Warren on it. The reason I liked it was that it was a reporter actually challenging someone on something, rather than simply letting it stand. This is something that has been missing from reporting in many cases. It's what Jay Rosen has referred to as "he said/she said" reporting -- where a reporter asks questions to elicit a story from multiple parties, but never tries to ascertain if either story is true -- but just presents what the various people say. Davidson wasn't doing that. He was actually claiming that it seemed like Warren was trying to stretch the purpose of her job to do something that didn't necessarily fit in the role. And it was great to see a reporter actually say to someone "that's not true" because it felt like someone was finally getting challenged (no matter whether you feel Warren is in the right or not).

It was quite clear what Davidson's position was -- he laid it out -- and he challenged Warren, and it made for an interesting discussion. The whole idea that reporters must "keep their opinions to themselves" doesn't seem to make much sense. If someone is talking to a reporter and saying stuff that the reporter believes is wrong, don't they owe their audience the courtesy of digging deeper? I was impressed by Davidson, and am actually a bit disappointed that he backed down so quickly. It actually makes me wonder how much Planet Money will push back on people who state stuff that the Planet Money team feels is wrong in the future.

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Francesco Fondi writes:

While in Japan, I spotted this 1/20 scale replica of the famous Makino V33i CNC machine. This model kit is going to be released later this month from FineMolds for about $40.

These kits have been produced using a real-sized Makino V33i, so a machine made (small) copies of itself... the only thing missing is that the model kits can't replicate themselves!

These new model kits are aimed to industrial designers and hardcore DIY geeks who want to have a replica of one of the most diffused CNC machines on their desks. Info about REAL makino machines is here

Model kit of Makino V33i CNC machine

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A woman sued the Cap'n Crunch people because her cereal didn't contain any "crunchberries":

On May 21, a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California dismissed a complaint filed by a woman who said she had purchased "Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberries" because she believed "crunchberries" were real fruit. The plaintiff, Janine Sugawara, alleged that she had only recently learned to her dismay that said "berries" were in fact simply brightly-colored cereal balls, and that although the product did contain some strawberry fruit concentrate, it was not otherwise redeemed by fruit. She sued, on behalf of herself and all similarly situated consumers who also apparently believed that there are fields somewhere in our land thronged by crunchberry bushes.

Reasonable Consumer Would Know "Crunchberries" Are Not Real, Judge Rules (Thanks, @czelticgirl!)

An anonymous reader writes "Brian Aker, one of the core developers of MySQL, has written up a lengthy blog on how the Drizzle fork is handling both its code contributions and its testing. He has listed the tools they use and how they work with their processes. He also makes an interesting statement about the signing of corporate code-contribution agreements and how there are some, including Rasmus (creator of PHP), who refuse to sign them."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've already seen a bunch of nearly identical studies, but it's worth pointing out that there's yet another study coming out this week that says that those involved in file sharing also tend to be the best customers of the entertainment industry. Now, it's worth taking the study with at least some grains of salt, given that it was funded by Vuze, a company trying to sell licensed videos via BitTorrent and has had trouble getting content companies to sign on. However, given how many other studies have said the same thing, can we finally put to rest the idea that those who file share "aren't customers" as many in the entertainment industry insist? They do tend to be customers, and frequent ones as multiple studies have now shown. The issue is just that they also file share, meaning many file share, in part, to find out what's worth buying. So the focus should be (once again) on giving them reasons to buy rather than trying to stomp out file sharing.

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An anonymous reader writes "The Federal Trade Commission has convinced a federal judge to pull the plug on a 3FN.net, a.k.a. 'Pricewert LLC,' a Northern California based hosting provider. The FTC alleges that 3FN/Pricewert was directly involved in setting up spam-spewing botnets, among other illegal activities, the Washington Post's Security Fix Blog writes. From the story: 'Pricewert hosts very little legitimate content and vast quantities of illegal, malicious, and harmful content, including child pornography, botnet command and control servers, spyware, viruses, trojans, phishing related sites, illegal online pharmacies, investment and other Web-based scams, and pornography featuring violence, bestiality, and incest.' The story quotes a former Justice Dept. expert saying the FTC action may be a smoke screen for a larger criminal investigation by the federal government in 3FN's activities."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

h+ Magazine is edited by MAKE contributor R.U. Sirius. While it's not exactly a DIY magazine in the conventional sense, it's about making the future and about robotics, biohacking, brain-machine interfacing, space colonization, and other topics that may be of interest to MAKE readers. They have digital magazine edition, a downloadable PDF version, and will soon offer a print edition.

h+ Summer Edition

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation just launched "TOSBack: The Terms-Of-Service Tracker" which gives you realtime feed of the changes to terms of service in 44 online services (you know, all those sites whose terms are "subject to change without notice"). I want one of these that tell you which bits are enforceable.

"Terms of service form the foundation of your relationship with social networking sites, online businesses, and other Internet communities, but most people become aware of these terms only when there's a problem," said EFF Activism and Technology Manager Tim Jones. "We created TOSBack to help consumers monitor terms of service for the websites they use everyday, and show how the terms change over time."

At www.TOSBack.org, you can see a real-time feed of changes and updates to more than three dozen polices from the Internet's most popular online services. Clicking on an update brings you to a side-by-side before-and-after comparison, highlighting what has been removed from the policy and what has been added.

EFF Launches TOSBack - A 'Terms of Service' Tracker for Facebook, Google, eBay, and More

TOSBack | The Terms-Of-Service Tracker

Wanna hear primates laugh? It's infection, I guarantee it! Audio samples within.

Primatologist and psychologist Marina Davila Ross of the U.K.'s University of Portsmouth led a team that tickled the necks, feet, palms, and armpits of infant and juvenile apes as well as human babies. The team recorded more than 800 of the resulting giggles and guffaws.

Apes Laugh, Tickle Study Finds (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Anyone know who built this superb monster head kiddie car? I want to have them write a how-to for MAKE!

Gabriela from the Sunlight Foundation sez,

It comes as no surprise that Indiana Democrat Pete Visclosky's favorite word to say in Congress is "Indiana." While staying out of the spotlight in Washington, he has been a champion for his Northwestern Indiana congressional district, bringing home millions of federal dollars to create jobs and win fans. Since the decline in manufacturing, new jobs have become essential for this Rult Belt region and Visclosky, from his position on the House Appropriations Committee, has sought to get as big a piece of the federal pie as he can for his constituents.

This hard work bringing home federal dollars has made Visclosky a national news name as his connection to a lobbying firm, the PMA Group, which represented many of the recipients of federal money earmarked by the congressman, has brought him under investigation by the FBI. In the past two weeks, Visclosky's offices and campaign committess have been subpoenaed and he has reliquished control of the Energy & Water Appropriations Subcommittee to Rep. Ed Pastor.

All of this is due to the connection between campaign contributions flowing from the PMA Group and their clients to Visclosky's campaigns and the millions of dollars in earmarks to PMA Group clients that Visclosky secured in his post on the powerful House Appropriations Committee.

After studying campaign contribution data for 1998-2008 (compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics) and earmark data for FY2008 and FY2009 (from both Taxpayers for Common Sense and Legistorm), the connection between those PMA Group clients that contributed money to Visclosky's campaigns and the earmarks they received is clearly evident. The visualization -- created by the Sunlight Foundation's terrific designer Kerry Mitchell -- shows how connected the earmarks are to the receipt of campaign contributions.

Vis-a-Visclosky: Or How I Learned to Take Campaign Contributions and Turn Them Into Earmarks (Thanks, Gabriela!)

Barry Ritholtz sez, "Contrary to the nonsense being fed to the public, the credit crisis and economic collapse was not an accident or the result of a 'perfect storm.' Rather, it was the result of deliberate policies that were pursued over the course of many years."

7 Factors That Led to Crisis (Thanks, Barry!)

An anonymous reader writes "According to Jonathan Miller, News Corp's CDO, Hulu may soon begin charging subscription fees for some of their online content. News Corp is the parent company of Fox, which owns a huge portion of Hulu. When Miller of Newscorp was asked if Hulu would begin charging for online content during an Interview with Daily Finance, he said that 'the answer could be yes.' He went on to say that he doesn't 'see why over time that shouldn't happen.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In February my friend Kevin Kelly handed out sheets of paper at the TED conference and asked people to draw a map of the Internet, indicating their "home" on the map. So far he's collected over 60 hand drawn maps. My daughter Sarina drew one. At Kevin's site you can print a page and submit your own map, too.

I hope he publishes a book of them.

Internet Mapping Project

I loved Theo Gray's frozen mercury fish but, as he says, mercury is bad for you. If you want to play with a nontoxic metal that melts at low temperatures, you can buy little bottles of it at scitoys.com. Simon Field, the proprietor, sells two kinds.

In the photo above, I am holding two small vials of liquid metal. The vial on the right contains gallium, an element that melts at 29.76° Celsius (85.57° Fahrenheit). The vial on the left is an alloy that contains gallium, indium, and tin, and melts at -20° Celsius (-4° Fahrenheit).

You can do a lot of fun things with these. For instance, you can put a drop of gallium on a sheet of aluminum foil and it will combine with the aluminum, dissolving a hole in it. Nontoxic metal alloy that is liquid at room temperature

Six months ago, you may recall, the RIAA announced that it was shifting its strategies away from suing individuals (though, it would and has continued to sue some) towards working with ISPs to kick file sharers off the internet via a three strikes policy (the industry prefers "graduated response"). However, no one could find any ISPs who had agreed to it, despite rumors that Comcast and AT&T were onboard. Yet, when later comments made people think that AT&T had agreed to such a plan, AT&T issued a denial, claiming that it was not working with the RIAA in that way. Now, Greg Sandoval points out that there still aren't any ISPs officially signed on. Among the interesting nuggets in the article is the report that the RIAA thought it could pressure ISPs into signing up by having NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo take their side. The only problem? The ISPs know that there's absolutely no legal angle that could force them into a 3 strikes policy, so Cuomo has no power to do anything. So, basically, for now not much has changed. The RIAA (post-layoffs) is still conducting lawsuits (though, fewer of them) and is hoping to push ISPs into agreeing to a plan most ISPs recognize would piss off most of their customers. But, of course, never count the RIAA out. For too long, they've shown that when they're stopped at one door, they've already been planning for many months to sneak in through one of many backdoors.

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David Hambling over at the Wired.com Danger Room blog writes,

The story that the CIA uses tiny homing beacons to guide their drone strikes in Pakistan may sound like an urban myth. But this sort of technology does exist.

The military has spent hundreds of millions of dollars researching, developing, and purchasing a slew of "Tagging tracking and locating" (TTL) gear -- gizmos designed to keep covertly tabs from far away.

Most of these technologies are highly classified. But there's enough information in the open literature to get a sense of what the government is pursuing: laser-based reflectors, super-strength RFID tags, and homing beacons so tiny, they can be woven into fabric or into paper.

Inside the Military's Secret Terror-Tagging Tech (Wired Danger Room, thanks Noah Shachtman)

CNETNate writes "As the reviews of the Palm Pre start to roll in, DVD Jon expands on previous coverage of the Pre showing up in iTunes as some sort of an iPod, by publishing the offending code Palm has used to enabled the feature. As suspected, in regular USB mode, the phone addresses itself as a standard peripheral. But in 'Media Sync' mode, it claims to be an iPod ... from a vendor known as Apple."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BBC News' Tech department highlights a collection of Arduino projects, introducing the platform to a a broad audience in the process. This is some very bigtime recognition for the lil' blue board and its users - and hey its about time! =) [via Arduino Blog]

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NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Russia's state anti-monopoly service said on Thursday it had launched a probe of Microsoft over cutbacks in supplies of its Windows XP operating system in Russia. The agency said it thought Microsoft had violated antimonopoly legislation by cutting delivery of Windows XP operating system to Russia both separately and pre-installed on personal computers, as well as in its pricing policy on the product. It said it would consider the case on July 24, 2009."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The BSA's actions often seem so short-sighted that it makes you wonder if the organization is actually working against the interests of its membership on purpose. We've detailed in the past how the BSA loves to trot out bogus stats to support its claims about software piracy rates and the supposed "damage" it does to the economy -- but a bigger issue is the practice of BSA software audits. A year and a half ago, the Associated Press exposed the BSA's auditing practices as being highly questionable, bordering on what many would consider to be outright extortion. The organization targets lots of small companies and has no mercy. So even if it was a simple misunderstanding over what a hugely complex software license allowed, the BSA still demands money. And the most stunning part? The BSA keeps the money. According to the AP piece, the BSA (unlike some other organizations) does not distribute the money it gets from fining companies for software licensing violations.

But the bigger issue is that these practices, which are productivity killers for companies, and make many small businesses feel like their software vendors are treating them like criminals, are driving companies to look for alternatives from providers who won't accuse them of infringement at the drop of a hat, and send in a bunch of auditors. Especially in the middle of an economic downturn, treating customers as if they're criminals isn't a very good strategy.

So, what is the BSA doing? Yes, that's right, it's pumping up its software audit program, sending 1,000 audit letters to companies in London, officially demanding they detail their software usage -- while unofficially acting as a tremendous advertisement for open source software, where providers don't treat their customers as if they were criminals.

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narramissic writes "The 'dead simple and dirt cheap' touchscreen Web tablet that Michael Arrington of TechCrunch set out to build last July seems to be nearing completion, writes blogger Peter Smith. 'The CrunchPad is a Linux-based touchscreen tablet using a browser-based UI. When you turn the unit on, it boots right into the webkit-based browser. There's a pop-up virtual keyboard for entering URLs and such (you wouldn't want to do any significant typing on it) and scrolling is via swiping the screen. When Arrington first visualized the project he was shooting for a $200 price point, then discovered that a $299 price was more realistic.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rebecca MacKinnon of Global Voices has been tweeting a number of noteworthy items related to today marking the 20th year since the massacre at Tiananmen Square in China.

Among them: Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's statement, calling for prisoner release. And this article by James Fallows in the Atlantic on the hordes of plainclothes cops in the square today, whose presence is intended to block any photography or video coverage that would remind people of the incident. Also, this piece in the Financial Times, in which a reporter who was there 20 years ago says that Western news misrepresented the protesters and got the narrative wrong.

In related items, do read this New York Times piece about the exiled Tibetan poet Woeser, featured among "China's New Rebels." You may also want to read this earlier profile about the blogger/poet/dissident in the Times (Thanks, Laird).

And one of the principal student leaders in exile flew to China this week, attempting to surrender to the Chinese government in a final act of protest.

When not blogging on BB, Bill Gurstelle writes books like Backyard Ballistics and The Art of the Catapult. His latest, Absinthe and Flamethrowers is now on sale everywhere.

I experimented with knife throwing as a consequence of writing Absinthe and Flamethrowers. It's quite entertaining and I've been recommending knife throwing anyone who'll listen (well, almost anyone.) It's much different experience than, say, throwing pub darts. To me, one really can't compare the bold, red-blooded flush of satisfaction derived from a perfect, cold steel stick in a target with the rather dainty, epicene feeling one gets when tossing a dart. It's harder to learn, but once you get the hang of it, it's a terrific.

Knife throwers, as portrayed in popular culture are usually strange and menacing; from crazy Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York to the murderous twins Mischka and Grischka in Octopussy, to Rookwood in V for Vendetta.

I did some research on knife throwers in the media - invariably they're portrayed as weirdos.

How strange are they? Behold just a few a of the movie summaries I've gleaned from Internet sources having knife throwers as their focus:

The Unknown (1929) : Alonzo is an apparently armless knife thrower who uses his feet to encircle Estrellita with blades. Estrellita falls in love with Alonzo (she fears men's arms), so he goes to a hospital and has his amputated. Meantime Malabar cures Estrellita of her fear of men's arms, so Alonzo tries to have him killed during a circus act.

Santa Sangre (1989): A young man is confined in a mental hospital. Through a flashback we see that he was traumatized as a child, when he and his family were circus performers: he saw his father cut off the arms of his mother. Back in the present, he rejoins his surviving and armless mother. Against his will, he "becomes her arms" and the two undertake a grisly campaign of murder and revenge.

Mad love (1935): An insane surgeon's obsession with an actress leads him to replace the severed hands of her musician lover with the hands of a knife murderer which still have the urge to throw knives.

The Flintstones (1962): Fred becomes suspicious when Wilma's former boyfriend and circus knife thrower Rodney Whetstone shows up and strange things start happening.

(Download MP4)

Boing Boing Video teams up with PopSci and Theo Gray to bring you today's episode -- in which the MAD SCIENCE author shows you how to make delicious mercury-sicles shaped like fishies and turtles!

Okay, okay, you're not supposed to eat them at all. In fact, the safety precautions in the production of this episode were probably more extreme than in any video we've ever published, because even the tiniest amount of mercury is incredibly toxic to humans.

I don't want to spoil the surprise here, so -- hop on over to PopSci.com for the whole story on this dangerous but beautiful experiment in how to work with mercury as a solid: Frozen on Video: Theo Gray Sculpts in Solid Mercury, with Some Help from Liquid Nitrogen.

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Where to Find Boing Boing Video: RSS feed for new episodes here, , subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video. (Thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic, to Paul Adams and Mike Haney of PopSci, and to Theo Gray and photog Nick Mann!)

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• The verdicts are in: we rounded up 15 of the best Palm Pre reviews.

• Could the Palm Pre masquerade as an iPhone to circumvent Apple's iTunes locks?

• Enter to win an awesome, arty laptop case -- by submitting photos of your tricked out, custom laptop.

• An interview with the guy who keeps the World Food Programs phones turned on.

• By 2011, iRex says we'll have our mits on the ultimate, "magazine qualtiy" color e-reader.

• Microsoft would prefer to call a netbook a "low cost small notebook PC." (not kidding)

• The first-gen Peek is now available for $20 (that is not a typo).

• The latest digital picture frame from SilverPac reminded us that everything is turning into a PC.

• A USB vacuum cleaner for tidying up your workspace (USB maid not included).

• We tested a $400 tide watch and tideApp, a free desktop/Android/iPhone app; find out which one we recommend.

• Deal Alert: Dell is phasing out its Mini 9 netbook.

• Video footage of a programmer riding a Kuka robot as if it were a surfboard.

• The Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA of the camera world is the Sigma DP2. Discuss...

• A $95,000 machine that converts printed documents to toilet paper.

• A look at the Soma AirBag, an inflatable surfboard carrier.

• Answering iPhone calls in the car? Consider the new Belkin Tunebase.

Instructables user pstretz made this Arduino-based simple soft tone generator for another user (carmitsu) who wrote:

I teach music in elementary school. We play a lot of recorder music. i.e. the kids play little flutes...... I have several special needs kids who can are using these black poster boards with circles that have the name of the note on them. These students push on the circles with notes names at the same time the rest of the students are playing a song..... Most of the special needs kids can do this fairly well and in time with the music.

What I am looking to to is build a very simple sound generator so that these kids could play the same pitch as those being played by the students on their recorders. I would only be a few pitches. I thought I could attach some kind of small button to the bottom of their round circles so that when they push on them the sound would come out of a small speaker, loud enough so they could hear.

And that's just what this is, a simple tone generating soft circuit. It's a great simple project to make, and it warms my heart to see makers helping teachers helping kids.

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We just wrote about the PR nightmare facing eMusic for announcing both a price increase and its first major record label signing at the same time -- leading many to assume that the price increase was due to the Sony Music deal. Some in our comments pointed out that eMusic subscribers were protesting in a variety of places -- including on Twitter, where they were using the hashtag (used to designate a unique cause or event): #emusicfail. And, as usually happens in such situations, many of the hundreds of commenters on eMusic's own blog post on the deal mentioned the Twitter hashtag, and encouraged others to start using it as well, while making their protests public. So, how did eMusic address these angry customers?

It apparently made them disappear.

A commenter on our post, pointed us to a comment on the eMusic blog noting that all of the comments that mentioned the Twitter tag had been deleted by eMusic -- not only wiping out signs of the protest, but also screwing up the numbers of comments, which made the conversation confusing, since people are referring to other comments with the wrong number now.

So, rather than address the fact that there are a ton of angry protesters, eMusic simply decided to pretend they don't exist? It's hard to see that ending well.

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Thought motion control was the only trick Sony worked up for their E3 appearance? Over at Offworld we looked at some of the developments that went unmentioned at their press conference, including a portable augmented reality game for their PSP (above) that sees you discovering and Pokemon-battling creatures conjured out of thin air, and Echochrono, a time-warping PSP game that sees you enlisting the ghosts of your own previous playthroughs to help you advance through its puzzling levels. Elsewhere we rounded up some of Sony's other E3 developments: the first look at the PSP's littler LittleBigPlanet, the retro-vector design-your-own-PS3-shooter Gravity Crash, the fantastically robust and intuitive track editor for their "race, create, share" kart game ModNation Racers, the latest look at gritty PS3 thriller Heavy Rain, and our guess that Hideo Kojima's newest portable Metal Gear Solid will include 4-player simultaneous play in its main storyline. Finally, we looked at the 'Rock Gods' joining the adventure for Double Fine's Brütal Legend including Judas Priest's Rob Halford, Motorhead's Lemmy Kilmister, Lita Ford, and, of course, Black Sabbath's Ozzy Osbourne, and saw how Nintendo plan to mix competitive and cooperative elements in their updated classic New Super Mario Bros Wii.

The 72-year-old actor of "Kung Fu" and "Kill Bill" fame passed away in Thailand today.

(Bill Gurstelle is guest blogging here on Boing Boing. He is the author of books including Backyard Ballistics, and the recently-published Absinthe and Flamethrowers)

I had a chance to converse with artist Zina Saunders at the GEL 2009 conference in New York City last month. (GEL stands for Good Experience Live, which is something like an East Coast mini-TED conference. Basically, the organizer, Mark Hurst, invites schedules a day of 20-minute talks given by interesting people with unusual experience. Each presenter speaks about what makes up good experience.)

Saunders does a lot of work for the magazines and newspapers,(the political stuff is wickedly funny depending on your outlook) but she may be best known for her delightful collection of New York City slice-of-life portraits called Overlooked New York. It's a huge and creatively rendered look at New Yorkers do interesting things below the radar. They raise pigeons on the rooftops of their flats and long distance swim in the East River. If you visit the site, be sure to check out the story of the Puerto Rican Bike Men.


http://www.overlookednewyork.com

Also as it turns out, both Zina and I find the fire plugs and sprinkler connections on New York City sidewalks unexpectedly interesting. They reflect, albeit imperfectly, the neighborhood in which they reside. The ones on the upper west side are all shiny and new, while the ones in the grittier parts of town are beaten up and covered with unfriendly looking spikes.


http://www.drawger.com/zinasaunders/

BobB-nw writes "Cybercriminals are improving a malicious software program that can be installed on ATMs running Microsoft's Windows XP operating system that records sensitive card details, according to security vendor Trustwave. The malware has been found so far on ATMs in Eastern European countries, according to a Trustwave report. The malware records the magnetic stripe information on the back of a card as well as the PIN, which would potentially allow criminals to clone the card in order to withdraw cash. The collected card data, which is encrypted using the DES algorithm, can be printed out by the ATM's receipt printer, Trustwave wrote."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BobB-nw writes "Cybercriminals are improving a malicious software program that can be installed on ATMs running Microsoft's Windows XP operating system that records sensitive card details, according to security vendor Trustwave. The malware has been found so far on ATMs in Eastern European countries, according to a Trustwave report. The malware records the magnetic stripe information on the back of a card as well as the PIN, which would potentially allow criminals to clone the card in order to withdraw cash. The collected card data, which is encrypted using the DES algorithm, can be printed out by the ATM's receipt printer, Trustwave wrote."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Book-A-Day in May
Last week was the last in our Book-A-Day in May, where we gave away Maker's Notebooks to 20 Twitter followers and four Arduino MEGAs.

Last week's winners of Maker's Notebooks were @j0nny5 @Arroxane @1stPageofGoogle @philomathickat @johalloran

The winner of last week's Arduino MEGA microcontroller was @eemaguire

If you haven't direct-messaged us on Twitter, please do it now so we can get the books out to you.

Twittering Maker Faire
Thanks to everyone who Twittered about Maker Faire and who sent us in tips for @FaireTraffic. We had a fabulous Faire and the traffic and parking situations were relatively painless/smooth, given the tens of thousands of people moving in and out of the area. We heard few complaints about significant bottlenecks.

Make: Tips
Don't forget to subscribe to @make_tips, if you don't already, and to send us tips. Here are a few recent ones:

# Silver binder clips as emergency cufflinks: http://bit.ly/mBvqU

# For a nice finish with spray paint, sand before you prime, and prime before you paint. Follow up with several thin clear coats.

# A jewelers wooden ring clamp is awesome for holding small parts: http://bit.ly/10UAZm (via @wackyvorlon)

# Embroidery floss organizers work great for storing components when traveling. Get them at the craft store.

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CurtMonash writes "The Indianapolis Star reports that Tuesday Morning, Methodist Hospital turned away patients in ambulances, for the first time in its 100-plus history. Why? Because the electronic health records (EHR) system had gone down the prior afternoon — due to a power surge — and the backlog of paperwork was no longer tolerable. If you think about that story, it has a couple of disturbing aspects. Clearly the investment in or design of high availability, surge protection, etc. were sadly lacking. But even leaving that aside — why do problems with paperwork make it necessary to turn away patients? Maybe the latter is OK, since there obviously were other, more smoothly running hospitals to send the patient to. Still, the whole story should be held up as a cautionary tale for hospitals and IT suppliers everywhere."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just last week we were talking about how News Corps' "chief digital officer" was claiming that free doesn't work, though his reasoning was incredibly weak. It was also incredibly ironic, because Miller's previous work included convincing Time Warner to turn AOL's walled garden into an open and free platform... which was the right move, but got him fired. Perhaps because of that, he now has an aversion to free and is trying to put up garden walls wherever he can, not realizing that the animals won't go back into a walled garden very easily. His latest suggestion, as sent in by robert, is that Hulu should start making shows available by paid subscription only. In other words, take all the good that Hulu did to get people to watch TV online with ads, rather than downloading unauthorized versions... and put it behind a paywall, to drive people right back to unauthorized downloads where there is no ad revenue.

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I don't know to what extent Twitter archives my posts. For example, here's a blog post from January of this year. It links to a tweet, which is still there. Not sure if it keeps around older stuff, or how I would browse them if I wanted to see what I had written. The search command in Twitter stops at a certain point, exactly where that is -- I don't think anyone knows.

Uncertainty about what's backed up is a sure sign of a problem with backups.

Because I want a record of whatever I post to Twitter, I wrote an app that archives all my posts and those of people I follow. It's a very easy bit of code to write, since Twitter has an API call that returns all the recent tweets of all the people I follow, every client has to make this call regularly, so it has to be efficient, on both ends; and it is. I have shared the code, anyone can download it for free. It runs in the OPML Editor. But I think more developers should add this to their Twitter clients as a service to their users, as a competitive advantage, and as a way of making the work we do safer.

Right now we're all running without a safety net. Or more accurately, only Twitter knows how much of a safety net we have. And as we saw in the financial meltdown, it's not wise to assume that people we depend on to understand how complex systems work actually understand how they work.

In software, it's always a good idea to back up your work. And the people who make the popular Twitter clients could do a lot to help us there.

Discussion:

1. Some environments allow apps to write to local disks, and others don't. I don't know if Air, the platform many of the Twitter clients run on, allows this. If so, then I recommend that the clients simply maintain a calendar-structured folder of XML files containing each days' tweets, one file for each user. If not, then the backup has to be maintained in the cloud.

2. The size of these files is negligable in the age of MP3 and AVI. Text files are tiny and disks are relatively huge. Size isn't an issue.

3. Neither is performance. The file systems of today's computers are incredibly good at saving small text files.

4. It might add a little complexity to the Prefs user interface. At least it would require a panel that allows the user to choose a folder, and to enable or disable the feature. I would have it enabled by default.

5. You might want to allow the user to save his or her backup in Amazon S3 or to use FTP to upload to another server. Again, the overhead is negligable. I have the software running on my desktop system in the background. It's just an ordinary iMac. I don't notice any delays. Honestly.

6. What format to use? The simplest choice would be to use the XML-based format that Twitter itself uses. Other choices include RSS, Atom, OPML, or something of your own invention. I think RSS is the most rational choice, but I used OPML. I'm beginning to think that was a mistake, though I had good reasons for that choice at the time.

7. I also dereference short URLs and store both the long and short version. Wouldn't want to go to all the trouble of backing up the tweets only to find out the URLs broke because tinyurl (or whatever) went away.

8. The most basic reason to do this is backup, and that was the original motivation in my suggestion, in the summer of 2008. I suggested to the client vendors I could reach that they support RSS-based backup. That way, when Twitter went down -- as it was doing regularly then -- their users would not go down. But then Twitter started becoming more reliable so the urgency of this decreased

9. However, storing user backups first on the desktop, then in the cloud, those are the first steps towards an open, low-tech, simple form of federation that doesn't depend on a central node. If for no other reason, we as a community, should start down that road, asap. Murphy's Law says that at some point we will wish we had.

10. I'm sure there are other considerations, please post comments if you think of them, and I'll add to this list as I think of them.

Indiebass sez, "For the very narrow niche of people who are interested in both papercraft and politics, the Chicago Tribune has created this Sen. Roland Burris (D-IL) 'Pinocchio' pdf with real Nose Grows with Lies action! Personally, I'm more interested in the papercraft side of it, and I'm more impressed the Chicago Tribune thought 'you know what would get a point across? Papercraft!'"

PDF Link (Thanks, Indiebass!)

It seems Synthmaker Unearthed Circuits has built one of just about every popular sound project known to the internet-kind. But his knack for retro-military console styling sets his collection apart from others' work - awesome to see such continuity of style and high-quality work. Example: the Stepped Tone Generator (aka - Atari Punk Console) -

Hmmm, just what is it that makes wood endpanels so reliably awesome?
Don't miss the relevant blog, and Flickr pages for more examples of great work. [via DeviantSynth]

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The MIT Technology Review website has an article highlighting the work of T.V. Raman and Charles Chen, two Google engineers working on an eyes-free interface for Android called Marvin.

"We are building a user interface that goes over and beyond the screen," says Raman. Often, eyes-free interfaces are employed for blind users, but Raman, who himself is blind, assures that these interfaces have much broader implications. "This is not just about the blind user," he says. "This is about how to use these devices if you're not in a position to look at the machine."

This effort at creating a new interface is in line with the notion of "programs without borders" and is exactly the sort of thing that gets me excited about Android. With a system designed to foster mash-ups, each new component amps up the possibility you'll find the elegant solution you're looking for.

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Left 4 Dead -- a first-person, team-play zombie game -- is one of the most compelling, nightmarish, cinematic games I've ever seen. Part of it is the excellent play mechanics, part of it is the music (which has its own AI subsystem to ensure that it follows your play and makes appropriate, dramatic swellings at all the right times), part of it is the superb writing -- but it's mostly the fact that computer generated zombies are supposed to inhabit the uncanny valley, so these undead critters seem incredibly lifelike.

And now there's a sequel in the works, and holy crap, it looks even scarier. Watch this trailer and tell me that this thing won't give you bad dreams and twitches for months.

Left 4 Dead 2 PC GamesTrailer - E3 2009: Keep Fighting Trailer (via Wonderland)

blackbearnh writes "Google just released Google Squared into the Google Labs playground. Google Squared lets you get results back in row and column format, and then add more columns to the result set. There's a brief tour of the features over on O'Reilly Radar, where the judgement is that there's lots of rough edges, but a huge amount of potential, especially for quick and dirty table generation for reports."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Melka writes -

I just released a first version of an Arduino XCode Template.
I thought Makers would be interested to have code completion and stuff while coding for the Arduino ^^

Very cool. I've found Xcode's bells and whistles to be incredibly helpful with writing/learning Objective C - I imagine the auto-completion feature alone would make writing Arduino sketches a breeze. The template, available on Melka's site, includes a thorough rundown of adjustments you'll need to make to the sample project. Drop a line in the comments if you give it a go.

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino

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Flickr user dbx1 has created a lovely series of zombie My Little Ponies.

My Little Zombie Pony (via Street Anatomy)

The Servershield is an inflatable, ventilated portable "clean-room" (not actually hermetically sealed) for servers, presumably useful if you have to keep computers running on the playa or other disaster area. Inexplicably, it's advertised for "mainframe" computers, which bodes poorly for the technical know-how of the manufacturer; surely that's a standard commodity rack beneath the cocoon?

Four small ventilator/filter units provide a clean ventilating airflow keeping the machine temperature stable and importantly clean and dry.

The cover simply drops over the machine and forms a semi airlock/seal as it rests on the floor around the machine. The machine requires no modifications whatsoever and continues to work as originally designed taking air through the body of the machine and exhausting around the top rim .

A small independently powered digital temperature readout is fixed to the cover showing machine working temperature within the cover.

Openings in the cover are provided to allow quick and easy access to the machine without removing the cover.

Servershield (via Red Ferret)

CNETNate writes "Dial-up connections and flaky Wi-Fi are made significantly more tolerable with Opera 10, it seems. After yesterdays news that Opera 10's first beta had landed, some testing was in order. One major new feature is Opera Turbo — server-side compression — which shrinks pages before sending them down your browser. With a 100Mbps connection throttled to a laughable 50Kbps, Opera 10 proved itself to outperform every other desktop browser on the planet, and there are graphs to prove it. Javascript benchmarks put the new browser in fourth place overall, after Chrome 2, Safari 4 and Firefox, but it indeed passes the Acid3 test with a perfect score. If you ever use a laptop on public Wi-Fi, to not have Opera 10 installed could be a big mistake"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The June GO-Tech (Ann Arbor, MI) meeting is this Tuesday, June 9, at 7pm. Everyone is welcome.

Rick Chownyk will be demonstrating aluminum casting and Gene David (Portland, MI) will be showing off his steam-powered motorcycle in progress. Plus, there will be the usual assortment of 5-minute presentations -- bring cool demos. Topics in the past have ranged from metal casting to PCB design to web-based home automation and everything in-between.

Door prizes! Circuit Cellar Ink sent GO Tech a box of goodies - magazines plus some development systems.

The meeting is at 7 pm at A2 MechShop, a shared technical office/shop space located at 240 Parkland Plaza, Ann Arbor, MI 48103 on the west side of Ann Arbor, MI, off of Jackson between Zeeb and Wagner.

They have a video projector (VGA, composite), wireless internet, copier, etc. If you have an idea for a talk longer than five minutes, let them know.

GO Tech (formerly NotBAGO) is a meeting for Ann Arbor area readers of MAKE Magazine, Circuit Cellar, Home Shop Machinist, Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools, Slashdot, etc. That is, people who are interested in and make things using technology, whether that's a metal cutting lathe or a Python script. A kind of generalized mixture of CerealBar, Dorkbot, Oxford Geek night, and Portland Machinist Guild. GO Tech includes machinists, electrical engineers, software folks, industrial control types, and so on. They share projects, information about tools and ideas, and connect with like-minded people.

Meetings are generally the second Tuesday of the month at 7PM.

More info here.

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A North Carolina man has been arrested after allegedly arranging for his wife to be raped via Craigslist, a story that's sure to give more ammo to the "blame Craigslist" crowd. What's clear from the details is that, if the reported details of the crime are true, this guy is pretty evil: apparently he posted a couple of ads on the site "in an effort to arrange for someone to come to his home and have sex with his wife using some type of scare tactic." When police responded to a 911 call saying an armed man was sexually assaulting a woman in the house, the guy was present. While Craigslist gets the mention in the headline -- and will likely catch flak for it -- it's hard to believe that a person capable of such an act did it just because Craigslist was available. What doesn't get too much mention, though, is the usefulness of the Craigslist ads (again) have in investigating and prosecuting the guy.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Nevo writes "A partner and I are in the planning stages of a business. We've decided on a name that we'd like to use but the domain name is already registered. The owner has a single 'search' page up (similar to the one at www.goggle.com)... clearly not a legitimate business interest, but since we don't own a trademark on this name it doesn't qualify as bad faith, I don't think. Does anyone have any experience buying domains from these operators? Do you have any advice on how to approach the owners of these domains to get them at a reasonable cost?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Udi Tirosh, of DIYPhotography, sent us the link to this post on creating back-to-back ring adapters for macro photography on the cheap:

One method of delving into macro photography is to use adapter rings.

These rings have threads on both sides, one end is screwed onto your present camera lens like any filter and a second lens is attached in reverse onto the other end of the ring. So two lenses can be attached front to front using the adapter rings filter threads. You can buy these adapters or you can make them yourself by taking filters matching the thread sizes of the lenses being used and removing the glass and epoxying the rings together with the threads sticking out on both ends.

Macro Photography On A Budget Or Back To Back Couplers

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The news broke this week that a bunch of big name Silicon Valley companies are under investigation by the Justice Department for their hiring practices and potential antitrust concerns. The specific issue appears to be that the companies may have agreed to not try to poach top execs from certain companies. Apparently there was nothing stopping the employee from getting a job at one of these companies, if they took the initiative -- but the companies wouldn't initiate the attempt. In most cases, the idea was not to poach from partners -- which might just be good business sense (pissing off partners generally isn't a good idea). Where it gets tricky is the accusation that some companies had written agreements not to poach, which could lead to some charges of collusion. Oddly, the NY Times article's title claims that the issue is "unwritten rules" when the details of the article suggest it's not the unwritten, but the written rules that are the problem. There have been studies that suggest that root of Silicon Valley's success was the easy movement of people from job to job -- so if it's true that companies are holding back trying to get the best employees to move around, they may actually be doing a lot more harm to themselves anyway. And, on the whole, it does seem like there's an awful lot of movement between big name companies. Just this week at the Conversational Marketing Summit, one of the speakers had a musical chairs presentation that went on for a long time showing a bunch of execs and how they played musical chairs between Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, AOL, News Corp. and Facebook.

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If you have an Android phone, you probably have an unlimited data plan or something like it -- but the telcos and Google have done their best to keep you from using the phone as a 3G modem with your laptop (it's "unlimited" provided you don't try to use it with a full-sized computer).

The nice thing is that the Android OS is based on free/open Linux, and hackers have extracted the security information necessary to load your own OS on your phone. With an open, hackable OS and an open bootloader, the tethering problem is simple to solve: just install your own OS that includes all the same code as a factory-fresh G1, with the anti-tethering stuff deleted. You can even bridge the 3G to the WiFi in your phone, turning your G1 into a self-contained all-wireless WiFi access point (bring along a USB cable anyway, since you need to keep the damned thing charging or your battery will croak in ten seconds flat).

Danny O'Brien describes the moment that drove him to cracking open his G1, and recommends a HOWTO for getting the job done. I know what I'll be doing when I get home!

So it was being stuck without wifi in the Library of Congress the other week that finally made me decide to overwrite the T-Mobile firmware on my Android G1 with something with root access. I was talking with the US Copyright and Patent offices about how to improve access to copyrighted material for the reading disabled (in the hopes, partially, to encourage them to support the Treaty for the Visually Impaired at WIPO the following week).

In the end, I chose to install JesusFreke's distribution of the Android OS, which now has a great little utility to manage who gets root on your phone (each application's request is intercepted, and you, as user, get to allow or deny it). This tethering application is incredibly easy-to-use, and lets you share your 3G connection via wifi or bluetooth (I haven't tried the bluetooth). You can WEP encrypt the wifi connection, or allow access to only selected users.

Of course, next time I go to the LoC, I'll be sure to keep the wifi node open. I wouldn't want the MPAA guys doing without!

How To: Root Your G1 And Install Android 1.5 Cupcake (via Oblomovka)

dasButcher writes "Enterprises and mid-size business rely on auditors and service providers to certify their systems as compliant with such security regs and standards as PCI-DSS or SOX. But, as Larry Walsh speculates, a lawsuit filed by a bank against an auditor/managed service provider could change that. The bank wants to hold the auditor liable for a breach at its credit card processor because the auditor certified the processor as PCI compliant. If the bank wins, it could change the standards and liabilities of auditors and service providers in the delivery of security services."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The US Trade Representative has finally finished the long overdue task of relaunching its website. Among such spiffy new features as a blog and an interactive map, the USTR has promised to fulfill Obama's pledge "to advance the social accountability and political transparency of trade policy." And while these are nice and all, the promise rings somewhat hollow.

Even though Obama's nominee, Ron Kirk, had just begun his term as the new US Trade Representative, the 2009 Special 301 that was released in April continued the ridiculous fallacies of years past. Even worse, for an organization pledging transparency, the process of researching and writing the Special 301 reports is notoriously secretive, blocking out NGOs, consumer groups and citizens. Instead, IP maximalist industry groups collaborate with USTR bureaucrats to write draconian US government reports that serve to alienate nations and harm innovation around the world. If Ambassodor Kirk and Obama want a USTR that does advance social accountability and political transparency, it would do well to be open in substance, not style. Perhaps a good place to let them know would be their new "Ask the Ambassador" feature.

Kevin Donovan is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Kevin Donovan and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Two police officers pin a man to the ground and try to handcuff him. The man wriggles and prays to Yahweh. Eventually, one of the officers shoots him with a Tazer, which instead of subduing the man, gives him the strength to break free and run away. The officers pursue the man half-heartedly, but quickly give up.

Barence writes "Streaming will overtake download services to become the dominant force in the online music industry, according to industry insiders. The claim comes in the wake of the PRS cutting the amount of royalties streaming services have to pay songwriters to about a third. Sites will now pay the PRS 0.085p per track, compared to the 0.22p they paid previously. On-demand streaming services still have to pay the record labels about 1p for every track streamed, however. Steve Purdham, CEO of music service We7, says the move will accelerate the growing trend towards online streaming which has seen newcomers such as his site and Spotify attract millions of users in less than a year. 'Over the next 12-24 months you'll see a move towards listening [online],' Purdham told PC Pro. 'Why do you actually need to have something downloaded on your PC? The streaming idea is really the future.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The latest posting from Ukrainian arts collective Bob Basset (makers of all those wonderful leather steampunk gasmasks) features an intriguing pair of "paw shoes." Got 'em in a 45?

paw-shoes. my new project./????????? .

Wired's HOWTO wiki suggests freezing Mentos into ice cubes and then serving them in Diet Coke-based cocktails as a kind of timed practical joke (the cubes melt, and the drink turns into a volcano). Diet Coke is recommended "because it isn't sticky."

Mix an Exploding Drink (via Neatorama)

Ryanair, the discount airline that operates virtual prison-ships in the sky, is serious about installing pay toilets on its aircraft -- it will cost a pound to go wee. They're also reducing the number of toilets on their cramped, miserable planes. What are the odds that this will improve relations between passengers and the surly, angry flight crew?

The (very) last time I flew Ryanair, they locked us all in a no-toilets departure area for an hour and a half before the flight, then threatened to have me arrested for using the toilet when I boarded, rather than waiting until we were in the air and levelled off (which turned out to be an hour later).

The chief executive of Europe's largest budget carrier said the airline would also generate extra revenues by removing two out of the three toilets on its Boeing 737-800 jets and filling the space with up to six seats...

Asked if he would be interested in charging £5 a toilet visit in order to eliminate the need for the loo altogether, he said: "If someone wanted to pay £5 to go to the toilet I would carry them myself. I would wipe their bums for a fiver."

Ryanair's Michael O'Leary defends pay-per-pee fee (via Consumerist)

(Image: Ryanair seats, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Matt From London's Flickr stream)

Just read a wonderful post by Jackie Danicki, about how she chokes up in the presence of older people. Me too. I have tears streaming down my face as I read her piece, as I write this one, as I experience the memories it evokes for me.

A few weeks ago I was walking in my neighborhood in Berkeley, a hot day, and I came up behind an old man, all bundled up, walking slowly. The sidewalk was narrow, so I walked around him, and as I passed I said, gently "Excuse me." He jumped, startled and said reflexively -- "I'm sorry." In an instant I felt protective and sorry I hadn't found some other way to handle this. I did the best I could, and said something like Oh no, smiled and continued my pace.

He was skinny and fragile, exposed and vulnerable, and reminded me of my father, who will turn 80 this month. I felt protective for this man as I would if he were my own family. And was instantly reminded of something my father says often, that's worth remembering: Growing old isn't for sissies.

No doubt. But we, whose bodies still work, more or less, as they were designed to, can easily overlook that in every old body is a person who remembers well what it was like to be young. We are at a disadvantage, we don't know their experience, we get little inklings of it when we get sick, but we expect we'll get better. At some point, you no longer have that to depend on, and the quality of life must change.

Why do old people reach my heart this way? It could be their courage, or the inner strength it takes to compensate for the weak body. I don't know why they get to me this way. But they do.

Mark sez, "The recent post of the CARDIAC Unboxing [ed: the CARDIAC being a cardboard teaching computer that Bell Labs released in the late 60s] made me poke my father, who has written a CARDIAC emulator that actually looks like the real CARDIAC, to put together a webpage with the source of it. Both his childhood and mine were definitely influenced by this little wonder out of Bell Labs, so for those who can't get the cardboard variant, here's the software one, along with a scan of the original CARDIAC manual."

CARDIAC: (CARDboard Illustrative Aid to Computation) (Thanks, Mark!)

Ben sez, "A 1930s pamphlet from the Kotex Company to help mothers teach their daughters about menstruation (aka, the new purification) and the proper use of Kotex brand pads and belts."

Marjorie May's Twelfth Birthday (Thanks, Ben!)

First off, I should say that I respect what the folks over at Creative Commons are doing, and think they really do have the best interests of content creators and the public at heart in their plans -- but I've always been a bit uneasy with the whole setup of Creative Commons -- some of which I expressed last year in discussing the difficulty in distinguishing commercial from non-commercial use, as is necessary in many CC licenses. As I wrote at the time:

But it's this blurring of "personal" and "work" lives that again has me pondering if there really is a meaningful distinction between "commercial use" and "non-commercial use." Some of this debate first came about years ago, when some web publishers claimed that their RSS feeds were "for non-commercial use only," but what does that mean? If I read your site as part of my job, have I violated that rule? If I learn information from your feed that allows me to make money, have I violated that rule? More recently, there have been proposals to separate copyright violations, such that "non-commercial use" is allowed. But, again, you quickly run into very questionable scenarios. If my personal blog has Google AdSense on it, is it commercial use? If I end up getting a job because of my "personal use" of your content, does it suddenly morph into "commercial use"? The questions get more and more confusing, and the mess would make less and less sense.

It seems that Danny Sullivan has come across the same issue, and is taking both Flickr and Creative Commons to task for the ambiguity in their licenses which is so confusing that even those who are using CC licenses don't seem to totally agree with what their own licenses say. He details a variety of stories, where it's simply not clear at all what is really allowed under the CC license being used. If a commercial blog uses and attributes a photo that has a "non-commercial use" only license, is that infringing? Or is that "non-commercial use" only limited to not selling the image. But some might argue that you were "selling ads off of the image." It all gets quite blurry fast.

To their credit, the folks at Creative Commons have been working hard on trying to deal with the ambiguity (and part of the reason for the original post I linked to at the beginning of this story was a survey they were taking on this very subject). But it's quite clear that there's still an awful lot of ambiguity that isn't really helped by the phrase "non-commercial use."

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Noah at Instructables writes:

Building your own custom speakers has got to be one of the most rewarding, straightforward and cost-effective DIY activities I've come across. I'm absolutely shocked that it hasn't had a larger presence on Instructables and in the community...well, until now of course.

Some speaker projects can be complete in a weekend, while others can go on for years. Budget speaker kits start around $100, while top-of-the-line kits and components can add up to several thousands of dollars. Regardless of how much you choose to spend on your speakers, you'll likely be building something that will sound as good as commercial product that off the shelf would cost as much as 10 times more.

You can win the speakers noah made in the Art of Sound contest.

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coondoggie writes "Unmanned aircraft maker AeroVironment got an additional $5.4 million to further develop a diminutive aircraft that can fly into tight spaces undetected, perch and send live surveillance information to its handlers. Last Fall, AeroVironment, got $4.6 million initial funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop the Stealthy, Persistent, Perch and Stare Air Vehicle System (SP2S), which is being built on the company's one-pound, 29-inch wingspan battery-powered Wasp unmanned system."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Newly minted Tonight Show Conan O'Brien did a really funny segment last night about Twitter -- or, more specifically, about the breathless, conspicuous insertion of Twitter into every news and entertainment program everywhere all the time, of late. Twitter Tracker (via @biz, and sadly, Hulu region-blocks folks outside of the USA - this sucks.)

Last week, VentureBeat wrote about how politicians in Argentina, including the country's president, were pushing a plan to nearly double taxes on all tech products not made in the province of Tierra del Fuego. As the article notes, it's not clear why Tierra del Fuego gets this special benefit, but the whole idea is one that will massively harm innovation and economic growth in the country. Raising most taxes, in general, when the economy is sour is generally a bad idea (there are some exceptions), but doing it on the very tools that increase productivity and economic growth in every other industry? Not only do you harm the tech industry, but you harm pretty much every other industry that uses technology to innovate and increase productivity.

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Liam sent me another cool project that uses the Make Controller. This time it's a PCB etching agitator. This looks like a great way to make PCB etching a bit easier and safer. You could make this project with just a simple 555 circuit, but with the Make Controller you could add a lot more functionality in the future, like ventilation control and heating. Check out the link for more information and a video. Thanks Liam!

I've been etching numerous PCBs at work for various little projects, and one of the annoying parts of etching is the actual etch process. The copper clad board is immersed in Ferrocloric acid in order to etch away the exposed portions of the board. During the etch, the liquid should be agitated in order to achieve maximum saturation. I got tired of jiggling the tupperware around for 20 minutes, so I built an agitator!

More about PCB etching with the Make Controller

In the Maker Shed:


More about the Make Controller 2.0 & Interface Board kit

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1sockchuck writes "After shaking up the market for blade servers, Cisco Systems is launching a line of rackmount servers. But the company says its ambitions are more targeted than a full-scale 'all your racks are belong to us' assault on the volume server market. Cisco says it sees its 1U and 2U C-Series rackmount servers as offering an entry point to its Unified Computing System vision for companies who've built their data centers using rackmount servers instead of blades. But it thinks many customers will like the expanded memory capacity Cisco has built into the Xeon 5500/Nehalem EP processor."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

1sockchuck writes "After shaking up the market for blade servers, Cisco Systems is launching a line of rackmount servers. But the company says its ambitions are more targeted than a full-scale "all your racks are belong to us" assault on the volume server market. Cisco says it sees its 1U and 2U C-Series rackmount servers as offering an entry point to its Unified Computing System vision for companies who've built their data centers using rackmount servers instead of blades. But it thinks many customers will like the expanded memory capacity Cisco has built into the Xeon 5500/Nehalem EP processor."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's depressing, though perhaps not too surprising, to see how many readers have been sending in the NY Times story from this week about how some investors are dumping their money into lawsuits, with the idea of taking a piece of the profits. The article notes that a growing number of investors are doing this and that some see it as a "good investment during a recession" -- especially as various class action lawsuits have been springing up by people upset with the financial collapse and looking for parties to blame. Can you imagine investors who funded the real estate bubble now investing in the lawsuits over who's to blame for that bubble?

Of course, in many ways, many of the patent lawsuits by "non-practicing entities" (or as many prefer, "patent trolls") are exactly this as well. NTP, the company that stung RIM for $612.6 million over patents that the US PTO said were invalid was really just a bunch of investors, who all got to share in the "winnings," some of which they're now investing in more patent lawsuits. While the theory may be good, the problem is that it encourages bad lawsuits. One would hope that such investments wouldn't encourage such bad lawsuits because investors would rather invest in lawsuits that have a strong foundation, but that isn't always what we see. Since so much of these sorts of lawsuits (and certainly various class action lawsuits) feel like something of a crap shoot, what you end up getting is a case where these "investors" are better off "diversifying" across a bunch of questionable lawsuits, in the hopes that a few hit homeruns and pay off big time.

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Twenty years ago today -- the Tiananmen Square Uprising in China. There were no blogs that day, but things have certainly changed.



Now so many blogs and social media sites are blocked in China.

Here's a tool that helps you determine if your site is blocked.

http://www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china-test.html

If you discover anything interesting, feel free to report in a comment here.

PS: scripting.com is accessible from Beijing, Shanghai, Munich and Seattle.

Improv Everywhere is the joyful performance art troupe that pulls playful large scale pranks designed to surprise and delight unwitting public audiences. They're the ones behind the frozen people in Grand Central Station, the No Pants! subway ride, the Food Court Musical, the 80 fake uniformed Best Buy employees, the Starbuck's time loop, the McDonald's bathroom attendant prank, and others.

Improv Everywhere founder Charlie Todd and his cohort Alex Scordelis have written a book, Causing a Scene: Extraordinary Pranks in Ordinary Places with Improv Everywhere, that reveals the behind-the-scenes stories of 13 of their pre-planned missions, along with tips on how anyone can start their own street theater prank group.

Yesterday, Improv Everywhere threw a surprise wedding reception for a random couple getting married at City Clerk's Office in Manhattan. Watch the video here.

Causing a Scene: Extraordinary Pranks in Ordinary Places with Improv Everywhere

Acoustic Bubble writes "Researchers at Cornell University have developed the first algorithm for synthesizing familiar bubble-based fluid sounds automatically from 3D fluid simulations, e.g, for future virtual environments. The research (entitled "Harmonic Fluids") will appear at ACM SIGGRAPH 2009 in New Orleans in August 2009. Check out some videos of falling, pouring, splashing and babbling water simulations. (computed on a Linux cluster)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Is that Champ, the mysterious cryptid that supposedly roams Lake Champlain? The image above is a video still from new phonecam footage said to have been taken near Oakledge Park in Burlington, Vermont. BB pal Loren Coleman is all over the story at Cryptomundo. "Media and Others Take Closer Look At 'Champ Video'"

This maker was inspired by an old post here on Make: Online of the "Top Ten Most Useful Knots" to create a wallet card of several useful knots.

More:

Top Ten Most Useful Knots

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