The NY Times is reporting on the Associated Press's decision to distribute the investigative journalism of four nonprofit groups. This ought to benefit both struggling newspapers, which have cut investigative staff, and the nonprofits where, we can hope, many of those laid-off journalists are plying their trade. It's refreshing to see this kind of forward thinking coming out of an organization not normally known for its progressiveness. "Starting on July 1, the A.P. will deliver work by the Center for Public Integrity, the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and ProPublica to the 1,500 American newspapers that are A.P. members, which will be free to publish the material. The A.P. called the arrangement a six-month experiment that could later be broadened to include other investigative nonprofits, and to serve its nonmember clients, which include broadcast and Internet outlets."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

JamaicaBay writes "I'm a development manager, and the other day my boss and I got into an argument over whether it's worth doing code reviews. In my shop we've done both code reviews and design reviews. They are all programmer-led. What we've found is that code reviews take forever and tend to reveal less than good UI-level testing would. The payback on design reviews, meanwhile, is tremendous. Our code is intended for desktop, non-critical use, so I asked my boss to consider whether it was worth spending so much time on examining built code, given our experience not getting much out of it. I'm wondering whether the Slashdot crowd's experience has been similar."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Humanscale's new Diffrient World Chair is the latest outing from legendary designer Niels Diffrient, the man who (as Bruce Sterling points out) literally wrote the book on ergonomics. Reading this description is sheer chairporn. $740 is out of my budget, though I have no doubt that it's worth every penny.

Made from just eight major parts and weighing less than 25 pounds, the Diffrient World chair achieves Humanscale's signature weight-sensitive recline through an innovative new design that functions without a mechanism. Utilizing two frame components, the user's body weight, and the laws of physics, the Diffrient World chair's mech-free recline action automatically adjusts to the needs of each user, offering appropriate levels of resistance without unnecessary locks, dials or other manual controls.

Like its older sibling, the award-winning Liberty chair, the Diffrient World chair features Form-Sensing Mesh Technology that ensures perfect lumbar support for every user without the external, manually adjusted lumbar devices found on all other mesh chairs. Additionally, a mesh seat pan with a frameless front edge provides all-day comfort with soft support under the thighs.

Humanscale Sets New Bar With Ultra Simple Task Chair (via Beyond the Beyond)

Murilee sez, "English Russia has dug up some excellent photos of crypto-punks of the Late Brezhnev Era, when it still took plenty of guts to dress like a freak."

Soviet Punks (Thanks, Murilee!)

Barence writes "Dell has admitted to raking in over $3 million from advertising its products on Twitter. The PC maker has been using Twitter for two years, and employs proprietary software to track sales from users clicking through from Twitter links. Of that $3 million, the company claims that $1 million was made in the past six months following an explosion in Twitter's popularity. (Here is an analysis indicating that 72.5% of Twitter users joined in 2009.) The majority of sales have come through the @DellOutlet account which posts six to ten special offers a week — with at least half of these being Twitter exclusives. Though the $3 million is a drop in the bucket given the Dell's $12.3 billion in revenue during the first quarter of this year, it further bolsters Twitter's case for charging businesses."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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

Well, my time guest blogging on BoingBoing is almost over. So many things to write about and so little time. A few things I like that deserve more, than the few words I'm able to provide:

1. ZoozBeat This is the iPhone/iTouch application that won the "gadget-off" competition at Kinnernet last month in Washington DC. It's a gesture-based mobile musical studio, simple enough for non-musicians to immediately become musically expressive but rich enough for experienced musicians to push the envelope of mobile music creation. Use shake and tilt movements, tap the screen, or press the keypads to create and modify rhythmic and melodic lines. Available thru iTunes.

The Celestron digital microscope I wrote about earlier came in second.

2. The Debut My absolute favorite indie rock band in the world. I'm especially fond of the lead singer. ; ) Best known work is The Photograph Song



3. Goex brand black powder. Sure, you can learn how to make your own bp by reading the Thundring Noyse chapter of Absinthe and Flamethrowers. But what if you just want to buy it? Then this is the stuff I like: "In a powder mill in the piney woods of north Louisiana, workers carry on the tradition of generations of American black powder makers, grinding out granules of black powder at the GOEX Black Powder Plant."

4. BIRTH CONTROL IS SINFUL IN THE CHRISTIAN MARRIAGES and also ROBBING GOD OF PRIESTHOOD CHILDREN!! (Paperback). Not sure if it's worth every penny of its $135 cover price, but may be available used for less. One Amazon reviewer wrote:
"Despite being written entirely in BLOCK CAPITALS, this self-published work conveys its message elegantly. In fact, you don't even need to read it to understand the main argument being put forward.

True, by avoiding this book you will miss out on the precise location of the heretical surfboard worshipped by the British royal family and . . . .". .( more here)

5. Malta (the drink, not the country, although the country is fine as well) It's a delicious malt flavored beverage popular in the Caribbean. (But read the label. Goya Malta has a whopping 230 calories per 12 oz serving.)

We've discussed the supervolcano beneath Yellowstone a few times here (not going to blow, 2004; going to blow, 2008). Now scientists are pondering whether a large area of conductive material beneath Mt. St. Helens might contain enough magma that the area could be classed a supervolcano. The jury is still out on this one. Reader nhytefall sends us a New Scientist progress report. "Magma can be detected with a technique called magnetotellurics, which builds up a picture of what lies underground by measuring fluctuations in electric and magnetic fields at the surface. The fields fluctuate in response to electric currents traveling below the surface, induced by lightning storms and other phenomena. The currents are stronger when magma is present, since it is a better conductor than solid rock. ... [M]easurements revealed a column of conductive material that extends downward from the volcano. About 15 km below the surface, the relatively narrow column appears to connect to a much bigger zone of conductive material. This larger zone was first identified in the 1980s by another magnetotelluric survey, and was found to extend all the way to beneath Mount Rainier 70 km to the north-east, and Mount Adams 50 km to the east. It was thought to be a zone of wet sediment, water being a good electrical conductor. ... [Some researchers] now think the conductive material is more likely to be a semi-molten mixture. Its conductivity is not high enough for it to be pure magma.. so it is more likely to be a mixture of solid and molten rock."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brad at MAKE: PDX writes:

May ended up being a busier month than anticipated and ultimately disrupted our plans to hold contiguous monthly meetings. However, everything is back on track for an excellent meeting for the month of June!

We have lined up a speaker from the active and inventive local electronics gurus, DorkbotPDX. They regularly have meetings at various locations around town that range from casual gatherings to focused in-depth workshops. Check out their calendar for more info.

Also we have a speaker from the Portland State Aerosapce Society. PSAS members work on airframes, avionics, communication equipment, motors, software, and more. They welcome participation from students and community members and have a list of open projects that they would like help with if you’re so inclined.

MAKE: PDX meeting

June 20, 2009 3pm

Portland TechShop

10100 SW Allen Blvd. Beaverton

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Death Metal tips news about how defense contractor Raytheon is adapting military-style surveillance packages for use aboard blimps at public events like the Indy 500. "Until recently, Raytheon's eye-in-the-sky technology was used in Afghanistan and Iraq to guard American military bases, working as airborne guards against any oncoming desert threat. Using infrared sensors and a map overlay not unlike Google Earth, the technology scans a large area, setting important landmarks (say, the perimeter of a military base), and constantly relays video clips back to a command center. If a gun fires or a bomb is detonated, the airships can detect the noise and focus the camera — all from a mighty-high 500 feet." Though the technology is expensive, Raytheon is shopping it around to police departments and other organizations that might want to keep an eye on large gatherings of people.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Titan books, the publishers of the terrific Jack Kirby / Joe Simon Golden Age comic book anthology, The Best of Simon and Kirby, kindly gave me permission to run one of the stories in the book, from a delightfully weird comic book called The Strange World of Your Dreams. Click the thumbnail images to enjoy the story!

Buy The Best of Simon and Kirby on Amazon

An anonymous reader sends in a philosophical piece at ZDNet about the similarities between open source development and the scientific method. Here's an excerpt: "The speed of progress is greatly enhanced by virtue of the fact the practitioners of Science publish not only results, but methodology, and techniques. In programmatic terms, this is equivalent to both the binary and the source code. This not only helps 'bootstrap' others into the field, to learn from the examples set, but makes it possible for others to verify or refute the results (or techniques) under investigation. In an almost guided-Darwinian evolutionary fashion, this makes the scientific process a powerful tool for the highlighting, analysis and possible culling of ideas and concepts; less useful ideas and hypothesis die, and likely contenders come sharply into focus. Newton made his famous comment about 'standing on the shoulders of giants,' in part, to indicate that his contributions to human knowledge could not have been achieved solely. He needed the 'firmament' beneath him hypothesized, tested and confirmed by generations of scientists, philosophers and thinkers before him, over centuries."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today in his weekly column on junk science, Ben "Bad Science" Goldacre challenges the War on Drugs and Britain's latest obsession with fighting cocaine:

In the case of cocaine, there is an even more striking precedent for evidence being ignored: during the early 1990s the World Health Organisation conducted what is probably the largest ever study of global cocaine use. In March 1995 they released a briefing kit which summarised their conclusions, with some tantalising bullet points.

"Health problems from the use of legal substances, particularly alcohol and tobacco, are greater than health problems from cocaine use," they said. "Few experts describe cocaine as invariably harmful to health. Cocaine-related problems are widely perceived to be more common and more severe for intensive, high-dosage users and very rare and much less severe for occasional, low-dosage users."

The full report - which has never been published - went on to challenge several of the key principles driving prohibition, and was extremely critical of most US policies. It suggested that supply reduction and law enforcement strategies have failed, and that alternative strategies such as decriminalisation might be explored, flagging up such programmes in Australia, Bolivia, Canada and Colombia....This report was never published, because just two months after the press briefing was released, at the 48th World Health Assembly, the US representative to WHO threatened to withdraw US funding for all their research projects and interventions unless the organisation "dissociated itself from the conclusions of the study" and cancelled the publication. According to WHO, even today, this document does not exist, (although you can read a leaked copy in full on the website of the drugs policy think tank Transform at www.tdpf.org.uk/WHOleaked.pdf ).

This is my column. This is my column on drugs. Any questions?

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

Uber-maker Bre Pettis his colleagues Zach Smith and Adam Mayer are hard at work on a open source 3D printer for the masses. Great idea: it's one thing to come up with an idea on paper (or CAD file), and quite another to turn that idea into a tangible thing. It's even another thing to sell a 3D printer kit that's about as cheap as a regular-old mass produced laser printer.
photo by rstevens

I interviewed Bre at NYC Resistor last month, after we went on a fruitless search for restaurants in Brooklyn that serve saltfish and ackee.

Bill Gurstelle (pointing to squarish object on desk): What's that?
Bre Pettis: That? It's the MakerBot Cupcake CNC. It's an open source 3D printer, that turns your table top into your own little factory.

Bill Gurstelle: So, how does it work?
Pre Pettis: The machine works like a super accurate automated hot glue gun robot. It takes a filament of plastic and melts it down and extrudes it through a tiny hole to make a tiny string of molten plastic. Layer by layer it builds up material until your object is complete!

BG: Um, what's with all the cans of cake frosting?
BP: We created a frosting attachment that you can use by switching out the plastic extruder. The Frostruder means it can frost a cupcake too! Right now, we're getting set up to make a world record attempt for the fastest cupcake decorated by a robot.

BG: (points to more stuff on a different table) What's all this other junk for?
BP: We're prototyping up a scanner which together with a MakerBot would be a replicator. We are also in the process of having an eco-friendly plastic manufactured called Polylactic Acid (PLA) manufactured. PLA is a material made out of corn in Nebraska. PLA is clear and we may be able to get it in a medical grade to do things like replace bones with it. Also we're getting the electronics for the machine assembled.

BG: Replicator? Hey, Could a Maker Bot make a Maker Bot?
BP: We're getting there one part at a time. With every batch we manufacture a new part to ship with the machine. Already we've got idler pulleys that snap over a skate bearing that are made on a MakerBot. MakerBot Operators who got a first batch MakerBot can get a hardware upgrade just by downloading the design file and printing it out on their machine. Printable Upgrades!

With the DTV transition upon us, there couldn't be a better time to pick up some coat hangers and some wood and make yourself a kickin' DTV antenna as featured on Make: television. Of course, you'll still need a digital converter box, but here's a simple, low-cost project that can definitely improve your reception. Check out the segment, and then download the PDF for detailed plans on howto make one yourself. Let us know how it works!

Here's the PDF, and be sure to check out more great comments our original blog post.

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There are multiple reports that the text-messaging systems on cellphone networks in Iran went down just before the polls opened. Boing Boing reader Jadi says, "Right now, there are many ongoing protests in the streets against the fraud and still SMS system is down."

According to Ghalam News and multiple Twitterers in Tehran, the text messaging system in Iran has been taken down, just hours before polls open for Friday's presidential election.(...)

The Ghalam News report, translated from Persian, says that the popular network "was cut off throughout the country." The action occurred just before midnight local time, less than nine hours before the start of elections. "All walks of life from all over the country" are discovering that "messages on different cell phone networks will not send."

Blog accounts: Textually, Mideast Monitoring, i-policy.

MojoKid writes "Engineers from Apple have applied for a patent on an 'emergency' mode for cell phones that would squeeze every last drop of energy out of the batteries. The phone would recognize emergency calls when the user dialed an emergency number, such as 911 in the United States. But another number could also be stored as an 'emergency number' on the phone (a spouse, child, or parent, for example) or the user could manually put the phone in emergency mode. The process would do a variety of things. It would disable 'non-essential hardware components' and applications on the phone, reduce power to the screen and potentially reduce the phone's processor speed. It also would make it harder to disconnect the call and enable 'emergency phrase buttons' on the phone."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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

Am I being overly skeptical of this story: Boy Hit by Meteorite Traveling at 30,000 MPH?

The news photos show the meteorite to be quite small, something slightly smaller than a 22-cal bullet. But 30,000 mph is around 15 times the muzzle velocity of an M-16. I'd expect a worse outcome than a band aid and a smile.

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

Eighty-five year old George H. W. Bush celebrated his birthday by going skydiving. Politics aside, that's a wonderful thing. (Yes, it's a tandem jump, but give him a break, he's 85.) GHWB, perhaps unlike some of his descendants, seems to be a pretty fair practitioner of the Art of Living Dangerously.

theodp writes "The first rule of data centers is: don't talk about data centers. Still, the NY Times Magazine manages to take its readers on a nice backstage tour of internet data denters, convincing Microsoft and others to let them sneak a peek inside some of the mega-centers that make up today's cloud. And if it's been a while since you software types stepped inside a real-life computing facility, there's an accompanying data-center-porn slideshow that'll give you an idea where your e-mail, photos, videos, music, searches, and other online services that you take for granted these days come from." Reader coondoggie sends in a related story about a government plan to spend $50 million on improving data center technology.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bilal has been hanging out with the Instructables folks for a while. When I bumped into him at Maker Faire, he was typically animated as he told me about what they do there.

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Death Metal sends in a story about Kyle Brady, a computer science major at San Jose State University, who recently ran into trouble over publishing the source code to his programming assignments after their due dates. One of Brady's professors contacted him and threatened to fail him if he did not take down the code. Brady took the matter to the Computer Science Department Chair, who consulted with others and decided that releasing the code was not an ethical violation. Quoting Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing: "There's a lot of meat on the bones of this story. The most important lesson from it for me is that students want to produce meaningful output from their course-assignments, things that have intrinsic value apart from their usefulness for assessing their progress in the course. Profs — including me, at times — fall into the lazy trap of wanting to assign rotework that can be endlessly recycled as work for new students, a model that fails when the students treat their work as useful in and of itself and therefore worthy of making public for their peers and other interested parties who find them through search results, links, etc. But the convenience of profs must be secondary to the pedagogical value of the university experience — especially now, with universities ratcheting up their tuition fees and trying to justify an education that can put students into debt for the majority of their working lives."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ruphus13 writes "The race for a hyper-fuel-efficient car is on in a big way. Now, Riversimple has tried to leverage the knowledge of the masses to bring its vision to reality soon with a car that gives the equivalent of 300 miles to the gallon. 'The idea to build an open source car isn't a new one, but you've got to give vehicle design company Riversimple credit for originality. The company plans to unveil its first car in London later this month, a small two-seater that weighs roughly 700 pounds. If you agree to lease one for 20 years (yes, 20), Riversimple will throw in the cost of fuel for the lifetime of the lease...The team decided to release the car's designs under an open source license in order to speed up the time it takes to develop the vehicle while also driving down the cost of its components.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Martin Heller finds Silverlight 3 gaining ground on Adobe Flash, Flex, and AIR in all the areas where Silverlight 2 had lagged. No longer do developers need to build desktop WPF apps based loosely on corresponding Silverlight RIAs, as Silverlight 3 adds the ability to install Silverlight apps on the desktop, update them in place, detect Net connectivity state changes, and store data locally and securely. Moreover, solid Expression Blend 3 and Visual Studio 2010 betas provide developers with much improved tools to create Silverlight RIAs. '"I do not expect many Adobe shops to give up their Flash, Flex, and AIR for Silverlight 3. I do expect many Microsoft shops to do more RIAs with Silverlight now that it's more capable and to create lightweight browser/desktop Silverlight 3 applications where they might have fashioned heavier-weight Windows Forms or WPF client applications," Heller says.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BoingBoing video visited Maker Faire!

In today's edition of Boing Boing Video, Mark Frauenfelder and Boing Boing Gadgets editor Lisa Katayama profile three cool things found at the recent Bay Area Maker Faire: The Yudu personal screen printer, an interactive, collaborative, musical Tesla Coil, and a candy-fabbing device from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.

More:

• CandyFab 6000
  
• Yudu Screen Printing Video Review on CRAFT
  

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Replacing guitar pickups is a good option for those wanting better tone without forking over the cash for a new instrument. The process may seem a bit intimidating to newcomers, but it's actually pretty simple - John's instructable provides a helpful step-by-step -

After some time on Google reading articles mentioning the good things that can come out of getting rid of the stock pickups on inexpensive guitars, I was set on trying to do this myself. I had never considered it before, I always thought that the insides of guitars were something only an elite group of individuals were allowed to mess with.

I was wrong. After finishing this pickup swap, I learned a ton about my guitar without messing ANYTHING up. And now I have a great sounding guitar, too.

If you're finally becoming good at guitar, or even if you have been playing for a while and want a change, swapping out the pickups is one of the best things you can do without shelling out hundreds for a new guitar.

Especially handy, as he documented some snags he ran into along the way, as well as a quick rundown on choosing a replacement pickup. Read more in the Instructable.

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Hugh Pickens writes "Things may get a little tight in space as seven shuttle astronauts blast off from Florida on June 13 to join up with six colleagues already on the International Space Station (ISS) bringing the ISS contingent to thirteen, the largest number of individuals on the platform ever at one time. The 13 space-farers represent seven from the US, two each from Russia and Canada, and one each from Europe and Japan. '"I don't know what it's going to be like," says Endeavour commander Mark Polansky, a veteran of two prior spaceflights. "We know it's going to be challenging with 13 people aboard."' During five spacewalks, an external platform will be added to the lab which will enable those experiments to be performed that require materials to be exposed to the harsh environment of space and astronauts also have to fit equipment to the exterior of the platform such as batteries and a spare space-to-ground antenna."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you are looking for a way to smarten up your travels, you may want to look into the Sightseer's Guide to Engineering provided by the National Society of Professional Engineers and National Engineers Week.

From the entry on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge:

To engineers, crossing the Tacoma Narrows presented more of an economic challenge. Originally it was hoped the federal government would help pay for an $11 million bridge that would cut at least 40 miles off the trip between Tacoma and Bremerton. After the federal government refused, the state turned to Leon Moisseiff, who calculated that a thin-plate girder type bridge could be built for only $6.4 million. The collapse of the bridge shocked the engineering community, and the lessons learned did a lot to shape future American bridge building. The replacement bridge, built in 1950, is one of the largest suspension bridges in the world.

There are entries for each of the states, though it appears that they could use some suggestions for additional places for engineering minded vacation spots. Via Celeste.

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An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post is reporting that the U.S. Justice Department has indicted three residents of the Philippines for breaking into more than 2,500 corporate PBX systems in the United States and abroad. The government says the hackers sold access to those systems to operators of call centers in Italy, which allegedly made 12 million minutes of unauthorized phone calls through the system, valued at more than $55 million. The DOJ's action coincides with an announcement from Italian authorities today of the arrest of five men there who are suspected of funneling the profits from those call centers to terrorist groups in Southeast Asia."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Marisa Ranalli's Ribcage Bag is felt on the outside, and has a change-purse screen-printed with a heart sewn into the interior.

Ribcage Bag (via Street Anatomy)

In Britain, cops have the power to search you if you take a picture of a "sensitive" area, but they won't tell you which areas are "sensitive," because they're so "sensitive."

The British Journal of Photography is trying to use the UK Freedom of Information Act to find out which places in Britain have such precious photons that people who collect them without authorization can have their civil rights violated, but so far they've been unsuccessful.

There's no evidence that terrorists use photographs to plan attacks. Indeed, if disclosing the visible features of notable, iconic buildings puts them in danger, we may as well tear them all down now and get it over with, since the whole point of a notable, iconic building is that everybody knows what they look like.

The Home Office has rejected a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the BJP regarding the disclosure of the list of all areas where police officers are authorised to stop-and-search photographers under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000...

While it is common knowledge that the entire City of London [ed: the City of London is a one-square-mile financial district], at the behest of the Metropolitan Police, is covered by the legislation, it remains unclear which other areas in England and Wales have requested the stop-and-search powers...

The request asked for a 'full list of all areas - in England, Wales and Northern Ireland - subject to Section 44 Terrorism Act 2000 authorisations, which the Home Office has a statutory duty to be aware of.'

The request was rejected in late May on grounds of national security. 'In relation to authorisations for England and Wales, I can confirm that the Home Office holds the information that you requested. I am, however, not obliged to disclose it to you,' writes J Fanshaw of the Direct Communications Unit at the Home Office. 'After careful consideration we have decided that this information is exempt from disclosure by virtue of Section 24(1) and Section 31(1)(a-c) of the Freedom of Information Act...'

As part of its ongoing campaign for photographers' rights, BJP has appealed the decision, requesting an internal review of the request's handling. It has also filed 46 additional Freedom of Information Act requests to all Chief Constables in England and Wales, asking them to disclose whether they have asked for stop-and-search powers under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

All quiet on the Westminster front (via Memex 1.1)

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz gave its reporters the day off and asked novelists and poets to report the news for a special edition in honor of Hebrew Book Week. The results were lovely:

Among those articles were gems like the stock market summary, by author Avri Herling. It went like this: "Everything's okay. Everything's like usual. Yesterday trading ended. Everything's okay. The economists went to their homes, the laundry is drying on the lines, dinners are waiting in place... Dow Jones traded steadily and closed with 8,761 points, Nasdaq added 0.9% to a level of 1,860 points.... The guy from the shakshuka [an Israeli egg-and-tomato dish] shop raised his prices again...." The TV review by Eshkol Nevo opened with these words: "I didn't watch TV yesterday." And the weather report was a poem by Roni Somek, titled "Summer Sonnet." ("Summer is the pencil/that is least sharp/in the seasons' pencil case.") News junkies might call this a postmodern farce, but considering that the stock market won't be soaring anytime soon, and that "hot" is really the only weather forecast there is during Israeli summers, who's to say these articles aren't factual?

Literary Lesson: Authors, Poets Write the News (via Kottke)

The IT Crowd, Channel 4 UK's brilliant sitcom about sysadmins, is coming out on DVD in the US (previous DVDs were region-free, but were only sold through UK retailers and importers to the US). It's only the season 2 disc (you can order season 3, where the show really hit its stride, from the UK). I love this show, plain and simple: it's funny, silly and relentlessly geeky, and pushes the envelope with every episode.

The IT Crowd on DVD in the States

Niles sez, "Here's a video introducing the Atari wallet, a project I've just completed after almost five years in the making. I repurpose original Atari 2600 video games into wallets using every original piece inside except the screw."

Atari wallet - Pac Man introduction (Thanks, Niles!)

Se trata de una entrada temporal que no se eliminó. Elimínala manualmente. (63f04703-72be-43d4-813a-88b0a2d1e89d - 3bfe001a-32de-4114-a6b4-4005b770f6d7)

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MonkeyClicker writes to tell us that the world's first large-scale floating turbine has been installed off the coast of Norway. A combined effort between Siemens and StatoiHydro, this marks the first foray into deeper waters due to restrictions in place that require offshore turbines to be attached to the sea bed. "The turbine in Norway will be 7.4 miles offshore where the water is 721 feet deep. It will be utility-size turbine, with a hub height of about 100 feet, capable of generating 2.3 megawatts of electricity. To address the conditions of the deep sea, the turbine will have a specially designed control system that will seek to dampen the motion from waves."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Replicas of actual old boats and sailboats - Last photo: replica of engine boat Rum punch.

Shermac is a Belizean friend who comes to Cholula two or three times a year for a couple of months. He's made these boats since he was a boy, in his hometown Mullin's River, to play boat races in the river and later, in Caye Caulker island, as a handicraft that attracts the attention and desire to own one of tourists and locals alike. These boats are made of three types of wood mainly: moho, pine, and Santa Maria. Sometimes he also uses mahogany. Moho, Shermac's favorite, is a very light tropical wood that floats like cork when it dries completely; so it is ideal to make sailboats. Pine is the heaviest and hardest wood - and, therefore, more fragile for this kind of work - and Shermac uses it to make replicas of engine boats (or Belikin boats), fishing boats, and yachts. The Santa Maria wood is the most flexible of the three; it is also light and boats made with it sail pretty well in the sea.

Shermac uses very simple tools for the process. The first step is shaping the piece of wood with a machete and sometimes a coping saw. Then, with a smaller sharp knife - and I mean any knife, even a kitchen knife, as long as it is sharp -, he cuts away any bumps from the surface and begins working on the details, as in engine boats where he has to carve a rectangular hole that represents the cargo deposit in real boats. Afterwards, he rubs the surface with sandpaper until it is smooth and gives the final touches to the boat. He does this by hand.

Once this part is finished, he makes the details with plywood and glues them on, like the cabins on the engine boats (whose interiors in the photo are painted white to cover up the porosity of the wood). For the sailboats, Shermac carves and paints bamboo masts - bamboo is also used to make the masts of real sailboats. The last step is painting the boats. Shermac uses wood paint diluted with thinner and lets the boats dry in the shade, since putting them in the sun would bring up bubbles on the paint coat. Again, for the sailboats, after painting and placing the mast, Shermac cuts, sews, and puts the cloth sails which he obviously does himself with no more than scissors, thread, and needle. Depending on the size and type of boat, Shermac finishes a boat in approximately three days. These boats are a clear example of the inventiveness and creativity put to work with little resources that we can find a bit further down the Rio Bravo. Thanks, Shermac!

Make: es Español

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Kalanda shared with us this project where you can take 360° panoramic pictures using this aluminum base, a traditional tripod and any camera you have at home. As you know, most of the digital cameras have already integrated this function, where it is possible to take two or more pictures and merge them into a panoramic one. So, what is the mounting head for? When we put the camera on a traditional tripod, it will generally let us spin 360° over the horizontal axis, and a little bit less on the vertical. The problem is that when we take pictures and we turn the camera, the spinning axis does not line up with the objective's "nodal point". This mounting head allows you to decentralize the camera from the trip, in order to line up both axis. You can visit the original blog for a thorough explanation and construction details. We hope you are practicing your Spanish with Make:en Español.

¡Gracias Kalanda!

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Making your own brass clay-sculpting tools is easy with a few tools and some brass tubing, guitar strings, acupuncure needles, and other unexpected (and inexpensive) materials. These are great for the studio and for art teachers to make for/with their students.

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In my post earlier about Rep. Robert Wexler's misguided remarks at the World Copyright Summit, an anonymous commenter added a wonderful comment highlighting similar politically misguided sayings throughout the years that was too good not to share. The anonymous commenter didn't say where it's from, but it appears that it was mostly from a Wired article from a few years ago. So, one could make an argument that the original comment was infringing, but aren't we all better off for having had the chance to read it?

Is it the only lesson of history that man is unteachable?

-- Sir Winston Churchill

The disturbing material in Grand Theft Auto and other games like it is stealing the innocence of our children and it's making the difficult job of being a parent even harder ... I believe that the ability of our children to access pornographic and outrageously violent material on video games rated for adults is spiraling out of control.

- US senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, 2005

The effect of rock and roll on young people, is to turn them into devil worshippers; to stimulate self-expression through sex; to provoke lawlessness; impair nervous stability and destroy the sanctity of marriage. It is an evil influence on the youth of our country.

- Minister Albert Carter, 1956

Many adults think that the crimes described in comic books are so far removed from the child's life that for children they are merely something imaginative or fantastic. But we have found this to be a great error. Comic books and life are connected. A bank robbery is easily translated into the rifling of a candy store. Delinquencies formerly restricted to adults are increasingly committed by young people and children ... All child drug addicts, and all children drawn into the narcotics traffic as messengers, with whom we have had contact, were inveterate comic-book readers This kind of thing is not good mental nourishment for children!

- Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 1954

The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth; and prevented others from improving their minds in useful knowledge. Parents take care to feed their children with wholesome diet; and yet how unconcerned about the provision for the mind, whether they are furnished with salutary food, or with trash, chaff, or poison?

- Reverend Enos Hitchcock, Memoirs of the Bloomsgrove Family, 1790

Does the telephone make men more active or more lazy? Does [it] break up home life and the old practice of visiting friends?

- Survey conducted by the Knights of Columbus Adult Education Committee, San Francisco Bay Area, 1926

This new form of entertainment has gone far to blast maidenhood ... Depraved adults with candies and pennies beguile children with the inevitable result. The Society has prosecuted many for leading girls astray through these picture shows, but GOD alone knows how many are leading dissolute lives begun at the 'moving pictures.'

- The Annual Report of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 1909

The indecent foreign dance called the Waltz was introduced ... at the English Court on Friday last ... It is quite sufficient to cast one's eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of the limbs, and close compressure of the bodies ... to see that it is far indeed removed from the modest reserve which has hitherto been considered distinctive of English females. So long as this obscene display was confined to prostitutes and adulteresses, we did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is ... forced on the respectable classes of society by the evil example of their superiors, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion.

- The Times of London, 1816

I particularly like the last quote. That darn Waltz. Destroying society.

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The Register has details on a recent EC2 outage that is being blamed on a lightning strike that zapped a power distribution unit of the data center. The interruption only lasted around 6 hours, but the irony should last much longer. "While Amazon was correcting the problem, it told customers they had the option of launching new server instances to replace those that went down. But customers were also able to wait for their original instances to come back up after power was restored to the hardware in question."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nikki is all about electric vehicles. She does a great job at explaining how she is rebuilding and modifying the old and new EVs in her fleet. Her photo stream on Flickr helps her document projects like converting her Prius into a plug in hybrid electric. She is a frequent host for the EVCast, a podcast about electric vehicles. Check out her site for her regular updates on all things EV.

Nikki is a maker who is using her tinkering skills to convert the systems in her life to be more green. She is also having a good time learning about electric vehicle transportation and sharing her knowledge with the world.

Look for more photos of electric vehicles:

• Battery Electric Vehicles of Bristol
• Electric Vehicles

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Someone just alerted me to a NY Times story claiming that the guys behind The Pirate Bay have lost their appeal of the verdict that found them guilty. That would be big news (and it may very well happen). However, I can't find anything else to support it. The NY Times credits the Hollywood Reporter, whose only recent article I can find on the subject merely claims that the TPB guys failed to get the case thrown out. But digging deeper, the only information I can find is that the District Court, which made the original ruling has told the Appeals Court that there was no bias. That's not surprising -- of course the District Court is going to say it wasn't biased and that its judge wasn't biased. But I haven't seen anything that says the Appeals Court has ruled one way or the other on the issue. It looks like the reporters at The Hollywood Reporter and the NY Times may have gotten confused about the difference between the District Court and the Appeals Court -- and assumed that because the District Court claimed the judge wasn't biased, the Appeals Court had ruled that way. Now, it may well come to pass that the Appeals Court does rule that way, but I haven't seen any reports of that yet, and given how news has spread about this case, you would think such reports would have been out there.

But, you know, it's the professional reporters at the NY Times who fact check stuff. We bloggers just make up innuendo and rumor. Surely, they couldn't have gotten the story wrong, right?

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Still getting a few analog stations.

Jason points us to the news that, once again, someone who doesn't own the copyright to something has sent a DMCA takedown on a YouTube video. The link doesn't fully explain the situation, which is explained in the following video: But, basically, someone used a video to respond to a guy from the Discovery Institute concerning a recent appearance he made on Fox News. The Fox News video is Fox's copyright. Yet, the Discovery Institute sent the takedown notice. Furthermore, the use of the video (even if Fox had sent the takedown) is almost certainly fair use. It was used for commentary in a non-commercial manner. The last time something like this happened (quite similar, actually) the EFF got involved, and forced the false DMCA issuer to rescind the DMCA notices, take a copyright law course and issue a public video apology.

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NewScientist has an interesting look back at the birth of the Conficker worm and how this sophisticated monster quickly grew to such power and infamy. "Since that flurry of activity in early April, all has been uneasily quiet on the Conficker front. In some senses, that marks a victory for the criminals. The zombie network is now established and being used for its intended purpose: to make money. Through its peer-to-peer capabilities, the worm can be updated on the infected network at any time. It is not an unprecedented situation. There are several other large networks of machines infected with malicious software. Conficker has simply joined the list. The security community will continue to fight them, but as long as the worm remains embedded in any computer there can be no quick fixes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

David Veloz Jr., an engineer at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, told us about a unique class he was teaching over the summer. His company conducts an outreach program for local high school students who show an interest in science and math. David was teaching them about his job and electronics in general.

Thinking that his class sounded like a worthwhile effort, we were happy to send some copies of MAKE out to his students. Afterward, David was kind enough to send us some photos of his class reading the issue, along with this nice note:

I've been meaning to get back to you guys, attached are some photos of the class reading their magazines. They absolutely loved them! I tried not to bore them too much, so I kept my bit short and quickly got them started on their project (Styrofoam speaker). We talked about magnetism, magnetic fields, and current, it was fun for everyone! A handful of the kids finished after our 2.5 hrs were up (we went over). They said that it was the best class!

During the class, David helped the students build the styrofoam plate speaker from MAKE, Volume 12, and gave away a couple of multimeters as prizes. What a great way to teach young people about the world of making!

You can still pick up a copy of MAKE, Volume 12, and other back issues of MAKE in the Maker Shed.

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In writing about The Pirate Party's success in winning a seat in the EU Parliament, I noted that I wasn't necessarily a fan of The Pirate Party's name or some of its positions, but I do think the Party is bringing some attention to important issues. Ivor Tossell, at The Globe and Mail, has an interview with Christian Engstrom from The Pirate Party, who will be taking the seat, where they discuss a variety of issues -- including the name. When Tossell questions why it wasn't called something like the Copyright Reform Party, Engstrom pointed out (most likely correctly): "Because if that had been the name, you wouldn't be talking to me."

The other issue, that was raised in the comments to that post, was the assertion that members of The Pirate Party aren't actually interested in the civil rights and freedom issues the party stands for, but that they just want "free stuff." However, in the audio interview, Engstrom does a good job highlighting why the issues they fight for are very much civil rights issues. He talks about the value of privacy and human rights -- as well as access to information.

Much of the discussion does focus on the name. Engstrom insists that the name is essential -- and notes that he joined the party because the word "pirate" acts as an effective shorthand for everything that the party stands for. Tossell, though, does raise some important questions about how far the Party can go with the name, however. I tend to agree. While I agree that calling it The Pirate Party helps in getting initial attention (and press attention), it also brings out those sorts of false accusations that it's just about "getting free stuff" rather than serious issues that impact civil rights and innovation.

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