Flavorwire has an interview up with photographer Richard Mosse, who recently returned from Iraq, where he photographed what remains of Saddam Hussein's many palaces, which American soldiers have repurposed as combat headquarters. Snip:

This month, the American army is set to handover the last of the palaces back to the Iraqi army. Mosse, who has previously photographed war-torn areas of Eastern Europe and the Middle East, sat down with us to discuss his latest project and the deeply disturbing, though darkly humorous, aspects of the ongoing war in Iraq.

The Architecture of War: A Look at Saddam Hussein's Palaces (image, Richard Mosse, thanks, Caroline Stanley)

More on the web-fueled uprising in Iran, where many are expressing outrage over presumed electoral fraud in the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmmedinajad. From Noah Shachtman at Wired:

While demonstrators gather in the streets to contest Iran’s rigged election, online backers of the so-called “Green Revolution” are looking to strike back at the Tehran regime — by attacking the government’s websites.

Pro-democracy activists on the web are asking supporters to use relatively simple hacking tools to flood the regime’s propaganda sites with junk traffic. “NOTE to HACKERS - attack www.farhang.gov.ir - pls try to hack all iran gov wesites [sic]. very difficult for us,” Tweets one activist. The impact of these distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks isn’t clear. But official online outlets like leader.ir, ahmadinejad.ir, and iribnews.ir are currently inaccessible. “There are calls to use an even more sophisticated tool called BWraep, which seems to exhaust the target website out of bandwidth by creating bogus requests for serving images,” notes Open Society Institute fellow Evgeny Morozov.

Activists Launch Hack Attacks on Tehran Regime (Wired Danger Room)

Jay notes a Wall Street Journal report about ad networks unintentionally selling empty space to malware loaders (the link is to a syndicating site that doesn't require a subscription to view). The submitter comments: "The labeling of the fake ad sellers as hackers is pretty bogus; there's no hacking involved. Simply sign up for one of these networks, create your fake site, put up another company's creative, and you're good to go." The incidents being reported go back a few months, but the pattern of this criminal activity seems to be coming clear only recently."EWeek.com, a technology news site owned by Ziff Davis Enterprise, in February displayed an ad on its homepage masquerading as a promotion for LaCoste, the shirt maker. The retailer hadn't placed the ad — a hacker had, to direct users to a Web site where harmful programs would be downloaded to their computers, says Stephen Wellman, director of community and content for Ziff Davis."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A first for one of the First Men, spotted in a NYT Q+A with Dr. Buzz Aldrin:

Q: What sort of music do you like?
A: I just did a rap session with Snoop Dogg and a rap composition called "Rocket Experience." It's going to be an online video. The Web site is funnyordie.com.

Q: Do you actually sing on the video?
A: I relate. It's not singing, it's rapping.

The Man on the Moon (via Robert Pearlman)

Over at the NYT, this story by John Schwartz about a ruling issued Friday by a judge in San Francisco that allows a civil lawsuit to go forward against former Bush administration official John C. Yoo...

[L]awyers for the man suing Mr. Yoo, Jose Padilla, say it provides substantive interpretation of constitutional issues for all detainees and could have a broad impact.

Mr. Padilla was held as an "enemy combatant" in solitary confinement for more than three years in the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. Mr. Padilla, who was convicted of supporting terrorism and other crimes, demands that Mr. Yoo be held accountable for actions that Mr. Padilla claims led to his being tortured.

During the time Mr. Padilla was held in the brig, according to his filings in the case, he "suffered gross physical and psychological abuse at the hands of federal officials as part off a systematic program of abusive interrogation intended to break down Mr. Padilla's humanity and his will to live."

In the 42-page ruling, Judge Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court in San Francisco characterized the conflict as one that embodies the tension "between the requirements of war and the defense of the very freedoms that war seeks to protect."

Judge Allows Civil Lawsuit Over Claims of Torture (NYT, thanks Mark Kleiman)

The NY Times is running an article about a bunch of illustrators complaining that Google offered to promote their work for free as special skins for its Chrome browser. The concern? That Google wouldn't pay them to promote their work. Of course, that's fine. They can (and many did) choose not to accept this free promotion, but it's difficult to understand what sort of statement they think they're making. As Google noted, it found plenty of takers for the chance at such a great channel for promotion, so all those artists who stood by their "principles" will suddenly find out that for all their complaints about not being "paid" by Google, lots of artists will get a lot more exposure, and hopefully most of them are smart about turning exposure into money. Google wasn't asking the artists to do anything new, but to reuse an existing work -- but from that, it's likely that people will learn about these artists, and that could (or should) easily lead to new work. The cost to artists is next to nothing, but the potential payoff is quite high. So why deny it? It's the same silly entitlement mentality that has people think that for every use of work they've already done they must get paid. It's a failure to recognize that exposure is a form of payment, and widespread exposure from a brand like Google should be quite easily monetizable. People who think compensation only comes in money are going to have a lot of difficulty succeeding in the digital era.

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Damien1972 writes to tell us that researchers from the Carnegie Institution and California State University claim that a fleet of kites could harvest enough energy to run New York and other major cities, especially if they are affected by polar jet streams. "Using 28 years of data from the National Center for Environmental Prediction and the Department of Energy, Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology and Cristina Archer of California State University, Chico compiled the first global survey of wind energy available at high altitudes in the atmosphere. They found that the regions best suited for harvesting this energy align with population centers in the eastern U.S. and East Asia, although they note that 'fluctuating wind strength still presents a challenge for exploiting this energy source on a large scale.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here're some instructions for tethering your Palm Pre. It works the same way as tetherbot for Android in that it's an SSH tunnel to the phone running as a SOCKS proxy. It'll only get you HTTP, but hey, it's something! Via BBG.

More:

Tetherbot - browse on your laptop through the T-Mobile G1

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suraj.sun writes "The UK's Virgin Media could start suspending persistent file sharers on a temporary basis, using information provided to it by Universal Music. The ISP announced on Monday that it would, before Christmas, launch an all-you-can-eat music download service for its users, based on a monthly subscription fee. The tracks will all be DRM-free. 'In parallel, the two companies will be working together to protect Universal Music's intellectual property and drive a material reduction in the unauthorized distribution of its repertoire across Virgin Media's network,' a statement read. 'This will involve implementing a range of different strategies to educate file sharers about online piracy and to raise awareness of legal alternatives. They include, as a last resort for persistent offenders, a temporary suspension of internet access.' DTecNet has already been working with UK content companies for some time to do much the same thing, and is also working with RIAA in the United States."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've pointed out in the past how ridiculous it is to have "collections societies" for music, which basically act as big bureaucracies for taxing any kind of music usage. These societies -- both the for-profit and non-profit ones -- have pretty much one goal and one goal only: to increase how much money they get. So when you hear about new schemes, like Choruss, to set up a new such collection society, you know it's just a blatant money grab, rather than allowing for real business models to be developed. We've seen this all over the world, with SoundExchange in the US sitting on millions of dollars it collected, PRS in the UK trying to charge a stable for horses listening to the radio or calling up small businesses and threatening them if they hear music in the background.

The latest -- sent in by a bunch of you -- is that the various collections societies in Australia are looking for massive increases in what they can collect. Apparently, the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia is gleeful after the Australian Copyright Tribunal allowed somewhat insane increases to yearly fees. The new fees will almost certainly put some nightclubs out of business while making sure some restaurants no longer play any music at all:

Buoyed by the nightclub ruling, the PPCA is now targeting eateries. It wants to increase licensing fees in a 120-seat restaurant to $19,344 a year -- up from $125. Small cafes would be slugged with a 4729 per cent yearly increase from $124 to $5860.

Just look at those numbers for a second. And then try not to laugh as the PPCA defends the numbers by claiming "we are looking to establish a fair return."

Meanwhile, that may not be all. Thanks to this ruling, the Australasian Performing Right Association, which collects a separate fee for composers and artists, is asking for its own massive increase in fees.

All this really does is highlight another ridiculous aspect to collections societies: their rates aren't set by the market or any effort to become more efficient/offer a better product. Instead, the rates are set by various copyright boards, courts or tribunals who get pushed heavily by industry interests for such increases. Even so, while we've seen crazy numbers from around the world, I've never seen percentage increases like those being discussed in Australia. It's as if the collections societies there don't want anyone ever playing music again.

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GregDz11 writes to inform us that Canada's three main wireless companies will be launching a service that allows customers to send, request, and receive money via their mobile phones. "The service, called Zoompass, will be managed by Enstream, a joint venture the three carriers first established in 2005, when it was called Wireless Payment Services, to investigate the potential of mobile commerce. [...] Money can be drawn from an account the user sets up or from their credit card. Each withdrawal will cost 50 cents from the account, or 3.5 per cent of the transaction if from a credit card. (As a result, sending dollar amounts under $15 are actually cheaper to do using a credit card.)"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Joshua Foer is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Joshua is a freelance science journalist and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Dylan Thuras.

Thanks so much, Mark, for that introduction. We're thrilled that you guys have lent us the keys to Boing Boing for the next few days.

I'd like to tell Boing Boing's readers a little bit about the new web site that Dylan and I have launched, the Atlas Obscura.

The Atlas is a collaborative project whose purpose is to catalog all of the "wondrous, curious, and esoteric places" that get left out of traditional travel guidebooks and are ignored by the average tourist.

Anyone can enter new places into the Atlas Obscura, or edit content that someone else has already contributed. We're counting on you, Boing Boing readers, to help us fill out the map and document all of the world's wonders and curiosities!

What kind of places are we talking about? Here are a few that were recently added to the Atlas:

- A hidden spot in the Smoky Mountains where you can find fireflies that blink in unison

-A 70-year-old house made entirely out of paper

- A giant hole in the middle of the Turkmenistan desert that's been burning for four decades

- A Czech church built of bones

- The world's largest Tesla coil

- A museum filled with the genitals of every known mammal in Iceland

- Enormous concrete sound mirrors once used to detect aircraft off the English coast

- The self-built cathedral of an eccentric Spanish ex-monk

- A museum of Victorian hair art in Independence, Missiouri

- An underwater sculpture garden off the coast of Grenada

- Galileo's amputated middle finger

- An island in the Canaries where people communicate by whistling

- The corpse of a 14th-cenutry Japanese monk who mummified himself while he was still alive

Dylan and I are hopeful that we if can get a bunch of like-minded travelers (and armchair travelers) to share their obscure knowledge, we can build a truly awesome resource for everyone. So, please check the site out! Explore! Get involved! Add a curious place!

First, though, a quick caveat: The site is still very much in beta. We're still adding features, making improvements, and sussing out bugs. So please let us know what works and what doesn't.

Now, before handing the mic over to Dylan, I'd like to take a moment to abuse this very big soapbox by giving a quick shout out to the Atlas Obscura's amazing developer Adam Varga of Sawhorse Media, our genius fix-it guru Boaz Sender, and our slick designer Aaron Taylor Waldman. Thanks gentlemen!

Last week, I did yet another presentation at a music industry conference (hoping to get video of it), where one of the points I raised was that competition from things like video games has been one of the major competitive market elements that the recording industry never seems willing to recognize, when it talks about its declining sales -- instead, always insisting that "piracy" is to blame. Yet, Charles Arthur looked at some of the numbers in the UK and recognized that if one assumes that discretionary spending on these sorts of things remains about equal, it certainly looks like the decrease in music purchases has simply been replaced by video game purchases. In other words (once again) this is a business model issue. The recording industry hasn't give people good reasons to buy, while the video game industry has.

Related to this, by the way, is that this shows what a lie it is for the recording industry to insist that hundreds of thousands of jobs are "lost" and millions in tax revenue goes missing because of its losses. If, for some reason, people continued to spend as much on music, then it's likely that the video game industry would be smaller, and the job "losses" would be there. In other words, those job "losses" in the music industry almost certainly turned into job gains in other sectors (which somehow never make it into those reports). And the "tax revenues" likely remain about the same, as the greater taxes paid by the video game industry make up for the smaller tax bill in the recording industry.

Now, this is a rather simplistic study of things, and a much more detailed study could be done to support the shift in consumer preference. But the simple claim that all of these losses are due to "piracy," rather than other competitive forces, has increasingly come under serious doubt.

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Jimmy's Lambretta scooter from the 1979 movie Quadrophenia sold at auction for £36,000.

The scooter gained instant acceptance everywhere, its cleanliness and convenience in particular appealing to those who regarded the true motorcycle with suspicion. Scooters would eventually surpass their strictly utilitarian origins to become an integral part of British youth culture in the 1960s as favourite transport of the fashion-conscious ‘Modernists’, or ‘Mods’. The scooter’s enclosed engine and decent weather protection meant that its rider could arrive at a club, doff his parka and look like he’d just stepped out of a taxi, which was a definite advantage within a dandified sub-culture that placed a premium on smartness of appearance.

Quadrophenia scooter sold at auction (via Dinosaurs and Robots)

davecl writes "The Herschel space telescope, the largest ever launched into space, has opened its instrument cover allowing its three instruments to observe for the first time. BBC news has the main coverage, while there is more coverage on the SPIRE instrument team website, and on the mission blog. I'm part of the SPIRE instrument team and the excitement as we move towards our first observations is building fast. The PACS and SPIRE instruments will see first light in the next few days."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meet our new guest bloggers for the next two weeks: Joshua Foer and Dylan Thuras!

My name is Joshua Foer. I'm the co-creator of the Atlas Obscura, along with Dylan Thuras. More about that soon... By day, I'm a freelance science journalist with an interest in Boing Boingish kinds of subjects, like lightning strike survivors, amnesiacs, brain-computer interfaces, photographic memory, micrographic writing, insane fictitious Texans, and the Bosnian "pyramids" hoax. I'm also the secretary of the Athanasius Kircher Society, which has been on a bit of an extended hiatus recently. My main project right now is finishing up a book about the 2006 United States Memory Championship. It'll be published next year.

My name is Dylan Thuras. I'm a film maker and world traveler in search of the weird and curious across the globe. I recently spent a year living in Budapest and traveling throughout Eastern Europe seeking out the obscure and wondrous, much of which is documented on AtlasObscura.com. I also run and write the travel and curiosities site CuriousExpeditions.org along with my co-author and soon-to-be wife Michelle Enemark. I'm currently working on a short documentary about wax anatomical models and the history of dissection, a graphic novel about the London beer flood of 1816, and many other foolish projects. I'm also thrilled as punch to be blogging on a site of which I have long been a great admirer.

Providence's AS220 Labs just released the results of their recent MakerBot raffle. The lucky winner is our very own inimitable and irreplaceable Becky Stern. Grats, Becky!

More:

• MakerBot CNC makes cupcakes, bunnies ... you name it
  
• 3D-printer robot caterpillar parts
  

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Via Create Digital Motion, this awesome LED bottle wall by Alex Beim:

An illuminated bottle wall. There is a LED controllable light behind each bottle that is controlled from an on board computer. Something missing in the video is that the cavities for the bottles are empty at the beginning and people start filling them with empty containers to reveal the visuals. Everything started when Tom (the client) said, "I want to make a light bright with bottles for Bacardi, is that possible?"

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We see all sorts of confused analysis when it comes to how "free" works in economics -- which goes back to our assertion that the human brain tends to run into a mental block when it encounters a zero and rather than recognize the rest of the economic equation, it just pops out an error message. That's the only explanation I can find for the so-called analysis by Media Metrics' Laura Martin of how Hulu is "anti-consumer, anti-media employees, and even anti-America" and supposedly putting $300 billion worth of market value "at risk" (thanks Ben for sending this in).

Wait... what? Anti consumer? Offering consumers more of what they want at a better price is anti-consumer? How?

Anti-media employees? Offering a better product that can be better monetized through smarter means should be good for media employees.

Anti-America?!? How? Martin's claim is apparently "Media companies will lose a lot more revenue by giving shows away for free online than they will from pirates." Oh really? How does a person like Martin get and keep a job if that's her analysis? Apparently she's never heard of a little something we call "television" which has made a tremendous amount of money for years giving shows away for free and supporting it with ad dollars. Furthermore, the idea that media companies stand to lose more by competing with piracy by offering something better is the most twisted economic analysis we've heard in a long time (and, boy, we've heard some twisted economic analyses over the years). The fact is more and more people were moving to online to watch shows anyway. Pretending that didn't exist is economic suicide. Offering a better experience allows the networks to compete.

On top of that, Martin apparently hasn't looked at much of the actual research out there if she thinks that online shows are somehow cannibalizing TV revenue. In fact, most studies have found the opposite. They've found that putting shows online for free helps make the audience more engaged and convinces more people to watch the shows on TV, because if they miss an episode they can just catch up online.

It's hard to fathom how any media analyst in this day and age can actually think that using "free" as a part of your business model is not just a "bad idea" but "anti-consumer" or "anti-America." If you don't understand basic media economics, how can you be a media analyst?

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astroengine writes "Dr. Richard Obousy, a guy who has put modern science into the warp drive, has designed his very own warpship. Now, for the first time, he's shared it with the world. It might not be the sleek Starship Enterprise, but its structure has been optimized to harness local 'dark energy,' generating a warp bubble so faster-than-light velocities are possible." Now, the only question is: will the ship achieve faster-than-light travel...or will the company hit those speeds once it has enough money from investors?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

UPDATE: From Greg Laden's blog: The story was misreported.

Is the Earth's magnetic field caused affected by ocean currents, and not its massive molten core, as is generally thought? Gregory Ryskin, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern University in Illinois, thinks that the motion of salty seawater generates electromagnetic waves. His paper will be published by Britain’s Institute of Physics’s New Journal of Physics.

Earth’s magnetic field is vital for life, extending tens of thousands of miles into space and protecting the planet against radiation that would otherwise burn away the atmosphere and oceans.

...

Existing theories explain Earth’s magnetism by suggesting that the centre of the planet comprises a white-hot solid iron ball about 1,500 miles in diameter, surrounded by an outer shell of liquid metal a further 1,400 miles thick.

Oceans charge up new theory of magnetism (Via TDG)

An anonymous reader writes "Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot tells CNBC that he believes the next generation of video game systems isn't as far away as the public has been led to believe. Guillemot noted that public demand for the best machine possible, as well as coming competition from companies such as OnLive could spur Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo to role out new systems sooner than they want. That's not good news for publishers, though, as he says games in the next generation will likely cost $60 million to create."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It took a while for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol to release a video showing one of its troopers choking a paramedic who was taking an elderly patient to the hospital, and now that it's available on YouTube, you can understand why they tried to suppress it.

I'm in awe of the dignified and articulate ambulance supervisor who bravely stands up to the sickeningly hotheaded trooper who is furious that anyone would dare to "jump out and talk to a State Trooper like that."

Patricia Phillips, Oklahoma Crime Examiner, has been covering the story:

An ambulance, with Maurice White acting as supervisor and paramedic, is taking an elderly woman, who had collapsed, to the hospital for treatment. Her worried family follows.

Trooper Daniel Martin, who was responding to a stolen car report, came up behind the ambulance on a two-lane country road. In Oklahoma, those shoulders are notoriously tricky for even a car to pull off onto. But there's another factor involved.

As the dash cam clearly shows, a car is on the right-hand shoulder, partially obstructing the highway. Just as the highway patrol pulls up behind the ambulance, the medical unit must swing out to avoid colliding with the parked car.

Let me repeat that, because it's important: if the ambulance's driver, Paul Franks, had immediately pulled over when the racing trooper came up behind him, he would have created an accident. It is impossible to safely pull over while slamming into another vehicle.

After the ambulance gets past the parked vehicle, Franks slows and safely pulls over for the trooper. As Martin zooms by--at a speed that I would call excessive for just a stolen car report--he uses the radio to reprimand the ambulance for not pulling over.

Later in the tape, it's shown that the sheriff's department is already on scene at the stolen car incident. Martin is released from any need to be at the scene.

Then he whips around, guns his car, and goes out hunting the ambulance. When he catches up with the ambulance, what happens next is a textbook case for bad judgment and abuse of power.

J.D. Tuccille of Civil Liberties Examiner says: "Consider this a test case. If you don't see a paramedic's life-saving responsibilities as at least as pressing as the law-enforcement duties of a police officer, there probably is no limit to the authority you're willing to grant any government employee with a badge."

Oklahoma Highway Patrol finally releases video of trooper attack on paramedic

There's so much amazing work coming out of the AFOL* community these days that it can be hard to single out any particular work as outstanding. Nonetheless, mad_a0's mini-fig scale tank, with full interior detail, is, well... outstanding. Bravo! Via The Brothers Brick.

*That's "Adult Fans of LEGO" for you non-blockheads out there.

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There's lots of news coming out today about how UK broadband ISP Virgin has signed a deal with Universal Music to allow unlimited access to Universal Music's catalog (downloads and streams) for a set price. Various execs and politicians are talking it up like it's the greatest thing ever. It's as if they think that people can't remember back just a few months.

That's because it was just a few months ago that Virgin was set to launch a similar offering that included all of the major record labels, but then a few of them got greedy and said they'd only agree to it if Virgin also employed Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) techniques to track the file sharing and cracked down on any sharing of MP3s. Virgin resisted -- after all, just a few months before that, it had insisted that it would never cut subscribers off the internet for file sharing. So... wouldn't you know it... a part of this plan is to cut file sharers off the internet.

So, let's take a look at this "wonderful" and "amazing" new agreement. You get a vastly limited catalog (only Universal Music -- and who the hell knows what label their favorite bands are on these days?). It's not clear how the usage is tracked, but given the earlier reports, we have to wonder if it involves DPI spying on your usage... and Virgin is committed to cracking down on file sharing and even "temporarily" cutting off access to the internet (Virgin claims its okay, because the cutoff is only "temporary"). Perhaps there are some folks out there who will sign up for such a service, but it's difficult to see who. They aren't offering any benefits or additional value.

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To save money, more than 20 Michigan counties have decided to turn deteriorating paved roads back to gravel. Montcalm County estimates that repaving a road costs more than $100,000 a mile. Grinding the same mile of road up and turning it into gravel costs $10,000. At least 50 miles of road have been reverted to gravel in Michigan the past three years. I can't wait until we revert back to whale oil lighting and can finally be rid of this electricity fad.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael J. Ross writes "Among the more popular and better-regarded content management systems (CMSs), Drupal is distinguished partly by its building-block approach, in which a website 's functionality is built up in pieces, each of which is a module (either core or contributed). The opposite approach — using far fewer but more encompassing modules — is generally preferred by non-developers who do not relish integrating a sizable collection of modules or trying to modify the underlying code. Nonetheless, anyone who wishes to build a Drupal-based social website, can learn how to do so in a new e-book titled Drupal 6: Ultimate Community Site Guide." Read below for the rest of Michael's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This light-seeking Arduino mothbot builds on the SERB code, and the Instructable is very thorough. Beginning Arduino bot builders, rejoice and build!

More:

• Review: SERB Robot kit
  
• Adding bump sensors to your SERB
  
• SERB robot with Wii Nunchuck control
  

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There is an interesting Reuters article about how former NY state Democratic Majority Leader Malcolm Smith had a meeting scheduled with billionaire Tom Golisano, a major political fund contributor. (Eschewing the issue of how political contributions are accepted without question, as paid access to our elected officials,) the article describes how Mr. Smith spent enough time on his Blackberry to offend Golisano. The billionaire has clout, and subsequently engineered the ouster of Smith. The article's true focus, then, is how dangerous it is for people to use their mobile email devices during meetings, during social engagements, in the car with family, etc. It points out how rude it can be, and also point out how it can actually be less efficient, because a person's attention is split.

That is all true, but whenever one of these opinion pieces comes out, it ignores the other case: that oftentimes at meetings, our attention simply isn't necessary or productive. In any given multi-person meeting, for what % of the time is each person's participation and attention truly productive? Is every topic related to you? Could a quick check of email be more productive? I would argue that optimal participation is usually less than 100%. Same goes for conferences: Sometimes the conference agenda will include a speaker that is just not very relevant to your individual interests. Yes, you could learn something by listening, but perhaps you could be more productive by responding to your clients, staff, or boss on your mobile device. I've met a few people who take offense at every sighting of a Blackberry, but that's usually attached to a big ego that takes offense too easily. Not every word you say is golden, or even directed at me. In a one on one meeting, obviously one should be focused on the person in front, and one should not feign listening while actually reading. But in multi-party meetings, there are good opportunities to mentally duck out. A blanket Blackberry backlash isn't well-reasoned. As in most debates, a balance needs to be struck.

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

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Engadget is reporting that NVIDIA has released five new mobile GPUs to fill some imagined gap in the 200M series lineup. These new chips supposedly double the performance and halve the power consumption of the older chips, but still no word on why they think we need eight different GPU options. "The cards are SLI, HybridPower, CUDA, Windows 7 and DirectX 10.1 compatible, and all support PhysX other than the low-end G210M. Of course, with integrated graphics like the 9400M starting to obviate discrete graphics in the mid range -- even including Apple's latest low-end 15-inch MacBook Pro -- we're not sure what we'll do with eight different GPU options, but we suppose NVIDIA's yet-to-be-announced price sheet for these cards will make it all clear in time."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PETA wants to stop the fishmongers at Seattle's 102-year-old Pike Place Fish Market from tossing dead fish to each other at an an upcoming veterinarians' conference.

Asserting that the practice of lobbing fish above the heads of patrons and tourists at the market and other venues is disrespectful to creatures that already have gone through a lot, an animal rights group is protesting plans to stage a flying-fish exhibition at an upcoming national veterinarians conference in Seattle.

Ultimately, they would like to see the practice banned at the fish market too. They argue that tourists would not be nearly so eager to snap photos if dead kittens or gutted lambs were sailing over their heads.

"Killing animals so you can toss their bodies around for amusement is just twisted," said Ashley Byrne, senior campaigner for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in Washington, D.C.

Seattle's Pike Place fishmongers under fire

The Maryland Zoo spent $500,000 to make an escape-proof prairie dog habitat, called Prairie Dog Town. The prairie dogs escaped within 10 minutes of being introduced to their new habitat. Zookeepers caught the escaped prairie dogs with nets.

Aircraft wire, poured concrete and slick plastic walls proved no match for the fast-footed rodents, the stars of a new exhibit that opens today.

As officials were promoting the return of the zoo's 28 prairie dogs - their former digs had been out of sight in a closed section of the animal preserve for more than four years - some of the critters found ways to jump, climb and get over the walls of their prairie paradise, a centerpiece exhibit just inside the zoo's main entrance.

(Public domain photo of Black-tailed Prairie Dog taken by Adrian Pingstone)

Prairie dogs immediately escape from $500k escape-proof habitat

Undercover NYPD offices in New York arrested brothers Jose and Maximo Colon for selling cocaine in a night club. The men would almost certainly be serving lengthy prison sentences if it weren't for the fact that a surveillance video camera in the nightclub shows that the police made the whole thing up.

Paperwork signed by "UC 13200" — Officer Henry Tavarez — claimed that he told a patron he wanted to buy cocaine. By his account, that man responded by approaching the 28-year-old Max, who then went over to the undercover and demanded to pat him down to make sure he wasn't wearing a wire.

Max collected $100 from Tavarez, the report said. The officer claimed to see two bags of cocaine pass through the hands of three men, including Jose, before they were given to him.

.....

What the tape doesn't show is striking: At no point did the officers interact with the undercovers, nor did the brothers appear to be involved in a drug deal with anyone else. Adding insult to injury, an outside camera taped the undercovers literally dancing down the street.

This isn't an isolated incident, either:

On May 13, another NYPD officer was arrested for plotting to invade a Manhattan apartment where he hoped to steal $900,000 in drug money. In another pending case, prosecutors in Brooklyn say officers were caught in a 2007 sting using seized drugs to reward a snitch for information. And in the Bronx, prosecutors have charged a detective with lying about a drug bust captured on a surveillance tape that contradicts her story.

Is it any wonder that police all over the world are trying to stop people from videotaping them?

Drug suspect turns tables on NYPD with videotape

Schneier points out an article from a while back in Forbes about the "hidden" cost of privacy and how expensive it can be to comply with all the various overlapping privacy laws that don't necessarily improve anyone's privacy. "What this all means is that protecting individual privacy remains an externality for many companies, and that basic market dynamics won't work to solve the problem. Because the efficient market solution won't work, we're left with inefficient regulatory solutions. So now the question becomes: how do we make regulation as efficient as possible?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The NY Times reports that Google recently asked dozens of illustrators to provide art skins for its Chrome browser. They offered a fee of nothing. Well-known illustrators who were invited, like Gary Taxali, Melinda Beck, and Joe Ciardiello, all turned Google down.

Google's two-part explanation is that the artists will get great exposure, and that Google has done it before:

In a statement responding to questions, Google said that the project was modeled after a similar one last year for iGoogle, a personalized home page, where artists and companies (including Jeff Koons, Bob Dylan and Gucci) contributed images to be used as skins.

“While we don’t typically offer monetary compensation for these projects,” the statement said, “through the positive feedback that we have heard thus far we believe these projects provide a unique and exciting opportunity for artists to display their work in front of millions of people.”

But exposure often is a given for illustrators, who are rankled that Google is asking them to work for exposure alone.

I'm one of the illustrators who contributed art last year for iGoogle. (My art, above, is called "Adventure in Lollipopland") I was not directly compensated, but Google did give a very substantial donation in my name to a charity of my choosing (I chose the Jewish Family Services' SOVA food pantries program). I was very happy with this arrangement. It sounds like Google skipped the charity-donation part this time around, though, because it wasn't mentioned in the NY Times story.

Use Their Work Free? Some Artists Say No to Google

If you've been around the tech world for a while, you should know the name Sanford Wallace -- better know as Spamford. He was one of the first big spammers in the 90s, and quite proud of it. After a variety of lawsuits, he claimed he had gone straight, and even opened a nightclub somewhere. But it wasn't long before he was back in the game, and accused of being in the spyware business by the FTC. In response... Wallace disappeared (even his lawyer couldn't find him), and he was eventually fined $4 million. Last year, MySpace sued Wallace (who, again didn't bother showing up) and won $234 million (which it will never see, of course).

Earlier this year, Facebook sued him for spamming Facebook as well -- and, par for the course, he didn't bother showing up at all... until Friday. Apparently he first declared bankruptcy on Thursday and showed up at the court hearing on Friday. The bankruptcy protects him against the unpaid fines for now... but, the hearing on Friday was about handing the case over to federal prosecutors, given the contempt for the law Wallace has shown to date. In other words, he can try to disappear again, but he may end up in prison, rather than just ducking out on the hundreds of millions of dollars he owes for spamming.

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A reader writes, "Catherynne M. Valente (Tiptree winner, Clarion Alumna and all-around-awesome speculative fiction writer) is putting up a wonderful piece of YA fantasy, one chapter a week, on her website for free: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making."

Lovely title, and that first chapter's a doozy! There's free audio of the author reading the book, too.

Once upon a time, a girl named September grew very tired indeed of her father's house, where she washed the same pink and yellow teacups and matching gravy boats every day, slept on the same embroidered pillow, and played with the same small and amiable dog. Because she had been born in May, and because she had a mole on her left cheek, and because her feet were very large and ungainly, the Green Wind took pity on her, and flew to her window one evening just after her eleventh birthday. He was dressed in a green smoking jacket, and a green carriage-driver's cloak, and green jodhpurs, and green snowshoes. It is very cold above the clouds, in the shanty-towns where the Six Winds live.

"You seem an ill-tempered and irascible enough child," said the Green Wind. "How would you like to come away with me and ride upon the Leopard of Little Breezes, and be delivered to the great sea which borders Fairyland? I am afraid I cannot go in, as Harsh Airs are not allowed, but I should be happy to deposit you upon the Perverse and Perilous Sea."

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

Wagner James Au says,

Iranians around the world are making extraordinary use of Twitter and Twitter APIs to send updates and coordinate the uprising that now disputes Ahmadinejad's election. (Some background from Andrew Sullivan here) Last night Tweets from Iran seemed to go silent for several hours, apparently after Iranian government intervention, but protesters just used TwitterFall.com and other workarounds to keep the information stream going. (As one developer supporter put it, "Open APIs equal freedom.") The mainstream media has been tragically slow to cover what seems to be a major social upheaval fueled by Twitter.

BB reader Luke adds,

Persiankiwi on twitter is tweeting like a crazyman about the protests happening RIGHT NOW in Tehran and has just posted this video on Youtube. Also this twitter user is posting. They reckon the protests are largely peaceful and also guess at least hundreds of thousands are on the streets.

Link to Twitter search for hashtag "IranElection." Some Twitterers I'm following on this issue: @persiankiwi, @ johnperrybarlow , IranRiggedElect, @Pouyan. Here was a liveblog post over at HuffPo by Nico Putney. Here's a piece by Nasrin Alawi. Please add other resources you're following in the comments.

Mamiya has announced three new M series digital backs for its 645AFDIII medium-format camera. The M18, M22 and M31 backs are based on 18MP, 22.1MP and 31.6MP sensors respectively, and incorporate 2.2" LCDs featuring a Live Preview mode. With the fastest capture rate of the line (0.8 fps), the M18 uses a 44.2 x 33.1mm CCD with 9 x 9 micron photosites. The M22 features a larger 48.9 x 36.7mm CCD with 9 x 9 micron photosites, and the M31 has a 44.2 x 33.1mm with 6.8 x 6.8 micron photosites. Each digital back can be purchased separately or in a system kit with the 645AFDIII camera and Sekor 80mm F2.8 D lens.

KentuckyFC writes "Black holes are thought to form when a star greater than 4 times the mass of the Sun explodes in a supernova and then collapses. The force of this collapse is so great that no known force can stop it. In less massive stars, the collapse cannot overcome so-called neutron degeneracy, the force that stops neutrons from being squashed together. Now a Russian physicist says another effect ought to be involved. He points out that quantum chromodynamics predicts that when neutrons are squashed together, matter undergoes a phase transition into "subhadronic" matter. This is very different from ordinary matter. In subhadronic form, space is essentially empty. So the phase change creates a sudden reduction in pressure forcing any ordinary matter in the star to implode into this new vacuum. The result is a massive increase in temperature of this matter that creates a "burning wall" within the supernova. And it is this burning wall that stops the formation of a black hole, not just the degeneracy pressure of neutrons. This should lead to much greater energies inside a supernova than had been thought possible until now. And that's important because it could explain the formation of high energy gamma ray bursts that have long puzzled astrophysicists."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Recently on Offworld we saw Kevin Slavin -- co-founder of drop7 developer area/code deliver a fascinating speech on the future interplay of TV and games at the recent 5D Immersive Design Conference that's well worth a half hour of your time for its background on the company and its lesser known location/real world games, and the conjecture that 'any screen without a mouse ships "broken"'. We also saw the puppet-show insanity of the latest trailer for upcoming PS3 remake of the original Katamari Damacy games, spotted the newest Left 4 Dead mobile from the creator of the Team Fortress original, and saw new songs from the inimitable Spinal Tap coming to Rock Band. Finally we played a fantastic set of augmented reality web-mini-games from Poke London and LittleBigPlanet artist Rex Crowle (above), coveted gorgeously designed T-shirts from Japanese developer Hudson, followed the latest #fezfriday, and our 'one shot's for the day: David Cronenberg's 8-bit daydream, and Pokemon, pixel by pixel.

Randy Sarafan shows us how to make this rad simple sequencer. Wood-grained contact paper is optional.

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destinyland writes "Sun Microsystems has helped fund a 198-page nanotechnology roadmap — but how close are we to real nanotechnology? A science writer asked four nano pioneers, including K. Eric Dexler ("progress is accelerating") and Ralph Merkle ("the exponential trends continue to be exponential") Though we don't have Star Trek replicators yet, the article lists some surprising recent nano developments (artificial tissue, nanoparticle sheets, ultrathin diamond nanorods). And the roadmap's scientists are envisioning targeted cancer therapies, super-efficient solar cells, high-density computer memory chips and even responsive "smart" materials.""

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've been bothered by the incredibly secretive (except if you happen to be in the entertainment industry) ACTA Treaty negotiations for quite some time now. This is the industry-led effort to get a bunch of nations to agree to draconian and damaging new copyright laws by sneaking them through as a secretive "international treaty," such that countries are then compelled to change their copyright laws to "be in compliance with international agreements." It's a really sneaky trick that Hollywood has used for years. And then it acts all innocent when people accuse it of pushing draconian laws on consumers, claiming "it wasn't us... we needed to be in compliance with our international agreements." They just leave out the part where they're the ones who write those agreements for the various trade representatives. The early drafts of ACTA are no different. They were clearly written by industry lobbyists, and are now being pushed by various trade representatives, and then our elected officials will have "no choice" but to change copyright laws to be in compliance.

Perhaps the most troubling part of all of this is that the negotiations are happening in secret, and when consumers rights organizations ask to be given a seat at the table, they're denied. When those same consumer rights organizations ask to at least be told what's being negotiated, they're told it's forbidden because of "state secrets." However, for all that national security, the administration has absolutely no problem giving industry lobbyists access to the process. Funny how that works.

Either way, it should come as no surprise that Michael Geist alerts us to the news that the US Trade Rep, Ron Kirk, is eager to get ACTA moving forward again. In response to all that secrecy, he claims:

As we proceed with these negotiations, we will ensure that the public is kept well informed and has further opportunities to give input.

Of course, the next meeting will take place in Morocco. How many consumer representatives will be there?

In the meantime, Kirk claims:

"The ACTA negotiations provide an opportunity to toughen international standards for the enforcement of intellectual property rights, making it harder for counterfeit and pirated products to enter our country, and making the world safer for the innovation and creativity that are so critical to the U.S. economy."

But... wait. Is it really true that this is a big problem? Both the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have taken a close look at the numbers thrown around about the "problem" of counterfeiting, and found them to be wildly overblown by lobbyists -- the same lobbyists writing ACTA, not surprisingly. So why is the US Trade Rep agreeing to let this go forward? It's not about "making the world safer for the innovation and creativity." It's about granting special protection to a few powerful US industries with lobbyists.

Isn't that a problem?

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So you've just made a tallbike from two frames, and you have a great time riding it around your neighborhood, but what happens when you want to take it farther away than your pedals can bring you? Instructables user sprocketscientist made a tutorial for a tallbike that comes apart for easy travel.

More tallbikes:

• 18 foot tall - tall bike
  
• Tall Bike Extravaganza
  
• HOW TO - Building a better Tall Bike
  
• Electric Tall Bike
  
• Homemade tallbike
  
• Aquachoppers of C.H.U.N.K. 666

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Harry writes "Once upon a time, it wasn't a given that PC owners should be able to format their own floppy disks. Or that ports should be standard, not proprietary. Or that it was a lousy idea to hardwire a PC's AC adapter, or to put the power supply in the printer so that a printer failure rendered the PC unusable, too. Over at Technologizer, Benj Edwards has taken a look at some of the worst design decisions from personal computing's early years — including ones involving famous flops such as the PCJr, obscure failures such as Mattel's Aquarius, and machines that succeeded despite flaws, like the first Mac. In most instances — but not all — their bad decisions taught the rest of the industry not to make the same errors again."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes "The CIA is adopting Web 2.0 tools like collaborative wikis but not without a struggle in an agency with an ingrained culture of secrecy. 'We're still kind of in this early adoptive stage,' says Sean Dennehy, a CIA analyst and self-described 'evangelist' for Intellipedia, the US intelligence community's version of the popular user-curated online encyclopedia Wikipedia adding that 'trying to implement these tools in the intelligence community is basically like telling people that their parents raised them wrong. It is a huge cultural change.' Dennehy says Intellipedia, which runs on secure government intranets and is used by 16 US intelligence agencies, was started as a pilot project in 2005 and now has approximately 100,000 user accounts and gets about 4,000 edits a day. 'Some people have (supported it) but there's still a lot of other folks kind of sitting on the fence.' Dennehy says wikis are 'a challenge to our culture because we grew up in this kind of "need to know" culture and now we need a balance between "need to know" and "need to share."' A desire to compartamentalize information is another problem. 'Inevitably, every person, the first question we were asked is "How do I lock down a page?" or "How do I lock down a page so that just my five colleagues can access that?"' The growth of Intellipedia has so far largely been fueled by early adopters and enthusiasts says Chris Rasmussen, a social-software knowledge manager and trainer at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. 'We are struggling to take it to the next level.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Flickr member okini393939 meets the growing demand for digital media among infants with the above-seen BabyPod MP3 player, built using -

MP3 Decoder: VS1011E
CPU: AVR ATmega168
Memory: SD card
PCB: Silver Circuits
Box: Daiso 100yen shop (300JPY)

Sure, and as soon as junior gets one of these they'll roll out the must-have BabyPod Nano, then the BabyPod Video, BabyPod Touch . . . Ah, well more pics in the project's photoset.

Toy Music Sequencer  MAKE Volume 13, page 132

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My friend Caterina Fake's new web-service Hunch just launched; you answer ten simple questions about yourself and then ask it oracular questions and it gives you entertaining and possibly useful advice. Caterina co-founded Flickr and is just swell, Hunch looks like great fun.

What should I be for Halloween? Do I need a Porsche? Should I dump that loser? Is Phoenix a good place to retire? Whom should I vote for? What toe ring should I buy?

It's a cruel world out there. Coin-flipping, I Ching consultation, closing your eyes and jumping, postponing the inevitable, Rock-Paper-Scissors, and asking your sister are all time-honored means of coming to a decision -- and yet we think there's room for one more: Hunch.

In 10 questions or less, Hunch will offer you a great solution to your problem, concern or dilemma, on hundreds of topics. Hunch's answers are based on the collective knowledge of the entire Hunch community, narrowed down to people like you, or just enough like you that you might be mistaken for each other in a dark room. Hunch is designed so that every time it's used, it learns something new. That means Hunch's hunches are always getting better.

Hunch

Boing Boing points to the rather ridiculous news that certain "sensitive" areas of the UK are banned to photographers, but when The British Journal of Photography tried to find out which "sensitive" sites to avoid, the request was rejected. Apparently even telling you what sites you can't photograph is too sensitive. Of course, that leaves photographers in a bit of a Catch-22, as they don't know whether or not a site is photographable until the police tell them they can't photograph it and they may have violated some law in doing so. But... of course, with no list to check on, the police can simply claim any building is off-limits. On top of that, as Cory Doctorow points out:

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.

Blind paranoia with a healthy dosage of security theater doesn't stop terrorism.

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Lennon Luks gives an in-depth tour of the grid-based MIDI controller/sequencer he built as his final project at Western Carolina University.

This is me showing some of the capabilities of the MIDI controller that I designed for my senior project. It uses an ATMEGA644 microcontroller. 3000ish lines of C code. I'm much more of an engineer than an electronic musician, clearly.

The interface will remind many of the Monome project, as the input/display are quite similar - but the awesome sauce here is the machine's ability to control MIDI devices without the need for an external computer. The onboard hardware offers a whole lotta possibilities via a single graphical LCD + switches - looks like much fun. Much more info available on the project page. [via Synthtopia]

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pallmall1 writes "OS News reports that Debian developer Josselin Mouette got Tomboy accepted as a dependency for gnome in the next release of Debian (codenamed Squeeze). While that may seem like nothing big (except for the 50 MByte size of the Tomboy package), Tomboy requires Mono — meaning that Mono will now be installed by default. Apparently, Debian doesn't have the same concerns over using specifications patented by Microsoft and licensed under undisclosed terms that Red Hat does. Perhaps Debian doesn't believe that Microsoft might do something like Rambus did."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

mr_sifter writes "As previously discussed, computers running Folding@home now contribute over 1 petaflop of processing power to research into protein folding, making Folding@home the most successful example yet of a distributed computing app. It's also at the forefront of GPGPU computing, with both Nvidia and ATI keen to push how well their graphics chips perform when folding. So the technology is great, but what about the science? This feature looks at how the Folding project was developed, how it's helping researchers and the thorny question of how long it might be until the software running on your PC or PS3 actually produces real world results."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Washington Post is running a story on the Obama Administration's attempt to get a scaled-back version of Bush's Real ID program passed and implemented. We've been discussing Real ID program from from its earliest days up through the states' resistance to its "unfunded mandate." "Yielding to a rebellion by states that refused to pay for it, the Obama administration is moving to scale back a federal law passed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that was designed to tighten security requirements for driver's licenses... Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano wants to repeal and replace the controversial, $4 billion domestic security initiative known as Real ID... The new proposal, called Pass ID, would be cheaper, less rigorous, and partly funded by federal grants, according to draft legislation that Napolitano's Senate allies plan to introduce as early as tomorrow. ...the Bush administration struggled to implement the 2005 [Real ID] law, delaying the program repeatedly as states called it an unfunded mandate and privacy advocates warned it would create a de facto national ID."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Randy shares steps for adding two key upgrades to the Mini-Theremin kit -

True, there are already directions to do both of these things in the accompanying magazine, but what sets this how-to apart is that it is in English. If like me you can't read Japanese and unlike me, you couldn't figure out what to do from the pictures alone, this should help. Basically, what I am doing is adding an audio out jack and also a bigger, sturdier telescoping antenna. This is a great improvement on the original.

I've added an 1/8" jack to mine as well, definitely a great idea for those who also own the Gakken SX-150 synth. Once 'jacked' the mini can act as a handsfree controller for the SX by way of its control input. Hmmm … think I'll be adding one of theses sturdier antennae as well. Read the full instructable for much mini modding infos. More: Gakken Mini-Theremin Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Kits | Digg this!

Last week, there was a bit of a silly fight over the NY Times publishing an article noting that blogs sometimes publish rumors. I didn't find the story to be all that bad, actually, as it did a fair job explaining why those blogs publish rumors without confirmation, and how they do it in a reasonable way (i.e., saying it's a rumor and hasn't been confirmed). Some felt the article was a hit piece, but on the whole it actually seemed pretty reasonable and accurate. Still, in response to that, Cody Brown (via Jay Rosen) put up a fascinating and thought-provoking writeup comparing online to print journalism -- noting that print is "batch processing" while online is "real-time processing" and explaining why this makes it so difficult for print to either understand the value of online journalism, or to keep up with it. To be honest, I think the point was made even clearer in last week's hilarious Daily Show takedown of the NY Times, where Jason Jones refers to the newspaper as "aged news" and asks Rick Berke, the assistant managing editor to point out a single article in today's newspaper that "happened today" (at around 3 minutes): Separately, I should point out that I find it amusing that around 1:45, the video quotes Kristin Mason, the NYT's communications coordinator, noting that "The NY Times really prides itself on making sure that the information we're putting out in the newspaper and online is factual. We have editors going through and checking on a variety of sources...."

Fair enough... But what happened on Friday? That's when the NY Times falsely reported that The Pirate Bay had lost its appeal... and that false story has remained uncorrected at least up until I published this story. It appears that the "pride" the NY Times takes in getting the story right doesn't necessarily extend to things like The Pirate Bay.

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Marco Rapino, a developer working at the Center for Knowledge and Innovation Research at HSE in Helsinki, has developed a prototype controller using the accelerometer in his Nokia N95 smartphone, some Python, and the Blender 3D content creation suite.

The application is structured in this way:

• Mobile client, a python script which reads the accelerometer data and sends it via bluetooth to the pc
• A server that runs on your pc and shares the data with the BGE through a local UDP non-blocking socket
• A Blender script which handles the cube rotation in the BGE using the n95 accelerometer's data

Source and examples available here

N95 accelerometer with Blender [via BlenderNation]

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Most makers probably already know of Diana Eng. She was one of the contestants, the so-called "fashion nerd", on the second season of Project Runway. She's also been a guest blogger on CRAFT and is the author of the new book Fashion Geek: Clothes Accessories Tech. And Diana Eng is no poser nerd. To prove it, she's here to talk about... ham radio? That's right, Diana is a licensed ham! She loves the hobby and is excited about introducing a new generation of amateurs to it. She'll be contributing some posts here about ham, like this convention report, and doing some radio projects. We're thrilled to have her. Welcome, Diana! - Gareth Branwyn

SOTA, Summits on the Air, is an award program that encourages hams to make contacts in the mountainous outdoors. SOTA is not only for hikers, the program recognizes Activators, Chasers, and Short Wave Listeners. Activators hike up registered SOTA summits and activate the location by setting up a station and making a minimum of 3 contacts. Chasers can operate from home or other SOTA locations, and make contact with activators. Short Wave Listeners who are often unlicensed hear but do not contact activators. Activators and Chasers earn points towards awards.

SOTA began in the UK in March 2002 as the brain child of John Linford, G3WGV. Early on, most activity was on VHF and UHF FM frequencies (70 cm and 2 m) using lightweight handheld radios. Since activators and chasers were usually in the same country, there was no need for long range HF. The high elevation also helped the propagation, particularly of VHF. Now as the popularity of SOTA grows and technology gets smaller, activators and chasers are using HF to make contacts around the world. SOTA now has 28 active associations in locations ranging from France and Belgium to South Africa and Macedonia.

I recently hiked up Mt. Carmel in Connecticut with Tom Tumino, N2YTF and Dave Clausen, W2VV. Tom Tumino is SOTA Association Manager for the W1 call area and SOTA Regional Manager for New Jersey as well as President of the Hall of Science Amateur Radio Club, HOSARC. At the time, Tom had submitted Mt. Carmel to SOTA headquarters for formal inclusion in the SOTA program. As of July 1, 2009 Mt. Carmel is a part of the SOTA program with the designator W1/HH-002.

I asked Tom some questions about SOTA:
[Diana Eng] How did you get started with SOTA and what made you want to bring
it to the United States?
[Tom Tumino] I got started with SOTA when my friend, Tom Golero, KC2CBA wanted to try something new and suggested that we try activating a nearby summit in the SOTA program. I now have 8 expeditions to 6 different summits under my belt and am the leading activator in the US.

[DE] How do you feel SOTA compares to other ham activities?
[TT] The ham radio population is facing many of the same challenges with weight and fitness that the American population is general is facing. SOTA is a great way for hams to develop their field and emergency preparedness skills while also increasing their physical fitness level and enjoying some spectacular views and in this sense SOTA is almost completely unique in the Amateur Radio world. The SOTA program provides interested hams with a list of summits worthy of hiking for hams of all physical fitness levels. Also, the SOTA websites are a great repository of information for hams interested in facing the challenges of setting up a portable global HF setup on a summit with only battery power. All SOTA activations must take place in an environmentally friendly manor and the activating hams must get to the summit under human power with all of their gear.

I feel that the SOTA program is the most exciting and challenging award scheme in ham radio and holds many benefits for its participants unavailable in other popular award schemes. Participation in SOTA has taken me to heights and summits I never would have known about never mind hike up.

[DE] What type of radios and rigs are used most often by SOTA activators?
[TT] A nice collection of photos of activators and their gear can be found at:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/sota_pics/

Many activators carry small, lightweight "dc to daylight" rigs such as the Yaesu FT-817. Such rigs can be used on voice and Morse code modes on HF, VHF, and UHF frequencies. Unfortunately, radios such as the FT-817 afford only 5w of output and are not optimized for low current drain meaning operators have to bring up more than 2 AH of battery power.

Some of the more physically fit operators are bringing up large, portable radios such as the Yaesu FT-897 & FT-857, or Icom -706MKIIG which allow an output of up to 100w on HF and 50w on VHF if activators can bring up batteries capable of sustaining current draws of 20 amps.

Recently there has been a move back to basics in SOTA, with some operators favoring light weight, CW only HF rigs with low current drain. Such radios are "no nonsense designs" that allow hikers to tackle the highest and most challenging summits with a minimum of extra weight. Many of these radios are built by the activators themselves from readily available kits.

I would say the most popular antennas are simple wire antennas for HF and simple home made Yagi type antennas for VHF/UHF.

[DE] What is your SOTA setup?
[TT] Lately I have been bringing a Kenwood TH-D7AG APRS hand held radio with me to the summits along with an Elecraft K3 (a small desktop radio). Together these radios give me all mode HF, and FM VHF and UHF capability along the ability to relay my position in real time to the global chaser community via APRS.

[DE] Which do you think is the most interesting SOTA award, and why?
[TT] As the Association Manager for the W1 area I have to say I am a bit biased to some of the unique awards we have in W1. The Master of the Black Dog Certificate which is particularly interesting for its connection to local legend. To be eligible for the Master of the Black Dog Certificate, an activator must have completed valid activations from all of the three summits in the Hanging Hills Region.

The Black Dog of the Hanging Hills is a supernatural hound that appears in Hanging Hills folklore. Folklore holds that the spirit has haunted the region since the early 1800s and manifests itself as a small black dog, often gregarious in nature, who leaves no footprints and makes no sound. According to legend, to see the Black Dog the first time results in joy while a second sighting results in misfortune. Seeing the Black Dog a third time is said to be a death omen.

One of the earliest accounts of the Black Dog was published in the Connecticut Quarterly, (April-June, 1898) by New York geologist W.H.C. Pynchon. According to Pynchon, in February 1891 he and geologist Herbert Marshall of the United States Geological Survey were conducting geologic research in the Hanging Hills when they saw The Dog. Pynchon had seen The Dog once before. Marshall, who had seen The Dog twice, scoffed at the legend. Shortly after the two of them saw The Dog, Marshall slipped on the ice atop one of the cliffs and plunged to his death. His body was later recovered by authorities.

For the record I have yet to see The Dog...

[DE] How does a mountain become a SOTA Summit?
[TT] To qualify as a SOTA summit, a summit must in general have a prominence of more than 500 feet .http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prominence Once an individual identifies a summit with a prominence of more then 500 feet, he/she can submit the summit to the Association Manager that handles the geographic area that encompasses the prospective summit. In the north east states that would be me. If I can verify the prominence of the summit, I can submit the peak to SOTA headquarters for formal inclusion in the SOTA program.

[Makezine] How can people get started with SOTA?
[Tom]Regardless of your interest (Activator, Chaser, or Short Wave Listener (SWL)), the first step is to register so that you may upload logs of your contacts to the SOTA system. There are no fees for participation in the SOTA system.

If you can't get out/have no desire to go hiking, you can get a list of upcoming activations and activations heard live on the air (spots) and tune your rig accordingly.

If you are interested in activating a summit, SOTA maintains an excellent repository of information submitted by its members to make hikes easier. From this website you can find a summit near your location and perhaps a little about where to park and find proper hiking maps for the summit. You may also find links to pictures and video of past activations on the summit you are interested in. The Yahoo SOTA group "Summits" also has a helpful file titled summits.kml for Google Earth. You can find summits.kml in the file section of the Yahoo SOTA groupl.

You can check out the general rules for SOTA and the specific Association Reference Manuals.

Of course prospective participants should feel free to email the Association Manager of their region with any questions they may have and we will be happy to help them.

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We were quite surprised to find no further calls for delays on the switchover to digital over the air TV from analog -- but we're not at all surprised to find out that the actual switchover happened with relatively few problems. Sure there are some people who are confused or who are having difficulty getting their new converter boxes working properly, but there's been no catastrophic failure or problems, and most of the issues seem to have been resolved pretty quickly. Perhaps the gov't really did need a few extra months, but my guess is that the same thing likely would have happened back in February... or if we had done the switchover years ago. So, now can we put the old spectrum to good use, finally?

Separately, the EFF is noting that (once again) it appears that Hollywood lied and exaggerated its claim that it needed a broadcast flag that would stop DVR copying of digital TV or it would start pulling content off the air. Funny thing... that didn't happen. As the EFF notes:

Entertainment industries like to argue that they "need" DRM to make works available. And policymakers have eagerly adopted this argument. But when the bluff is called, it turns out that the DRM wasn't so necessary after all.

So will our politicians recognize this? Or will they continue to believe Hollywood, everytime it insists it needs some new kind of DRM with legal backing from the gov't?

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Cosina has announced a Voigtländer branded Nokton 50mm F1.1 high speed lens for the Leica M mount, in a launch which marks the 10th anniversary of Cosina's Bessa series of rangefinder cameras. The Nokton becomes the second-fastest lens currently available for the M mount after the Leica Noctilux 50mm f/0.95, yet despite its speed weighs in at a relatively manageable 15 ounces and uses 58mm filters. The lens is constructed with 7 elements in 6 group and has minimum focusing distance of 1m. It will start shipping from the end of this month at a retail price of approximately 130,000 yen.

Hack your Brain with the Trip Glasses in the Maker Shed! Get comfortable, put on the glasses and headphones, close your eyes (the LEDs are bright!), and flick the power switch. Enjoy the hallucinations as you drift into deep meditation, ponder your inner world, and then come out after the 14-minute program feeling fabulous.

In the Maker Shed: Trip Glasses

Related:

Trippy RGB Waves Kit

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RazvanM writes "This is an attempt to visualize the relationships among the Linux File Systems through the lens of the external symbols their kernel modules use. We took an initial look a few months back but this time the scope is much broader. This analysis was done on 1377 kernel modules from 2.6.0 to 2.6.29, but there is also a small dip into the BSD world. The most thorough analysis was done on Daniel Phillips's tree, which contains the latest two disk-based file systems for Linux: tux3 and btrfs. The main techniques used to established relationships among file systems are hierarchical clustering and phylogenetic trees. Also presented are a set of rankings based on various properties related to the evolution of the external symbols from one release to another, and complete timelines of the kernel releases for Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. In all there are 78 figures and 10 animations."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: Peeling and Cracking 2. Squick!

Peeling and Cracked 2

Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that Jeff and Danielle Smith sent a photo of themselves with their two young children to family and friends as a Christmas card, and posted the image on her blog and a few social networking websites. Then, last month, a friend of the family was vacationing in the Czech Republic when he spotted a full size poster of the Missouri family's smiling faces in the window of a local supermarket in Prague, advertising a grocery delivery service. The friend snapped a few pictures and sent them to the Smiths, who were flabbergasted. Mario Bertuccio, who owns the Grazie store in Prague, admitted that he had found the photo online but thought it was computer-generated and promised to remove it, and 'We'll be happy to write an e-mail with our apology,' he says. Meanwhile Mrs. Smith has received 180,000 visitors and over 500 comments on her blog since she posted the story. She says she is glad the photo wasn't used in an unseemly manner. 'Interesting. Bizarre. Flattering, I suppose,' writes Mrs. Smith. 'But quite creepy.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Seth Schoen from the Electronic Frontier Foundation reminds us that the US digital TV transition that just took place was, for several years, Hollywood's best bet for infecting every device in your home with Digital Rights Management technology, giving itself veto power over the design of everything from video cards to networking protocols. This was the "Broadcast Flag" proposal, and the big studios and broadcasters promised that they would sabotage the DTV transition if they didn't get their way. The FCC rolled over and gave it to them -- and then EFF, the American Library Association and Public Knowledge sued them, demonstrated that they didn't have the jurisdiction to regulate hard drives and cable-connectors, and the studios never made good on their threat.

MPAA's Fritz Attaway said that "high-value content will migrate away" from television if the broadcast flag wasn't imposed; he told Congress that fears of infringement without a broadcast flag mandate "will lead content creators to cease making their high-value programming available for distribution over digital broadcast television [and] the DTV transition would be seriously threatened". Most famously, Viacom said that

"[i]f a broadcast flag is not implemented and enforced by Summer 2003, Viacom's CBS Television Network will not provide any programming in high definition for the 2003-2004 television season. "

It's six years later and these threats have all fallen flat. This week, CBS will broadcast dozens of popular programs, like CSI, Without a Trace, Survivor, and The New Adventures of Old Christine, in high definition via over-the-air broadcast. So will all the other major networks. Digital TV also continues to feature popular movies with no DRM.

Into the DTV era, with no broadcast flag mandate

Jonathan sez, "As an aspiring author of fantasy for young adults, there is only one to get better [and get published] that I can think of: write. Then write more. And write better. So in order to do that I have set myself the target of putting a free short story online every week, and to keep doing just that for a year. I'm at the third week, and I have a couple in reserve to cover busy weeks. But more than that, I am making these stories available under a Creative Commons Share-alike Licence, hoping that others will take the stories to places that even I can't imagine. And on top of that, I'm willing to let commercial licences go for 1 euro. Just to get the ball rolling."

I love to see projects like this that display work ethic and talent. Good luck, Jonathan!

free reads

In Brooklyn, the Lutheran Halal Cafe. As Patrick Nielsen Hayden notes, "I wonder what Lutheran halal cuisine would entail. Doner kabab hot dish?"

In Brooklyn, about a mile south of us (via Making Light)

layabout writes "We've seen tremendous advances in user interfaces over the past few years. Unfortunately, those UIs and supporting infrastructure exclude the disabled. In the same timeframe there has been virtually no advance in accessibility capabilities. It's the same old sticky keys, unicorn stick, speech recognition, text-to-speech that kind-of, sort-of, works except when you need to work with with real applications. Depending on whose numbers you use, anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 keyboard users are injured every year — some temporarily, some permanently. In time, almost 100% of keyboard users will have trouble typing and using many if not all mobile computing devices. My question to Slashdot: Given that some form of disability is almost inevitable, what's keeping you from volunteering and working with geeks who are already disabled? By spending time now building the interfaces and tools that will enable them to use computers more easily, you will also be ensuring your own ability to use them in the future." Follow the link for more background on this reader's query.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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

Thanks to Mark and the other BoingBoing bloggers for the chance to put words in front of the world's most interesting and lively blog readers. It's been great. You've been great.

I'm taking took a page from previous guest blogger Gareth Branwyn's final post and putting hyperlinks to many of my posts all in one place for those who may have missed them and so I have one place I can link to:

Summer Road Trips

Hit By Rock From Outer Space?

Rocket Making for Amateurs

A Monkey on My Back (non-metaphorically speaking)

Growing the Poison Pepper

Licensed to Drink

Knife Throwers Just Want a Little Respect

Happy 35th Anniversary, 10 Cent Beer Night

The Least Exciting Moments in Sports

Wails and mumbles: So Effective It's Given Away in Bags!

Wails and Murmurs: Eating Couscous at the Chi-Chi's in Walla-Walla

Exploring Your Own Backyard:

My new book, Absinthe and Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously continues to do well, as does Backyard Ballistics, The Art of the Catapult and the rest, no doubt helped by the interest fueled by posting on this wonderful blog.

Please do check out Absinthe and Flamethrowers if you have any interest. For more info, see www.absintheandflamethrowers.com.

If you want to reach me to, say, inquire about writing assignments or speaking engagements, visit me at www.williamgurstelle.com and use the form on the contact page. I'm leaving the country for a couple of weeks, but I'll have email access from time to time.

Thanks again. Enjoy your summer, live dangerously, and live artfully.

Nice story about the Open Source Embroidery exhibition and movement over on Wired.com:

The movement brings together knitters, embroiderers and quilters who see parallels between the way they create their crafts and how open source software creators share their ideas. At the BildMuseet (art museum) at Umeå University in Sweden, an exhibition — also called Open Source Embroidery — showcases artworks that use embroidery and code as a tool for participatory production and distribution.

“The idea of collaboration has been made cool by open source software,” says Carpenter, the curator of the exhibition. “But artists have been working like this for a long time.”

Even the differences between needlework crafts and open source software are alike, she says. Embroidery is largely dominated by women, while software is created mostly by men, she says. In embroidery, tiny stitches come together to create a pattern visible on the front of the fabric, while its system is revealed on the back. It’s similar to how software is created.

The arguments about open source vs. free software can also be applied to embroidery, says Carpenter, where artists struggle with questions around borrowing and modifying patterns. “The Open Source Embroidery project simply attempts to provide a social and practical way of discussing these issues and trying out the practice,” says Carpenter.

There's also a nice shoutout to MAKE and CRAFT in the article, too!

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suraj.sun alerts us to an anonymous-source story up at the NY Post, not what we would normally consider a leading source of tech news, claiming that Microsoft's introduction of Bing has alarmed Google. "...co-founder Sergey Brin is so rattled by the launch of Microsoft's rival search engine that he has assembled a team of top engineers to work on urgent upgrades to his Web service, The Post has learned. Brin, according to sources..., is himself leading the team of search-engine specialists in an effort to determine how Bing's crucial search algorithm differs from that used by [Google]. 'New search engines have come and gone in the past 10 years, but Bing seems to be of particular interest to Sergey,' said one insider, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The move by Brin is unusual, as it is rare these days for the Google founders to have such hands-on involvement in day-to-day operations at the company, the source added." CNet's coverage of the rumor begins with the NY Post and adds in Search Engine Land's speculation on what the world of search would look like if Yahoo exited the field.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From 1976 to 1983, Popular Science magazine, along with the American Plywood Association, ran an annual plywood panel project design contest for its readership. Often the winning projects were items of furniture, but that was not a requirement. A potter's kick wheel and a folding plywood boat are notable exceptions. The rules were simple: Apart from common fasteners, the entire project had to be constructed from one or more panels of plywood, cut to make most efficient use of the material. In 1984, these projects were collected, by original contest editor Alfred W. Lees, into a book called 67 Prizewinning Plywood Projects.

1984, of course, was decades prior to the advent of accessible home CNC milling, so all those carefully shaped and slotted parts, at the time, had to be laboriously hand-cut using a jigsaw or similar tool. Today, the book is a rich, untapped resource for CNC enthusiasts. I scored a used copy on Amazon, and besides the projects themselves, the book yields a bumper crop of ideas for clever tricks to incorporate into your own designs.

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