Last month, we noted that it was a really bad idea for Jammie Thomas not to settle her lawsuit with the recording industry. There was simply way too much evidence for a jury not to convict her. The trial itself was, again as expected, something of a circus, rather than anything interesting or compelling. So, it should come as no surprise that, yet again, Thomas has been found guilty. But what is surprising is that the the court chose to fine her $1.92 million, or $80,000 per song. That's $1.7 million more than the original trial. $80,000 per song! Still, it was a really bad idea for Thomas to go through with this suit as there was way too much evidence linking her to the music (and too many problems with her own testimony). Now the RIAA is handed a gift. A verdict that it can gloat about and misrepresent to its own advantages. What might be interesting is whether (for all the RIAA gloating) this ruling has a similar impact as The Pirate Bay victory had in Sweden -- galvanizing people to support the Pirate Party. Somehow, the story isn't quite as compelling though.

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jaroslav writes "The University of Wisconsin is attempting to update a payroll system they have had in place since 1975, but spent $28.4 million in a 2004 attempt with no results, and now is experiencing new overruns in cost and time after "not hav[ing] the full picture of how complex this project would be". The current estimate of the redesign is $12 million and years of further work on top of the money already spent."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool, this is a tiny functioning drill.

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

Riffing off of Xeni's excellent post about Omega Recoil I wanted to bring your attention to the Electrum, the world's largest Tesla Coil.

"Known as Electrum, the four-story (38-ft) Tesla coil was commissioned by a prominent New Zealand art patron Alan Gibbs, and set up on on his farm outside of Auckland, New Zealand in April 1998. Built by artist Eric Orr and high voltage engineer Greg Leyh, the enormous coil puts out over 3 million volts.

A particular delight of the Electrum Coil is the hollow spherical cage on top, where Greg Leyh would often sit during shows. While Leyh is safe within the Faraday cage created by the sphere, if he were to put his hand through the cage, he would be instantly electrocuted."

As interesting as the coil itself is Alan Gibbs, the art patron who commissioned it. Gibbs is one of New Zealand's wealthiest residents and is worth a third of a billion dollars. Called a "James Bond in Jandals" Gibbs has dabbled in everything from cars to telecoms, however the Bond reputation comes from Gibbs' recent project, the Aquada. The Aquada is an amphibious car that travels at over a 100km/h on land and smoothly transitions to 30km/h in water. Along with his other hobbies Gibbs owns what he calls "The Farm," an area rural in New Zealand where he collects and privately displays massive works of art such as the Electrum and Neil Dawson's "Horizons" pictured below.

There is more info on the Electrum on the Atlas, this is an interesting article about the Aquada, and a link to more pictures of the enormous art on found on Gibb's Farm.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Well the price went up from $9250 per song file to $80,000 per song file, as the jury awarded the RIAA statutory damages of $1,920,000.00 for infringement of 24 MP3s, in Capitol Records v. Thomas-Rasset. In this trial, although the defendant had an expert witness of her own, she never called him to testify, and her attorneys never challenged the technical evidence offered by the RIAA's MediaSentry and Doug Jacobson. Also, neither the special verdict form nor the jury instructions spelled out what the elements of a 'distribution' are, or what needed to be established by the plaintiffs in order to recover statutory — as opposed to actual — damages. No doubt there will now have to be a third trial, and no doubt the unreasonableness of the verdict will lend support to those arguing that the RIAA's statutory damages theory is unconstitutional."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael Scott points us to a column over at BetaNews recounting many of the examples of how the DMCA has created a chilling effect on security research. The column talks about the importance of hacking and tinkering, and then reminds us of all those stories we've heard: Ed Felten (threatened for both his research into DRM and e-voting), Alex Haldeman's DRM research. Seth Finklestein on censorware. Dmitry Sklyarov spending months in jail for discovering a security flaw. Eric Corley for daring to publish the basic DeCSS code in a magazine. Most of these stories you should already be familiar with, but it seems that the massive chilling effects of the DMCA on security research haven't been discussed in a while -- and it's certainly worth putting some of these famed cases together in one spot to remind people that the problems with the DMCA remain and are doing great damage to our security -- at exactly the time when the government claims we need to improve our cybersecurity.

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Check out "Soundie" by Kanjun Qiu. It's an interactive hoodie that plays music based on touch. It also has some LEDs for visual feedback. The entire piece is based on the LilyPad Arduino.

I've looked at a ton of light up garments, El Wire, etc. This is one of the most tastefully- and artfully-done articles of clothing I've seen as of late. Instead of hiding the electronics, the graphic on the back integrates, even highlights the main board.

More about Soundie: Interactive hoodie

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino

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O'Reilly is offering a discount of 40% on books, courses, workshops, and conferences in celebration of Father's Day. They're even throwing in a 20% Maker Shed discount when you use code DAD40 through June 22:

We're also sharing stories and posting photos of geeky Dads and Grandpas with their favorite tech books here. Please send us your fav pics to press@oreilly.com (by Friday, June 19). We'll be twittering about our Father's Day celebration, too. Please use #geekdad when you twitter.

Pictured above is O'Reilly's senior sysadmin, Dean Roman, and his kids (we're feeling love for you over here, too, Dean)!

More:

DIY for Dad: Happy Father's Day from MAKE, a gift guide for Dad

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iateyourcookies writes "As opposed to enforcement which usually makes the headlines, The BBC is running an article called Inside A Downloader's Head which looks at the film and music industries' attempts to prevent copyright infringement. It details some of the campaigns, their rationale, controversy surrounding them and notes that 'there are plenty, even among the young, who can be eloquent about why they believe illegal downloading is not wrong. These can include everything from what they see as the unacceptable "control freakery" of DRM and regional coding, to overcharging and exploitation of the very artists the music industry claims to protect.' However, PR company for the industry Blue Rubicon attests that 'campaigns can change hearts and minds... If you do them right you can make a material impact on people's behaviour.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've noted in the past that the record labels have a pretty well established operating procedure when it comes to "negotiating" with startups that are actually doing the innovative things in the music delivery and promotion space. They open "negotiations" with these startups... and then after a certain point, they file a lawsuit. It's purely a negotiating tactic (and a way for record label lawyers to keep busy), that makes the "negotiation" a lot more antagonistic, and often ends with the startup agreeing to give up way too much. Warner Music perfected this trick, such as when it sued iMeem only to then invest in the company as part of the settlement. Of course, because iMeem had no choice but to cave in order to deal with the lawsuit, the terms of the deal were so onerous that iMeem nearly went out of business -- until Warner Music wrote off the investment and recently renegotiated.

As unbelievable as it may be, the major record labels apparently don't recognize that "deals" negotiated at the end of the barrel of a gun tend not to work out very well in the long run. They're certainly not mutually beneficial.

And yet... the process continues. While Warner Music has done a bunch of these sue-to-negotiate deals, EMI seems to be involved in many of the more recent lawsuits of this nature. Its latest target is GrooveShark, one of a bunch of sites that lets you listen to streaming music online. Apparently the two companies had been negotiating terms... and then suddenly EMI sued. Par for the course. In the meantime, if you're a music startup hoping to do a licensing deal with a major label, make sure you have some litigators on your legal team. You're going to need them.

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An anonymous reader writes "A bill introduced by Canada's Minister of Public Safety will allow police to (warrantlessly) force ISPs to provide access to any requested digital traffic records, reports News 1130. Police lobbied for the bill as means of 'combatting gangsters, pedophiles, or terrorists,' but apparently they find the legal principles of judicial review and probable cause, as well as a constitutional provision against 'unreasonable search or seizure', to be too much of a hassle, and would rather be able to search anyone's web or e-mail traffic at their own discretion and without any oversight. All in the name of public safety, of course."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Etsy seller VonErickson offers this coffin couch for $3500. It's available in purple, red, or black velvet. The lid closes too. Coffin Couch (Thanks, Patty Trujillo!)

The summer class lineup at 3rd Ward in Brooklyn has got me really jealous I don't live in NYC anymore. Some instant drool moments:

• Night Welding: Intro to the Metal Shop
  
• Build It: DIY Sequencer
  
• Build It: Tone Generator
  
• How to Make Crappy Stuff Awesome (furniture)
  
• Plastics Fabrication & Casting
  

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CWmike writes "Apple patched 46 security vulnerabilities in the iPhone and iPod Touch, half of them in the Safari browser and its WebKit rendering engine, as it released iPhone OS 3.0 on Wednesday. One of the patched WebKit vulnerabilities stands out because of the attention it received in March, when a German college student, Nils, walked away with a $5,000 cash prize for hacking Safari at the Pwn2Own challenge. Nils used a bug in WebKit's handling of SVGList objects to crack Safari."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As we all know, online debates can spiral out of control pretty quickly -- with name calling and people quickly jumping to extremes. This is especially true in the political arena, where various positions are stereotyped and extreme passions come out quickly. I tend to find such discussions tiresome. However, they occur all the time (occasionally here in our own comments). But could you consider such a conversation disturbing the peace? It appears that's exactly what happened to a student in Nebraska who had a rather nasty political email exchange with a professor.

The student and the professor exchanged a series of emails over a short period of time. The two were at opposite ends of the political spectrum (which side was which, honestly, doesn't and shouldn't matter), and the student used some nasty language and accused the professor of being a traitor among other things. To be honest, if you've spent any time in online political discussions, this really isn't particularly out of the ordinary -- and (somewhat amazingly) after a back-and-forth exchange where the professor asked the student to stop emailing him and noting how insulted he was by the emails, the student did send a long apologetic email, telling the professor he was sorry that he got so riled up, and he really liked the professor and just wanted to debate someone intelligent who viewed the world from a very different perspective.

A few months went by, and then the professor received two anonymous emails from a new Yahoo email address that used the professor's name as part of the address (the username was "averylovesalqueda"), again ranting politically against the professor. The professor found the emails threatening and turned them over to the police. The police eventually tracked the emails down to the same student who was then charged with disturbing the peace. Yes. Disturbing the peace. For sending a nasty email.

First Amendment scholars look out. Who knew that sending a private ranting email could disturb the peace?

Amazingly, a lower court and now the appeals court agreed and the student has been convicted of disturbing the peace for sending those emails. The court even claims that the email address itself is libelous which seems quite difficult to square with reality. No one would look at that email address and assume that it was actually from the professor in question, and there's no indication that anyone outside of the professor himself ever saw the email address in question. O'Toole, in his post, puts the blame not on the judges, but on the student, who chose to defend himself, and appears to have done a pretty poor job of it, now leaving this ruling to be used as a citation in other cases. This is bad news no matter how you look at it. Even granting O'Toole's premise that the student is at fault for defending himself (and doing such a poor job of it), it's still bothersome that a judge wouldn't take basic First Amendment rights into consideration here.

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A rather thorough Tumblr theme based on Saul Bass' movie title work (via @weightshift) #

ericatcw writes "Google's Android may enjoy the hype, but an increasing number of key industry players say the mobile OS isn't ready for ARM netbooks, aka smartbooks. Nvidia is the most recent to declare Android unfit for duty, stating its preference for Microsoft's Windows CE, which an Nvidia exec praised for having a "low footprint" and being "rock solid." Nvidia is busy optimizing its multimedia-savvy Tegra system-on-chip for Windows CE. Such improvements won't arrive for at least a year to Android, which has an inflexible UI and poor graphics support for devices larger than a smartphone, says Nvidia. Other firms echoing similar criticism include ARM and Asustek."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ah, the gay (19)90s: before Y2K, 9/11, Gitmo, CDOs, and all kinds of other depressing modern acronyms. Venture capital fell from the sky like manna, and everyone was getting rich on the Internet, even though nobody knew exactly how. Enter, into that milieu, the following brilliant idea, courtesy of the wunderkinder at MIT's then-ascendant Media Lab: Ping-pong tables ought to contain schools of virtual fish that react to the impact of the ball. The rave toy to end all rave toys!

Pre-coffee sarcasm aside, this really is pretty cool. "PingPongPlus" is the work of Craig Wisneski, Julian Orbanes, Ben Chun and Professor Hiroshi Ishii. The "fish" mode is only one of several possible interactions, and they all include sound effects. Check out the vid:

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Boing Boing former guestblogger and bOING bOING editor Gareth Branwyn is on a magickal, mystery tour through London to attend an occult conference, conduct research for his novel, and find the ghost of William Blake. Gar writes:

People here must think I'm a crazy man, as it's hard for me not to walk around London mumbling William Blake poetry; it just sorta burbles out of me as I walk by, for instance, the Gothic church only blocks away from where he used to live on South Molton Street. I'm actually staying across from that dingy church, at another poet's house, a B&B in what used to be the home of Edward Lear. Blake likely would have walked past this church, maybe even sketched it.

But I can guarantee you that he never walked these streets in William Gibson's shoes! But I am! I'm sporting a baby-shit brown pair of William Gibson sneakers, with chocolate-brown leather accents and rubber sidewalls. I wanted the black pair, something Bill, the latter, would certainly appreciate, but they were out. I was lucky to get any pair. I only found out about them days before I left for my trip. I couldn't believe it. Gibson designing sneakers? And shoulder bags? And bomber jackets? It seemed too good to be true – trucking into some weirdo occult music and arts festival, being held on the very alchemical-sounding Red Lion Square, wearing a pair of Gibsonian sneakers? I had to have me some of that pregnant symbo!

I had a devil of a time tracking down a pair. The only place that had 'em in the US was Self Edge in San Francisco. And they had precious-few pairs left, and only in brown. Not sure if they'll get more. I think it was a limited edition sorta deal. Self Edge does carry some other Buzz Rickson William Gibson merch, such as the shoulder bags.

The sneakers are great looking, sorta tweaked-up Chucks. Several people commented on them at the Festival and it was a howl to say: “Guess what brand they are?” “These are Gibsonian sneakers, dude!” Nobody believes you (the only Bill branding is under the tongue). The style of the shoe is great, the packaging is worthy, but the quality of the material and the work seems a tad chincy for the $170. Not sure how long they'll last, but I'm still glad I got them.

My Gibsonian sneakers have taken me far and wide as I've tried to map Blakean space here in London. Trying to find overt evidence of dear William, the former, is sadly difficult. Besides the building on Molton Street, now in a posh shopping area, there's little else. As the Blake Society website puts it: “His birthplace, on the corner of Broad Street (now Broadwick Street) & Marshall Street, was demolished in 1965. The hideous block of flats built on the site is named William Blake House.” If you go to Wren’s St. James’s Church, Piccadilly, you can see the font in which he was baptized. The only other building he lived in that still stands is the cottage on the Sussex coast where he and his wife lived for three years at the beginning of the 19th century (that I did NOT see).

But the amazing thing to me, a huge revelation even, is how much his art was an expression of this city (among other things). I certainly thought I knew how much London meant to him, and how much of an important role it played in his mytho-poetic cosmology, but I never realized the extent to which that poetry was a psycho-geographic mapping of London until I walked its streets, in William Gibson's shoes, Blake's verse unwinding all around me like it's encoded in the odorous steam that swirls up from the underground.

I wander thro' each charter'd street, Near where the charter'd Thames does flow, And mark in every face I meet, Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man, In every Infant’s cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.

chrb writes "Two days ago Slashdot discussed broke counties grinding their tarmac roads into gravel. Now the Telegraph reveals plans to raze huge sections of at least 50 US cities to the ground. The resulting smaller cities will be more economical to run, and the recovered land will be returned to nature."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We just wrote about the Harvard economists who noted that, despite claims that file sharing would decrease the incentive to create content, more music than ever before is being made, and the trends keep going up. That report did note that it couldn't necessarily judge quality, but was simply focused on quantity. However, according to at least one well known band, unauthorized file sharing is absolutely improving the quality of music -- especially the band's own music. This is according to the lead singer of the Fleet Foxes, Robin Pecknold. He points out that his own musical tastes were heavily influenced by what he could download online, and that wide variety of influences has made him a much better musician:

"As much music as musicians can hear, that will only make music richer as an artform.... I think we're seeing that now with tons of new bands that are amazing, and are doing way better music now than was being made pre-Napster."

Now, obviously, this is anecdotal and a single data point -- but the critics (and fans) sure do seem to like the Fleet Foxes' music. Its debut album was named "Best of 2008" by Billboard, The Times, Mojo, Pitchfork and Uncut and hit number 3 on the UK charts (not sure about the US). And, of course, not surprisingly, Pecknold is fine if you want to download his album:

"I've downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records - why would I care if somebody downloads ours? That's such a petty thing to care about."

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Matt Mets just started a residency at the Pittsburgh Children's Museum, working on educational installations. In his first day in the shop, he built this articulated arm prototype. If you know of other systems that use this concept, post in the comments below, he's looking for leads.

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justinlindh writes "Bozeman, Montana is now requiring all applicants for city jobs to furnish Internet account information for 'background checking.' A portion of the application reads, "Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.' The article goes on to mention, 'There are then three lines where applicants can list the Web sites, their user names and log-in information and their passwords.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Either it's feeding time on the wire farm, or Leon Dewan is testing another one of his exquisite designs.
Actually pretty sure it's the latter as I do recall the Hymnotron at one of Dewanatron's performances a while back. The completed lever-controlled instrument looked like some kind of religious furniture - about the size of a china cabinet, but looking and sounding much better. Sadly, can't seem to locate any evidence on the webs.

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

A friend of mine just returned to the US after a year spent teaching, spear fishing, and eating giant clams in the Marshall islands. The Marshall islands are most known for being home to Bikini Atoll site of the U.S. nuclear tests. (It is also home to the Cactus Dome, a gigantic concrete slab built to cover the enormous pile of radioactive dirt left behind.) One of the interesting things my friend told me is that the largest group of Marshallese living outside the islands can be found at the foothills of the Ozarks in Springfield Springdale, Arkansas.

The Marshallese diaspora can be traced to one man, a Marshallese man named John Moody who took a job at Tyson Chicken in the 1980s. When he returned home to the islands, he let everyone know that there were jobs available at Tyson and that he would help people get setup in Springdale. Unfortunately the Arkansas Marshallese diaspora hasn't been much of a boon to the islands, with most of the money going out of the islands and into Arkansas to help with the expenses of America. Today roughly 6,000-8,000 Marchellese live in Springdale, and at a given time fifty percent of Tyson Chicken's floor staff are from the Marshall islands. The Marshallese do not generally wear shoes inside, and work at Tyson barefoot with mesh booties covering their feet. You will also note a large number of CB antennas on cars in the area as the Marshallese tend to use CB radios, as they do on the islands, rather then cell phones to communicate.

This also reminded me of another unexpected diaspora I had read about, the large Mennonite community in Belize. Roughly 10,000 Russian Mennonites live in Belize, farming the land and living according to their religious beliefs. All of which leads me to the question, what are some other unexpected diasporas around the world? A good overview of the Marshallese in Arkansas can be found here

We've discussed in the past what we refer to as "Steve Dallas lawsuits." The name comes from an old Bloom County comic strip (which to date, I've been unable to find online, but recall pretty clearly in my head -- but, uh, internet help me out -- can anyone find a copy of this strip?), following a storyline where the character Steve Dallas is punched out by actor Sean Penn for trying to take Penn's photo. In the strip, Dallas (a lawyer) discusses who to sue for his injuries from the attack. He rules out most of the obvious candidates for one reason or another (including Penn), before finally settling on the manufacturer of his camera (if I remember correctly, it was Nikon) for failing to put a warning label on the camera, that taking pictures of celebrities may lead to them beating you up. The point: you always sue some big company, no matter how tangentially related to the case, because they're the ones with the money.

Hence, "Steve Dallas lawsuits." However, in all of the past such lawsuits we've discussed around here, I don't think I've ever seen one that was as big a stretch as this one. A guy who got shot sued Craigslist, because apparently the shooter bought his gun from a gun dealer who advertised on Craigslist. Think about that for a second. At this point we're already twice removed from a reasonable defendant. Could you make an argument against the gun dealer? Even that seems like a stretch (though I'm not all that familiar with gun laws these days). But to go even further and blame Craigslist? That seems preposterous. And, thankfully, the court agreed. It quickly tossed out the lawsuit on Section 230 safe harbors, but you have to wonder if that was even needed, given the fact that Craigslist had nothing at all to do with the shooting.

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CarnegieScience writes "Plans to stop global warming by 'geoengineering' the planet by putting aerosols in the atmosphere to block sunlight are controversial, to say the least. Scientists are now pointing out that even if it keeps the planet cool, it will do almost nothing to stop another major problem — ocean acidification. The ocean will keep on absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (making carbonic acid) and the water's pH will get too low for corals and other marine life to secrete skeletons. So this is another strike against a quick fix of our climate problems."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sigma has said that its 18-250mm F3.6-6.3 DC OS HSM superzoom lens is now available in mounts for Sony and Pentax SLRs. This lens incorporates a Hybrid Optical Stabilisation system, which can be used on bodies which have built-in anti-shake (the camera's stabiliser must however be switched off). It also has a hypersonic motor for fast and quiet autofocus, and a minimum focus distance of 45cm for close-up photography. The MSRP is $800 in the USA, and £559.99 in the UK.

xclr8r writes "Eric Massa, a congressman representing a district in western New York, has a bill ready that would start treating Internet providers like a utility and stop the use of caps. Nearby locales have been used as test beds for the new caps, so this may have made the constituents raise the issue with their representative."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sigma has announced the price of the 10-20mm F3.5 EX DC HSM lens it announced in March 2009. The new lens, that will be sold in parallel to the older, variable aperture design, will cost £649.99. Sigma, Canon and Nikon versions will be available in July, with Pentax and Sony variants to follow in August.

Figure/Ground is Liao Yusheng's architecture and travel photography site. Gorgeous work. Yusheng's photography has appeared in various books and also New York Times, International Herald Tribune, and Time Asia. Above left, Verona. Above right, Yichang Airport. Click to see the full images. Figure/Ground (Thanks, Ari Pescovitz)

A Tibetan exile group in Northern India (whose work I've reported on previously for Boing Boing, WIRED, and NPR) is seeking used voice recording gear for an upstart independent community radio station.

At left, a photo I shot of Phuntsok Dorjee with a fellow volunteer, setting up a wireless network relay point inside a tribal family's garage on the top of a mountain at the southern edge of the Himalayas. Goats and routers, under the same roof, not far from the Tibetan Government in Exile's home of Dharamsala, India.

Phuntsok says,

"We have 10 students in the radio team but have only 2 Sony IC voice recorders. A friend of the organization will be in San Francisco sometime in early July on his way to India and he can bring for us the voice recorder if we manage to get some."

Got any used voice recorders, or related gear you're not using? Email him at: phuntsok at tcv.org.in. These are good folks, doing innovative work without a lot of resources.

Related: A Wireless Network for 'Little Lhasa' (Xeni on NPR)

Just as the record labels like to blame file sharing for their own business model problems, big retailers have been trying to blame eBay for all sorts of their problems for years. Last summer, the National Retail Federation (NRF), who represents the lobbying interests of big retail stores, started peddling a patently ridiculous line that using eBay led to crime. Seriously. They claimed that people got so addicted to selling stuff on eBay, once they ran out of their own things to sell, they would start stealing. Why even paraphrase it? Let's use their words:

"Thieves often tell the same disturbing story: they begin legitimately selling product on eBay and then become hooked by its addictive qualities, the anonymity it provides and the ease with which they gain exposure to millions of customers. When they run out of legitimate merchandise, they begin to steal intermittently, many times for the first time in their life, so they can continue selling online. The thefts then begin to spiral out of control and before they know it they quit their jobs, are recruiting accomplices and are crossing states lines to steal, all so they can support and perpetuate their online selling habit."

The problem, of course, is that this is complete hogwash. They presented no evidence whatsoever on this, and the actual stats on retail theft showed two things: first, retail theft has been on the decline for years and, two, that most retail theft is due to insiders, not shoplifters. So, if the retailers really wanted to stop theft, they should invest in better security against insiders. Yet, when asked why they didn't do this, a representative claimed that it didn't make any sense to make their employees into police officers. Yet it does make sense to pass draconian laws against eBay?

The truth is that the retailers aren't scared about eBay leading to shoplifting. They're scared about eBay, period. And they want to pass any laws to hurt eBay.

Of course, when presented with the fact that their claims were ludicrous, the NRF refused to back down, insisting its statements were accurate -- not in telling the actual truth, but in "reflecting the sentiments of many retailers that we work with." Seriously.

And, of course, politicians don't bother with fact, either, so the NRF was able to push legislation specifically designed to harm eBay and other online retailers, by adding all sorts of restrictions and liability over what can be sold through those sites. Of course, the NRF still has no evidence to back up its claims... so it looks like it's decided to try to manufacture some.

It recently came out with a report that pretends to show evidence that eBay leads to shoplifting. What's the data? Well, the NRF asked its own members what they thought the percentage of "new in box" merchandise for sale on eBay was stolen, and those members said they thought it was 50%. That's not evidence. That's just "reflecting" the highly biased "sentiments" of the NRF's members. As the NetChoice link above shows, there are lots of other problems with the NRF's position:

• Despite retailers' claims that theft is getting worse, nearly 6 in 10 retailers say they now spend less on loss prevention compared to last year. Yet while cutting spending on loss prevention, these same retailers doubled their spending on lobbying over the last three years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And they are lobbying for new laws to restrict competition from online sellers.
• A leading loss prevention consultant told retailers that over 2/3 of all store shrink is preventable, mostly by improving business practices, according to Larry Miller, Director of National Retail Research Group.
• Retail theft is not being caused by the Internet. According to the NRF's survey, retailers don’t identify stolen goods online any more than in traditional places like street corners, swap meets, and pawn shops.
• The NRF says that criminals use online marketplaces because they are anonymous, but these sites know exactly who the seller is, and disclose all that data to law enforcement officials whenever they ask. The truth is, an online auction is the last place a criminal would try to hide the sale of stolen goods.
• The NRF claims that online sellers "threaten the health and safety of innocent consumers", yet Rite Aid, CVS, Target, and Walgreens have paid millions in fines for selling expired products--often by putting stickers over the expiration dates.
• Overall, there is no evidence that organized retail crime has actually gone up -- the study only asks retailers whether they think it has increased. And that perception has only increased over the last two years -- concurrent with the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Isn't it much more likely that any increase in store theft may be a result of employees and consumers desperate to make ends meet?

That first bullet point, of course, is the most telling of all. While all of the evidence points to the fact that its insiders who cause the majority of any problem, rather than spending on dealing with that, they've massively increased their lobbying spend to try to craft anti-eBay laws.

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Danish designer Sebastian Campion put 300 t-shirts for sale at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde, Denmark. Each shirt in the Social Souvenir project has a different snip of text from an artist whose work is featured in the museum. When you buy one of the shirts, you provide your name and address to place you (and the shirt) on a Google Map. Above are my three favorites, with text by Brion Gysin, Laurie Anderson, and Yoko Ono. Social Souvenir

In 1913, Marcel Duchamp labeled everyday objects as art. Those "readymades" are now in museums. Now, artist Ji Lee has taken a classic Duchamp readymade and put it back into the everyday context of the street. Duchamp Reloaded

I upgraded my iPhone last night to version 3.0. Everything seems to be working but there's no camera icon on the desktop. I'm lost without my camera. Help!

Update: The ultimate fix was to go to the Settings app, General/ Reset/ Reset Home Screen Layout. That brought the camera back.

Building on some Kite Aerial Photography gear, Instructables user waldy made this rig to take panoramic photos automatically.

More:

Maker Profile - Aerial Kite Photography on MAKE: television

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The first projector I remember seeing in person had three great big glass eyes (for red, green, and blue lamps) and BNC connectors. It probably weighed more than 100 pounds, and had to be carefully calibrated to align the lenses. Now, I've got a projector above my head that weighs less than a Neal Stephenson novel and has a sharper, brighter image than that monster. I've been looking into LED projectors for a few years now; in that time, I've been waiting for them to come down in price and bump up in lumens. So I was very curious about BenQ's GP1 LED projector (also known, somewhat oddly, as "Joybee"), and was happy to get a sample for review. It may seem retrograde to bother with an 800x600, 100 lumen (no missing zero there: one-hundred lumen) projector in 2009 A.D., but for the past four weeks, I've used it as my primary display, and come out happy. It has some drawbacks, but it's an impressive little device for its $499 pricetag, and I hope a harbinger of even better things to come. Read on for my take on what BenQ got right, and what rough spots stick out.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael Moorcock has answered the questions you put to him (see Michael Moorcock answers your questions!) as part of the promo for his new book, The Best of Michael Moorcock. Moorcock will choose the three lucky prizewinners later this week.

Elric c'est moi, is the short answer. I've written about this in the introductions to the new Del Rey editions of the Elric stories. Elric was the 'me' I was as a late teenager -- like many teenagers -- angsty, self-blaming, feeling I was doing harm to others around me and so on. Unlike many of my characters (Moonglum, E's sidekick, for instance) Elric wasn't based on a real person, apart from myself, but on a sort of melange of fictitious characters. Melmoth the Wanderer, Maturin's great Gothic character, is the most obvious. I read a lot of Romantic and Gothic literature in my teens, as well as various mythologies, and the notion of the doomed character, who must find another to carry his burden, appealed to me. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress had a great influence on me as a lad, too! It was the first book I bought with my own money (though coming from what was essentially a secular home) and of course I was attracted to the pictures. The Doré illustrated Milton was another book I bought early. I suppose all those characters have to be aspects of myself, at different stages of my life, but weren't influenced by fiction the way parts of Elric were. His basic character and appearance were based on Zenith the Albino, a hero-villain who fought Sexton Blake, an English pulp detective whom I enjoyed (especially in his 1920s and 30s adventures) and who I came to, by strange chance, through my early enjoyment of P.G.Wodehouse! A Blake writer, Edwy Searles Brooks, tended to write in imitation of Wodehouse so when I ran out of Psmith and Jeeves I found something almost as good in Brooks (who, I discovered, was a near neighbour of mine as a boy). ERB and ESB could be called my twin literary midwives.

The Readers of Boing Boing interview Michael Moorcock

Shiv Sena, the ultra-right Hindu nationalist party in India, has launched a global brand of snack food called the Shiv Vada -- a sandwich containing deep-fried potato ball. They want to make it as popular as hamburgers.

The initiative is being seen as an attempt by the saffron party, which popularised the 'vada pav', staple diet of many a Mumbaikar, four decades ago, to establish rapport with the 'Marathi manoos', whose tilt in favour of Sena offshoot MNS, cost the party dearly in recent Lok Sabha polls.

"In foreign countries, burger is available 24-hours. Why can't vada pav be also available similarly," Uddhav said. The party, which has started a cooperative to encourage Marathi entrepreneurs, showcases 'Shiv Vada' as its first project under the new initiative, sources said. "To begin with, 25 Shiv Vada stalls would be operational in the city," they said.

Shiv Sena launches 'Shiv Vada'; to take it global

(Image: Jumbo Vada Pav.jpg, CC-BY, Wikimedia Commons)

I've got a new feature up on Internet Evolution today, a piece called "Internet ©rapshoot: How Internet Gatekeepers Stifle Progress," about how everybody wants to be a gatekeeper -- the studios and publishers, the bookstores and online retailers and theaters, the "creators rights' groups" and how that ends up screwing everyone:

So, how do you use copyright to ensure that the future is more competitive and thus more favorable to creators and copyright industries?

It's pretty easy, really: Use your copyrights to lower the cost of entering the market instead of raising it.

What if the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) had started out by offering MP3 licenses on fair terms to any wholesaler who wanted to open a retailer (online or offline), so that the cost of starting a Web music store was a known quantity, rather than a potentially limitless litigation quagmire?

What if the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the North American Broadcasters Association made their streams available to anyone who paid a portion of their advertising revenue (with a guaranteed minimum), allowing 10 million video-on-demand systems to spring up from every garage in the world?

What if the Authors Guild had offered to stop suing Google for notional copyright violations in exchange for Google contributing its scans to a common pool of indexable books available to all search-engines, ensuring that book search was as competitive as Web search?

Copyright is a powerful weapon, and it grows more powerful every day, as lawmakers extend its reach and strength. Funny thing about powerful weapons, though: Unless you know how to use them, they make lousy equalizers. As they say in self-defense courses, "Any weapon you don't know how to use belongs to your opponent."

Recording artists get an extra 45 years of copyright, and it's promptly taken from them by the all-powerful record labels, who then use it to strengthen their power by extending their grasp over distribution channels. Authors are given the right to control indexing of their works, and it's promptly scooped up by Google, who can use it to prevent competitors from giving authors a better deal.

Internet ©rapshoot: How Internet Gatekeepers Stifle Progress

Rebecca MacKinnon writes about news that China may be backing down from publicly announced plans to install Green Dam internet filtering software on all Chinese computers.

It would be naïve to think that scrapping the Green Dam mandate means the end of headaches for computer- and device-makers world-wide. More and more governments -- including democracies like Britain, Australia and Germany -- are trying to control public behavior online, especially by exerting pressure on Internet service providers. Green Dam has only exposed the next frontier in these efforts: the personal computer.

First, some context: China currently has the world's most sophisticated and multi-layered system of Internet censorship. Objectionable content on domestic Web sites is deleted or prevented from being published, and access to a large number of overseas Web sites is blocked or "filtered." Decisions about what to censor are based on the Chinese Communist Party's desire to maintain power and legitimacy. There is no transparency or accountability in the censorship system, no public consultation in developing block lists or censorship criteria, and no way to appeal the blockage or removal of Web content.

Green Dam purports to take censorship to a whole new level. A report by the Open Net Initiative, an academic consortium dedicated to the study of censorship and surveillance, finds the Chinese government's mandate of censoring software at the PC-level "unprecedented." Companies installing the software risk becoming part of the existing opaque extension of regime power, at the other end of the chain that already includes Internet service providers, Web hosts and Web content companies.

The Green Dam Phenomenon: Governments everywhere are treading on Web freedom (Wall Street Journal).

Continuing her remarkable series of reviews of older sf novels on Tor.com, Jo Walton today looks at Heinlein's Starman Jones (one of my favorite Heinlein juveniles. and his juveniles are my favorite Heinlein altogether!), in a review entitled "Starman Jones, or how Robert A. Heinlein did plot on a good day."

It's easy to see the overview as a set of adventures, leaving Earth and going to other planets, getting promoted, but it all has one goal: getting to that position where Max's freak talent is the only thing that can save them, where he becomes captain and astrogates them home. Everything leads to that. It's climactic. You couldn't predict that is where it would end up (I think, I don't know, I first read this when I was twelve), but there aren't any false leads. And beyond that, the real story is Max learning lessons--from Sam, from Eldreth, from his experiences--and ending up back on that hillside with a job to go to. Both stories end up at the same point, and everything reinforces the theme not just of Max growing up but of him learning what it is to grow up and what he actually values. At the beginning he's a kid with a freak talent, at the end he's a man who has lied, told the truth, seen a friend die and brought his ship home. There are no false moves, everything goes towards that. And it's a great end. All his juveniles have great ends.

Now Heinlein, from what he said about how he worked, did all that entirely on instinct, sitting down and writing one word after another and doing what happens and where it's going purely by gut-feel. When he gave Eldreth the spider-monkey, he wasn't thinking "and later, it can rescue them from aliens" because he had no idea at that point that they'd get lost and end up on an alien planet. But when they got to the alien planet, he knew what he had and what he wanted to do because of the way it flowed. But it works like wyrd, where the beginning is wide open and it narrows in and in so that at the end there's only one place for it to go.

Starman Jones, or how Robert A. Heinlein did plot on a good day

Starman Jones (Amazon)

The contest is big, the projects (and prizes) are pocket-sized:

Making a great small project is a fun challenge. It's about working within constraints to see how much stuff you can fit into a little tin, or creating something small enough to carry around and easily show others.

Due to popular request, we're bringing back one of our favorite contests - the Pocket-Sized Contest!

So show us something awesome and win a Leatherman Squirt P4-Pocket Multi-Tool with a custom laser-etching. You can add your name, a (very) short message, or even a little logo. We'll also be giving you an Instructables Robot t-shirt and some other goodies.

Check out last year's winners for inspiration. Now get creative, and think small!

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snydeq writes "Rather than view it as a game-changer, Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister sees Opera Unite as a Hail Mary bid for Opera to stay in the game. After all, in an era when even vending machines have Web servers on them, a Web server on the Web browser isn't really that groundbreaking. What Opera is attempting is to 'reintermediate' the Internet — 'directly linking people's personal computers together' by making them sign up for an account on Opera's servers and ensuring all of their exchanges pass through Opera's servers first. 'That's an effective way to get around technical difficulties like NAT firewalls, but more important, it makes Opera the intermediary in your social interactions — not Facebook, not MySpace, but Opera,' McAllister writes. In other words, Opera hopes to use social networking as a Trojan horse to put traditional apps back in charge."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Duncan Watts has a thought provoking writeup in the Boston Globe talking about the problems of systematic risk, and why no one could successfully see exactly how the various dominoes would fall, leading to our current (and still ongoing) economic financial crisis. Basically, his argument is that the system has become too intertwined and complex, such that no one can really manage the risk. This is hardly a new idea. Watts' suggestion (which, again, is not necessarily new, and has been discussed by many, including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner) is that perhaps we need a "systematic risk manager" within the government, whose job (like anti-trust folks) is to look at various companies and determine if they're too big to fail -- and then see how to change things such that they're no longer too big to fail.

It's a nice idea... in theory. In practice, it's a lot harder. The very reason systematic risk is such a problem is that it's so hard to even imagine the scenarios taking place. The idea that Lehman Bros. failing would have so much impact elsewhere is simply beyond the scope of what most people could have even imagined -- and that would almost certainly include any "systematic risk manager." While I agree that it's a problem that we end up with companies that are "too big to fail," I tend to think, in the long run, it's futile to try to predict ahead of time who's really "too big to fail," but that such an issue should only come up in the event of a gov't bailout. Thus, if you need to take gov't money to stay alive because you are deemed "too big to fail," then it should be required that as a part of the terms of the deal, you need to work out a plan that makes you small enough to fail.

Otherwise, you end up in a situation where companies who are successful get penalized for it. The only time "too big to fail" is a problem is when such a company fails. We shouldn't necessarily be penalizing a company that's too big to fail if it's not going to fail.

Separately, Watts notes that this idea of trying to prevent "too big to fail" is a way of avoiding systematic risk. I'd argue he has the equation a bit twisted. Too big to fail isn't the problem. It's the hidden risk that leads a company that is "too big to fail" to fail that's the problem. The answer to that is not breaking up successful companies -- it's increasing transparency into actual risk. That means increasing openness and data sharing, rather than the status quo of quarterly reports with the real details hidden and buried beneath complexities, combined with Wall Street putting together packages whose sole purpose is designed to hide the actual risk. Make the real data transparent (and real-time) and let anyone access and mess around with the data, and you get a much more accurate view of the risk, and you avoid situations where "healthy" investments suddenly turn sour.

Watts has the right idea that systematic risk is a problem, but the wrong solution. Companies that are too big to fail failing is a symptom of a lack of transparency over the actual risk. The answer isn't to stop companies from getting so big. It's to provide more transparency into the actual risk.

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Flickr user What Makes The Pie Shops Tick? has posted a complete, high-rez) scan of the 1964 Frederick's of Hollywood catalog!

1964 Frederick's of Hollywood Catalog (Thanks, copyranter!)

darthcamaro writes "We all know that IPv4 address space is almost gone — but we also know that no major US carrier has yet migrated its consumer base, either. Comcast is now upping the ante a bit and has now said that they are seriously gearing up for IPv6 residential broadband deployment soon. 'Comcast plans to enter into broadband IPv6 technical trials later this year and into 2010,' Barry Tishgart, VP of Internet Services for Comcast said. 'Planning for general deployment is underway.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Recently on Offworld we saw indie devs Flashbang return with Crane Wars -- hands down their best game since Minotaur China Shop and likely to be the best indie game of the month -- which sees your staunchly union construction lot pitted against the loathsome scabs next door. It's very polished, very funny, and very well balanced between careful construction and wanton destruction as you fling flaming rubble into the scab lot to stymie their progress. Elsewhere we also took a belated look at Fret Nice (above) -- a former Indie Games Fest finalist platformer played entirely with a Guitar Hero guitar -- which Tecmo has picked up for Xbox 360 and PS3 release, and saw how the 3.0 firmware has officially unlocked the iPhone's future of connected, social gaming. We also read about the etymology of a seemingly endless list of video game characters, saw the fanciest new LED-lit Metroid figurine, and saw LittleBigPlanet go Druidistic, and had a lazyweb bullseye as we asked (and received!) a translation for this ultra-dryly funny and massively adorable Japanese 8-bit meme crossover. And our 'one shot's for the day: Portal's Aperture Science vehicles spotted on the roads of Sweden (!), and Skinny Ships' fantastic work-in-progress retro-Zelda illustration.

Canadian copyfighting attorney Howard Knopf has written a great response to the Canadian Record Industry Association's letter to the Toronto Star, in which they claimed that Michael Geist column, "Time to slay Canadian file-sharing myths" was incorrect. Yes, it's truths about myths about myths about file sharing!

A levy-free terabyte external hard drive that now sells for less than CDN $200 can hold about 250,000 songs downloaded via P2P. The fact that this is apparently legal in Canada is the direct consequence of the private copying levy scheme that Mr. Pfohl's employer, the Canadian Recording Media Association ("CRIA"), so enthusiastically and effectively lobbied for and was given in the 1997 amendments to the Copyright Act. CRIA was short sighted. Mass access to the internet was already in full flight and the concept of the "celestial juke box" was already old news at that time. The Canadian levy scheme has now generated more than a quarter billion dollars. CRIA members whine about the consequences of their legislation all the way to the bank (and indeed incessantly afterwords), but keep on cashing the cheques.

As CRIA must constantly be reminded, "be careful what you wish for." And hopefully, Government officials, MPs and Ministers will be careful about who they listens to when it comes to Canadian copyright law and sound public policy. CRIA and some of those who speak for it it, have a poor record for foresight, wisdom, credibility and even basic accuracy in these matters.

More Myths about Myths about File Sharing (via Michael Geist)

I'm starting a second series of podcasts about tech with Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb. We're recording the first show tonight. You'll be able to listen live, but there will be no call-in. There will be a feed, of course.

Every Thursday at 7PM, Murphy-willing.

We'll follow the model of RTN, the weekly podcast I do with Jay Rosen, but we plan to expand the cast beyond Marshall and myself. But the first show will be a duo.

The name of the show is BadHairDay. As I say in the teaser, that's every day for me. I'm pretty sure Marshall has good hair. So that balances things out.

Here's a list of things I'm interested in talking about in the first show (no way we'll get to it all): iPhone 3.0, tethering, netbooks, Twitter clones, backing up Twitter, Hackintosh, Google Wave, Any hope for Yahoo?, Opera Unite, desktop web servers.

Marshall has his own list.

We'll be doing the show on BlogTalkRadio.

The website for the podcast is http://badhair.us/.

The feed will be here (no shows yet): http://badhair.us/rss.xml.

Pandaman0529 shares his steps for a very interesting guitar mod -

So what exactly are scalloped frets? Scalloping a fretboard is when you remove wood from the fretboard so that when the guitar is played, the fingers only contact the string, not the wood underneath, eliminating massive amounts of friction. It is much easier to bend strings with a scalloped guitar, and many guitarists do claim that scalloped fretboards allow you to play faster, as minimal contact with the string is needed.

I've never playedone of these necks, but I'm guessing it would be rather bouncy - that kind of momentum could boost one to prog-solo speeds in no time. Pretty straightforward (if a bit tedious) process with sandpaper + metal files - see the instructable for more.

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Last week, I spoke at the GO-Tech meeting, which was held at the A2 Mechshop in Ann Arbor, MI. I was there for a terrific demo of aluminum casting by Rick Chownyk. He was not only well-informed but very entertaining.

Rick began with a styrofoam mold he had created already.

He had built his own burner for melting scrap aluminum. (He said that you can't do this using aluminum cans.)

He buried the mold in a bucket of sand. When the aluminum was red-hot, the exciting time for the pour arrived. In the video below, listen to the enthusiastic audience and their questions -- this is why these demos are so cool.

Minutes later, after the mold had cooled, he removed it, dunked it water, and raised it high to the delight of the crowd -- a metal Make sign!

Rick recommends the site, Backyard Metalcasting, for instructions on how to do this yourself. He also credits the Dave Gingery books available from Lindsay's Technical Books.

Thanks to Dale Grover and A2 Mechshop for inviting me to speak and to the hundred or so who came out.
A2 Mech Shop, a "co-engineering" space, is a positive sign that good things are happening in Michigan.

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Media player, mobile phone, Internet device, gaming console... sketch pad? It would seem that not only is the iPhone up-ending the mobile and gaming industries, but it seems to be making inroads into fine art as well. What had seemed like a novel concept for contemporary magazine cover art has turned into a global phenomenon. iPhone users across the world are producing fantastic works of art with little more than their index finger, a paint app, and a 3.5" screen.

By far, the top dog of the iPhone paint apps is Brushes. Its simple interface is both welcoming and direct. You get a canvas, brush picker, color picker and that multi-touch interface the iPhone is famous for.

What are you lookin at? by Susan Murtaugh

Circus (left) and Stinker by Mike Miller

Amazing iPhone Art [via digg]

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Trepanation, the ancient practice of drilling a hole in your skull to relieve pressure on the brain, is now being studied as a possible treatment for dementia. The effort is being led by Russian neurophysiologist Yuri Moskalenko, now at the Beckley Foundation in Oxford. Apparently, dementia may be correlated with cranial compliance, a measure of how cerebrospinal fluid circulates around the brain. If that system gets mucked up, the brain doesn't function well. From New Scientist (image from Wikimedia Commons):

Moskalenko studied 15 people who had undergone (trepanation) following head injuries. He found that their cranial compliance was around 20 per cent higher than the average for their age. Based on this, he calculates that a 4-square-centimetre hole increases cerebral blood flow by between 8 and 10 per cent, which is equivalent to 0.8 millilitres more blood per heartbeat (Human Physiology, vol 34, p 299). This, he says, shows that trepanation could be an effective treatment for Alzheimer's, and he even goes so far as to suggest that it might provide a "significant" improvement in the mental functions of anyone from their mid-40s, when cranial compliance starts to decline.

The Return of Trepanation

Lucas123 writes "While solid state disk may be all the rage, what's often being overlooked in the current consumer market hype is that fact that hard disk drive prices are at an all-time low — offering users good performance and massive amounts of capacity for 10 to 30 cents a gigabyte. And in a side by side comparison of overall performance of consumer SSDs and HDDs, it's hard to justify spending 10 times as much for a little more speed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Markus sez, "300 people gathered today in Berlin to demonstrate against the German net censorship law. The Deutsche Bunestag (German parliament) will vote on that law today. Lots of banners with slogans like 'New Berlin Wall?', 'IT-Courses for politicians' and 'Don't worry, we're from the internets' showed a colourful protest in front of the Brandenburger Gate close to the Reichstag."

Demonstration against Censhorship in Berlin (Thanks, Markus!)

Moves are afoot in Delaware to open legal sports books there, after the state's Supreme Court ruled that certain types of bets are constitutional. The state, like many others, sees taxes on gambling as a potential financial savior, but the NFL doesn't care. The league is threatening to file suit to try and stop the legalization of sports betting in Delaware, part of its long-running efforts to wipe out betting on its games. The league says that legalized gambling "will inevitably lead those gambling fans to question whether an erroneous officiating call or a dropped pass late in the game resulted from an honest mistake or an intentional act by a corrupt player or referee" -- but to suggest that such speculation won't exist otherwise is erroneous. It's really hard to see why the NFL (like other American sports leagues) thinks that keeping most betting (which is going to carry on anyway, regardless of its feelings on the matter) underground will prevent corruption, or even its mere appearance. It's a similar argument as that surrounding other forms of gambling, like internet poker: bringing the activities into a legal, regulated and monitored environment offers greater protection and far more benefits than keeping it in an unregulated, underground black market where anything goes. To this point, legal bookies can play a significant role in rooting out corrupt behavior by reporting suspicious betting patterns and other information. Illegal bookies aren't too likely to do that sort of thing.

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

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Jack spends some quality tinkering time controlling a small keyboard with a Drawdio kit -

This is the synaesthesia-sizer I invented for my girlfriend Kelsey.

We'll be giving a class on DIY pencil synthesizers at The Hacktory in Philadelphia on June 27th, 2009. Please come!

I'm guessing that'll be a fun class @ the Hacktory - Pencils down! [via Adafruit]

In the Maker Shed:


Drawdio Kit/a>

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oh2 writes "The highest applicable Swedish court, Regeringsrätten, has ruled that IP numbers are protected (in Swedish) since they can be traced to individuals. This means that only government agencies are allowed to track and store IP adresses, leaving "anti-piracy" advocates with no legal way to find possible copyright infringers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PocketWizard has announced the development of ZoneContoller, a multiple light controller. It adds to the company's radio transmitters to offer independent control over three lighting zones. Each zone can be adjusted to ±3EV in 1/3EV steps and switched to manual, TTL auto or turned off. The ZoneContoller will be made available in late summer.

coondoggie writes "News today that the Air Force is investigating signal problems with its latest Global Positioning System satellite is likely to rekindle the flames of a congressional report last month that said the current GPS coverage may not be so ubiquitous in the future. The Air Force stated that routine early orbit checkout procedures determined that the signals from the Lockheed-built GPS IIR-2 (M), which was launched in March, were inconsistent with the performance of other GPS IIR-M satellites. The Air Force said it has identified several parameters in the GPS IIR-20 (M)'s navigation message that can be corrected to bring the satellite into compliance with current GPS Performance Standards."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Barry Ritholz sez,

It is exceedingly difficult to convey exactly how much we are spending o bailouts. Start talking trillions (versus mere billions) and you get puzzled looks from people. Humans have a hard time conceptualizing any number that large. I wanted a graphic way to clearly show how astonishingly ginormous the amounts involved were.

This Bailout Nation graphic shows the the total costs to the taxpayer of all the monies spent, lent, consumed, borrowed, printed, guaranteed, assumed or otherwise committed. It is nothing short of astonishing. In one short year the bailouts managed to spend far in excess of nearly every major one-time expenditure of the USA, including WW2, the moon shot, the New Deal, Iraq, Viet Nam and Korean wars -- COMBINED. 206 years versus 12 months.

Bailout Costs vs Big Historical Events (Thanks, Barry!)

As was widely expected, Rep. Eric Massa has introduced a bill that would outlaw metered billing and create a bunch of other regulatory hoops ISPs need to jump through on pricing plans. We're no fans of metered broadband by any stretch of the imagination. It stifles innovation and limits the usefulness of the internet. Contrary to what some broadband providers will claim, it's not at all necessary and has nothing to do with preventing the network from being overrun or to stop part-time users from "subsidizing" everyone else. The Broadband Reports link above walks through how silly each of those arguments are. It also explains why this is a pure money grab. Flat-rate pricing has been quite profitable for the providers, but they want more. Note that nowhere in these usage plans do they talk about cheaper tiers. Beyond just being about a straight money grab, part of the desire is to use this to reduce competition for online video by making it more expensive for anyone other than the ISP to deliver video services.

That said... this bill seems laughable and is unlikely to go anywhere. The real issue here (as it has been all along) is the lack of meaningful competition in the broadband space. Get meaningful competition into the market, and this whole issue goes away. But that's not what Massa's bill does. It just adds regulatory burdens to ISPs without doing much to get at the root of the issue.

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Casio has released a software enabling tethered shooting with its EX-F1 high-speed superzoom compact. It recommends users to update the camera firmware to v2.00 before downloading the software.

With the Obama administration bizarrely claiming that documents pertaining to negotiations over ACTA, the industry-written treaty that will push countries to change their copyright laws, are somehow a state secret, EFF and Public Knowledge have reluctantly decided to drop their lawsuit to try to open up the proceedings and get access to the documents (freely shared with industry lobbyists, but kept secret from consumers or consumer watchdogs). Basically, they realized that by claiming it's a national secret, there was no way the lawsuit would get anywhere. The whole situation is really unfortunate. What a shame that the administration would be covering up for an entertainment industry's attempt to increase protectionism for its own broken business model, by claiming it was a "national secret."

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An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist summarizes an important new study on file sharing from economists Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf. The Harvard Business School working paper finds that given the increase in artistic production along with the greater public access conclude that "weaker copyright protection, it seems, has benefited society." The authors' point out that file sharing may not result in reduced incentives to create if the willingness to pay for "complements" such as concerts or author speaking tours increases."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Johnathan Martinez writes "Sainsbury's market in England has installed 'kinetic energy' plates in the parking lot of its store in Gloucester. The plates are an experiment with a newer energy producing technology. The plates create as much as 30 kWh of energy as cars drive over them. The weight of the cars puts pressure on the plates creating kinetic energy to run a generator. The current is used to power the store and will lower the energy consumption of the market."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is a bit of a surprise, as it appears that Facebook has lost a lawsuit in Germany against a site it accuses of copying Facebook (but in German). It's certainly true that the sites look quite similar, but the German court basically says that looking close is meaningless. If there's no confusion in what site people are on, there's really not much of an issue. And while the sites do have a lot of similarities, being on StudiVZ it's clear that the site is different from Facebook. While this may just be a German court protecting a local company against an American competitor, it seems like a good ruling from a policy perspective. Let the sites compete in the marketplace, rather than worrying about who copied what from whom.

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• Jay-Z vs. Auto-Tunes Part II: the rapper's anti-Auto-Tunes track gets remixed by an artist that puts Hova's vocals through Auto-Tunes.

• The iPhone 3.0 OS has released (yay!). But it's temporarily bricking phones (boo!).

• A massive touchscreen wall that can handle multiple touches/users. Oh, and did we mention it's HUGE?

• Fujifilm is supplying Matt Sharp of the bands Weezer and The Rentals with black and white Neopan film for a special project.

• Photos of little tiny wire creatures (aka Automata).

• A video of an RGB table that changes colors. It is beautiful.

• Verizon and AT&T continue to defend SMS price hikes.

• Could the Cideko Air Keyboard be the perfect device for couch surfing?

• A reminiscence about primitive graphics hardware and "Super Reality" architecture.

• Beware of "Troogle"! (if you have no idea what that is, you could Google it or simply click here)

Cliff sez, "Bozeman City, Montana now asks all applicants for jobs to 'Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.,' the City form states. There are then three lines where applicants can list the Web sites, their user names and log-in information and their passwords."

The anonymous viewer emailed the news station recently to express concern with a component of the city's background check policy, which states that to be considered for a job applicants must provide log-in information and passwords for social network sites in which they participate.

The requirement is included on a waiver statement applicants must sign, giving the City permission to conduct an investigation into the person's "background, references, character, past employment, education, credit history, criminal or police records."

Bozeman City job requirement raises privacy concerns (Thanks, Cliff!)

This 1965 NatGeo ad for GM's "Tomorrow-Land" exhibit at the 1964 World's Fair makes me go all dribbly for a time-machine: "You can look over GM's exciting 'idea' cars -- Firebird IV with television, stereo, game table, refrigerator; GM-X with jet aircraft cockpit and controls--fascinating design and engineering innovations right out of tomorrow. You'll take a ride that is wrapped in wonders . . . through the metropolis of the future, over Antarctic wastes, into tropical jungles, along the ocean floor."

TOMORROW-LAND (Apr, 1965)

George W. Hart's Frabjous is a 3D sculpture you can print and assemble yourself with some cardboard and glue and patience. It's named for a line from Jabberwocky, my favorite poem (it was what we had at our wedding, in lieu of a service).

Frabjous (via Evil Mad Scientist Labs)

Alys sez, "A new bill is due to be introduced Thursday in the Canadian House of Commons that will give police the ability to eavesdrop on online communications. This legislation would apparently allow them to force ISPs to allow the police to tap into their systems to obtain information. Naturally, this comes about with the spectres of 'gangsters, sexual predators and terrorists.'"

They forgot pirates. The Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse are gangsters, child pornographers, terrorists and pirates. As a Pirate-Canadian, I am deeply insulted.

The proposed legislation would force Internet service providers to allow law enforcement to tap into their systems to obtain information about users and their digital conversations...

Privacy advocates and civil libertarians, however, have vocally opposed the prospect of giving police "lawful access" to the digital conversations of Canadians by being able to access such things as their text messages, e-mails, web surfing habits and Internet phone lines.

Feds to give cops Internet-snooping powers (Thanks, Alys!)

Vancouver, site of an upcoming Olympic games, has just announced a policy prohibiting cops from taking away your camera or making you erase your photos.

It's always been policy but now it will be enforced. Vancouver police are not allowed to seize cameras or cell phones from anyone, unless they have consent, a warrant, or the person has been lawfully arrested.

Constable Lindsay Houghton tells the Province newspaper the policy has always been there, but it's now in writing and updated in their official regulations manual.

Vancouver police update camera/cell phone seizure policy

Scott DeathBoy sez, "Blog post about a photographer's interaction with a police officer, who wrongly tried to have him delete the photo of their van in a disabled bay (referencing terrorism). The photographer held their ground and the policewoman backed down after checking her facts."

As soon as I had taken a shot, PC Smith (40144) came out from the train station and asked to speak with me. She asked why I'd taken a photo of her van. I told her that it was parked in a disabled bay. She told me that she'd been called because a woman was self-harming on the station and that was the only place she could park...

I asked her why she wanted the photo to be deleted, she told me that "in the current climate" the police had been asked to stop people from taking photos of sensitive buildings and of the police.

That isn't true - and I told her so.

She was told by her superior that she could take down a description of me. I told her that asking to delete photos was silly because they can be easily undeleted. I also thanked her for not escalating the situation. I left. As I left, I allowed my phone to post the photo I'd taken to twitpic.

Police, Camera, Action... (Thanks, Scott Deathboy!)

Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: Ren Party, fine art with party hats.

Ren Party 2

Via WMMNA, Regine writes:

Encastrable is a series of guerrilla art residencies held inside gardening and DIY megastores in the Paris area. At no cost at all, the young artists have at their disposal a huge array of material that they can grab, move, superimpose, and organize onto temporary installations and sculptures. Authorization of the manager of the establishment is obviously never requested.

If I worked at Home Depot, I sure wouldn't like cleaning up after these guys, but they make some neat-looking stuff.

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Well, this is certainly something of a surprise. Earlier this month, China required new censorware be installed on all computers sold there. Of course, this upset a bunch of people and also raised serious security concerns. Still, we didn't expect the Chinese gov't to back down. However, a variety of lawsuits and public protests in China has resulted in at least some backing down by the government. The gov't is now saying that while the software will come installed on all new PCs, there's no requirement that it be used. Of course, it's not at all clear how easy it is to disable the software. The software is apparently uninstallable (or so the makers claim), but this new statement from the government makes it clear that there shouldn't be sanctions against those who do go through with the uninstall.

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An anonymous reader writes "I've been working as a helpdesk monkey for over a year in a small-medium sized law firm of around 200 users and I don't know if my patience and sanity can last much longer. I'd like to remain in IT, but in less of a front-line role where I can actually get some work done without being interrupted every five minutes by a jamming printer or frozen instance of Outlook. There isn't really any room for progression at my current employer, and with the weak job market it seems I can only move sideways into another support role. I've been considering a full-time Masters degree in a specialized Computer Science area such as databases or Web development, but I don't know if the financial cost and the loss of a year's income and experience can justify it. Do any Slashdotters who have made it beyond the helpdesk have any knowledge or wisdom to impart? Is formal education a good avenue, or would I better off moving back home, getting a mindless but low-stress job, and teaching myself technologies in my free time?"

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.

I'm awed and wowed by the huge number of incredible places that people have been adding to the Atlas Obscura over the last couple days. It's especially neat to see folks contributing the sorts of local curiosities that are not only not listed in conventional travel guides, but are barely mentioned anywhere else on the web. Like this odd tree in Grana, Italy, submitted by a user named Alpha:

A very unusual tree grows in the town of Grana, Italy--or rather, an unusual pair of trees. It consists of a fruit tree growing on top of a common willow tree, creating a kind of two-tiered, two-species hybrid duplex. While it's not uncommon for a small tree to grow on a larger one, it is rare to see two fully grown trees in such an unusual configuration. Nonetheless, the arrangement appears to be working well for both individuals, as the fruit tree on top bears lovely white flowers.

Earlier this week, we wrote about how the IRS was exploring how to enforce an old law that required people whose mobile phones were paid by their employers to pay taxes on the phone service as a "fringe benefit." That got quite an uproar, and it appears the IRS is now saying that it agrees it's a really stupid idea and hopes that Congress will repeal that old law. Of course, it's not clear why it was even explored late last week as a possibility if the administration is so against the idea.

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When the fabulous Pontani Sisters engage in their covert after-hours life of fighting crime, they use a select arsenal of weaponry. Seen above are the sisters in action with the Head-Mounted Water Cannon from MAKE Volume 07. John Young shared this lively DIY with us in 2006, along with this hilarious intro:

Let's face it: at some point this summer, you're going to be in a water fight. Whether it's at a family barbecue or an office picnic, some 12-year old is going to leer at you from behind 25 bucks worth of store-bought plastic, and that little punk is going to think that the orange and blue Mega Awesome Hydrolator 9000 they're clutching is the last word, the ultima ratio regnum, in neighborhood water warfare.

Think again, punk. With about two hours of effort with the parts listed below, you can hack together a water weapon of such power, such style, such extraordinary and exuberant overkill, that you'll be out of the store-bought leagues forever. Lock yourself in the garage, play the A-Team theme, and emerge at the end of your build montage with a pressurized, stainless steel, head-mounted water cannon that packs five gallons of icy-cold water at 100psi.

The main components in this project are a standard stainless water extinguisher, a plastic scuba backplate, and a helmet, plus a bike brake lever assembly, brake cable, and cable housing, garden hose repair fittings, a quick-coupler set for a standard garden hose, and some hardware.

Here are images of the front and back of the helmet and the backplate attached to the extinguisher:

And here is the full article in our Digital Edition just for you.

Back issue of Volume 07, our Backyard Biology issue, are sold out, but you can have digital access to all of our volumes if you subscribe! Right now we have an awesome deal running where you get $5 off the normal year sub price plus an extra issue for free, all for just $29.95. Can't really beat that with a stick!

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Hugh Pickens writes "The FDA has advised consumers to stop using Matrixx Initiatives' Zicam Cold Remedy nasal gel marketed over-the-counter as a cold remedy because it is associated with the loss of sense of smell (anosmia) that may be long-lasting or permanent. The FDA says about 130 consumers have reported a loss of smell after using the homeopathic cure containing zinc, an ingredient scientists say may damage nerves in the nose needed for smell and health officials say they have asked Matrixx executives to turn over more than 800 consumer complaints concerning lost smell that the company has on file. 'Loss of the sense of smell is potentially life-threatening and may be permanent,' said Dr. Charles Lee. 'People without the sense of smell may not be able to detect life-dangerous situations, such as gas leaks or something burning in the house.' The FDA said the remedy was never formally approved because it is part of a small group of remedies known as homeopathic products that are not required to undergo federal review before launching. The global market for homeopathic drugs is about $200 million per year, according to the American Association of Homeopathic Pharmacists. Matrixx has settled hundreds of lawsuits connected with Zicam in recent years, but says it 'will seek a meeting with the FDA to vigorously defend its scientific data, developed during more than 10 years of experience with the products, demonstrating their safety.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've often talked about the importance of service provider "safe harbors" found in the CDA and the DMCA. To be honest, these safe harbor laws shouldn't be necessary at all, since it should be common sense that the user of a service is liable for his or her actions rather than the service provider. In practice, however, we've learned that common sense isn't so common -- and it's not unusual for individuals (and sometimes judges and politicians) to blame service providers. Thus, safe harbors are key to bringing common sense to the law. However, we've definitely seen that such common sense is often totally lacking in foreign countries that have no recognition at all concerning the separation between a service provider and a user. Witness, for example, LVMH's victory over eBay in France, or the fact that Google execs are facing criminal charges in Italy over a video of kids attacking a disabled boy that was uploaded to its site (and quickly removed).

It appears that US politicians have finally realized this is a problem. While it doesn't appear to be a blanket safe harbor, it appears that Congress is currently considering a bill that would allow US companies to ignore foreign rulings in defamation cases against service providers, where the issue is actually the action of a user. While limited to just defamation cases (for now), this is important, especially since so many other countries have more draconian defamation laws that lead to "defamation tourism" as people try to find the most favorable countries in which to file a defamation lawsuit. Making it so that the US won't recognize those rulings will help protect US companies from bogus and misguided defamation suits around the world.

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One of the most important functions of an embedded system is the ability to connect to a variety of external signals. For my smart home energy efficiency dashboard, the signals come from a variety of sensors and use a range of different protocols. Ideally, I'd like to handle these signals in software by creating a custom driver for each signal, or better yet, by configuring an existing driver to connect each sensor. In some cases, the sensors may require additional signal conditioning or interface circuitry to before being connected to the embedded processor board. Sometimes it's appropriate to use a small microcontroller to provide the interface or signal conditioning. This provides additional flexibility, but also requires programming a second processor. Where possible, I like to avoid programming and debugging multiple computer systems.? With that in mind, I'm taking a close look at computing system selection.

Microsoft has teamed-up with six hardware partners provide a range of computing system options with a variety of different feature options. Special pricing is available for non-commercial use as part of the SPARK promotion. These prices vary from system to system depending on capability and included accessories, and each computing system is ready-to-run out of the box. Ready-to-run means different things to depending on your level of exposure to embedded systems. In most cases, these computers are ready for you to load an operating system onto the device via a bootloader. Many of the configurations of the boards are managed through standard BIOS at power-on. With the exception of the VIA Artigo which doesn't come with RAM or disk storage installed, the computers include the basic components load an operating system and run applications.

Download my SPARK hardware comparison chart and read more about the available hardware features on the SPARK Project blog.

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