In talking yesterday about the legality of viewing the "spy camera" footage of sportscaster Erin Andrews in her hotel room, someone pointed out in the comments that some journalists are now claiming that this shows why the internet needs to be regulated. Wait, what? How? Why? Creating the video was already illegal. What kind of regulation is needed here and how would it actually change anything? It seems that any time something "bad" happens some people suddenly jump up and insist "their oughta be a law!" without actually thinking through what that actually means.

Meanwhile, some others have noticed that this video apparently has been online for many months, and no one paid any attention at all to it until ESPN made a big deal out of it. Now, you can understand ESPN's general position, but it makes you wonder if there wasn't a better way to handle this that could have involved tracking down who was responsible without putting out a big press release and kicking off all this interest in the video. It's almost as if (perish the thought!), ESPN is actually trying to exploit this situation (and Andrews) to draw more attention to itself...

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An anonymous reader writes "In a Wired news article, iPhone Forensics expert Jonathan Zdziarski explains how the much-touted hardware encryption of the iPhone 3Gs is but a farce, and demonstrates how both the passcode and backup encryption can be bypassed in about two minutes. Zdziarski also goes on to say that all data on the iPhone — including deleted data — is automatically decrypted by the iPhone when it's copied, allowing hackers and law enforcement agencies alike access the device's raw disk as if no encryption were present. A second demonstration features the recovery of the iPhone's entire disk while the device is still passcode-locked. According to a similar article in Ars Technica, Zdziarski describes the iPhone's hardware encryption by saying it's 'like putting privacy glass on half your shower door.' With the iPhone being sold into 20% of Fortune-100s and into the military, just how worried should we be with such shoddy security?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's been said here before, but Jay Rosen points us to a post at NewsFuturist that points out that newspapers haven't charged for content in 180 years. Before that, subscribers paid the full freight -- but since then, subscriptions have always been less than the cost of producing the physical paper and the cost of delivery. The actual reporting has been paid for by advertising, not subscriptions, for nearly two centuries. And there's a pretty basic economic reason for this, and it's the same one we've been making for years, but is nicely summed up here:

The price of a product in a competitive market falls to the marginal cost of creating and delivering one more unit.

For printed newspapers, the marginal cost was a little more paper and ink, maybe an extra block on the delivery route. Subscription fees never accounted for the fixed costs of producing the content: the building, staff, printing press, etc. That share of costs has long been paid by advertising and diluted by economies of scale.

The same economic forces apply online. And because the marginal cost of bits is nearly zero, the appropriate price becomes too small to bother tracking. Free is the result.

In fact, the principle of marginal-cost pricing is even stronger in the Internet economy because there are very low barriers to entry and nowhere near the startup costs of print. And the marginal costs such as bandwidth and storage decline every month.

Those who ignore the rule of marginal-cost pricing and try to charge users for content in a competitive market will be undercut by more efficient competitors who stick with free. They'll also face an endless fight against piracy, because economics says the product should be free and technology makes it easy to duplicate and spread.

The thing that seems the most difficult for some to get is that last paragraph. When we talk about the reasons why it doesn't make sense to charge for the content itself, all we're pointing out is that if you do it, you'll fail. All you've done is open up an opportunity for someone else. We're not saying "information should be free." Should has nothing to do with it. It's will be free, because the economics drive it there, and as much as you don't like it, or don't like the implications of it, it doesn't change that it's what is happening. So, you either learn how to embrace it (as many are doing, quite successfully) or you die.

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Will you be MY dad?

(How long do you think it'll be though before a pillow fight turns ugly and that Styrofoam AT-AT head gets decapitated? Just sayin')

Star Wars Imperial Walker Loft Bed [via Boing Boing]

More:
DIY AT-AT Baby stroller - how it was made...
All of our Star Wars make and craft projects

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I sat down with Apple's Final Cut Studio team and some fellow videobloggers and web video editors/producers in a Los Angeles hotel yesterday, and checked out the new version of the popular video editing suite.

Bottom line: normally I wouldn't be so jazzed about an application update, but as someone who's spent the better part of the last two years working on web video production, this struck me and other web video grunts in the room as "workflow-changing" (some said "life-changing!") and a nice big leap forward.

One of the editor/producer/shooters in the room said he could see these improvements shaving "a total of three months" off of every work-year, in saved man-hours. That's one way to look at it, and another, from a somewhat more workaholic person in the room: "We'll be able to get so much more video produced."

A quick recap of significant feature changes, after the jump.

---

On Thursday, July 24, Apple announced the release of Final Cut Studio 3 which includes the following components: Final Cut Pro 7, Motion 4, Soundtrack Pro 3, Color 1.5 and Compressor 3.5. Here's what I found most significant during the demo:

FINAL CUT PRO 7

* Exporting the finished product is much easier. You no longer have to output from FCP, then open and output again in Compressor before uploading to YouTube, Vimeo, or whatever web video hosting service you use (in Boing Boing Video's case, Episodic). A new "share" option within FCP includes pre-set export options for YouTube, Mobile Me, and iPods and iPhones, and you can easily add your own pre-sets from Compressor. You can even publish right to the web from FCP now. And...

* This is huge! While you're exporting, you can KEEP ON EDITING. Editors: say goodbye to those excuses for long smoking breaks during export.

* This is huge, too! iChat Theater support. So, let's say you've finished editing a rough cut of an episode, and you need to preview that with your supervising producer on the other side of the country, to get notes. Fire up iChat, and send your FCP video to iChat Theater, and you'll be able to watch the video with your two-way, person-to-person video chat inset in a small window in the lower right. I'm not sure what the limit on participant number is, but theoretically, you should be able to do this with up to 4 people iChatting in, if memory serves (and you have enough bandwidth).

* New versions of Apple's "ProRes" codec are offered, including one intended for higher-res digital motion picture output, and two at the lower end of the spectrum which could be particularly helpful for folks editing for broadcast or web on MacBook pros.

* You can color-code markers now. This is neat, and helpful if lots of different editors are touching a given project and you want to keep track of everyone's individual edits.

* There's a new floating, resizable timecode window. So if you're the editor, and you need to have a preview session with a client or producer or whatever, they can easily see the timecode progress while you preview a rough cut together.

* Multi-touch gesture support, which is nice if you're editing on a late-model MBP.

SOUNDTRACK PRO

* The feature that elicited the most "OMGs" in the room was a new dialogue level matching option. Allows you to quickly, automatically, intelligently match levels on separate snippets of dialogue, without increasing the levels of noise or non-dialogue sound sources. You can save levels and use them as standards in future projects. This saves a TON of time on a frequent issue that crops up for low-budget web productions that can't afford to hire sound guys for every field shoot. This was a big deal for a lot of us.

* Cool new visual editing interface for fine-tuning audio.

* Helpful new improvements to the time-stretching abilities in Soundtrack Pro.

MOTION, COLOR, DVD STUDIO, COMPRESSOR

* We don't use these tools as heavily every day on Boing Boing Video as we do the aforementioned Final Cut Pro and Soundtrack Pro. But the bullet points from these demos that struck me as significant: powerful, less-intimidating 3D tools in Motion that allow you to create motion, shadow, and light effects; the ability to dump text files and create credit and title sequences more easily (I hate the old text editor!). And DVD Compressor now allows you to author blu-ray equivalent discs using the standard red-laser burners that come standard issue, and cheap standard 99-cent-per-blank-disc DVDs. Compressor includes a number of iterative improvements, but the thing I was most excited about was not having to actually open this damned app every day anymore.

More on all the features at Apple's Final Cut Studio website.

angry tapir writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation is urging its supporters to pressure Google to build significant privacy protections into its Book Search service. The EFF suggests that the service gives Google access to new personal information: what people are searching for in out-of-print and out-of-copyright books. The EFF posted its concerns with Google Book Search on its blog, with EFF designer/activist Hugh D'Andrade saying the search product could infringe on 'privacy of thought.' Google, in a responding blog post, said it will protect user privacy, though it can't yet say how — the service hasn't been designed yet, nor approved."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Well this is odd. Twitter was one of the many tools that President Obama used to help build up a strong base of supporters, and the White House has its own Twitter feed that is quite popular. Yet, reader Ben points out that White House spokesman Robert Gibbs has now admitted that Twitter is blocked from White House computers. Wonder who's updating the official feed, then... Apparently this isn't actually a new thing. A couple months ago, it came up in another press conference, and it came out that only a small number of "new media" folks are allowed to have access to Twitter from the White House. Someone ought to let the White House IT staff know that it's easy to update Twitter via SMS from your phone... Either way, makes you wonder if only the media communications people in the White House are allowed to use telephones, too.

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Glyn Moody has a thoughtful piece taking a long look at the never-ending battle between pragmatists and purists in free and open software. "While debates rage around whether Mono is good or bad for free software, and about 'fauxpen source' and 'Faux FLOSS Fundamentalists,' people are overlooking the fact that these are just the latest in a series of such arguments about whether the end justifies the means. There was the same discussion when KDE was launched using the Qt toolkit, which was proprietary at the time, and when GNOME was set up as a completely free alternative. But could it be that this battle between the 'purists' and the 'pragmatists' is actually good for free software — a sign that people care passionately about this stuff — and a major reason for its success?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Artist Heidi Cody makes all kinds of crazy work using corporate mascots and scenes of nature as portrayed on grocery store packaging. With collaborator Pete Beeman, she currently has this large kinetic sculpture (below) showing at the LAB Gallery in New York (47th & Lexington) through July 31.

In Ad Nauseam, I wrote about how her work illustrates the extent to which consumer culture has become our natural environment. We can identify corporate logos by the tiniest fragment, but can barely name a single plant or tree native to our neighborhoods.

We've discussed a few times over the years how copyright gets in the way of academic work. Journals (who get all of their writing and reviewing totally for free) insist on holding the copyright for those works in many cases. I've even heard of academics who had to redo pretty much the identical experiment because they couldn't even cite their own earlier results for fear of a copyright claim. It leads to wacky situations where academics either ignore the fact that the journals they published in hold the copyright on their work, or they're forced to jump through hoops to retain certain rights. That's bad for everyone.

However, at least some are recognizing the problem. Christopher points us to a new paper, which questions if copyright law should be abolished for academic papers:

The conventional rationale for copyright of written works, that copyright is needed to foster their creation, is seemingly of limited applicability to the academic domain. For in a world without copyright of academic writing, academics would still benefit from publishing in the major way that they do now, namely, from gaining scholarly esteem. Yet publishers would presumably have to impose fees on authors, because publishers would not be able to profit from reader charges. If these publication fees would be borne by academics, their incentives to publish would be reduced. But if the publication fees would usually be paid by universities or grantors, the motive of academics to publish would be unlikely to decrease (and could actually increase) – suggesting that ending academic copyright would be socially desirable in view of the broad benefits of a copyright-free world. If so, the demise of academic copyright should be achieved by a change in law, for the 'open access' movement that effectively seeks this objective without modification of the law faces fundamental difficulties.

The whole paper is well worth reading, and it makes a very compelling case (admittedly, I'm already a strong believer in the harm done by copyright in many instances) as to why copyright makes no sense in the academic setting, and likely causes a lot more harm than good. Beyond showing why abolishing copyright on academic works wouldn't decrease output, it also suggests that it would lead to nuermous additional benefits as well, that come with more freedom in sharing ideas, which speeds further ideas and innovation. The last bit, suggesting why the "open access" movement isn't enough is also quite interesting. While I've always paid attention to the "open access" people, I hadn't given it too much thought. The paper though, does outline some key problems with the open access push as it stands today, and shows how the goals of the open access movement would be much better accomplished not through such a system, but in getting rid of copyright on academic research entirely.

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Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with a common-law wife, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.



Some of you may have seen the amazing Soviet Arcade Machines Museum; this is up that same socialist alley: I started out trying to import a Polski Fiat from Poland, and somehow ended up with this: an old, beaten Ulak-Tartysh video game.

Ulak-Tartysh, for those of you not familiar with carcass-based sports, is essentially polo played with the headless body of a dead goat. It's popular in Central Asia, and especially in Kyrgyzstan, which is where this fascinating game hails from. This one appears to have been built in 1983, at some state-run electronics factory in the city of Mailuu-Suu. The coin slots say "15 Kopeks," but I think at that time all the USSR satellite states used that denomination.

I'm a big fan of 8-bit era games, and this sample from behind the Iron Curtain is especially fascinating. It's based on what appears to be a KR1858VM1 chip, which was a copy of the Z80. Most of the other chips are TTL logic ones, with very little large-scale integration. The video seems to be about 148x116 (?) with what I think are 8 colors. The graphics have that really satisfying gigantic-pixel look, but I think are pretty nicely rendered, considering.



I got it here as a strange sort of compensation when a warehouse owner in Poland was unable to ship the Fiat like we had agreed; apparently, this machine was just sitting, forgotten, in a corner of the warehouse. To restore it, I cleaned up the case, and replaced the power supply system with a cobbled-together 110V unit, from the 220V it originally had. I've made repairs, and had to replace the screen/CRT, but beyond that it's as I got it. I left the case in its battered state, but the marquee cleaned up surprisingly well. I'm not sure of what all the words mean, but via an online Kyrgz dictionary, it seems the TAPT button means "grab" or something similar, and I think it says "GOOD!" (pronounced "Djackshi?) when you get a goal.



It was on display at the last i am 8 bit art show here in LA, and it proved itself to be a playable, if not too exciting, game. MyTarpit posted a bit more about it here, and, more excitingly, there should be a BoingBoingVideo segment featuring it on its way soon.

AnonymousIslander writes "The Information and Privacy Commissioner for the Province of British Columbia has ruled that electronic scanning of driver's licenses (and similar forms of ID) as a condition of entering a bar or nightclub is a violation of BC's Personal Information Privacy Act. The decision (PDF), while dealing with one specific club, will still have ramifications across the entire province. It is not known if the nightclub in question will attempt to appeal the decision in court. A similar decision was reached last year in Alberta. The system in question is known as BarWatch, and has been the target of criticism by many for a number of years. Despite this, a number of bars/nightclubs and restaurants in communities across Canada have installed similar systems, and just days before this decision came down there were calls for the expansion of BarWatch in Victoria to cover restaurants and other establishments serving the post-bar crowds." Similar systems are in use across the US, as we have discussed.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader sends in coverage from Ars Technica of Microsoft's capitulation to the EU, after European regulators requested that Redmond bundle multiple browsers on new PCs. "Microsoft has decided that the last thing it needs in this economy is some combination of the following: fines, legal bills, and a delay of Windows 7. It has offered to adopt the European Union's preferred solution for browser competition: a browser selector screen at startup."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tinker it now! has a little write-up about the recent Music Hackday in London, hosted by the Guardian:

We had a great time last weekend at Music Hackday hosted by the Guardian as so many events in London in the past months. The idea behind the event was for developers to interact with online music services such as Soundcloud and Last.fm and build hacks. We tried to make that more physical and for people to interact with those APIs in a physical way somehow.

++ Peter Knight, our Senior Engineer (of Auduino fame) ran a lovely quick intro to Arduino and then it was all about the hacking and I thought I'd report on what people ended up making (among other great projects).

++ Andie Nordgren made a lovely internet of things project where physical objects embedded with RFID tags could trigger your favorite song on SoundCloud.

++ Rain Ashford used the Lilypad Arduino to trigger a cat to sing and display tweets.

++ Finally the winner of the Tinker.it! Hacking Prize was Alistair McDonald and Mr Duck who built a lovely percussion machine.

++ Peter also took the opportunity to launch Cantarino, a speech synth library for the Arduino. Watch it sing Daisy Bell and make your own!

Music Hackday report

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Japanese scientist have shown how the human body glows with visible light. The quantity of light emitted is 1000 times too dim for our eyes to see, but the researchers imaged the glow with special cameras. The light is tied to metabolism, suggesting that measuring it could have medical applications, says Tohoku Institute of Technology scientist Masaki Kobayashi. Meanwhile, New Age aura-seers everywhere scream with "vindication." From LiveScience:

In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, which is thought to be a byproduct of biochemical reactions involving free radicals.

(This visible light differs from the infrared radiation -- an invisible form of light -- that comes from body heat.)

To learn more about this faint visible light, scientists in Japan employed extraordinarily sensitive cameras capable of detecting single photons. Five healthy male volunteers in their 20s were placed bare-chested in front of the cameras in complete darkness in light-tight rooms for 20 minutes every three hours from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. for three days.

The researchers found the body glow rose and fell over the day, with its lowest point at 10 a.m. and its peak at 4 p.m., dropping gradually after that. These findings suggest there is light emission linked to our body clocks, most likely due to how our metabolic rhythms fluctuate over the course of the day.

"Strange! Humans Glow in Visible Light" (Thanks, Marina Gorbis!)

With all the talk about various "three strikes" plans to kick accused (but not convicted) file sharers off the internet, it appears that one ISP, called Kaloo, in the UK has taken this to an extreme: it's kicking people off on the first accusation of infringement, with no warning, and the only way to get reconnected is to sign a form admitting guilt and promising not to do it again. Even worse? It's the only ISP in town, so people who get kicked off are basically without an internet connection. What's really odd is that the ISP doesn't seem to recognize how a complete lack of due process is a problem, calling the program "reasonable" and suggesting it "protects people from illegal activity." No, actually, it doesn't. It cuts people off from what's increasingly a vital communications system without any real proof or due process. Doesn't that seem like a problem? Update: With all the fuss and publicity from the BBC article the ISP seems to have agreed to change its policy to a "three strikes" one. That's still not great, but better than the one strike plan.

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Irwin Chusid called this promo video for fans of Insane Clown Posse and other bands of its ilk, "14 minutes of the world's worst fonts."

bonch writes "Richard Stallman has written an article on the GNU Web site describing the effect the Swedish Pirate Party's platform would have on the free software movement. While he supports general changes to copyright law, he makes a point that many anti-copyright proponents don't realize — the GPL itself is a copyright license that relies on copyright law to protect access to source code. According to Stallman, the Pirate Party's proposal of a five-year limit on copyright would remove the freedom users have to gain access to source code by eventually allowing its inclusion in proprietary products. Stallman suggests requiring proprietary software to also release its code within five years to even the balance of power."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We thought it'd be fun to poll Make: Online readers to collect some of YOUR top soldering tips. Please share your pearls of wisdom in the comments for those who may be new to the alchemical art of turning lead into electronics.

Here's one tip that's a perfect example of a "why didn't I think of that?," something really simple that can prove amazingly useful. We've posted it before, but it bears repeating. It was first posted in my Toolbox: Jigs, clamps, and helping hands">clamps and jigs Toolbox column:

Here's a soldering trick that was a revelation to me the first time I saw it. It's not really a jig, more like using the material, in this case, solder as itself a jig/helper. Dave Burton, of Dorkbot DC took this picture for us and writes: "A fellow DC Dork asked for a visual aid after I was unable to describe this soldering technique via email. Basically, you coil up a piece of solder and let it serve as a jig for you, but since I've already proven my inability to describe it verbally, here's my attempt at modeling it. This is a piece of Radio Shack perfboard, with my butane soldering iron, and a diode sticking out of the perfboard in the back. Note the technique of coiling the solder on the table and reaching one end upward. I can't remember who taught me this technique (neither could my fellow dorks), but it has saved more soldering hours than every other jig, clamp, and hack that I've got.

More:
Camp counselor Dave's soldering tips

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Keni Lee Burgess plays Furry Lewis' "Judge Harsh Blues" on his 3-string cigar box guitar.

suraj.sun points out CNet coverage of Palm's newest OS release, which restores the ability to synch with iTunes that iTunes 8.2.1 had broken. "The news was posted on Palm's blog where it listed the new features and enhancements of the software update and nonchalantly added at the end: 'Oh, and one more thing: Palm WebOS 1.1 re-enables Palm media sync. That's right — you once again can have seamless access to your music, photos and videos from the current version of iTunes (8.2.1).' Bold move, Palm. Bold move. It'll be interesting to see how Apple responds, and do you suppose the use of the phrase 'one more thing,' a phrase that Apple CEO Steve Jobs often uses to introduce a new product at the end of his keynotes, was intentional or am I just reading too much into this?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reader Yann alerts us to an interesting set of lawsuits and decisions in France, both concerning the Google Suggest feature. One case involved a company named Direct Energie and the other with a company named CNFDI (both links to the Google translation of the news).

In both cases, the companies were upset that when people started searching on their company names, the first suggestion was their company name followed by the word "arnaque," which means "scam." Of course, as you probably know, Google Suggest works by finding the most common searches on what you've typed and letting you know. So, all this really meant was that an awful lot of people were doing searches questioning whether or not these two companies were scams. But, is Google liable for its algorithm accurately suggesting the most common searches associated with those company names? It appears the courts split on that decision (it's worth noting that there was one major difference between the lawsuits: Direct Energie sued under civil code, while CNFDI sued for libel -- which apparently makes it a criminal case in France.

With Direct Energie, the judge seemed to not really understand Google Suggest or how it worked, declaring that no algorithm could justify the prejudice caused by Google. He then got confused, saying that it was clearly Google's fault because the search on "direct energie arnaque" was not the first alphabetically in the list, nor did it have the highest number of results. Despite it being explained by Google, the judge seems to have totally ignored the reason why it was at the top of the list (the number of people searching for it). Because of this, he said it's no limit on free speech to force Google to change the results, and ordered Google to do so (though, did not allow for any damages to be awarded). This seems to get the basic facts backwards, and it seems quite ridiculous to find Google guilty of such a charge when all its actually doing is accurately counting up what people are legitimately searching for.

The CNFDI ruling, seems much more reasonable. There was one oddity (though it's probably got more to do with French law than with the judge), and that is that the judge ruled that Google could be liable for libel because the company had been informed by CNFDI of the issue, thereby removing any safe harbors. In the US, Section 230 safe harbors on libel thankfully do not get waived if you've been informed. Instead, they take the much more logical position that a third party service provider should never be blamed for actions of its users. Thus, it would be flat-out ridiculous to blame Google for the phrases people are searching for. But, even having lost its local "safe harbor" protections, the judge properly recognized that the suggestion came from the algorithm looking at what people were searching for, and noted that the suggestion was based on "a valid observation." On top of that, he pointed out that search engines are "important tools for the free circulation of ideas and information," and the fact that many people were questioning whether CNFDI was a scam was, in fact, important and potentially useful information, and thus not libelous by itself. Finally, the court also noted that forcing Google to remove such a suggestion would be too big a burden on free speech and citizens' rights.

It should be no surprise that I think the second ruling is much more sensible, while the first ruling makes little sense, and appears to have been decided without a full understanding of what Google's Suggest feature is or how it works. Still, I imagine we'll be seeing similar cases around the world... and hopefully they'll find themselves in front of judges more like the one that dealt with the CNFDI case...

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Sad news: Ellie Frazetta, the wife, muse, and model for Frank Frazetta, recently passed away.

The following comment at Golden Age Comic Book Stories is amazing:

On Saturday the 18th, me, my wife and my mother-in-law were in East Stroudsburg, PA, on vacation from San Diego, CA for the purpose of visiting the Frazetta Museum. When we got there, we met another couple also there for that purpose, who broke the terrible news to us. While standing there talking, Frank Frazetta himself came out of his house, and insisted on showing us the museum, while waving away our condolences. However, he could not find the key, so he then invited us into his home! We were in Frazetta's livingroom/studio, talking to The Master, and to his son, for more than an hour or so. It is a very good thing to know that someone who's been your hero for all your life is truly a gracious, down to earth, humble and generous person in real life. Our hearts, thoughts and prayers go out to him, his family and friends. Thanks also to you for the posting of so much of his work, and this post in particular, of his beloved and beautiful wife, Ellie.

Ellie Frazetta, R.I.P.

Jake spotted this bit of silly fun at a pizzeria in New York.

Tom Hanks trash can

Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with a common-law wife, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.

On my way to my neighborhood auto parts store one morning, I saw a diminutive, shabby, bearded man standing by the side of the road with an armload of papers. As I approached, I saw a sign: "$1 Stories." Excited, I fished a dollar out from my pants somewhere and handed it to him out the window; I think he fanned out his stack of stories to let me pick, but he may have just handed me one at random. I can't really remember, and it doesn't matter, since so far everything I've read of his has been great in its own odd way.



UPDATE! I've reduced the posted story to just an excerpt; I was going back and forth about it, but enough well-meaning killjoys in the comments pointed out that as a copyrighted story, there were issues in posting it all online, especially since the donation I suggested went to the homeless shelter as opposed to the author directly, who is still unreachable. I'll keep trying to find him, and if I can hunt him down and get his ok, I'll put the whole thing back up, and possibly some more. Still, I encourage everyone to read the excerpt and donate to the LA Midnight mission, and I promise to reflect on what a monster I am. Thanks!

I've only seen him out there a few times, and each time I make sure to buy a story. The stories all have hand-illustrated covers, and appear to be written on an old typewriter and Xeroxed. The selection of stories is usually a bit weighted to the science-fiction side, with a good helping of mystery and adventure. He has at least one recurring character, Joe Cotton, of his Joe Cotton mysteries.

The author, Ronald Raydon, is a homeless man, and the only contact information included on the stories is an address for the Midnight Mission shelter in downtown Los Angeles. I've tried to hunt him down, but so far without luck. I'd like more people to know about his charming, funny, bizarre stories, but I'd like him to get paid for his work, just like he would if you happen to be lucky enough to find him on an LA street. So here's what I'm going to do: I've scanned and put up one of his stories on Flickr, A Crime in Time: Wise Guys Steal a Time Machine! (which is as good as it sounds; the main character is Paul Klee, which I think should give some clue about what sort of man Ronald Raydon is).

What I'd ask is that if you read the story, please donate $1 to the Los Angeles Midnight Mission, since that's the only known address I have for Ronald Raydon. If I can get ahold of him more directly, I'll set up a PayPal account just for him, but until then, I think this could work out well.

If anyone out there knows Ronald Raydon, or knows how to find him, please let me know, as I'd love to be able to get him his story-profits directly. Enjoy!

BuzzSkyline writes "It's possible to produce energy by simply mixing fresh and salty water. Although chemists and physicists have long known about the untapped energy available where fresh water rivers pour into salty oceans — it's equivalent to 'each river in the world ending at its mouth in a waterfall 225 meters [739 feet] high' — the technology for exploiting the effect has been lacking. An Italian physicist seems to have solved the problem with the experimental demonstration of a 'salination cell' that creates power given nothing more than input sources of salty and fresh water. The reearcher believes that this renewable, environmentally friendly energy source could be deployed in coastal areas and could provide another addition to the green-tech roster. A paper describing the technology is due to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Physical Review Letters."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Amateur" Professor Solomon, a "findologist" and author of the fantastic book How To Find Lost Objects, has a new free e-booklet available and it's a hoot. Unless, of course, you take it seriously, in which case it might be incredibly useful. "Flying Saucer Travel Tips: How To Optimize Your Ride In A UFO" is 27 pages, illustrated, and available as a PDF from the delightful Professor's site. Also free: "Can I Smoke Aboard A Flying Saucer? Questions and Answers about UFOs." From Flying Saucer Travel Tips:

5. The Space People can help you develop your psychic powers. If you’re serious about it, and willing to make the effort, you can learn ESP, clairvoyance, or spoon-bending. Just let them know you’re interested. *

6. Ask for a jumpsuit—there’s usually a spare one aboard—and wear it about the ship. You’ll feel less like an outsider. †

* Uri Geller, the noted spoon-bender, tells (inMy Story[Praeger Publishers, 1975]) of having acquired his powers from extrater- restrial entities.

† The jumpsuit will be useful, too, back on Earth—so hang onto it. You can wear it to parties, as a conversation piece. And it will enhance your stage appearance, should you go on tour as a spoon-bender.

Flying Saucer Travel Tips

Urban Screen's mesmerizing building facade video: "How it would be, if a house was dreaming." (Via Dangerous Minds)

We've noticed that pretty much every single new and innovative digital music startup that pops up eventually gets sued by the record labels. The labels seem to view this as a part of basic negotiations -- and, in fact, many of the lawsuits have ended in partnership/equity deals. But, those deals tend to be suffocating. Given that (likelihood of getting sued or getting a deal that makes a profitable business impossible), is it any wonder that entrepreneurs are shying away from any sort of digital music startup these days, in favor of opportunities with no obsolete gatekeepers demanding huge chunks of whatever revenue they might one day make?

At a time when the recording industry needs innovative startups more than anything else, the record labels and their oppressive lawsuits and deal terms have basically scared off exactly the people who create those businesses.

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UC Berkeley researchers have built a cell phone microscope capable of imaging malaria parasites, tuberculosis bacteria, and other bugs. The CellScope consists of compact microscope lenses attached to the phone's camera. Most impressive is the device's ability to do fluorescent microscopy.

The researchers showed that the TB bacteria could be automatically counted using image analysis software.

"The images can either be analyzed on site or wirelessly transmitted to clinical centers for remote diagnosis," said David Breslauer, co-lead author of the study and a graduate student in the UC San Francisco/UC Berkeley Bioengineering Graduate Group. "The system could be used to help provide early warning of outbreaks by shortening the time needed to screen, diagnose and treat infectious diseases."

The engineers had previously shown that a portable microscope mounted on a mobile phone could be used for bright field microscopy, which uses simple white light — such as from a bulb or sunlight — to illuminate samples. The latest development adds to the repertoire fluorescent microscopy, in which a special dye emits a specific fluorescent wavelength to tag a target - such as a parasite, bacteria or cell - in the sample.

"Fluorescence microscopy requires more equipment — such as filters and special lighting — than a standard light microscope, which makes them more expensive," said Fletcher. "In this paper we've shown that the whole fluorescence system can be constructed on a cell phone using the existing camera and relatively inexpensive components."

"UC Berkeley researchers bring fluorescent imaging to mobile phones for low-cost screening in the field"

A group of research engineers at Berkley have developed a mobile phone microscope that can photograph microbes in your blood, and analyze them for disease. The group hope's the device will be useful to doctors in developing countries to diagnose blood diseases in the field. The device uses a phone attachment with an LED, then magnified images are fed into the cell phone camera. Software installed on the phone analyzes bacterial counts, or the images can be sent to labs for quick analysis. UC Berkeley bioengineer Dan Fletcher led the CellScope research team. He said, "The same regions of the world that lack access to adequate health facilities are, paradoxically, well-served by mobile phone networks. We can take advantage of these mobile networks to bring low-cost, easy-to-use lab equipment out to more remote settings . . . We had to disabuse ourselves of the notion that we needed to spend many thousands on a mercury arc lamp and high-sensitivity camera to get a meaningful image. We found that a high-powered LED - which retails for just a few dollars - coupled with a typical camera phone could produce a clinical quality image sufficient for our goal of detecting in a field setting some of the most common diseases in the developing world."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I really heart coiled cords. I think coiling is a very elegant way of dealing with the problem of unsightly slack cables, and often I find myself wishing that this or that appliance had come with a coiled cord. Replacement cords that are factory-coiled can usually be purchased and installed (if necessary), but that may be an unnecessary expense because, with some simple tools, it is easy to coil a straight cord yourself.

Tools:

• Pipe or other metal mandrel
• Heat gun
• Sink with sprayer (or other source of cooling water)

Materials:

• Duct tape
• Aluminum foil
• Water
• Cord to be curled

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Carrie McLaren is a guest blogger at Boing Boing and coauthor of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. She lives in Brooklyn, the former home of her now defunct Stay Free! magazine.

My friend Skip, who runs the AV Geeks sections at Archive.org, has collected a ton of vintage educational films. The ABC of Sex Education for Trainables is a thoughtful, fascinating look at how social workers in the 1970s taught the mentally handicapped about sex.

Skip's DVD collections--focused on everything from venereal disease to ecology to nutrition and propaganda--are very much worth your while.

Pink Tentacle posted this video of a robotic baseball pitcher and batter.

The robot pitcher consists of a high-speed, three-fingered hand (developed by professor Masatoshi Ishikawa and his team from the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology) mounted on a mechanical arm (developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). With superb control of nimble fingers that can open and close at a rate of up to 10 times per second, the robot can release the ball with perfect timing. Precise coordination between the fingers, hand and arm allow the robot pitcher to hit the strike zone 90% of the time.

Video: Robot baseball

When I have new tech to talk about I love to do what I call a "roadshow." I take the idea to some other city and have a meetup with anyone who's interested. Last time, when I lived in Florida, I did meetups in NYC, Toronto and Berkeley.

Now with rssCloud beginning a bootstrap, it's time for another roadshow, this one in NYC, at the same place as the 2005 meeting.

Next Thursday, July 30 at 6:30PM at the offices of Ritchie Capital, 747 Third Ave at 46th, 38th floor. We have a big conference room with a midtown view and a rooftop patio, the meetup should go for a couple of hours, then if people want to go out for a bite, let's go.

Already have confirmation that some of the most interesting people from NY tech will be there. If you know you'll be there, please post a comment below.

BTW, thanks to Thane Ritchie for allowing us to use the space. The investment world has been through some hard times, as we all know, but it's great to see them still out there. His latest interest, I hear, is urban farming.

theodp writes "On Tuesday, the USPTO granted Microsoft a patent for 'Email Emotiflags' despite ample evidence of a circa-1996 Lotus Notes precedent called Mood Stamps — sender-chosen emoticons that appear next to inbox messages. Among those seemingly aware of the existence of Mood Stamps is Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, who appears to have fielded questions about the feature while at Lotus. While simply Googling for 'Email Emotiflags' would have turned up evidence of this prior art (including a Slashdot discussion), the USPTO came up empty after instead going with the more-upscale Google Scholar and patent databases for its search effort. Think we can count on Ozzie to do the right thing and give the USPTO a heads-up?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yesterday I posted the Implementor's Guide. It walks a coder through the components of rssCloud -- the authoring tool, cloud, and aggregator.

I also released the source code for my implementation of the cloud. My aggregator, River2, was updated to support the cloud. I have not released my authoring tool yet.

I started a FriendFeed group to facilitate communication among implementors.

A feed that will help you test, if you're developing an aggregator. It updates every 15 minutes, notifies the cloud server, which in turn will notify any registered subscribers.

My personal "LifeLiner" feed is also available for testing. I wouldn't recommend subscribing in a feed reader like NetNewsWire or Google Reader. It's designed for the loosely coupled 140-character network. For which there aren't any readers. Yet! (Gotta start somewhere..)

Anil Dash has written an excellent white paper on recent developments in the realtime or "pushbutton" web, including of course rssCloud.

rssCloud isn't "recent" --> it was defined in January 2001.

I'm really digging the collection of user-submitted articles on primitive technology over at PrimitiveWays. So far, one of my favorites is this article, by one Dino Labiste, about how to treat the natural pith in a deer antler to make an adhesive bed for a stub-tang blade.

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DRM has failed in almost every instance it's been tried. Not only does it fail to actually prevent copying, it tends to piss off legitimate users and limit value rather than enhance it. And yet... people keep trying. But, honestly, I can't think of anything as pointless as the latest move from the Associated Press which appears to be an attempt to DRM the news. That's not what they call it, but that's what it sounds like:

The Associated Press Board of Directors today directed The Associated Press to create a news registry that will tag and track all AP content online to assure compliance with terms of use. The system will register key identifying information about each piece of content that AP distributes as well as the terms of use of that content, and employ a built-in beacon to notify AP about how the content is used....

The registry will employ a microformat for news developed by AP and which was endorsed two weeks ago by the Media Standards Trust, a London-based nonprofit research and development organization that has called on news organizations to adopt consistent news formats for online content. The microformat will essentially encapsulate AP and member content in an informational "wrapper" that includes a digital permissions framework that lets publishers specify how their content is to be used online and which also supplies the critical information needed to track and monitor its usage.

Hopefully I haven't "violated" that rule by quoting the section above. It really does sound like the mythical dreams of DRM that the software industry discussed two decades ago and the music industry discussed a decade ago. Neither one worked -- and both of those were (theoretically) a lot more "protectable" than news. Honestly, it's difficult to think of anything quite this useless:

1. It won't work. It physically can't work. News is news. You can't put any real DRM on it, because it's so easy to copy text and remove any sort of "registry" tags.
2. It removes value. Nothing in this move increases the value of the AP's content to anyone. It does the opposite. It significantly limits the value, and for those who actually want to help promote the content, it now gives you extra incentives not to do so.
3. It's a waste of AP resources. At a time when the AP should be focusing on looking for ways to add value to create a better business model, it's now about to throw away money, time and staff on putting together a DRM for news that doesn't work? Talk about screwed up priorities.

This has been said before (multiple times) but you don't rescue your business model by "protecting" against what people want to do. You don't rescue your business model by wasting resources trying to hold back what people want to do. You rescue your business by providing more value and figuring out a way to monetize that value. Putting bogus DRM on news does none of that. It only hastens failure.

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Recently on Offworld we saw a bit more news trickle out of the ongoing Comic-Con, most notably new media and information on Left 4 Dead 2, with a gallery of new screenshots, on-the-floor video of its bayou-terror in action, and a new boss monster, whose get-up serves as a strict warning to everyone: when you dress yourself in the morning, please take note that this outfit could possibly be the one in which you spend eternity as a reanimated corpse. (Note: new star Rochelle understands this, as she shows up in style donning the electroclash Depeche Mode T-shirt above.) We also saw newly revealed features coming to Q-Games' decidedly old-school inspired PixelJunk Shooter, and a demonstration of its fluid- and thermo-dynamics, and discovered that -- finally! -- an official version of gold star board game Settlers of Catan is being developed for the iPhone. Finally, we saw Plants Vs. Zombies confirmed for the Xbox 360, Katamari Damacy's King of All Cosmos bringing his aloof and royally pluralized inanity to Twitter (and with it, a fantastic repurpose-able desktop background), and watched what happens when you try to play all four instruments at once as a One Man Rock Band. And our 'one shot's for the day: gorgeously illustrated Mario deaths, and retro-future Pac-Man/Space Invaders in automotive form.

think_nix writes "Karoo, an ISP in Hull, in the UK, is disconnecting subscribers without warning if they file-share, or are even suspected of file-sharing. Karoo is the only ISP in the area. Copyright owners are working with the ISP helping them identify and report suspected filesharers using their services. In order to get service restored, subscribers have to go to Karoo's office and sign a form admitting guilt and promising not to do it again. The article states that some subscribers have had their access cut off for more than two years." Update: 07/24 16:29 GMT by KD : The Register is reporting that Karoo has relented and has changed its policy. A spokesman said: "It is evident that we have been exceeding the expectation of copyright owners..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

cfa22 writes "Nice piece in the NY Times today on ultra-fast trading on the NYSE and other markets. The 'algos' that make autonomous trading decisions have to be fast, but I wonder: Is network speed ever a bottleneck? Can anyone with inside experience with millisecond trading provide some details for the curious among us regarding hardware architectures and networking used for such trading systems?" According to the article, high-frequency traders generated about $21 billion in profits last year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I don't know how much work Miltron is going to get done in his shop, now that he's built and installed this nifty little game system on his bench. It's built using a NoaC (NES on a Chip) and a cannibalized PSOne LCD screen. Yet another use for The Maker's Notebook -- as a game controller wrist-rest.

DIY Workbench playable NES [Sent by Hector of Make:en Español. Thanks, Hector!]

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When it comes to copyright law, it's no secret that politicians tend to listen almost entirely to lobbyists, and pay no attention at all to the feelings of the public. There are a few different reasons for this (and, certainly it depends on each politician). In some cases, it's basic corruption. You listen to the folks who fund your campaign, and the entertainment industry can be a major contributor to elections. However, I think a bigger issue is that many politicians really do believe that the industry representatives best represent the needs of cultural society. This might be because they get starstruck in meeting rockstars and movie stars that the entertainment industry occasionally parades around, or it might be because they just don't know where else to turn to on these issues -- and simply assume that "who would know better the impact of copyright than those who seem to rely on the system."

For years, a growing number of folks have worked hard to try to amplify the public's voice on these issues. They've been trying to make it clear that greater copyright isn't an unequivocal "good thing" and that it has many real and significant downsides as well. The internet has been an amazing tool in making this happen, but it's still not enough. In the US, for example, I can count on the fingers of one hand how many politicians actually recognize the downsides to over protection from copyright... and still have enough fingers to wag at the rest of our elected officials. The situation in Canada appears to be just slightly better, however. Michael Geist deserves a lot of the credit for that. He was the one who rallied the public the last few years when Canadian politicians tried to rush through draconian copyright changes to the system, pushed directly by US copyright interests.

While some Canadian politicians appear to have recognized some of the issues, that doesn't mean most still aren't under the false belief that more copyright is good, and what the industry reps claim is "good" is actually good for the public. So, as the Canadian gov't has begun a consultation over new copyright laws, Geist is trying to make sure that the public's voice is actually heard this time. He's launched a website called Speak Out On Copyright that tries to track the online discussion (from all over the internet) on copyright issues and help the public become much more involved in the consultation process. He's also kicked it off with his own response to the consultation, which is well worth a read.

It's still an uphill battle. The recording industry has said that they thought the bill that died last year, which so many had protested as being way too draconian, was actually too tame and did not go far enough. They've asked for the moon -- including anti-circumvention clauses, three strikes and copyright term extension. And most politicians will still hear their voice the loudest, and think that it's representative. But maybe, just maybe, the actual public -- the real people impacted by these things -- can get their voice heard in a way that has a real impact and prevents new laws that don't serve the public, don't encourage more creativity and serve only to prop-up and protect one industry's old and obsolete business model.

Is it enough to make a difference? The fact that it actually exists is already a difference. It may not stop those powerful, connected and well-funded lobbyists from pushing through bad legislation, but hopefully the voice of the public will actually at least play a role in what happens.

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MagicM writes "A critical flaw has been discovered in DD-WRT, a Linux based alternative open source firmware for WLAN routers such as the fan-favorite Linksys WRT54GL. The flaw can give an attacker instant root access to the router merely by embedding an image with a specially crafted URL in a Web page (CSRF attack)." The linked page notes that a fix is being rolled out (build 12533) and gives firewall rules to thwart the attack if the fix is not available yet for a particular device.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Flickr member maan2k built this quite awesome board for hacking a variety of LCDs, he provides a rundown of the features -

• 24 PROGRAMABLE I/O LINES
  
• 8 CHANNELS ANALOGUE SIMULATION
  
• STANDARD ISP HEADER
  
• STANDARD RS232
  
• 6 DIGITAL INPUTS (PUSH BUTTONS)
  
• 3.3V / 5.0V / 8.0V PROVISION TO ACCOMMODATE WIDE RANGE OF MINI TFTs
  
• 24 BIT DETACHABLE DEBUG BOARD FOR INTERFACE VISUALIZATION .
  
• 5V DC POWER CONNECTOR FOR LOGIC PROBE
  
• 28 PIN RIGHT ANGLE SIL HEADER FOR LCD ON TEST/HACK CAREER BOARD
  
• BASE FOR CRYSTAL
  
• BUZZER WITH JUMPER ( ENEBLE / DISABLE )
  

Nice modular PCB system used here, have a closer look on Flickr.

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An anonymous reader writes "In a sign that patent trolls are getting desperate to keep their cases in East Texas — long known as the friendliest venue for their claims — some have taken to suing tiny, no-name companies that are run by East Texas residents. The hope is that, if at least one defendant is located in East Texas, the judge will keep the entire case there. Nate Neel, a Longview, Texas resident with a small open source software company called CitiWare, was sued by Bedrock Computer Technologies in June despite (he claims) having no customers or other meaningful operations of any kind. In response, Mr. Neel has posted a strongly worded letter to Bedrock's attorneys on his Web site. It will be interesting to see how East Texas judges respond to this abuse of process perpetrated against their own residents."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Make the ultimate soaking weapon for this summer's water warfare! No squirt gun even comes close.
Thanks go to John Young for the original article in MAKE, Volume 07.
To download The Head Mounted Water Cannon MP4 click here or subscribe in iTunes.

Check out the complete Head Mounted Water Cannon article in
MAKE, Volume 07 "Head Mounted Water Cannon" and you can see that in our Digital Edition.

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Make the ultimate soaking weapon for this summer's water warfare! No squirt gun even comes close.
Thanks go to John Young for the original article in MAKE, Volume 07.
View the PDF of this project. and then subscribe to MAKE Magazine for other great projects
you can do over the weekend.

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Peter Friedman has an interesting post wondering why artist intent plays into the determination of what is "fair use." While a judge has pretty wide latitude in determining fair use, there are the famous four factors that a judge must weigh -- but none really have anything to do with the artist's intent. As Friedman notes, what's odd is that based on this fact, it seems that a work may be considered fair use or not solely because of what an artist said his or her intent with the work was. That doesn't make much sense if you think about it logically. Since the point of copyright law is to cover the work itself (remember that whole separation of the idea from the expression thing?), a fair use determination should be based entirely on the work, and never on the intention of the artist. So why don't judges follow that?

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Patrick Sébastien Coulombe's Guitare à crayon project allows the user to create visual art and music with one instrument. The custom USB device makes use of Pure Data to generate sound and Gimp software handles the visual element. The feature list includes -

• Accelerometer X-Axis (for example controlling the octave)
  
• Accelerometer Y-Axis (for example controlling an effect)
  
• 6 analog strings giving around 10 bits of resolution
  
• External input: 1 analog, 1 digital
  
• 4 positions switch
  
• 8 buttons
  
• 4 pots
  
• 1 piezo with velocity filter (for example trigging any sound)
  
• 1 ir distance sensor (+-6cm – +-20cm)
  
• 1 unuseful led (for tapping the bpm)
  
• Pressure-sensitive tablet
  
• Foot controller (using a led & a photoresistor)
  
• Foot switch (looper, change sound, …)
  

The maker is currently accepting donations to further develop the project. Relevant schematics and source available on the project's site. [via Synthtopia]

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In this brief video, MAKE contributing editor Bill Gurstelle demonstrates a simple arc light (a precursor to the incandescent bulb) using a length of carbon rod, a knife switch, some ceramic insulators, Nichrome wire, and an 18-volt power tool battery.

How to Make an Arc Light

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This video documents the creation of a fabulous homemade Star Wars AT-AT walker loft bed, built by a father for his son. It's made from everyday, easy-to-source materials and includes a hide-hole loft (in the AT-AT's body) with trap-door access. This fills me with feelings of fatherly inadequacy and makes me start plotting something equally elaborate for Poesy once she's big enough to enjoy a trap door.

Star Wars Imperial Walker Loft Bed (Thanks, Stagueve!

Richard Kadrey's new novel Sandman Slim is the most hard-boiled piece of supernatural fiction I've ever had the pleasure of reading. William Gibson says it's a "deeply amusing, dirty-ass masterpiece" and that's just right.

Eleven years ago, James Stark was banished to hell by his circle of magic buddies, betrayed by his supposed friends for the crime of being a better magician than them. For eleven years, he's suffered hell's torments as Azazel's mortal slave, first made to fight in the pits and then turned into an assassin. And now he's escaped hell by stabbing himself in the heart with a key that opens every lock, and he's returned to Los Angeles to seek his vengeance on the magicians who betrayed him. He hunts them across a demon-infested Los Angeles, dishing out and receiving relentless, graphic violence, determined to take his revenge and then die and leave the Earth behind forever.

In another writer's hands, this might be just another of those gonzo-funny books about demons and magic and so forth, an over-the-top, ironic novel that eschews horror for yuks.

But Kadrey's Stark is hard-boiled -- not just self-conscious and wise-cracking, but bereft of hope, burning with anger, without any of that self-reflexive, cutesy stuff that writers put in when they're worried about sounding like a poseur. Kadrey's not worried. In the way that Lovecraft's best work is totally unapologetic about the horrors of hell, in the way that Chandler is totally unapologetic about his antiheroes who inhabit a world without redemption or light, Kadrey's Stark is in a living hell, and he hurts, and he will make other people hurt, and he will not stop.

That's not to say that there's no wit in Sandman Slim -- there's plenty of that, but it's the gritty, whiskey-fuelled Tom Waits kind of wit that laughs like it has throat cancer and then spits something wet on the floor after it's done.

This is a tightly plotted revenge story that grabbed me by the throat and didn't let go. The characters are fascinating and even likable, and the gun-stuff and the magic-stuff and the demonology-stuff all feel like they're from someone who knows what he's talking about, all confident and energetic and fresh and angry. I loved this book and all its screwed-up people.

Sandman Slim: A Novel

We're excited to learn of the release of this free, 104-page PDF book dedicated to physical computing via soft circuits, or "softwear." The book starts with a basic intro to the hardware and software involved, goes into basic projects, such as button and soft switches, and then delves deeper into what can be done with things like touch-sensitive embroidery and controlling a servomotor via a zipper.

The authors hope the book will serve as a starting point for professionals and educators who will feed back what they learn in the field to help grow and refine the book. Looks like they're off to a decent start.

Open Softwear: Download the book [via http://www.adafruit.com/]

In the Maker Shed:


Fashioning Technology
Ready to take your craft projects to the next level? With "smart" materials, unorthodox assembly techniques, and the right tools, you can create accessories, housewares, and toys that light up, make sounds, and more.

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Back in March of 2008 we mentioned a class project from a group of UC Berkeley students working to develop a microscope extension for cameraphones. Led by Daniel Fletcher, the team has since updated their prototype, which is capable of acquiring objects at 1.2 micrometers across. In it's current form the device attaches to a Nokia N73 and is capable of viewing color images of malaria parasites and individual blood cells at 3.2Mp. This low-cost solution is used for telemedicine applications in developing worlds, where access to cellphone networks are more prevalent.

Could u txt me ur blood sample? [via RegisterHardware]

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We were just talking about how ridiculous it is when people insist that without traditional newspapers, no one will actually report on local politics. And here's yet another example of why that's apparently not as big a problem as people said. It's a story of Publicola, a Seattle-based startup that's built a business on covering local politics making use of various insiders (which may horrify traditional reporters, but it appears to be working). And that's the point: if there's demand, there are lots of business models that can and will work. In fact, we're seeing they already are working.

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This Hello Kitty Stormtrooper fig-mod was spotted at this year's ComicCon. Huzzah! I want to see an entire platoon of life-sized cosplayers in this getup.

Hello Kitty Pink Stormtrooper (Thanks, David!)

My first soldering iron was the kind that our camp counselor, Dave Hrynkiw, recommends we never use. You know the kind, it comes in a $10 kit and barely works. The reality is, a lot of people find one on these irons in the bottom of their toolbox and start their soldering careers with it. Big mistake.

I ended up with a few burnt boards, traces that lifted, and an overall sour taste for soldering. It's a shame that I was so frustrated, because soldering really isn't difficult. You just need the proper tools.

Fast forward about a year later. I picked up a nice mid-priced Weller iron. Unfortunately I can't remember the model, but it had selectable heat and it worked great. I remember ordering a MiniPOV kit from ladyada. I was able to solder it together fairly easily. In fact, I was successful in making lots of kits, even a couple of CNC controller boards, which I still use today. Now that I look back on it, it wasn't my improved technique so much as having a decent iron.

About a year ago, I was hanging out at adafruit in NYC and asked Limor about her soldering iron recommendations. Her immediate answer was "Buy a Metcal." I searched eBay and found a used one for about $120. It came with two tips and a nice heavy stand. I turned it on, and in about five seconds it was up to full heat. I pulled out some scrap parts and did a little test-soldering. Limor was right, this iron was amazing!

The pen has a really nice feel, it's lightweight, and the handle never seems to get hot. The solder melted perfectly, and everything went together so easily. I've been happily soldering with it ever since.

Keep in mind, I'm not suggesting everyone go out and drop $120 on a soldering iron, it just isn't necessary. However, do take Dave's advice and don't bother with a super-cheap one. Spend $25 and save yourself a lot of misery.

What kind of soldering iron do you use? Let us know in the comments, it will serve as a useful resource for everyone. Thanks!

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Jason Wilson writes "Windows 7 comes out Oct. 22, and many gamers are wondering whether it will be a boon for gaming, as Microsoft promised Vista would, or a disappointment (like Vista was at its launch). Former ExtremeTech editor Jason Cross, who's covered games and tech for 13 years, discusses the pluses and minuses of Windows 7 for gamers — how it differs from Vista, if it'll run older games, and the benefits of 64-bit computing. 'Windows 7 basically takes the Vista codebase and rewrites, refines, optimizes, and overhauls most of the internal stuff without making dramatic changes to the driver stacks that Vista did over WinXP. The changes to the fundamental driver models are small and mostly serve to improve performance. Plus, the hardware makers — especially the graphics guys — are on top of the changes this time around. Nvidia and ATI have been shipping quite good Win7 graphics drivers for months now.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with a common-law wife, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.

Yet again I've dragged out some little ad from a 1977 Popular Science; I just can't help myself. This one is especially good:


So, here we have President Malcom J. Roebuck telling me, with a look of dead-eyed seriousness, that I can make $25 to $100 per hour by making and selling "metal pin-back badges" made with his $35 button crimper doohickey. Let's use his own figures here and break down exactly what it would take in the "profitable badge and button business" to make this $25 to $100/hour.

So, to even hit his low end, I need to sell 10 of these an hour, every hour. That's assuming I'm only selling the expensive "photo" buttons and have zero expenses-- say, I stole the machine and am just punching images from discarded newspapers and ATM receipts. Roebuck, please. I can't even imagine the convoluted chain of events that would have to happen for you to hit the $100/hour number, but I bet it would involve a stadium full of people, and you and your button-making machine being the only source for an antidote for something.

So, $100/hr in 1977 dollars, selling cheap-ass pins you make on the crappy little crimper you bought from this crook. I'd really love to see the "fully illustrated money making plans" he offers as well. I bet they have tips like "Make sure everyone you know buys several buttons, every day, forever! It's THAT EASY!"

Martin sez, "During a recent stay at our cottage in norther Wisconsin, I awoke to find this balloon hovering above a futon in the corner of the room. It was eerie. I didn't know what was going on for a second or two. There was no air movement, even though all the windows to the cottage were open. Perfect neutral buoyancy!"

The video is awesomely David Lynchian -- something about the cottage decor.

Hovering Balloon (Thanks, Martin!)

Apparently, a bunch of big biotech firms feel that the patent monopolies they already have over certain drugs aren't enough, and they are demanding Congress enact laws that also stamp out any competition from similar drugs (known, back here in the real world, as competitors). You would think that after centuries of understanding how bad monopolies are for the market that the gov't wouldn't kowtow and simply hand over such things -- but it is. Of course, the biotech firms already have patents, so it's questionable why they also need an additional gov't granted monopoly period to block out "biosimilar" drugs, other than the fact that they don't like competition.

They claim, of course, that they need this exclusivity to recoup their costs in developing the drug. However, the deeper you look at the details, the less true that really is in practice. Much of the really core biotech work is done under gov't grants anyway, and often at research institutes. These private firms pick up the trail later in the game in a lot of cases -- but still get full patent rights. The actual cost of developing these things has been massively overstated, often lumping in marketing costs to R&D. It is true that clinical trials are crazy expensive and a huge burden on biotech and pharma companies, but that's a separate issue. There are numerous proposals about ways to take the clinical trial burden expense away from pharma. Lumping those mandatory gov't induced expenses into basic R&D is misleading. Furthermore, even in the face of competition, time and time and time again, we've seen that the original provider still commands a large and noticeable premium, from which it can easily recoup its costs. This is nothing more than blatant monopoly rents with a Congress too clueless about basic economics to resist.

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The CSS IS AWESOME mug is awesome -- until it makes you snarf coffee out your nostrils all over your keyboard.

CSS IS AWESOME Mug by stevenfrank (via Global Nerdy)

On the IDSA Materials and Processes blog, a fascinating look at a one-piece plastic latch designed to close large cardboard boxes, like the ones giant TVs come in.

It's passed though a hole that goes through two walls of corrugated (the top and the bottom) and then the two locking surfaces are pushed inward, hooking onto the backside of the inside of the carton. The latch is locked in place with a snap, which can be opened by squeezing...

Okay, now for a few points of interest: This part takes advantage of polypropylene's flexibility - particularly for snaps and living hinges. The image below shows the part in the position it's molded in. Part of the mold comes from underneath and part from the top, but they meet in the middle at a "bypass" to create a break between the two moving parts. Except they leave a little bit of flash to connect they (and probably to improve the flow of the material in the mold). That flash is broken with the latch is used for the first time...

What's That?: Plastic Cardboard Box Latch

As Mark posted yesterday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has extended a really heartfelt apology for Amazon's ham-fisted remote deletion of Orwell's 1984 from Kindles last week. The company offering the book for sale through Amazon didn't have the US rights (but US copyright law doesn't say anything about Amazon chasing down customers and taking unlicensed books back from them if it makes a mistake like this). I believe Jeff is sincere. I think he's a good guy, and I think that Amazon, is, generally, the best etailer around, with incredibly customer-friendly terms of sale and service for physical goods. Amazon is my first choice for everything from hard drives to CDs to electronics to small furniture items.

But when it comes to digital delivery, the picture is very different. Amazon won't even tell publishers, writers, or readers what kinds of mischief the Kindle can do -- in the months since its release, we've learned that Amazon will shut off your Kindle account for returning physical purchases if it doesn't think you're sincere; we've learned that Amazon can remotely delete files from your Kindle; we've learned that Amazon has a secret deal with some publishers to limit the number of times you can download Kindle books; we've learned that Amazon can selectively switch off features on books after you buy them, such as the text-to-speech feature.

And what's more, we've learned this all the hard way, because it bit customers on the ass.

Further, Amazon won't say what else is lurking in the Kindle. Specifically, they won't say:

* Whether the Kindle EULA or other terms forbid moving Kindle's "DRM-free" books to competing devices

* Whether there is a patent or other encumbrance that would make it illegal to build a competing device that can read or convert the "DRM-free" files

* What after-purchase control Amazon can exercise on "DRM-free" files: can they be remotely deleted? Can they have features revoked?

This is basic stuff: if you're going to sell a product, you should tell the purchaser what she's getting. It's not a radical proposition, and the fact that Amazon, with its stellar, customer-oriented real-goods business won't disclose these basic facts shocks me silly.

I want to love the Kindle. It's my kind of gizmo. If Amazon comes clean about what it can and can't do, and offers a way to sell and buy books without any of this control stuff, I'll be their biggest cheerleader. In the last year, my Boing Boing book reviews sold 25,000 (real) books through Amazon -- given half a chance, I'd start reviewing DRM-free ebooks here, too.

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com

An Apology from Amazon (via Make)

Roger Griffiths, a successful artist is Mapua, New Zealand, lost it when Westpac, the bank he'd been with for 25 years, declined to give him a NZ$80,000 (7,466,385.08 North Korean Won)mortgage because, as an artist, he doesn't have a regular income. He does, however, have a ton of property, a gallery show in NYC, and NZ$190,000 (301.471664g of platinum or 81,051.56 Burmese Khat) on deposit with Westpac. Which he promptly withdrew. In twenties. And then he deposited it with his local, community-oriented credit union, the Nelson Building Society. As Griffiths points out, Westpac is happy to lend to cigar-chomping loony industrialists like Lane Walker Rudkin Industries, who took Westpac for NZ$110,000,000 (10,860,852,632.40 Nigerian Nairas) in bad loans.

"They can lose $110 million with LWR but turn down a normal customer who has never missed a loan payment," he said. "If they don't have the trust in me after 25 years, there's a problem for Westpac."

Having decided to withdraw his money, he then decided to make it hard for the bank by requesting payment in $20 bills.

He said the Nelson branch told him it did not have that amount and he would have to also go to other branches at Stoke, Richmond and Motueka. However, he insisted the bank have the money ready to collect at 9am today. He then took it to the Nelson Building Society, saying he would rather deal with NBS because it was part of the community.

His message to Westpac: "If you don't support the community, the community won't support you."

$190,000 withdrawn in $20 bills (via Consumerist)

(Image: MARTIN DE RUYTER/ The Nelson Mail)

<td style='padding:2px 1px 0px 5px;' colspan='2'Exclusive - Backstage With Douglas Rushkoff

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
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Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Mark Sanford

Our pal Doug Rushkoff was a guest on the Colbert Report last week. Doug was talking about his new book Life Inc., the story of how corporatism has spread into all aspects of our life. The producers also made a terrific green room comedy sketch with Doug too. I LOL'd.

So much for the much-vaunted Swedish progressivism: the IKEA store in Redhook, New York, sent Sarah Miller to the toilets to breastfeed her baby, then, when she gave up on waiting for the toilets to be free and tried to leave the store, the same security guards who'd banished her to the shitter held her up again to check her receipts.

On Wednesday I was in Ikea Redhook in the middle of breastfeeding, fully covered, when I was told I had to stop doing "that" and go to the nearby family bathroom. The Ikea employee and security guards were extremely rude to us. I was hustled off to the bathroom and then had to wait because someone else was using it. I was humiliated, my daughter was upset from being interrupted in the middle of her feed. When eventually I gave up and headed for the car to finish feeding, the security guards who had seen the entire event insisted on checking my receipts. I'm putting together a formal complaint to IKEA. I was wondering if this has happened to anyone else?

IKEA Redhook breastfeeding incident (via Consumerist)

YA author Justine Larbalestier has gone public with her disappointment over her US publisher Bloomsbury's cover art for her forthcoming novel Liar. Specifically, Justine is upset that the cover shows a white girl, and the book is about a black girl. She took this up strenuously with her publisher but was overruled.

It's a rare author who gets final say in her cover, many don't get any say at all. I'm generally OK with this, since I figure the point of the cover is to convey to the reader, "this is this sort of book, and if you like this sort, you'll like this." And I figure that cover designers and art-directors who do hundreds of covers a year know, in a much more fine-grained way, what the psychology of covers is. It helps that Irene Gallo, Tor's art director who oversaw the covers of all my Tor books, is terrific, loves my work, and always does a good job, and that HarperCollins in the UK have also been kicking all kinds of ass on this score.

But Justine's right about this one, because, as she says,

This cover did not happen in isolation.

Every year at every publishing house, intentionally and unintentionally, there are white-washed covers. Since I've told publishing friends how upset I am with my Liar cover, I have been hearing anecdotes from every single house about how hard it is to push through covers with people of colour on them. Editors have told me that their sales departments say black covers don't sell. Sales reps have told me that many of their accounts won't take books with black covers. Booksellers have told me that they can't give away YAs with black covers. Authors have told me that their books with black covers are frequently not shelved in the same part of the library as other YA--they're exiled to the Urban Fiction section--and many bookshops simply don't stock them at all. How welcome is a black teen going to feel in the YA section when all the covers are white? Why would she pick up Liar when it has a cover that so explicitly excludes her?

The notion that "black books" don't sell is pervasive at every level of publishing. Yet I have found few examples of books with a person of colour on the cover that have had the full weight of a publishing house behind them4 Until that happens more often we can't know if it's true that white people won't buy books about people of colour. All we can say is that poorly publicised books with "black covers" don't sell. The same is usually true of poorly publicised books with "white covers."

Ain't That a Shame (from Justine's blog)

Justine Larbalestier's Cover Girl

Abel Mebratu writes with this excerpt from the BBC: "The first undersea cable to bring high-speed internet access to East Africa has gone live. The fiber-optic cable, operated by African-owned firm Seacom, connects South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique to Europe and Asia. The firm says the cable will help to boost the prospects of the region's industry and commerce. The cable — which is 17,000km long — took two years to lay and cost more than $650m."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kevin sends in this video of Michel "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and son at ComicCon, rapping about the Green Hornet, noting, "Probably the weirdest thing I've ever seen in covering Comic-Con."

SDCC: Michel Gondry Raps About The Green Hornet

Darren sez, "Often the best blogs give you access into a world you otherwise would never see, or even think about. This blog is written by somebody who escorts women into an abortion clinic, through a gauntlet of tens or hundreds of protesters. This photo shows how they surround the women to protect them."

I used to do this at the Morgentaler Clinic in Toronto some weekends -- my mother Roz was an early and prominent pro-Choice activist, and we were involved in the movement as a family from my early childhood. The hateful, violent protests at the clinic (which culminated with its bombing in 1992) were some of the most intimidating scenes I've ever been in.

We do this because clients of the clinic are often met at their cars by protesters. Between 2 and 5 protesters will follow/chase a client from their car parked in the public lot across the street to the private property line; talking at them, handing out literature, attempting to steer clients into the fake clinic down the block, shouting misinformation, slowing their pace, blocking the door and impeding clients any way they can.

Everysaturdaymorning's Blog (Thanks, Darren!)

Brando's new spy-lighter looks like a disposable cigarette lighter and shoots 4G worth of 640x480 video. When I was in China last year, I saw a ton of variations on this, including video cameras hidden in fat ball-point pens, etc. Stuff like this just makes you realize how pointless those bans on photography in stores are.

A Fake Generic Lighter Spy Camera Camcorder (via Red Ferret)

Hugh from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez,

As Google expands its Google Book Search service, adding millions of titles, it will dramatically increase the public's access to books. More and more people will soon be browsing, reading and purchasing books online. But Google may be leaving out the privacy we have come to expect, with systems that monitor the digital books you search, the pages you read, how long you spend on various pages, and even what you write down in the margins.

To ensure that our privacy remains at least as strong online as it is in the physical world, Google needs to do more. With the ACLU of Northern California and the Samuelson Clinic at UC Berkeley, EFF has written a letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, demanding that Google take specific steps to protect your freedom to read privately. We've asked that Google only respond to legitimate warrants when the government comes calling, for example, and we've asked that they not share your private reading data with third parties without your permission, among other things.

Now, we need you to join us in the fight to defend reader privacy -- take action and tell Eric Schmidt that you demand the same privacy for your online reading habits that you enjoy when reading paper.

I have some misgivings about the Google Book Search settlement, mostly to do with the fact that a settlement means that Google won't litigate the fair use question of whether making a copy of a work in order to create a search engine infringes copyright. Those misgivings don't trump my delight at the idea of guaranteeing public access to all these books, and the restoration of orphan books to public hands.

But the issue of privacy is much more grave. I want Google to create a binding, written agreement to hold readers' information private, so that the future of reading doesn't include the possibility of warrantless spying on your book-reading activity. For complex legal reasons, it's unlikely that anyone will ever be in a position to give Google a settlement permitting this again, so this is it. The status quo Google sets will be the one that we end up living with for the foreseeable future.

Don't Let Google Close the Book on Reader Privacy

In talking about business models for the newspaper industry, one point is often discussed: that newspapers are uniquely positioned to provide really good and thorough "local" news coverage. And while they often do a superficial job, in many cases they really don't provide as useful or as thorough coverage as they could. And that's opened up the market to others -- both big and small. We've seen a bunch of stories about various "hyperlocal" startups growing up. But, it need not be startups. BullJustin (who, btw, was the fastest on the trigger and was the very first buyer of our CwF + RtB store) alerts us to a story about how sports giant ESPN is moving in a big way into local sports coverage, hoping to take attention away from newspapers who could use some competition on the beat. Funny then that, as we're being told that there's no business model to support beat writers, ESPN seems to be finding an increasing need for them.

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Jonas writes -

My interactive media project this semester is about the augmentation of the classic communication medium business card. I tried to extend it wisely, so that you can have the essential information of a businesscard (adress, email etc.) and at the same time create a very personal and interesting possibility to introduce yourself to others. I kept the physical businesscard and extended it digitally. I don't think the "analog" business card will die soon, to many people it is almost like a status symbol and in Japan for example the "handing over" of a business card is quite a ritual. With my project i keep these possibilities and bring a new interesting touch to this communication medium.

I asked myself which technology is suited best for what I want and what came to my mind pretty quickly was Augmented Reality.

While developing my concept it was very important to me that everybody should be able to create such a businesscard and present himself to the audience. Also i am a Star Wars fan and i liked the idea of displaying the person as a kind of "hologram" :)

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With various ISPs implementing forms of capped or metered broadband, you would think it would be standard (if not required) that they also provide consumers with the tools to measure their consumption. Otherwise it seems a bit unfair to say you can only use x amount, but you have no way to know when you've actually done so. But, it seems that hasn't really stopped various ISPs. News.com is noticing that despite capping broadband connections at 250 gigs/month for many months (and rumors and screenshots of it), Comcast still refuses to deliver a broadband monitoring solution for users. If that's the case, it makes you wonder how accurate/reliable its own internal monitors are, and how it can guarantee that users actually get the 250 gigs they're promised. Perhaps I'm missing something, but is it really that difficult to measure broadband usage? If so, that would seem to be yet another reason that ISPs might want to stay away from metered broadband: the cost of developing a system to actually track it.

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Diomidis Spinellis writes "Two UCLA researchers published a paper in the prestigious IEEE Transactions on Computers that describes a technique for p2p content poisoning targeted exclusively at detected copyright violators. Using identity-based signatures and time-stamped tokens they report a 99.9 percent prevention rate in Gnutella, KaZaA, and Freenet and a 85-98 percent prevention rate on eMule, eDonkey, and Morpheus. Poison-resilient networks based on the BitTorrent protocol are not affected. Also the system can't protect small files, like a single-song MP3. Although the authors don't say so explicitly, my understanding is that the scheme is only useful on commercial p2p distribution systems that adopt the proposed protocol."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Who is this man and what is he smiling about? Pictured above is our very own Copy Chief Keith Hammond, and he's grinning ear to ear for a number of reasons. First, he's doing what he loves best. Second, he just caught a wave in the salty cold waters of Northern California on a board that he made himself. And, he used a kit from Greenlight that uses natural, non-toxic, and sustainable materials that won't trash our planet. That's plenty to smile about right there. To boot, on January 1st, we posted things we want to make in 2009 and Keith had said he wanted to make this board. Good work, soldier!

Keith sits right next to me in our workspace at MAKE headquarters, and it was a blast watching him work a shapeless piece of EPS foam into a beautiful surfboard, down to adding the personalized graphics touches. Keith lives to surf, and that passion came through loud and clear in his build.

Ready to build your own? Check out Keith's step-by-step DIY article in MAKE Volume 19. If you're a subscriber, your copy should be shipping in the next few days; newsstand date is August 18th.

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Carrie McLaren is a guest blogger at Boing Boing and coauthor of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. She lives in Brooklyn, the former home of her now defunct Stay Free! magazine.

A monkey is the prime suspect in a garden store burglary that recently took place in Richardson, Texas. The monkey was caught on surveillance video maneuvering through the shop, Plants and Planters. Owners of said shop have deduced that the monkey was trained by a human (since monkeys in the wild don't steal flower pots) to collect the goods and hand them over the fence. As of this writing, the monkey--and his or her owner--remains on the loose.

View more news videos at: http://www.nbcdfw.com/video.

Link (via Monkeys in the News)

This is the fifth post in a series of posts looking at the question of intellectual property rights in both China and India. We'll be adding new posts to this series each week for the next few weeks.

Access Is More Important Than "Incentive"

China and India are countries of enormous internal economic differences, primarily stemming from productivity gaps. The technologies that enable world-class economic efficiency in some parts of China and India need to be diffused throughout the country, but the monopoly pricing associated with IPR limits the ability of the poor to access empowering technology.

Despite the presence of high-tech hubs like Bangalore and Hyderabad, India ranks 63rd out of 72 surveyed countries for the Technology Achievement Index (Dahlman 2005). In China, Beijing and Shanghai have knowledge-intensities 6.1 and 5.3 times the national average, respectively (Dahlman 2001).  These disparities indicate an inability to effectively diffuse innovations, likely resulting from the higher prices and protectionism associated with increased intellectual property. The low productivity in most Indian enterprises indicates an enormous opportunity to make better use of existing knowledge; one analysis “implies that the output of the Indian economy could be as much as 4.8 times higher if enterprises were to absorb and use the knowledge that already exists in the economy” (Dutz 2007). Intellectual property is certainly an important factor, but not the only factor preventing this diffusion: after all, India's remarkable agricultural productivity growth known as the Green Revolution took place prior to global intellectual property harmonization.

Because R&D requires much more than financial incentives (educated workforce, infrastructure, etc.), close to 80% of global R&D is carried out in the developed world. Therefore, innovation in the developing world is more appropriately adoption and adaptation of existing technology. Instead of hoping that increased intellectual property will attract it (likely a fool's errand), there are other ways to access global knowledge such as reverse engineering, imitation, utilizing diaspora linkages and networks, and simply purchasing knowledge-embodying goods. Even with broadly condemned intellectual property policy, China and India remain highly desirable locations for the R&D labs of major international corporations. Several surveys indicate that India is the preferred location for innovation centers, likely stemming from the critical mass of low-cost, highly-skilled knowledge workers – the average annual salary of a scientist or engineer in India is $22,600, compared to $90,000 in the United States. Additionally, given the ability to digitize and internationally transfer much of their work, India is attractive regardless of concerns about intellectual property infringement (Dutz 2007). And the benefit to India is impressive:

“Between 1998 and 2003, MNCs made $1.3 billion in R&D investments in India. More than 300 MNCs are setting up R&D and technical centers in India. They employ 80,000 scientists and engineers and spend about $4 billion a year. Planned investment totals $4.7 billion… The growth of MNC R&D centers generates positive spillovers to the Indian economy, with the demonstration effect to indigenous corporations being the most critical” (Dutz 2007).

Although MNCs state their preference for higher intellectual property, a recent study noted that “it is unlikely that product patents will make a dramatic difference to their choices;” instead a change in IP will likely most affect domestic firms who are increasing amount and type of R&D without the incentive of intellectual property (Lanjouw 1997). India, and China where a similar trend is present and increasing, can further their attractiveness to FDI through tax breaks, increased liberalization and actively utilizing their diaspora.

Unnecessary for Innovation. Period.

Stronger intellectual property may also be unnecessary in another way. Although they are promoted as a tool for enhancing economic competitiveness, readers of Techdirt will know that their effectiveness is, at most, questionable. In the 1980s, there was a boom in American patenting activity, seemingly corresponding with changes to intellectual property laws that were made in response to worries about diminishing national competitiveness (Dahlman 2001). A measure of useful innovation, Total Factor Productivity, should have increased accordingly with the rise in useful, novel and non-obvious inventions, but this has not been the case (Boldrin 2008), providing compelling evidence that, contrary to common usage, patent activity is not equitable with economic benefits.

But even if we take patent activity as a reliable indicator of useful innovation, the case for stronger IP is doubtful. Strengthened intellectual property is unlikely to have caused the increase in American patenting in the 1980s: a study of patent reforms over 150 years in 60 countries confirms “that reforms have few positive effects on patent applications by entities based in the country undertaking the policy change” (Lerner 2002).

If traditional patents are not indicative of innovation and productivity-enhancement, is it possible that newer, related exclusive rights could do so? One such right, known as Plant Breeder’s Rights, provides patent-like protection to agricultural innovations. Here again, the evidence fails to provide compelling support for monopoly rights. The premier international treaties on the subject, the PVPA/UPOV, have not led to an increase in experimental or commercial wheat yields; instead, agricultural rights take away from the public domain seeds by allowing commercial entities to patent hardly novel strains. When enforced, these exclusive rights price previously affordable agricultural inputs beyond the means of the millions of subsistence farmers in China and India (Boldrin 2008).

Instead of focusing on intellectual property as the sole source of incentive for innovation, China and India should actively explore and promote ways in which to promote investment in public goods without bringing the distortions of monopoly rights.  As legal scholar Larry Lessig writes in The Future of Ideas, “There is no necessity to marry the incentive to innovate to conferral of monopoly power in innovations” (Lessig 2002). Digital, networked technology expands the ability for people to collaborate across time and space, significantly decreasing the up-front costs of innovation that intellectual property seeks to recuperate through exclusive rights. Models of open source innovation have proven spectacularly successful in software development where innovation is a cumulative and competitive process (Jaffe 2004). Open licensing models also hold promise in biotechnology where much of the research costs are provided by academic researchers who have an interest in promoting knowledge widely (Kapczynkski 2005). In fact, IT and biotechnology were successful in large part due to the freely available research made possible by university knowledge (So 2008). Funding can also be provided by non-profit entities such as government-awarded prizes for socially desirable innovations (Love 2007). Finally, even in a market without intellectual property, large up-front costs associated with innovation can be recouped through trade secrecy and the first-mover advantage (Jaffe 2004).

---

Other posts in this series:

• Do China And India Really Want Stronger Intellectual Property?
• A Brief History Of Intellectual Property In China And India
• Why Might China And India Want To Strengthen National Intellectual Property Policy?
• Why Increased IP In China And India Is Likely To Disproportionately Benefit The Developed World
• In China And India, Stronger Intellectual Property Is Unnecessary

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

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I'm very much digging these classic visual effects created by animation pioneer John Whitney using parts from an anti-aircraft gunsight. YouTuber crystalsculpture2 gives more info -

John Whitney's demo reel of work created with his analog computer/film camera magic machine he built from a WWII anti-aircraft gun sight. Also Whitney and the techniques he developed with this machine were what inspired Douglas Trumbull (special fx wizard) to use the slit scan technique on 2001: A Space Odyssey

[Thanks Erica!]

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Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading, is an enjoyable reflection on young adult books from the 1960s-1980s, written by Jezebel columnist Lizzie Skurnick (who is a young adult novelist herself, having written several Sweet Valley High novels).

Skurnik (and her friends) re-read a bunch of the books they cherished as adolescents and wrote funny and touching essays about them. I read quite a few of the books in here myself (I Am the Cheese, Go Ask Alice, My Darling, My Hamburger, The Clan of the Cave Bear) and the essays brought back a flood of forgotten memories. And now I'm interested in reading a bunch of the books I missed out on the first time around, like The Great Brain and A Day No Pigs Would Die

Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading