Matt_dk writes "On Saturday, Aug. 1, 2009, the LCROSS spacecraft successfully completed its first Earth-look calibration of its science payload. 'The Earth-look was very successful' said Tony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist. 'The instruments are all healthy and the science teams was able to collect additional data that will help refine our calibrations of the instruments.' During the Earth observations, the spacecraft's spectrometers were able to detect the signatures of the Earth's water, ozone, methane, oxygen, carbon dioxide and possibly vegetation."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Matt_dk writes "On Saturday, Aug. 1, 2009, the LCROSS spacecraft successfully completed its first Earth-look calibration of its science payload. 'The Earth-look was very successful' said Tony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist. 'The instruments are all healthy and the science teams was able to collect additional data that will help refine our calibrations of the instruments.' During the Earth observations, the spacecraft's spectrometers were able to detect the signatures of the Earth's water, ozone, methane, oxygen, carbon dioxide and possibly vegetation."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pat Race of Alaska Robotics, whose "Buy Back Alaska" video was featured here a couple years ago, has created a new video about crushing absurdity of national economics. It's embedded above, and I think it's sweet and funny in a homey, dorky, "I made this!" way.

From the land of Sarah Palin, meth shacks, and aerial elk-massacres, he emails Boing Boing:

Alaska Robotics is Pat Race, Aaron Suring, Lou Logan, Sarah Asper-Smith, and whoever else falls into our cast of friends and family. We live in Juneau where we make short films, draw comics, and eat halibut. We organize screenings of locally made short films twice a year and also work to bring filmmakers, animators and writers north to teach workshops.

If you're interested, there are a bunch of other films on our site, I like these ones: Socks, The Big Joke, Butterfly Kisses, Town vs. Valley, Nipple Fire, High Five.

Last month we wrote about how a district court banned the publication of a so-called "sequel" (written by another author) to JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. I had a lot of trouble with this ruling, which seemed to be a complete assault on the basics of free speech and a total misreading of copyright law. The book itself is not a copy, but something entirely new. Whether or not it's any good (and some of the reviews say it's not), it is a new creative work -- the exact type of thing that copyright was supposed to encourage. It's good to see a lot of other folks are quite concerned about this ruling as well, and the Fair Use Project at Stanford has teamed up with some other universities to file an amicus brief on behalf of the American Library Association and some other library associations, who are reasonably concerned about the free speech implications of banning the publication of a book such as this one.

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Sampled at Sushi Ran in Sausalito.

War is a calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings"--Harry Patch

Richard Metzger writes,

Beautiful, somber new Radiohead single available for download on their website.

Titled Harry Patch (In Memory Of), the song is a tribute to the oldest surviving Tommy who fought in World War I. Harry Patch was 111 years old when he died on July 25th, 2009. He fought in one of the grimmest battles of the war, the Battle of Passchendaele, where over 325,000 Allied casualties occurred and over, 260,000 Germans. The 99 day battle from July 31st 1917 to November 6th 1917, saw an average of 3,000 British troops killed, wounded, or captured daily. (By contrast, in Iraq, 3,650 US troops have died and approximately 26,000 have been wounded).

More over at Metzger's blog, including a statement by Thom Yorke. Beautiful.

Above, embedded, one of the last (if not the last) interviews with Mr. Patch before he died last month. All proceeds from the track will be donated to the Royal British Legion.

Matti Laakso tells Boing Boing,

The Acid Symphony Orchestra just published their first video on Vimeo. In a nutshell: 10 early 80's synths (Roland TB-303s - the defining sound of early techno and acid) played manually by Finlands top techno performers, orchestrated by the granddaddy of Nordic techno scene, Jori Hulkkonen.

The hardware required some serious hacking (this is pre-MIDI gear), courtesy of the Society for Experimental Electronics - a Finnish hacker/maker group.

Their first performance was at UMF (Uuden Musiikin Festivaali, or Festival for New Music) in Turku, Finland in 2007, and they toured Europe over the next two years. A festival documentary is on YouTube (in 3 parts).

Video here.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The judge overseeing the SCO Chapter 11 bankruptcy case has issued an order appointing a chapter 11 trustee to oversee SCO's operations. However, the judge's reasoning is far from clear. While the judge believes that SCO has 'abandoned rehabilitation' to bet its future on litigation, he doesn't think it appropriate to convert their case to Chapter 7 liquidation. So SCO's management hasn't been fired yet, but they're no longer fully in charge either. It's not clear why the bankruptcy judge opted for this solution, when even the US Trustee was pushing to fire SCO's management and convert the case to Chapter 7. In short, SCO is still only mostly dead, rather than all dead, and in desperate search of a miracle worker."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Boing Boing and Boing Boing Video are partnering with Institute for the Future and Sun to support the Digital Open, in which youth around the world are invited to submit technology projects "that will change the world--or even just make life a little easier or more fun."

The final deadline for submissions is August 15, 2009, but projects posted before the deadline will benefit significantly from feedback from the Digital Open community. We are giving away more than $15,000 worth of very cool prizes including laptops, video cameras, recycled billboard backpacks, solar-powered gear and more. We've already received 49 projects from eight countries: Argentina, Canada, India, Russia, Spain, Ukraine, the UK and the US!

More online: digitalopen.org

Clever wallet-size LED resistance calculator at EMSL!

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The artist Gary Lee-Nova likes to recombine newspaper comic book strips. "Uncanny Old Gags" is an anagram for "Nancy and Sluggo."

Uncanny Old Gags Series - Gary Lee-Nova

Because of farm fertilizer runoff, the seaweed in coastal waters in Brittany is growing like a monster. Scientists warn that as the seaweed rots, it forms white crust that traps hydrogen sulphide gas. When the crust breaks, it can poison people.

Alain Menesguen, director of research at the French Institute for Sea Research and Exploitation, said: “This is a very toxic gas, which smells like rotten eggs. It attacks the respiratory system and can kill a man or an animal in minutes.” Some scientists believe that a build-up of hydrogen sulphide in the atmosphere wiped out the dinosaurs 300 million years ago.

Fumes from rotting seaweed on France's northern beaches could kill

A few weeks ago, after the AP announced its plans to crack down on people who it felt were linking/excerpting too much, we suggested that Reuters should speak up and respond to the AP's position by encouraging linking and sharing of news. It appears that Chris Ahearn, President, Media at Thomson Reuters, has taken us up on the offer, writing a nice little manifesto: Why I believe in the link economy. And, of course, helping to prove that, he linked to a bunch of other sites -- including our original blog post asking him to make a statement just like this (in contrast, by the way, while I've been quoted multiple times by the AP, I'm pretty sure they've never linked to Techdirt in an article). His post is pretty much exactly what I'd hoped Reuters (or others) would say (though, Ahearn is better at being diplomatic about the AP). Here are some key excerpts:

The Internet isn't killing the news business any more than TV killed radio or radio killed the newspaper. Incumbent business leaders in news haven't been keeping up. Many leaders continue to help push the business into the ditch by wasting "resources" (management speak for talented people) on recycling commodity news. Reader habits are changing and vertically curated views need to be meshed with horizontal read-around ones.

Blaming the new leaders or aggregators for disrupting the business of the old leaders, or saber-rattling and threatening to sue are not business strategies -- they are personal therapy sessions. Go ask a music executive how well it works.

Exactly. There's been too much misdirected blame placed on the internet, even though the internet has never been the problem. Not keeping up with what readers want is where the mistakes have been made.

I believe in the link economy. Please feel free to link to our stories -- it adds value to all producers of content. I believe you should play fair and encourage your readers to read-around to what others are producing if you use it and find it interesting.

I don't believe you could or should charge others for simply linking to your content. Appropriate excerpting and referencing are not only acceptable, but encouraged.

That's basically exactly what I had suggested Reuters say... so that's great. Once again, this makes me want to look for Reuters alternatives to any AP story I happen to come across.

Of course, I don't agree with everything Ahearn has to say, though I do agree with the overall spirit of what he's saying. He talks about the need to agree "on a code of conduct and ethics." I'm not against the concept, I just don't see how it's possible or even necessary. These things tend to sort themselves out. Players who are "bad actors" become obvious over time. Good players get rewarded for it, and you deal with some questionable players on the margin. Rather than worrying about what everyone else is doing, why not just focus on providing more value yourself?

Then there's this:

Let's identify how we can birth it and agree what is "fair use" or "fair compensation" and have a conversation about how we can work together to fuel a vibrant, productive and trusted digital news industry. Let's identify business models that are inclusive and that create a win-win relationship for all parties.

The thing is, the law says what's fair use, not any voluntary agreement. And "fair compensation" isn't determined by everyone chatting (that could be seen as collusion, actually), but in the market actually doing deals. I'm all for discussions on positive business models that are inclusive and create win-win relationships. That's why we highlight examples of that all the time around here. But I don't think discussing good business models means getting an entire industry to agree to use them ahead of time. For better or for worse (well, I'd argue for better), the world just doesn't work that way. The win-win business models are being developed already -- and that's great. Let's keep looking at those success stories, and pull out the important lessons from them -- but that doesn't mean everyone "agreeing" to things beforehand. Unfortunately, that's just not going to happen. There are too many vested interests to make it work. But the nice thing is that those who don't figure it out get swept out with the tide.

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Last in the line of Pentax's announcements comes the Optio E80, expanding the company's affordable E series of digital cameras. It sports a similar interface to its predecessor, the E70 but with larger buttons, a larger 2.7 inch LCD, 3x zoom lens starting at a slightly wider-angle 32mm and HD video recording.

Next up is the Optio P80 ultra-compact camera. Incorporating most features of the earlier released P70 into a lighter body, the 12MP camera comes with a 4x zoom lens (27.5-110mm equiv.) and 2.7 inch LCD. It offers features such as HD video recording and a new 'Small Face filter', which makes the subject’s face appear smaller in relation to the body. Interesting.

Pentax has released three new compacts. From the top, we have the Optio WS80 waterproof compact. More of a lifestyle camera, it is not quite as resilient as its sister model, the W80 (though is still certified to depths of up to 1.5 meters for two hours). The 10MP camera features an SP (Super Protect) coating on its 35-175mm zoom lens. It also has a 2.7 inch LCD and offers interval shooting, HD video recording and a digital panorama mode.

Last in the line of Pentax's announcements comes the Optio E80, expanding the company's affordable E series of digital cameras. It sports a similar interface to its predecessor, the E70 but with larger buttons, a larger 2.7 inch LCD, 3x zoom lens starting at a slightly wider-angle 32mm and HD video recording.

Next up is the Optio P80 ultra-compact camera. Incorporating most features of the earlier released P70 into a lighter body, the 12MP camera with a 4x zoom lens (27.5-110mm equiv.) and 2.7 inch LCD. It offers features such as HD video recording and a new 'Small Face filter', which makes the subject’s face appear smaller in relation to the body. Interesting.

Pentax has released three new compacts. From the top, we have the Optio WS80 waterproof compact. More of a lifestyle camera, it is not quite as resilient as its sister model, the W80 (though is still certified to depths of up to 1.5 meters for two hours). The 10MP camera features an SP (Super Protect) coating on its 35-175mm zoom lens. It also has a 2.7 inch LCD and offers interval shooting, HD video recording and a digital panorama mode.

Eric Weinhoffer used his Makerbot to create this simple little puzzle.

Files and instructions on Thingiverse.

7-Piece Block Puzzle Pieces

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Geoffrey.landis writes with a snippet from CNET reporting another example of offputting treatment at Apple's App Store: "'In this case, it's a dictionary app called Ninjawords (so called because ninjas are 'smart, accurate, and really fast') that was rejected three times over the course of two months, mostly because 'objectionable' words could be looked up and found in the dictionary's search function, Gruber reported.' PCWorld also reports the story." Note that the app was eventually approved, but only after a few go-rounds and changes.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Blizzard has just announced that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty won't be released this year. From their announcement: "Over the past couple of weeks, it has become clear that it will take longer than expected to prepare the new Battle.net for the launch of the game. The upgraded Battle.net is an integral part of the StarCraft II experience and will be an essential part of all of our games moving forward. This extra development time will be critical to help us realize our vision for the service. ... As we work to make Battle.net the premier online gaming destination, we'll also continue to polish and refine StarCraft II, and we look forward to delivering a real-time strategy gaming experience worthy of the series' legacy in the first half of 2010."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mister Jalopy says: "Not a great picture, but I was leery of getting any closer. A swarm of bees have decided to create a hive under one of the bicycles in the long line of faded champions at Coco's Variety."

What can he do about this?

UPDATE: Amy Seidenwurm came and got 'em. Thanks, Amy!

This should hardly be a surprise, but with Twitter being so popular lately, it was only a matter of time until it was targeted in patent infringement lawsuits. At the very least, the company suing them appears to (a) actually be based in Texas and (b) have a product on the market. But... that doesn't make TechRadium's lawsuit against Twitter any more reasonable or sensible. Take a look at the patents in question:

• 7,130,389: Digital notification and response system
• 7,496,183: Method for providing digital notification
• 7,519,165: Method for providing digital notification and receiving responses

Read through the claims on each of these patents and try not to gag on the obviousness of all three. If you picked any competent programmer (or, should we say, one who is "skilled in the art") and discussed messaging systems, this is pretty much what any of them would develop. There's nothing particularly unique or special in what's described in these patents. And, now, unfortunately, Twitter needs to waste time and money defending itself for doing something (ahem) obvious.

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A MAKE reader sent this to me, they call it the "Big Gulp" - have a clever title for this? Post it up in the comments!

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recoiledsnake writes "OpenOffice.org has prototyped a new UI that radically changes the current OO.o interface into something very similar to the new Ribbon style menus that Office 2007 introduced and which have been extensively used throughout Windows 7. The blog shows a screenshot of the prototype in Impress (the equivalent of PowerPoint), but this UI is proposed to be used across all OO.o applications. Some commenters on the Sun blog are not happy about OO.o blindly aping Office 2007, and feel that the Ribbon UI may be out of place in non-Windows operating systems."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

recoiledsnake writes "OpenOffice.org has prototyped a new UI interface that radically changes the current OO.o interface into something very similar to the new Ribbon style menus that Office 2007 introduced and which have been extensively used throughout Windows 7. The blog shows a screenshot of the prototype in Impress (the equivalent of PowerPoint), but this UI is proposed to be used across all OO.o applications. Some commenters on the Sun blog are not happy about OO.o blindly aping Office 2007, and feel that the Ribbon UI may be out of place in non-Windows operating systems."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazing sculptures from Peter Jansen, moving through space and time.

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Here's a fun project you can do during the family MAKEcation (or vacation, for that matter): create a chest-camera rig so you can spin your kids around and take photos of them in flight. (Maybe if you get them super dizzy, they'll forget the fact that you're not taking them off the family compound this summer.)

Give 'Em A Spin - A Fun Family Photography Project [Thanks, Udi!]

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We talk here quite frequently about the fact that copyright (and patents) are gov't granted monopolies, and should be watched carefully because of that. Historically, economically speaking, gov't granted monopolies are bad for innovation and the economy. However, over the last few decades, there's been a big push by those who benefit from monopoly rents to try to redefine them as "intellectual property" rather than the more accurate description as a gov't granted monopoly. For the most part, our elected officials have bought into that language shift. Could that finally be changing back to a recognition that copyrights are monopolies and deserve the same scrutiny as any other economic monopoly? Today we saw a small move in that direction with a Congressional Rep admitting that copyrights are a monopoly and deserve scrutiny from the Judicial Dept. for that very reason.

I'm at the always-excellent State of the Net West event today, and the second discussion is about Antitrust in the Internet Era, and the discussion was introduced and led by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, who had a number of surprising (in a good way) remarks. On traditional antitrust issues, she's worried that antitrust actions aren't being used to stop anti-competitive behavior but for anti-competitive purposes. She notes that many in Congress don't really understand the purpose and reasoning behind antitrust and assume that dominance or marketshare automatically means there's an antitrust problem. And, of course, there is the problem of regulatory capture. So, she notes that you'll see elected officials basically read out talking points on antitrust issues from competitors -- rather than actually looking at whether or not there's real harm to the market. So, she suggests that the framework for antitrust issues should be looking at innovation and whether or not that's happening or is being hindered. Of course, the cynical out there (you know who you are) might suggest that these sound sorta like Google's talking points... Either way, she says she's trying to set up a seminar for the Judiciary Committee about antitrust, to get them better educated about the real issues related to antitrust, and that seems like a good thing.

However, much more interesting and unexpected were her brief comments at the end of her remarks, where she took on copyright, noting that it is a gov't granted monopoly that deserves antitrust scrutiny. She said, "Let's face it, copyright extension these days is 'limited' to the life of Mickey Mouse." And yes, there was sarcasm in her voice over the word "limited." The guy sitting next to me who works at Disney started shuffling uncomfortably.... Lofgren went on to say that copyright is being used to put up barriers to competition and innovation and is an issue that antitrust regulators really should be scrutinizing. This is really surprising, but really good to hear. Lofgren has been one of the (very) few elected officials who actually does "get" copyright issues, but this is the first time I've heard any elected official recognize that copyright is a monopoly/antitrust issue that deserves serious scrutiny for the way it's so frequently abused for anticompetitive purposes.

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A semi-anonymous reader writes "In the latest blow to DNS neutrality, Comcast is starting to redirect users to an ad-laden holding page when they try to connect to nonexistent domains. I have just received an email from them to that effect, tried it, and lo and behold, indeed there is the ugly DNS hijack page. The good news is that the opt-out is a more sensible registration based on cable modem MAC, rather than the deplorable 'cookie method' we just saw from Bell Canada. All you Comcast customers and friends of Comcast customers who want to get out of this, go here to opt out. Is there anything that can be done to stop (and reverse) this DNS breakage trend that the ISPs seem to be latching onto lately? Maybe the latest net neutrality bill will help." Update: 08/05 20:03 GMT by T : Here's a page from Comcast with (scant) details on the web-jacking program, which says that yesterday marked the national rollout.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bill Gurstelle is a Contributing Editor for MAKE magazine. His most recent book is entitled Absinthe & Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously. You can follow Bill on his danger-quest at twitter.com/wmgurst. He is a guest Make: Online author for the month of August.

I love the way movies and television glorify the maker spirit. From billionaire weapon inventor Tony Stark in Iron Man to the coconut-happy Professor on Gilligan's Island, there's often a heroic geekiness that shows how cool inventing and building really are.





But, watching something like Iron Man gives me a bad case of maker envy. I have a pretty nice workshop and decent tools. But try as I might, I've had no luck building a decent powered exoskeleton or even a radio that uses coconut fibers for an antenna.

With a few exceptions, the era of the great lone inventor, making commercially-viable inventions in their garages, ended in 75 years ago. Except in Hollywood. On the silver screen, the amateur inventor is still able to turn out everything from Doc Brown's time machine to Wallace and Gromit's BunVac 6000. To me, they're more inspiring than NASA.


Here's a list of top movie inventors. There are no doubt, many, many others. Add your favorites in the comments.

• Dr. Fred Brainard (Fred MacMurray) in The Absent Minded Professor


• Wallace (of Wallace and Gromit) in The Wrong Trousers


• Caractacus Potts (Dick Van Dyke) in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang


• Ben Chapleski (Dian Bachar) in Orgazmo


• Navin Johnson (Steve Martin) in The Jerk


• Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) in Back to the Future
• C.A. Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) in Metropolis

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A bunch of folks have been sending in Charles Blow's NYTimes column about the supposed "death" of the music industry. However, Blow makes the most basic of errors: he appears to equate the music industry with the recording industry. He accepts RIAA numbers of when "sales peaked," not realizing that he's only talking about sales of a segment of the wider music industry. Yet as recent studies both from outside and inside the music industry have shown, the overall music ecosystem has been getting larger in terms of dollar volume. Money may be shifting away from CDs, but it's not shifting away from music-related commerce. But, I guess that's what happens when you rely on just the RIAA for your data...

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tygerstripes writes "The dysfunctor has spotted an impressive project over on InventGeek.com; an innovative chap has developed his own thermal compound for improved CPU cooling, using diamond dust — the best available material for thermal conduction — as the key ingredient. In spite of the quick-&-dirty DIY nature of the project, the gains in cooling performance are remarkable, especially considering the material cost was only $33. Given the price many enthusiasts will pay for a top-end cooler, it's easy to imagine this product coming to market quite soon."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

R.Mo_Robert writes "BetaNews is reporting that Google is acquiring On2, the video codec company and original developers of the VP3 codec from which Theora is derived. The article suggests that this may mean Google is backing Ogg Theora as the HTML5 video standard, but this is likely not the case--with Theora already being open-source and On2 having disclaimed all rights and patents, there is no reason Google should have needed to do this to push Theora. You may recall from some time back that HTML5 no longer specifies which video codec(s) a browser should support due to there being, unfortunately, no suitable codec at this time. But Google (known for supporting H.264) practically owns Web video with YouTube in most people's minds, so their influence could really swing the future of HTML5 video either way. It remains to be seen whether Google's acquisition of On2 has any bearing on their plans for video on the Web."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michelangelo's first known painting is The Torment of St. Anthony, which is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York through September 7, 2009.

He was 12 or 13 years old when he painted it, which goes to show you that the kinds of things that intrigue 12 year old boys haven't changed much in the last 500 years.

NY Times slide show with details of Michelangelo's The Torment of St. Anthony

In 1997, the tech press knew three stories: 1. Apple is dead. 2. Microsoft is evil. 3. Java is the future.

In 2009, the stories are: 1. Heard a rumor. 2. Rewrite press release. 3. Steve Jobs. 4. Twitter has no way to make money.

So that's some progress. They added another story!

Last month, we wrote about a new study that basically showed that independent bloggers and the mainstream press had a rather nice symbiotic relationship, with different stories flowing back and forth across the two. Oddly, the NY Times misinterpreted the study to claim that it showed that bloggers were "behind" the mainstream press on stories, but the details showed a very different story. It's no surprise that a mainstream publication would portray the study this way, but it makes it even more amusing when that same publication is then caught using a story from a blog as well, without doing any additional reporting.

Now, before we get into the details, I want to be absolutely clear: I don't think there is anything wrong with this at all. You can't (and shouldn't be able to) copyright facts, and having multiple versions of a story written up from multiple perspectives is a good thing in my book. But with some, such as the Marburgers, insisting that its these independent sites acting as "parasites" and you have Ian Shapira and his editors at the Washington Post complaining about Gawker supposedly "ripping off" one of Shapira's articles, it's worth noting that this happens all the time in the other direction as well.

Eric Goldman alerts us to a blog post by writer/blogger Kashmir Hill, where she talks about how the NY Times did the exact same thing that Shapira accuses Gawker of doing to a blog post she wrote for the blog AboveTheLaw. The story is actually one that we blogged about as well (and linked to the AboveTheLaw version, along with two other blogs that led us to the original story), concerning a professor who gave his class an assignment to see what sort of private info they could find online about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (following Scalia's claim that there was no need to protect privacy online).

It was an interesting story that got plenty of attention, and involved real reporting by Hill, including talking to both the professor and actually getting a quote from Scalia via the Supreme Court. From there, a bunch of mainstream sources, starting with ABC News, but also including the NY Times wrote up their own versions of the story. They did no real additional reporting. They did cite AboveTheLaw as the source, but also used quotes directly from Hill's piece.

Again, this seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do -- but according to Shapira, this is the NY Times "ripping off" Hill and according to the Marburgers, this is the NYTimes acting as a "parasite." Does it occur to either of them that this is just part of how news is written about these days? Stories originate in all sorts of places, and then go through a variety of different sources.

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Boing Boing reader Travis emailed me this photo, along with the following:

I found this odd tombstone in Walla Walla, Washington. I liked getting high and strolling through the graveyard cuz there were a lot of really old masonic tombs. But this is just....the weirdest one I've ever seen. Maybe I missed something and someone on boingboing might have a clue?

UPDATE: More photos here. There are inscriptions on the back and on top of the tombstone.

Digital Dan writes "Twitter is being sued for patent infringement. Surprised? OK, probably not, but you'd think the plaintiff would at least wait for Twitter to actually make money before striking. According to TechCrunch: 'Twitter is being sued ... by TechRadium, a Texas-based technology company which makes mass notification systems for public safety organizations, the military, and utilities.' The abstract to patent #7130389 describes it: 'A digital notification and response system utilizes an administrator interface to transmit a message from an administrator to a user contact device. The system comprises a dynamic information database that includes user contact data, priority information, and response data. The administrator initiates distribution of the message based upon grouping information, priority information, and the priority order.' Two other patents are involved as well."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Zeer pot is an African cooling gadget which, for less than $2US in local materials and without electricity, can extend the storage lifetime of fresh produce by as much as 18 days. It is of staggeringly simple design: Two clay pots are nested with a relatively thin layer of sand between them. The sand is watered twice daily, and the inner pot, which is lidded, is cooled by evaporation. It's interesting to note that, although the technology to manufacture the zeer pot has existed literally since the dawn of civilization, it is not known to have been produced until recently. Who would have thought there was a profound invention remaining to be discovered using only clay and sand?

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Recently on Offworld, Valve announced another infected incidence with Crash Course (above), a new downloadable campaign for the original Left 4 Dead due in September that will bridge the No Mercy and Death Toll episodes with an entirely new location, and PopCap continued to perfect their chesty/lusty zombie parody with a new set of Evony-busting banner ads. We also saw Braid creator Jon Blow tease his next game, The Witness -- described as "an exploration-puzzle game on an uninhabited island" -- by dropping a Tao Te Ching quote, as Braid itself is confirmed to come to the PlayStation 3, and we found new details of the Wii/Xbox 360/PS3 remake of cult hex-strategy game Military Madness/Nectaris. Elsewhere, AI specialists announced a competition that will use science to build a better Mario, Taito teased Puzzle Bobble for the iPhone, Sega fanatics released the long-fabled 32-bit Virtua Hamster (!), and we looked at an 8-bit iPhone NES synthesizer. Our 'one shot's for the day: Keita 'Katamari' Takahashi, shoeless and amused, and Super Mario Lilliput.

I'm delighted by Elaine Morgan's hypothesis that humans evolved from aquatic apes.

Elaine Morgan is a tenacious proponent of the aquatic ape hypothesis: the idea that humans evolved from primate ancestors who dwelt in watery habitats. Hear her spirited defense of the idea -- and her theory on why mainstream science doesn't take it seriously.

TED Talk: Elaine Morgan says we evolved from aquatic apes

If it’s a good idea and it gets you excited, try it, and if it bursts into flames, that’s going to be exciting too. People always ask, ‘What is your greatest failure?’ I always have the same answer—We’re working on it right now, it’s gonna be awesome!

#

Last week, a lawsuit involving an allegedly defamatory Twitter message about a landlord made the news. This week, we've got another defamation suit involving another Twitter message and a condo building, but the situation here is quite different. First, if the alleged facts are true, it does sound like it could be defamation. It involves some condo owners, and who used Twitter, blogs and other websites to apparently accuse the condo board president of a variety of things including "murder, bribery, extortion, illicit payoffs, and corruption." Assuming those things are untrue, it would appear that the guy targeted by all this, Daniel Neiditch, has a decent defamation claim.

However, rather than just sue those folks responsible for the message, Neiditch's lawyers appear to have sued pretty much every company that these messages could loosely be associated with, including Twitter, WordPress, Ning, and GoDaddy. As Sam Bayard notes in the link, it appears that Neiditch's lawyers appear not to know about Section 230 of the CDA. That's a pretty big one for your lawyers to miss when filing a lawsuit like this. Ultimately, all four of those companies should have the case easily dismissed under Section 230, but it will be a waste of time and money in the meantime.

Of course, even if they were totally unaware of Section 230, basic common sense should tell you that these sites, hosting the content (or the domain, in the case of GoDaddy) should never be responsible for what was written on those sites. Going after them as a part of the lawsuit appears to be a blatant money grab, by trying to tie any company to the lawsuit, no matter how ridiculous the connection is between the actual action and the company. There really ought to be sanctions against lawyers who do such things, because it happens way too often.

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bednarz writes with this excerpt from Network World: "Vulnerabilities discovered in XML libraries from Sun, the Apache Software Foundation, the Python Software Foundation and the GNOME Project could result in successful denial-of-service attacks on applications built with them, according to Codenomicon. The security vendor found flaws in XML parsers that made it fairly easy to cause a DoS attack, corruption of data, and delivery of a malicious payload using XML-based content. Codenomicon has shared its findings with industry and the open source groups, and a number of recommendations and patches for the XML-related vulnerabilities are expected to be made available Wednesday. In addition, a general security advisory is expected to be published by the Computer Emergency Response Team in Finland (CERT-FI)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Crosley IcyBall (wikipedia) is a commercial early-twentieth century portable chemical refrigerator that runs without moving parts or electricity. Cooling is caused by the evaporation and re-adsorption of ammonia into a water-based solution, which is a spontaneous process that can be reversed by applying heat, as from a campfire. Authentic IcyBalls are valuable antiques, but Larry Hall has posted a cool write-up of the one he built for himself using gas pipe fittings.

>

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An anonymous reader writes "Tech Review has a roundup of some cool, experimental new interfaces being shown at SIGGRAPH 2009, underway in New Orleans this week. They include an amazing 'touchable holograph' display, developed by a team in Japan, which uses an ultrasound device to simulate the sense of touch as the user grasps objects shown in 3D. The other ideas on display are Augmented Reality for Ordinary Toys, Hyper-Realistic Virtual Reality, 3D Teleconferencing and Scratchable Input Devices. If this is the future of computers, sign me up." The conference has also seen the release of OpenGL 3.2 by the Khronos Group.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A brief yet interesting video featuring Luray Caverns Stalacpipe Organ we wrote about a while back.


More:

Luray's cave-strument

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Each week we're bringing you some of our favorite posts from our friends over at TreeHugger. Enjoy! • If it's September, it must be time to kill the wolves. • 98% of Scientists' Clean Energy Research Proposals are rejected by the Obama Administration. • It really is good that you're composting, but if you really want to help the planet, you should have fewer kids. • Hey there, future Darwin Award winnner! Next time you shoot an endangered animal, maybe you don't want to take it to the taxidermist.

Mark Guertin writes in with an interesting situation that he's dealing with, which I think highlights some of the problems with copyright law today. Guertin put together a YouTube video of some swimming pugs as part of a promotion for a charity he's involved with. Knowing that music on videos is a potential copyright issue, he went to Wikipedia to find some public domain music, and chose Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries to accompany the swimming pugs.

Except... he got blocked. YouTube's content ID system told him that the song was owned by (who else?) Warner Music Group, and thus the soundtrack was muted. Guertin filed a counternotice, and the music was reinstated, but then muted a second time as apparently someone (Google/Warner?) didn't agree with the counternotice. Without knowing the details, my guess is that the situation has to do with the different types of copyright coverage. While the song Ride of the Valkyries is public domain, each individual recording of it is covered by copyright. It seems likely that whatever recording was used is still under copyright.

Guertin is reasonably upset about the situation, especially the whole concept of having the music blocked until WMG has a chance to weigh in on it, noting that "guilt before innocence" seems incredibly unfair.

But the bigger issue may be how this (once again) shows how out of sync copyright law is with what people think is reasonable or fair. If you found out a piece of music was in the public domain, it's natural to assume that a recording of that same piece of music is in the public domain. And to make things more confusing, that's absolutely true (in the US at least) of a photograph of a public domain painting. But making a new recording of a public domain song? Bam. A new monopoly created.

Unfortunately for Guertin, the track he used probably is not in the public domain, even if the music is (yes, that's confusing). That's why, these days, it's probably more reasonable to search out Creative Commons-licensed music than public domain music -- because you can't be as sure whether the PD part covers the recording as well as the music. To some of us, that seems like a problem with current copyright laws, while others appear to view it as a feature.

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Did you know about our daily tips service, called make_tips? It's a Twitter account that will send you a tip every day from us here at MAKE (we have one for CRAFT, too), so you can either follow us there or check out the tip each day in the site sidebar. We publish tip submissions, too (with credit, of course), just send us an @ reply to make_tips! Here are some of the latest tips:

• When clamping wood, use a scrap between the finished surface and the clamp to prevent marring the surface (more surface area).
  
• Pack your essentials in a mint tin and keep them forever handy: http://bit.ly/DKznN
  
• Sparkfun enclosure tips including measuring before you finalize your box descision: http://bit.ly/1wpCsS
  
• Use big tweezers to insert/remove components from solderless breadboards (use plastic ones or turn the power off): http://bit.ly/OQJj8
  
• Many ideas and tips for miniatures: http://bit.ly/DoJ6V
  
• Don't use WD-40 on a rusty bike chain get triflow or 3 in 1 instead (via @frenzy666)
  
• Denatured Alcohol is better for cleaning metal than acetone; circuit boards too!
  
• Replacing handlebar tape? Only remove the adhesive from a few inches at each end; you can re-wrap if you make a mistake (via @zeldaar)
  

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Great reception for yesterday's rollout of OPML for Twitter Subscription Lists.

Some thoughts from various people.

Kevin Tofel at jkOnTheRun asks if it makes sense to output not just the people you follow but the people who follow you. At first I was going to say no -- but then I remembered a very important thread that came up at the NYC meetup. What about when Ashton Kutcher wants to move his base from twitter.com to kutcher.com. He's going to need a way to export his follower list. So yes, it matters. Now I'm not sure I want to deal with an OPML file with over 3 million entries. So we need to think about this before writing the code.

Shea Bennett at Twittercism, a very smart guy when it comes to Twitter, has a twist on Kevin's idea. He says OPML can be used to move subscribers between Twitter accounts. Hadn't thought of it, but yes -- it certainly can.

Phil Torrone says MAKE is the only OPML magazine. He's into what I call reading lists. Same idea Jay Rosen came up with for his Twitter followers. I think this time around it's going to happen. I make a list of great people you should follow, and maintain it. When I add one to the list, you automatically follow. When I remove one, you automatically unfollow. My guess is the Twitter folks already have something here too.

As I said in NY, I'm wanting to build something alongside Twitter, not instead of Twitter. I don't believe in killing in tech, I believe in respectful and peaceful co-existence. It's what really happens. Not the drama the reporters want, but the continuity users want.

Hugh Pickens writes "Scientists at Imperial College London have created detailed 3D computer models of two fossilized specimens of ancient creatures called Cryptomartus hindi and Eophrynus prestvicii, closely related to modern-day spiders. The researchers created their images by using a CT scanning device, which enabled them to take 3,000 X-rays of each fossil then compile them into precise 3D models, using custom-designed software. Both spiders roamed the Earth during the Carboniferous period, 359-299 million years ago, when life was emerging from the oceans to live on land. C. hindi's front pair of legs were angled toward the front, suggesting they were used to grapple with prey, an 'ambush predator' like the modern-day crab spider, lying in wait for prey to come close. 'Our models almost bring these ancient creatures back to life and it's really exciting to be able to look at them in such detail,' says researcher Russel Garwood, adding that the technique could be used to return to fossils that have previously been analyzed by conventional means. 'Our study helps build a picture of what was happening during this period early in the history of life on land.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ubiq_01 points out this vid demonstrating the use of a wiimote over iPhone's bluetooth connections -

The video first shows the iPhone's AirPlane mode activated before starting an OpenGL-ES Demo. In the demo, the orientation of the virtual WiiMote is controlled by a physical WiiMote over a Bluetooth connection. For this demo, the portable Bluetooth Stack from the BTstack project was used.

The OpenGL-ES code was based on the excellent tutorial by Simon Maurice. Thanks, this is my first OpenGL program.

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MAKE Flickr pool member Jeff M built this shop workbench using the instructions from Weekend Projects. In fact, it was our first Weekend Projects podcast (sniff, sniff), from July 7, 2006. Ah, that was a simpler time...

Weekend Projects - Make a Workbench

Workbench

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eldavojohn writes "Sixteen-year-old Deng Senshan was tragically beaten to death by three of his instructors in an internet addiction camp in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China. Reportedly it was for not being able to run fast enough. An article in the Wall Street Journal says that, 'China's netizens have played a key role in drawing nationwide attention to recent cases of deaths in prisons and detention centers, so it should be no surprise that they are up in arms over the fate of one of their own. Many questioned the fairly new diagnosis of "Internet addiction" as a mental disorder.' You may recall electroshock treatment being banned from use on internet addicts in China. According to Xinhua, more than 100 juveniles remain in 'treatment' at the camp, which has stayed open. Perhaps for Senshan it would have been better to let him endure his cruel affliction instead of having his parents pay over $1,000 to have him beaten to death?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Q-Hack! writes "Citing security concerns, the United States Marine Corps has issued an order banning access to social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter on its network for the next year. The Pentagon is now reviewing its social networking policy for the entire Department of Defense, which should be completed by the end of September, according to a report from CNN. The policy for the entire military is somewhat fragmented, as the Army ordered military bases to allow access to social media sites in May."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anonymous reader points out this squeezebox gone digital, incorporating a 16-button monome pad -

the Concertinome is a custom made instrument combining the concertina accordion with the monome style keyboard and electronic air pressure sensors. It was made by Espen Sommer Eide 2009 and demonstrated in this concert at Visningsrommet USF, Bergen, Norway.

Seems like a natural progression to me! The instrument uses an Arduino Mega running a custom monome-compatible sketch.

In the Maker Shed:

Arduino Mega

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It always amuses me when people insist that no one would create content without getting paid for it, since that's clearly not true. Plenty of people produce all sorts of valuable content for a variety of other reasons -- and even if they don't get paid for it directly, down the road, it can lead to opportunities to get paid. A good example of that, obviously, is the open source community, where there are plenty of stories of active contributors leveraging their success in the community to find jobs. But can it apply to blog comments as well? Perhaps. Ian alerted us to the fact that the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) is looking to hire people on the PR side, and one of the things they're asking for (even before a resume) is a link to your Slashdot profile (or other similar "comment histories"). Who knew all those "first!" posts could be worth something...?

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CWmike writes "Microsoft will pay Yahoo $50 million a year for three years and will hire at least 400 Yahoo employees as part of the companies' recent search agreement, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Yahoo's form 8-K, which appeared online on Tuesday, reveals a few additional details about the agreement. The deal, announced last week, will mean that Microsoft's Bing search engine will power Yahoo's search site and Yahoo will sell premium search ad services for both companies. Five years into the 10-year agreement, Microsoft can opt out of the exclusive engagement for Yahoo's ad sales services, according to the filing. If it does, Yahoo will then keep 93 percent of the search revenue generated on sites owned and operated by Yahoo, instead of 88 percent. But Yahoo can also decide to remain the exclusive premium ad sales provider, in which case it will settle for an 83 percent share of the revenue. If Microsoft doesn't end the exclusive arrangement, Yahoo's share of the revenue will go up to 90 percent."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Marie-Claire Camp, of ellohay!, sent us word of this upcoming event:

The Geek-a-thon is ellohay! West Michigan's first annual install-fest. This evening event will bring geeks from all over the area together to help prepare 100 computers to be given away, free of charge, to at-risk and impoverished high school students in Grand Rapids.

ellohay! is expecting approximately 100 guests for an evening of games, robotics demonstrations, food and drinks. Admission is free and open to the public. There will be t-shirt, sticker and button sales, and door prizes as well.

Guests and vendors include, Geek-Aid West Michigan, MadCap Coffee, Astronomer Rickey Ainsworth from the Grand Rapids Public Museum Planetarium, the Lego Mindstorm Robotic youth group presenting their Robo-Sumo match, Intelligent Interactive Technology from Jason Sosa's Immersive Labs, Comprenew Environmental eWaste truck, and more.

The ellohay! team is working directly with Geek-Aid of West Michigan, who is holding their Geek-Aid 2009 benefit concert the same day in Grand Rapids to raise awareness of youth poverty and digital exclusion in West Michigan.

If you're interesting in participating, ellohay! is in need the geeks and nerds of West Michigan to come together and volunteer a few hours of their time to a great cause that will help stimulate job growth, foster community, increase school participation, fight poverty and digital exclusion, and create new jobs.

More information can be found at www.ellohay.org, by calling 1 (877) ellohay, or by emailing hello@ellohay.org.

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Peace Corps Online writes "An expedition called Project Kaisei has departed bound for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — a huge 'island' of plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean estimated to be the size of Alaska (some estimates place it at ten times that size). The expedition will study the impact of the waste on marine life, and research methods to clean up the vast human-created mess in the Pacific. The BBC quotes Ryan Yerkey, the project's chief of operations: 'Every piece of trash that is left on a beach or ends up in our rivers or estuaries and washes out to the sea is an addition to the problem, so we need people to be the solution.' The garbage patch occupies a large and relatively stationary region of the North Pacific Ocean bound by the North Pacific Gyre, a remote area commonly referred to as the horse latitudes. The rotational pattern created by the North Pacific Gyre draws in waste material from across the North Pacific Ocean, including the coastal waters off North America and Japan. As material is captured in the currents, wind-driven surface currents gradually move floating debris toward the center, trapping it in the region. 'You are talking about quite a bit of marine debris but it's not a solid mass,' says Yerkey. 'Twenty years from now we can't be harvesting the ocean for trash. We need to get it out but we need to also have people make those changes in their lives to stop the problem from growing and hopefully reverse the course.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A robot named QuietBot #1524 posted to its twitter channel about the latest issue of MAKE:

No mention of me and my work, but the newest issue of @Make magazine is out, and it's all about lots of other #robots.

We're sorry you feel left out, QuietBot #1524. We went to your site and looked at you and your army of fellow warehouse distro robots. Most impressive. We'll keep your barcode in our database for our next bot issue. And look on the bright side, you aren't in the current issue of MAKE, but you are on Make: Online!

Quiet Logistics

From MAKE magazine:

In MAKE, Volume 19: Robots, Rovers, and Drones, learn how to make a model plane with an autopilot and a built-in robot brain. We'll also show you how to make a comfortable chair and footstool out of a single sheet of plywood, a bicyclist's vest that shows how fast you're going, and projects that introduce you to servomotors. All this, and plenty more, 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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The prototype iPhone payment system Square, currently in testing at a trendy clothing store in NYC, has been generating a lot of buzz for the past couple of days. What caught my attention was its use of the mini jack as a communication port. Often overlooked as a means of transferring data, the microphone/audio port on the iPhone is accessible from the standard iPhone SDK. If you're curious about using the mini jack port, the hardware chapter of the book iPhone Hacks has a number of hacks that utilize the the mini jack for uni- and bi-directional communication.

In addition to magstripe readers, IR remotes, modems, and keyboards, the mini jack is suitable for building almost any low-speed peripheral requiring bidirectional communication using inexpensive components. Since the release of the v3.0 SDK the iPhone development community has been excited about the possibilities of the iPhone doc connector. However, using the mini jack over the doc connector not only shaves off some manufacturing costs, but by using a standardized connector the peripheral can be used by other devices like, for instance, the OLPC XO.

[via mobilewhack]

In the Maker Shed:

<img src="http://blog.craftzine.com/makershedsmall.jpg" height="45" width="200" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="Makershedsmall-1" /

iPhone Hacks

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What is it with statues and copyright claims lately? Following closely on stories about copyright claims against a town's statue of a mermaid (since resolved) and a still ongoing fight over a photo and US postage stamp of the DC Korean War monument, comes the news that the guy who created the famous (infamous?) Wall Street "bull" statue, is suing both the publisher and authors of a new book about the fall of Lehman Bros., for using a photo of the statue on the cover of the book. Apparently (I had no idea), the statue was made by Arturo Di Modica back in 1989 -- totally uninvited -- and he just dumped it in front of the New York Stock Exchange unannounced. It was soon moved nearby, and it's stuck around ever since. Apparently, this is not the first time he's sued over such things, though it's unclear what happened in that lawsuit. Still, um... shouldn't there be a rule, that if you just dump a big sculpture on the sidewalk somewhere without permission and leave it for twenty years, you no longer own it? Isn't it like throwing something out?

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This is a really interesting prototype of an augmented reality device. I like the use of so many "simple" components to make a relatively cheap, yet powerful, modeling tool. It wasn't that long ago that this would have been either technologically impossible, or was cost prohibitive.

More about Augmented reality with Arduino

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino

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Sam sez, "The Confederate motor company make motorcycles that rub together heritage and futurism to produce quite astonishing looking machines - the kind of bikes that look like they're going fast when they're stood still. They also have an attractive air of menace in their styling combined with a sort of 'Mad Max' craziness. The kind of bike one of Stross' characters might ride."

I can see one of Charlie's characters riding this thing, but only if he gets to make fun of the overblown marketing copy on the site.

Confederate Motor Company (Thanks, Sam!)

A few years back, we wrote about the guy who claimed to have invented The Electric Slide sending DMCA takedown notices to people who put up videos of people (at weddings, for example) dancing the dance. Eventually, the EFF sued and the guy backed down, but it looks like we haven't seen the end of aggressive enforcement of copyright control over choreography. Mockingbird writes in to let us know of a story talking about the recent death of choreographer Merce Cunningham, which focuses on how his estate is moving rapidly to execute a plan concerning the intellectual property he held in his dances. After discussing one of his famous routines that involved (literally) rolling some dice to determine the sequence, the article notes:

Yet, in a press conference held in Cunningham's dance studio shortly before his death, Fishman announced, "The future of his life's work cannot be left to chance."

And from there, we get statements such as:

Cunningham, according to board member Allan Sperling, "wanted clarity with respect to the ownership, control, and continuity of his choreography." Mr. Sperling adds, "He wanted it to be in the hands of those he trusted to carry out his philosophy and approach." The trust, which has meticulously documented his works, controls licensing of revivals. "Presumably," Sperling says, "the trustees will set standards for the way the work is performed."

From there, the article branches off into a discussion on copyright. While it gets some of the facts wrong (claiming that copyright exists to protect an artist's income, rather than the truth: it exists to create an incentive to create), it at least tries to balance some of the questions, discussing things like Creative Commons and the public domain. It also discusses exactly how other choreographers have been held back by copyright:

New York choreographer Jane Comfort has been inhibited artistically in the past by copyright barriers. She now commissions new scores for her dances rather than attempting to use copyrighted music. "It is stultifying and difficult," she says. "The music industry and literary estates can be really tough."

The article also quotes numerous other creative types hoping to get away from copyright and the hoops and hurdles people need to go through to create:

Contemporary composer Joel Durand, a professor of composition at the University of Washington in Seattle, knows composers rely on royalties for income but says, "I wish we were not so obsessively entrenched in our little discoveries." He'd like his work to be freely available since, Durand says, "Everything we do is universal in a spiritual way. It all belongs to everybody because it doesn't come from us as individuals." Works "of an aesthetic nature," he adds, are produced "in collaboration with the world, and the creator should offer it to all rather than clasp their fists around their thought for gain."

Holby, too, wonders if unfettered access might flower into "a new Renaissance with everyone inspiring everyone else."

But... don't expect that to happen with Cunningham's work from the sound of things. Even though the article notes that when he was alive he embraced change, collaboration, innovation and new technologies -- it's difficult to square that with this whole idea of his estate carefully controlling and licensing his works. It's equally troubling to think that you can stop someone from dancing in a certain way just because someone else choreographed it first.

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This is a one of a kind 8-bit synth made by Dmitriy Morozov. Check out the link for more information, including a lot more synths made by this very talented maker.

8-bit noise synth is my latest project based on HT-8950 voice changer chip. Like my Lo-Fizer and Noise guitar it can produce noises by itself or process sounds like a lo-fi ring modulator, 8-bit pitch shifter and simple guitar synth/digital fuzz.

More about the Star Noise synth by ::vtol::

In the Maker Shed:


More about the 555 Noisemusick Kit

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JoeLinux writes "I am soon to marry my true love (a girl! yes! they do exist!). She is a literary geek, whereas I am a gaming/Linux geek. Being the RTFM-style geeks that we are, we have been reading up on marriage, making things work, etc. Unfortunately, all of the references seem to be based around an alpha-male jock and a submissive cheerleader-style wife. A lot of the references to incompatibility in the books don't apply to us (neglect due to interest in sports, etc.). What are some of the pitfalls and successes learned in the course of a more geek-oriented marriage?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Holmes sez, "After Jeff Bezos's public apology for the remote deletion of books, Amazon still has total control over peoples' virtual libraries-- a kind of control that has no place in a free society. The Free Software Foundation is calling them out, joining with readers, academics, librarians and authors (including Lawrence Lessig, Clay Shirky and BB's own Cory Doctorow) in a petition against Amazon's ebook DRM. The petition opens: 'We believe in a way of life based on the free exchange of ideas, in which books have and will continue to play a central role. Devices like Amazon's are trying to determine how people will interact with books, but Amazon's use of DRM to control and monitor users and their books constitutes a clear threat to the free exchange of ideas.'"

We believe in the freedom to read (Thanks, Holmes!)

(Ed. Note: We recently gave the Boing Boing Video website a makeover that includes a new, guest-curated microblog: the "BBVBOX." Here, folks whose taste in web video we admire tweet the latest clips they find. I'll be posting periodic roundups here on the motherBoing.)

---

More @BBVBOX: boingboingvideo.com

There's obviously been a lot of Associated Press-bashing around these parts lately, as the cooperative has been making a series of strategic blunders that are only serving to make it more and more obsolete. The bashing isn't due to a dislike of the AP. It is more in the nature of seeing a car wreck about to happen, trying to yell out at the last minute and hoping disaster can be averted. But, of course, there is some question as to whether or not the Associated Press is even relevant any more at all. Still, it's good to come up with some proactive solutions for what the AP could be doing that are a lot more reasonable than what it appears to be doing. Mathew Ingram points us to an interesting analysis by Steve Buttry, pointing out that what the AP should be focused on is providing business solutions to newspapers, rather than content solutions. Content is no longer the problem. Business models are the problem. Could the AP deliver solutions that help newspapers generate revenue? At this point, frankly, I'm not sure, but it seems like much more reasonable approach than pretending the internet doesn't work the way it does.

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American Public Media's Marketplace has a piece about Los Angeles tamale vendors. Devin Browne interviewed Antonio, who has been hawking his tamales in MacArthur Park for the past 14 years. He used an adult tricycle with a wooden box mounted on it. He makes $30 a day and it is his full-time job.

(See photo slideshow by Anna Bosch)

The police constantly watch all the goods and services that are sold illegally here: drugs, sex, fake IDs, even street food. Health inspectors have to dispose of all food that isn't to code and that might be unsafe. Sometimes they dump full carts of tamales into the gutter. And the gangs in the area, they charge rent to any vendors who sell goods on the streets that they've marked as their territory. Here's Antonio.

ANTONIO: It's dangerous. It's very, very dangerous. You have to be careful with the gangs, you have to be careful with the police, you have to be careful with the cars. There are a lot of dangers in the street.

The tamaleros play a game, sort-of like a high-stakes version of hide-and-go seek. And there are rules that all the street vendors have to follow.

ANTONIO: Don't throw trash in the street. Second of all, if you see the police, don't make eye contact. And the gangs have asked me to pay rent, but no I have refused to do that.

The interview is short. I would have liked hearing more from Antonio.

UPDATE Devin Browne says: "[T]he radio story was based on a multimedia piece Anna and I produced together which can be seen here."

The risky life of an L.A. 'Tamalero'

An anonymous reader writes "The code is final, and CNet has reviewed the final version of Windows 7, with benchmarks to support the case that it's not only the fastest version of Windows to shut down, but also looks like 'the operating system that both Microsoft and its consumers have been waiting for.' The review continues: 'By fixing most of the perceived and real problems in Vista, Microsoft has laid the groundwork for the future of where Windows will go. Windows 7 presents a stable platform that can compete comfortably with OS X, while reassuring the world that Microsoft can still turn out a strong, useful operating system.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hannah Perner-Wilson made this soft stroke sensor from some conductive thread and fabric. When the sensor is stroked, the fibers touch each other in a different way than when still, transmitting the signal to a computer or microcontroller.

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I recently cleaned out my office and came to the realization that I have no need for "office supplies." I had bins filled with Post-it Notes, notebooks, pencils, pencil sharpeners, glue sticks, paperclips, scissors, rulers, and other OfficeMax detritus that I just never use. Never. But I also realized that I have a mild fetish for staples. In my worldview, papers that belong together should stay together, for all eternity. I have a good desktop stapler, but lately I've been moving around a lot between home and several remote offices. I've bought mini staplers for my laptop bag before, but they universally tend to suck. Mini staples are no good, and the machines themselves often collapse at the mere sight of a stack of papers greater than three high. Fortunately, I recently discovered the PaperPro 1820 Nano Mini Stapler. First of all, the Nano is very compact but uses standard staples. The real magic though is in the powerful stapling itself. The all-metal spring-powered mechanism provides the Nano with the satisfying ker-chunk of an industrial stapler. The product packaging claims "12 sheet push button stapling power," but I've given it 15 sheets before and it hasn't winced. The PaperPro Nano Miniature Stapler comes in five crazy colors and sells for less than $10 each from Amazon. I think I'm going to buy a 5 pack for $27, especially since my wife already snatched my first one.
PaperPro Nano Miniature Stapler

Shapeways - now you can print in stainless steel.

The process lays down a thin layer of stainless steel powder, this is bound by a binding material. Layer after layer is applied and the resulting model is then lifted out of the powder. The model is then heated, cured and infused with bronze. Then in this case it is polished. This is a very new process and we're taking it straight out of the lab and bringing it to you.

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There have been tons of stories over the years of domain names being hijacked. The famous Sex.com saga goes back more than a decade, and involves accusations of a "stolen" domain. However, as a bunch of folks have sent in, for what appears to be the first time, someone has been arrested and criminally charged in such a situation (usually the disputes are handled through civil suits or arbitrators). In this case, it did, in fact, start as a civil suit, back in 2007 (attempts at the time to get police involved went nowhere). However, as new evidence came to light, criminal charges were just recently added, as well. The article linked above is chock full of detailed info on the case, including a good explanation of why these disputes almost never involve criminal charges. Oh, and as an odd side note, apparently the guy who "purchased" the domain from the guy who allegedly hijacked it, is professional NBA basketball player, Mark Madsen, who, when not playing center for the LA Clippers, has a side hobby of domain name speculation. Who knew?

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Student makes bicycle which folds into 26-inch wheel circumference, wins James Dyson Prize

Dominic Hargreaves's bike, The Contortionist, has been shortlisted for this year's James Dyson Award for innovation. It may bag the young inventor £10,000. The 24-year-old, from Battersea, London, said he wanted to create a decent folding bike after the one he was using collapsed. "I couldn't find a folding bicycle I liked," he added. "I wanted something that could take a bit of punishment and that you could have fun with. "So I made one myself."

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mmmscience writes "A group of scientists has identified a structure in the brain of psychopaths that is abnormal when compared with controls. The change is found in the uncinate fasciculus, a bridge of white matter that connects the amygdala (emotion/aggression brain region) and the orbitofrontal cortex (decision making region). Interestingly, the greater the abnormality in the region, the more severe the levels of sociopathy in a subject. The results were published as 'Altered connections on the road to psychopathy' in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. A researcher on the team suggests the finding could have considerable implications in the world of criminal justice, where such scans could one day be presented as evidence in a trial." The study's results have not yet been replicated by other researchers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Down on the hippie weirdo yoga farm. (Thanks, Jim!)

It's been almost exactly six years since I got into a bit of a debate about whether or not there was a real business model for fee-based WiFi. Not surprisingly, I didn't think it would last, even as there were a bunch of startups (some well-funded) trying to stake out a claim that they could build huge networks of paid WiFi access points. Those businesses never got very far. While there are still some fee-based WiFi access points around (mainly in airports), more and more are becoming totally free. Starbucks (which had been a holdout) has gone conditionally free, and last week Barnes & Noble WiFi went totally free. So can we now close the book on the idea that fee-based WiFi was ever a good business model?

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Bill Gurstelle is a Contributing Editor for MAKE magazine. His most recent book is entitled Absinthe & Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously. You can follow Bill on his danger-quest at twitter.com/wmgurst. He is a guest Make: Online author for the month of August.

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My friend Zina Saunders' beautiful illustrations show a part of New York many people never see, in her wonderful website called Overlooked New York. There are brightly-rendered drawings of cricket players, urban astronomers, and rooftop pigeon keepers. But my favorite is one particular group of accomplished makers.


They are the Puerto Rican Bike Men. Zina explains who they are on her website:

"The Puerto Rican Bike Men .. .. have their own aesthetic, one that the mainstream culture knows nothing about. Their bicycles are their personal vision of beauty and art that they are always tinkering with, perfecting and adjusting and planning and applying, and then riding down the street for everyone to see."

View all the bikes at http://www.overlookednewyork.com/schwinn/

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angry tapir sends along coverage from Good Gear Guide of a recent Microsoft !0-K SEC filing: "Microsoft for the first time has named Linux distributors Red Hat and Canonical as competitors to its Windows client business in its annual filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The move is an acknowledgment of the first viable competition from Linux to Microsoft's Windows client business, due mainly to the use of Linux on netbooks, which are rising in prominence as alternatives to full-sized notebooks. ... 'Client faces strong competition from well-established companies with differing approaches to the PC market,' Microsoft said in the filing. 'Competing commercial software products, including variants of Unix, are supplied by competitors such as Apple, Canonical, and Red Hat.'"

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This is a still from surveillance video of a fellow who robbed two Abington, Pennsylvania homes on Friday. From CBS News:

One witness said she saw a naked man fleeing from the (first) apartment just after it had been robbed.

Surveillance video also shows the suspect wearing dark colored shorts and a white sleeveless tank top, apparently before he decided to "dress down."

The same naked thief is wanted in a second burglary the same day, according to police. A homeowner told CBS 3 Philadelphia the suspect went through her 14-year-old daughter's undergarments. Women's clothing was reportedly stolen from the dresser drawers, and obscenities had been written on the mirrors.

"Caught on Tape: Naked Burglar"

Today at Boing Boing Gadgets, we had a special theme day on Augmented Reality. *Lisa wrote a feature about Geisha Tokyo Entertainment, the Japanese company that made the virtual maid desktop app that made waves on the Internet last fall; *Steven wrote about wearable computing, pondered future applications of augmented reality, and asked the question: What do pirates call augmented reality? *Rob reviewed the Dyson D22 Motorhead and Pledge's fabric sweeper.

This is hardly a new issue, but it's still troubling every time we hear a story like this. For years, there's been a fight over whether or not it should be legal to modify a legally purchased game console. Those in favor of the right point out that if you've legally bought something, you should always be free to tinker with it. That's just common sense. Those against it say that modifying a gaming console is done mainly to play pirated games or to cheat, which can cause problems for legit players. I find the latter responses unpersuasive, as those are technological or business model issues that can be solved in other ways, rather than a legal issue. But, thanks to that good old DMCA, that's now how the law works.

Instead, we get stories about students getting arrested for "jailbreaking" a video game console. It's interesting to see the use of the word "jailbreaking" here, as that's more commonly been applied to iPhones -- where it's common. Usually, this action has been referred to as "modding" or "modchipping" when it came to consoles. But the basic fact is that the actions are effectively the same -- and both should be perfectly legal. Modifying legally purchased hardware should never be against the law. It's possible that you could then use that modified hardware to break the law -- and no one's saying that's okay. But the act itself of modifying the devices should never be against the law -- especially where it could lead to a ten-year prison sentence, as in this case.

This particular case involves a student who would modify game consoles to let people make use of backup copies of their own games on the consoles. Making a backup copy, by itself, has been well established as being perfectly legal. The problem here (once again) is the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause, which makes it illegal to circumvent any kind of DRM, even if it's for a totally legal purpose. It's difficult to see how that's constitutional. Making it illegal to do something that's perfectly legal, just because someone puts any kind of DRM in the middle doesn't make any sense at all. It's a ridiculous scenario that this kid is now facing 10 years in jail for making video game consoles more useful, allowing people to use perfectly legal backup copies of their games. But, such is the state of the DMCA and copyright laws these days.

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My friend "Woz" (not Apple Woz).. worked on these, they turned out great!

This year, the DefCon badge wasn’t the only electronic badge at the conference. Ninja Networks, which throws a popular party each year at the conference, produced an electronic badge of its own to gain access to its party.

Over 500 badges were made by hand. The badges featured ten segmented LED displays, four buttons and several microchips on the back. Once powered on, the LED’s blinked random, scrambled letters that froze to form the words “NINJA PARTY” after 100 seconds. The badge was also programmed with a game of Simon-Says. Owners could alter random segments of the badge’s memory through a keypad on the badge.

The badges were created by Amanda Wozniak, who designed the circuitry, and Brandon Creighton, who wrote the badge firmware.

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