Jones gets the implications of this story completely backwards. It's only because newspapers are large, profitable, commercial enterprises that the kind of intimidation techniques he talks about work at all. Imagine it's 2020 and the Idaho newspapers have all gone out of business, and they've been replaced by several hundred bloggers, most of them amateurs. A whistleblower discovers some evidence of wrongdoing by a prominent Mormon official. Is it easier or harder for the whistleblower to get the word out?As if to prove this very point, there were stories this week about a newspaper columnist being fired (and, yes, the newspaper disputes some of the details) for writing a column that highlighted an investigation of a major advertiser in the newspaper. Oh, and what has the fired guy done? He's gone and set up his own blog. Again, none of this is saying that professional reporters and news organizations aren't an important part of journalism -- but the idea that no one else can do what they do is just silly.
Obviously, it's easier. She can anonymously email the evidence to a dozen different bloggers. Those bloggers don't have to all prepare long "investigative journalism" write-ups; some of them can just post the raw documents for others to look at. Once they're widely available, other bloggers can link to those raw documents and provide commentary. The official being criticized has three big problems. First, taking legal action will be vastly more expensive because he'd have to sue dozens of bloggers rather than just one newspaper. Second, many of those bloggers won't have any assets to speak of, so he's unlikely to recover his legal costs even if he wins. And finally, if he foolishly presses forward, he'll discover our friend the Streisand Effect: the fact that he files the lawsuit will cause a lot more people to cover the original allegations.
Likewise, the threat of a boycott only works because newspapers are for-profit operations with significant overhead. Threatening a boycott against, a blogger who writes in a his free time is no threat at all.
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Amanda Visell says:
Hello friends and weirdos. Holy crap, I'm going to some places! I'll be showing up at some Kidrobot stores to release my newest vinyl toy with them, the 8-inch Wood Donkey Dunny. He is here to chop you and make friends!Kidrobot Los Angeles Tuesday August 18 6-8pm 7972 Melrose ave
Kidrobot San Francisco Wednesday August 19 6-8pm 1512 Haight st
Kidrobot Dallas Thursday August 20 6-8pm 5307 e Mockingbird ln
Kidrobot New York Friday August 21 6-8pm 118 Prince st
The Wood Donkey Dunny will be released in stores at 6pm on the day of that store's signing and Thursday August 20 at 11am EST at Kidrobot.com. (You have to contact Kidrobot for one of these, not me. Sorry!)
My second article was about pirate TV and starting your own "Local Area (TV) Network." Here's a chunk:
In 1989, Bill Gates founded a company called Interactive Home Systems, which changed its name a year later to Corbis. Now, Corbis owns one of the largest collection of stock images in the world: more than 100 million shots. A slew of those images are safely stored deep underground in a former limestone mine in Pennsylvania. If you want to use the photo of, say, Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue, Corbis will sell you a digital copy and sell you some rights. That wasn’t Gates’s big vision though. His forecast was that huge screens would hang throughout our homes, rotating through a global collection of photos and artwork. The future isn’t quite here yet though, and Corbis’s business is about supplying newspapers, magazines, and ad agencies. That’s all well and good and makes people money, but twenty years later, I still find Gates’s vision compelling. And it seems easy to turn your home into a digital art gallery using a home network, media players, and inexpensive LCD TVs. The art is also free, although I always recommend supporting artists whose work you dig...
"Reframing Art In A Digital Home"
In the 1980s guerilla media scene that birthed Boing Boing, the proliferation of pirate TV was a holy grail for culture jammers. Proto-cyberpunk television series Max Headroom featured a character who ran a pirate TV station out of a converted bus, and rumors of late-night anonymous signals floating in the ether fueled our Videodrome-inspired fantasies. And it wasn’t all wishful thinking that individuals with a bit of tech know-how could take back the TV airwaves, much like operators of pirate radio stations had done since the 1960s. Famously, during one weekend in 1978, a pirate TV station called Lucky Seven reached viewers in Syracuse, NY. The station, hosted by an anonymous announcer wearing a gas mask, mostly aired Star Trek and Twilight Zone episodes — geek programming to be sure. And in 1987, a TV pirate sporting a Max Headroom mask broke into the broadcast of a Dr. Who episode on WTTW Chicago. Decades later, the proliferation of wireless networking and media players could bring “pirate TV” out of the shadows, enabling anyone to curate and stream video programming to a nearby niche audience — college dorm, apartment complex, or even city block...
"Start Your Own Local Area (TV) Network"
Make subscriber Brown-Eyed Albino points out this unique bit of CD album art can be played as a photo-theremin. Artist/designer Moldover (whose work we've covered prior) even incorporated the tracklisting via the PCB traces - great design!
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Walden 3/4 Ratcheting Box Wrench for B.F. Goodrich, US Patent #928,719, 1906.
If you're interested in 20th-century hand tools, Alloy Artifacts is a great resource. Admittedly the page could do better in terms of user-friendliness, for instance by adding a search box and thumbnail-browsing of the entries. Still, in terms of the amount and quality of information available it's hard to beat. The tools are indexed by manufacturer, and each entry has a link to any relevant patents and a photo, like the one shown here, with a length scale and a close-up of the toolmark.
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I won't speak for Bill Patry, but I'm beginning to see copyright (and patents, at least for software and business methods) as emphysema of the marketplace: something that is bad to begin with and only gets worse.To support that point, he then asks an interesting question:
Can either of you name a single legislative or regulatory instance (in any country) when the concept of copyright has been challenged successfully -- or the scope of its restrictions (in time or any other dimension) has ever been reduced? I can't, but I'm not a lawyer.It's a good question. I left a comment pointing to the only one I could think of off the top of my head: which was the US's decision that federal gov't documents could not be covered by copyright. That, of course, is a tiny tiny minor push back on copyright, and many other countries haven't even gone that far, preferring to use "crown copyright" to allow governments to claim copyright on documents. In thinking about it a bit more there are two other possible points -- though both are again pretty minor. First is the fact that the 1976 Copyright Act codified "fair use." Before that it existed in common law, but was not directly in the law. However, considering that we basically gave up nearly the entire public domain on modern works, that Act was hardly a step towards less copyright. In fact, it was the single largest step towards copyright expansion in the US's history.
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Patry, long established as one of the foremost experts on copyright law, has written an outstanding text that discusses how copyright law has been twisted and abused by corporate interests who don’t use it for its intended purpose (to promote the progress of creative works) but as a tool to prop up an outdated business model. On top of this, he explores the misleading and inflammatory language used by those seeking to abuse copyright law in this manner. Highly engaging and a must read for anyone who’s worried about the state of copyright today. Oh, and as a bonus, Patry has started blogging again in support of the book, after he gave up on blogging a couple years ago.
Law professor James Boyle has been one of the foremost critics of the undue expansion of copyright law over the years, fighting against things like the DMCA and the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act. Over the years, he’s noticed a troubling trend among some to question why the public domain is even needed — so he wrote an entire book to explain why. It’s filled with story after story that highlights both the importance of the public domain and how overly aggressive copyright laws have held back the public domain and the creativity that it previously allowed. As a highlight, don’t miss the incredible chapter on the birth of soul music by Ray Charles. If today’s copyright regime had been in force at the time, we might not have had soul music at all. Think of all the great music we may be missing today thanks to current copyright laws.
This book was on the list two years ago, but that was an earlier digital-only draft, as opposed to the full hardcover version now available. Levine and Boldrin are two well-known economists who began investigating the impacts of intellectual property, and were eventually quite disturbed by what they found. That is, they could find no evidence that either copyrights or patents actually achieved their stated intention of "promoting the progress." Instead, they found a lot of evidence that the opposite occurred — and that copyright and patent law served to hinder the progress and slow down its pace. Chock full of examples and citations to important studies, this book is a must read for anyone trying to understand the state of today’s intellectual property law and how closely it lives up to its stated purpose.
An excellent addition to the literature on property law and the economics of property. Heller recognized what he refers to as "the tragedy of the anti-commons," when too many property rights get in the way of the efficient allocation of resources, and notes how this has come into play on things like patents and broadcast spectrum. If you’re trying to understand the economics of intellectual property, especially if you’re a strong believer in property rights (as we are) this is an excellent book to understand where property rights can go too far.
This is an incredibly worthwhile read. I plan to do a much more detailed review shortly. It methodically lays out the argument for how and why copyright law as it's written today clearly violates the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law... prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech..."). The book is, at times, a bit dense to read through, but you kind of expect that from two lawyers. However, the detailed and thought provoking look at the history of intellectual property law, along with related legal concepts such as misappropriation and unfair competition -- as well as its detailed dissection of a few key court cases -- is, alone, worth the price of admission. I have some other problems with the book (including its eventual suggestions for how to "fix" copyright law), but there's so much value in the first half of the book that I'd highly recommend it.
A must read for anyone looking to understand the patent system today. Bessen & Meurer go through a ton of the research that has been done about patent systems, and include a bunch of their own, and make the case that the patent system simply does not work for the majority of industries out there. The book is incredibly strong in detailing study after study after study that details, in an incontrovertible way, that the patent system is fundamentally broken and clearly hinders innovation much more significantly than it helps it.
Similar to No Law above, Copyright's Paradox goes into great detail showing how copyright law appears to quite obviously violate the First Amendment, and why that needs to be dealt with.
Mark Lemley should be a familiar name around here for his views on intellectual property, and this book certainly is a worthwhile read. It does a great job laying out the many problems with the patent system and why it often does significantly more harm than good. Where I find it a bit less convincing, however, is in suggesting that the court system can fix these problems. I agree that the current Congressional patent reform bills aren't very good, but I'm not convinced the courts will go anywhere close to far enough in fixing the system.
This is a collection of academic papers having to do with intellectual property, as related to not just legal and economic arguments, but philosophical ones as well. I don't agree with all of the different papers, obviously, but there's a lot to get your mind churning on different ideas and different approaches to intellectual property issues within this book.
By now, you should probably already know about this book, but Chris puts into book form much of what we talk about on Techdirt. My review of the book notes that it's well-worth reading, though I think he could have gone farther and could have done a better job anticipating how to respond to the obvious critiques from people who were responding emotionally, rather than based on the actual points raised by the book.
This is a fantastic read if you're looking to understand innovation in a global economy. It puts to rests various myths about globalization or off-shoring being bad for the US economy, and shows how innovation itself is global, but the key question is learning how to actually implement ideas, and how to take concepts and continually innovate, rather than just focusing on a small part of the puzzle.
While it suffers from sensationalism, at times (too much so at points), the book does a fantastic job of highlighting example after example after example of how what some people feared as "piracy" was simply a leading indicator of innovation. In every case, the same pattern emerges: some existing industry freaks out over so-called "pirates," but the "pirates" are merely the market telling the industry what it wants, and what's possible. Eventually (often over massive protests from that industry) someone comes along and figures out how to deliver what the market wants -- and to do so profitably. This is a must-read for anyone who calls things "piracy" without understanding the real implications of what's going on.
A quick and easy read that gets people to rethink certain easy assumptions about economic behavior. While I disagree with the idea that the actions are somehow "irrational," I do think it highlights how there are often more variables at play in an economic analysis than a simplified analysis takes into account. For folks around here, his investigations into how people respond to "free" within an economic model (i.e., they value it more than you would expect) are particularly noteworthy.
Pretty much anything by Clay Shirky should be required reading already, but this book is one of the best out there in getting you to understand how the old systems of production and consumption are changing due to enabling technologies, and how the old distinctions between production and consumption are melting away.
Not necessarily Lessig's strongest book, but still absolutely worth reading. It goes well with Matt Mason's (and James Boyle's) book above, in getting you to understand the nature of creativity, and the way in which nearly all creativity involves mixing one's own unique ideas with those that have come before.
While admittedly it can feel a bit preachy at times, once you get past that aspect of it, you realize that it's a manual for innovative decision making (not just in business). It's about recognizing that businesses by themselves don't get to call the shots any more, and if they don't realize that, they're probably not going to stay in business very long.
If you want to understand how the concepts we talk about here can be applied in practice, the open source community is a good place to start. Glyn Moody has written an excellent account of exactly how that came about.
I actually disagree with the conclusions of this book, but there are still a number of good points raised within it, about how there's always a fight between "control" and "openness" in new technologies. Zittrain worries about the trend towards control, though I think in the end the market will settle things, and "control" will lose out to openness in the long run.
This rather epic tome goes deep into how innovation occurs in Western Society through a basic mechanism of a "culture of improvement": the idea that when something doesn't work right, we seek out a better solution. If you want to understand how innovation occurs, this is a good starting point.
I have to admit, this book is something of a mixed bag. There are parts that I don't find well substantiated, and other parts that seem questionable. But there is a decent section on how patents are being used to destroy scientific research.
While I would have appreciated a bit more focus on the final section about what it all "means," Rosenberg's book on the history and rise of "blogging" is definitely worthwhile, if you're trying to understand how new creative industries spring from nowhere, built on cheap and easy tools, and a large, willing and able population of people who have something to say.
We've said it time and again: the real key to innovation is not the idea, but actually implementing it, and innovating to get the idea out there, and to see how you can deliver more of what a consumer needs. Written by someone who's done that many times over, this book is basically a guidebook for those looking to go from the idea stage to actually bringing a product to market. For those who think that the invention is the important stuff, and bringing it to market is just "business stuff," this is a worthwhile read.
Candyland Game Starts at 10 a.m. Today
(Thanks, Dat!)
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Back to school is fast approaching, so it's time to get in one more family project before the summer's over. We've extended the MAKEcation challenge deadline to September 9, two days after you're done enjoying your Labor Day weekend. We have $100 gift certificates to the Maker Shed just waiting for you to come and grab them when your family (we use the term loosely) learns to solder, hacks a cooler, or builds a backyard trebuchet. All you have to do is add photos of your project to the MAKE Flickr pool tagged "MAKEcation" to enter! If you get stuck, have questions, or just want to chat, email campcounselor@makezine.com. What are you waiting for?
Top prize in each category: $100 Maker Shed Gift Certificate
Runners up: The Best of MAKE or The Best of Instructables
Teach your family to solder:
Cooler hacking challenge:
Family trebuchet challenge:
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Exchange at a "town hall" meeting on the "health care debate," which more and more has nothing to do with health care and resembles a crazy people lynch mob:
Crazy lady: "Why do you support a Nazi policy?"
Barney Frank: "On what planet do you spend most of your time?"
Barney Frank Confronts Woman At Townhall Comparing Obama To Hitler (via Friends)
Evidence combined from examining returns, questionnaire responses and the coital model strongly suggests a single predominant mechanism of failure we named "blunt puncture," where the tip of the thrusting male penis progressively stretches one part of the intact condom wall until it ultimately breaks."Male condoms that break in use do so mostly by a "blunt puncture" mechanism." (via NCBIROFL)
CONCLUSIONS: Blunt puncture appears to be the mechanism of breakage responsible for more than 90% of condom breakage not attributable to misuse. Knowledge of the main mechanism of breakage should help develop better user instructions, better test methods and, ultimately, better condoms.
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Emma Caselton made this combination timer/recipe book. The directions are spaced out along the page so that they are pointed to at the correct time by the slowly moving time indicator. It's kind of like a piano roll, except for humans!
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Richard Metzger reviews Neil Young Archives, Vol. 1: 1963-1972, the Blu-ray box set (it's physically huge, you could stand on it to change a lightbulb!). The short version: it's pricey, but thumbs up. Metzger calls it "[T]ruly the most impressive hunk of pop culture multi-media I've ever seen."
The good:
Young's attention to audio fidelity is legendary--some of his classic 70s albums have never come out on CD due to his dislike of the way they sounded--and the 24bit/192 KHZ PCM audio possible with the BD format showcases his music as never before. There are some very, very high fidelity audio discs out there, but none of them sound as good as the material on Archives. It is as if one was present in the actual studio (or audience) when the performances were recorded. High quality transfers were made directly from the original analog tapes--or at least with the shortest signal path possible--and it shows. FM radio classics like Cinnamon Girl and The Loner have never sounded better, but on the more intimate folkie material covered in the set, the audiophile qualities of the BD format really shines. The size of the room the songs were recorded in, the space around the voice and guitar, the buzzing vibrations of a single guitar string--all of this is quite audible on Archives. The sound quality is magnificent. I'll say it again, I've never heard better. For sound quality alone it would win the gold medal, but that's not the half of it. There are a gazillion nooks and crannies on the set.And the bad:
My biggest problem with Archives, though, is not what is or isn't on the set (Blu-ray owners will get updates from Blue-ray Live as long as their players are hooked up to the Internet, so Young could always add things later as he pleases) rather it's the list price. This is where I become deeply ambivalent about Archives. An Amazon reviewer hit the nail squarely on the head when he described how absolutely floored he was by the box, but that it had been given to him as a gift. Had he paid the full $349.99 list price, he's not sure sure he'd have the same opinion.Read the whole thing at Dangerous Minds: METZGER REVIEWS THE NEIL YOUNG ARCHIVES (1963-1972) BLU-RAY BOX SET
"They took all the money? That sounds more like a bank robbery."The problem isn't "identity theft." It's bad security and verification processes by a financial institution.
"No, no. If only. 'Cause we could take the hit. No, no. It was actually your identity that was stolen, primarily. It's a massive pisser for you."
"But, it's actually money that's been taken..."
"Yes"
"From you?"
"Kind of."
"I don't know what you want from me other than my commiserations."
"You see it was your identity. They said they were you!"
"And you believed them?"
"Yes, they stole your identity."
"Well, I don't know. I seem to still have my identity, whereas you seem to have lost several thousands of pounds. In light of that, I'm not sure why you think it was my identity that was stolen instead of your money."
Zombaritaville"Rippin' Off Your Skin"
To the tune of "Blowin' In The Wind" by Bob Dylan
How many lobes must a ghoul gulp down
Before he eats the whole brainpan?
How many skulls must a sniper nail
Before her rifle has jammed?
Yes, n' how many bites must I take of this guy
Before I've digested his hand?
The zombies my friend, are rippin' off your skin
The zombies are rippin' off your skinYes, n' how many folks must cease to exist
Before it's called a "killing spree"?
Yes, n' how many years in this mall can we subsist
'Til we're forced by bikers to flee?
Yes, n' how many towns must shamblers infest
Before they all turn to debris?
The zombies my friend, are rippin' off your skin
The zombies are rippin' off your skin
It's a casting for an adult picture - check out the premise!
"6 young people suffer psychologically traumatic experiences, which create a tumor in the collective unconscious. They then learn to draw on this tumors energy to become a helmeted power rangers-like action squad."
And if that's not enough, here's the write up on the character Evie:
"A precocious blond high school student. Based on the "Evie" character from the 80's sitcom "Out of this World" who has a distant alien father she communicates with through a crystal intercom. She can also freeze time."
At 9 a.m. on a Friday I find myself sardined into a basement room with 129 other people, listening to David Cunningham, a boomer in a dark suit and bright purple shirt, whose first language seems to be Tent-Revival Baptist Preacher. (I later learn that he was raised a fundamentalist in Florida.) He informs us that he has personally led more than 50,000 people to Transformation. He's here to tell us that "anything you want for yourself and your life is available from being here this weekend." He starts by taking a few questions from the floor. A querulous man observes that the phrases carefully ruler-lined on the chalkboard seem like poor English. ("In The Landmark Forum you will bring forth the presence of a New Realm of Possibility for yourself and your life.") David agrees. "It's very poor English. You know why? Because the usual confines of language would not allow your Transformation this weekend.""The Landmark Forum: 42 Hours, $500, 65 Breakdowns"Another man is called to the mic. He wants to know how Landmark is different from est. David sighs. "If I had to sum it up, here's what I'd say: They're both about Transformation, but est was very experiential. It was the '70s, okay? Your access was an experience. Your access this weekend is going to be just through conversation. We realized we could do it just through conversation." And that's the last we hear of that.
A slight, blond woman sitting next to me confides that she's here only because her boyfriend paid her way--with the subtext that this was an offer she couldn't refuse. She shows me a packet of notes tied with a bow. They're from a friend who attended a Forum and thought it was brainwashing. In the corner of the top sheet is written, "To be opened on 'breaks.'" Why "breaks" in quotes, I wonder?
I soon find out. "Break" is a misleading term at an all-day workshop that offers no snacks, no drinks other than Dixie cups of water, a single mealtime, and only loosely scheduled pauses to use the bathroom.
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Afghan media refuse to censor election reporting (Associated Press, via @dangillmor)A separate statement from the Interior Ministry said journalists should stay away from the scene of any attacks until investigators have a chance to collect evidence.
Even before the ban went into effect, police beat back journalists arriving at the scene of an attack on a Kabul bank Wednesday. They threatened reporters with loaded guns pointed in their faces and hit others with batons and the butts of rifles, according to journalists from The Associated Press at the scene.
One officer yelled "Your pictures help the enemy! Why are you helping them?" at an AP reporter as he shoved him back.
Over the last few days, journalists responding to attacks in the capital have reported increasingly rough treatment. On Tuesday, a police officer beat a photographer with his pistol at the site of a bomb attack on a NATO convoy, according to an AP photographer.
Image: poster promoting Afghanistan citizen participation in the elections, found on the blog of a UK Foreign and Commonwealth representative in Afghanistan.
Instructables user ansanma offers this clever idea for repurposing spiral binding coils.
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And here's a related item on a Gov 2.0, an O'Reilly/Techweb event/website devoted to topics of government IT.The new web site will provide a clearinghouse of structured, raw and machine-readable government data to the public in an easily downloadable format. For example, there will be updated crime incident data from the police department and restaurant inspection data from the Department of Public Health. The initial phase of the web site includes more than 100 datasets, from a range of city departments, including Police, Public Works, and the Municipal Transportation Agency.
We imagine creative developers taking apartment listings and city crime data and mashing it up to help renters find their next home or an iPhone application that shows restaurant ratings based on health code violations.
It's a great idea, but I'm not clear on how much of this is a PR stunt, and how much is actually more open access than citizens had before the site launched. Perhaps those who've examined the actual data being offered can weigh in, in the BB comments.
I live in Los Angeles, and I hope the powers-that-be down here are watching. I'd love to see our city open data to more public access, and scrutiny. For instance, the LAPD crime maps website is great in concept, but poorly executed (not to mention the horrible data omissions). I can think of many services I'd like to see built with city data here in my home town. (via @laughingsquid)
Nikon has released a statement explaining why some D5000 owners have been asked to return their cameras for a second time. The company says it developed an enhanced preventative maintenance procedure after it had started servicing cameras so 'a small number' of customers will need to send their cameras back again. It has also updated its list of affected serial numbers under the original service notice. Comments Off [link]
Pre-IFA 2009: Lastly, Canon has announced seven Pixma All-In-One printers, an A4 photo printer and an A3 office printer. The Pixma iP4700 photo printer offers 1pl (picolitre) drops, 9600dpi printing and supports direct printing from compatible cameras. The entry level Pixma MP250, MP270 and MP490; mid-range Pixma MP550 and MP560; and the higher end Pixma MP640 and MP990 All-In-Ones incorporate the Auto Photo Fix II image correction function and an Auto Scan Mode that recognises different kinds of documents and processes them accordingly. Last comes the Pixma iX7000 Business printer with PgR (Pigment Reaction) Technology resulting in water- and smudge-resistant, longer lasting prints. Comments Off [link]
Nikon has released a statement explaining why some D5000 owners have been asked to return their cameras for a second time. The company says it developed an enhanced preventative maintenance procedure after it had started servicing cameras so 'a small number' of customers will need to send their cameras back again. It has also updated its list of affected serial numbers under the original service notice. Comments Off [link]
Pre-IFA 2009: Lastly, Canon has announced seven Pixma All-In-One printers, an A4 photo printer and an A3 office printer. The Pixma iP4700 photo printer offers 1pl (picolitre) drops, 9600dpi printing and supports direct printing from compatible cameras. The entry level Pixma MP250, MP270 and MP490; mid-range Pixma MP550 and MP560; and the higher end Pixma MP640 and MP990 All-In-Ones incorporate the Auto Photo Fix II image correction function and an Auto Scan Mode that recognises different kinds of documents and processes them accordingly. Last comes the Pixma iX7000 Business printer with PgR (Pigment Reaction) Technology resulting in water- and smudge-resistant, longer lasting prints. Comments Off [link]
Musicradar has an extensive index of artists associated with the UK-rooted musical genre known as dubstep. Matt West, upon whose tumblog I found this, says,
Might I suggest you start by checking out this gem of a podcast, "Bristol Rise Up," produced by Mary Anne Hobbs of the BBC. Her "BBC Experimental" show has been championing this style since it first appeared. As dubstep continues to bubble up from the underground, she chronicles the rise of some of the hottest young purveyors of these dark and dangerous beats.Photo above: Kode9, who would like you to know that he is not Burial.
A-Z of Dubstep: From Appleblim to Zomby in 26 easy steps (musicradar.com)
I used to think Chuck Grassley, Republican Senator from Iowa, was an honorable man. An exception to the spineless liars of his party. Now he's spouting the "death panels" lie, like all the rest. This pitch hypocritically confuses and hurts the very people they claim to care about, the people and families of people who are dealing with serious illness or imminent death.
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Not uncommon that an intensely productive week is followed by an unproductive one. Fighting a cold. Probably just my spirit saying Slow Down Davey. I've learned to accept these things, not fight them.
(Ed. Note: The Boing Boing Video site includes a guest-curated microblog: the "BBVBOX." Here, folks whose taste in web video we admire tweet the latest clips they find. We'll post roundups here on the motherBoing.)
This fountain, which appeared at the Royal Horticultural Society's recent Chelsea Flower Show, was designed by noted British vacuum sexifier James Dyson. Inspired by Escher's "Waterfall," Dyson's "Wrong Garden" incorporates a clever design to create the illusion that water flows up each of the four ramps before cascading over the end. A detail of how it really works is below. Massive props to Flickr user zeddy1200, whose photograph, shown above, seems to be the only decent hi-res image of the fountain online.
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BB Offworld posted this awesome set of images from the Tetris, Sonic, and Mario game 'factories'. Originally published in Amusement mag's Made of Myth feature, you can check out the hi-res gallery here.
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Today at Boing Boing Gadgets, you can read about...
* A steel key ring screwdriver set;
* The GoPro Hero helmet cam;
* A man who faked a webcam suicide;
* A light made out of thousands of straws;
* USB dongles inside the case (pictured above);
* The slim PS3 is here!
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.
More on the Maker quest towards building a flying car....
Batting third in the flying car line up was the Mizar, a true and actual product of the Technology Underground, but it has a sad and far more tragic case history than the others.
Henry Smolinski and Hal Blake took the top half, engine, and wings from a light airplane, and placed tehm in an attachable module that fit on rails set on top of a modified 1971 Ford Pinto.
By melding the two disparate vehicles through a variety of attachment methods, they came up with a flying car - half Ford economy car and half high wing airplane. Initially it worked pretty well. In fact, it really did fly and as such it got a lot press (as flying cars tend to do.)
Here's a quotation, from a 1973 magazine article (Peterson's Complete Ford Book, 3rd Edition):
"Planned as a dual-use vehicle to fly long-distance travel and then operate as a conventional automobile for local surface travel, here's how the Mizar works. Equipped with its pusher-type aircraft engine, the Mitzar airframe will be kept on telescopic supports at a convenient airport. You drive the AVE-modified Pinto to the hanger and back the car under the airframe. A self-aligning track incorporated into both units makes attachment an easy job that requires less than two minutes to complete.Structural connections are made with self-locking high-strength pins in the structurally linked track assembly and wing support connections.
The last line in that description is worth special attention. For in late 1973, Smolinski and Blake climbed aboard the Mizar prototype one last time and powered up the engines. No one knows what went on in the cockpit of the Mizar as it rolled down the runway during takeoff. But what is known is that very shortly after they left the ground, the "self locking high-strength pins" gave way and the flying car developers found themselves driving through the Southern California sky in a suddenly wingless, and decidedly non-airworthy, Ford Pinto.
The tragic death of the two principal developers resulted in the end of the Mizar project. So, still, the world awaits the first practical flying car. But there is always another one looming on the horizon, ready to take off from the technology underground and fly into the big time.
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The biggest news recently on Offworld will have been Sony's announcement of a new $299 Slim-model PS3 (though with the caveat that it no longer supports Linux), and the additional follow up news of its 'minis' line of smaller, affordable PSP games (many taken directly from the App Store itself, no matter how hard the company denies it's not competing with Apple) will probably provide us with an entire new virtual platform to cover in the coming months.
But elsewhere, with the European GamesCom conference in full swing, we saw a wide range of new trailers and video footage: Beatles: Rock Band, Lego Rock Band, Brütal Legend, LittleBigPlanet's new water filled world, indie WiiWare port And Yet It Moves, and legendary freeware shooter Tumiki Fighters on its way to the iPhone.
Finally, we saw the first official Plants Vs. Zombies T-shirts, found the most sublimely bizarre patent illustration for Sony's emotion-detecting engine and its perfect distillation of What Modern Comedy Looks Like (above), saw Interplay and Gameloft reviving Earthworm Jim for a number of consoles, previewed Kind of Bloop -- the 8-bit Miles Davis tribute album due for wider release tomorrow, saw Space Invaders crop-pixels, and mourned the earthy death of 8-bit.
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Hate having to flash your chip to bring your TV-B-Gone to Europe? Well, cross it off your packing to-do list, the new TV-B-Gone turns off TVs in North America, Europe/UK, and Asia.
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The Canon's PowerShot S90 appears to represent exactly the sort of compact we like - a bright lens, good screen and easy access to a selection of manual controls. Then we discovered the control ring around the lens and thought it worth publishing our first impressions. Click here to have a read of our brief hands-on with Canon's latest photographers' compact. Comments Off [link]
The Canon's PowerShot S90 appears to represent exactly the sort of compact we like - a bright lens, good screen and easy access to a selection of manual controls. Then we discovered the control ring around the lens and thought it worth publishing our first impressions. Comments Off [link]
Pre-IFA 2009: In addition to its camera announcements, Canon has introduced the Selphy ES40 compact dye-sublimation photo printer with built-in voice guidance. Offering an option of seven different languages, the voice guidance helps users through the printing process and also informs them of common printing issues. It features a similar design of its predecessor, the ES30, including the Easy Scroll Wheel and large buttons, but with a larger 3.5 inch LCD. Comments Off [link]
Pre-IFA 2009: Canon has also launched the super-zoom PowerShot SX120 IS. Featuring the same 10x zoom lens (36-300mm equiv.) and 3 inch LCD of its predecessor (SX110 IS), but has seen the resolution increase to 10MP. The rest of the features are similar to the the SX110 IS including P/A/S/M shooting modes but with faster Face Detection that can detect up to 35 faces. Comments Off [link]
Pre-IFA 2009: Canon has announced the PowerShot SX20 IS super-zoom digital compact, successor to the the SX10 IS. Featuring the same wide angle 20x (28-560mm equiv.) zoom lens and 2.5 inch vari-angle LCD of its predecessor, the latest model features a 12.1MP sensor and offers 720p HD video recording. Comments Off [link]
Pre-IFA 2009: Then come Canon's first touch-screen camera, the SD980 IS (Digital IXUS 200 IS), and its slimmest wide-angle compact, the SD 940 IS (Digital IXUS 120 IS). The SD 980 IS features a 3 inch touch-screen LCD and an optically stabilized 5x zoom lens starting at a wide 24mm equivalent. The SD 940 IS is bundled with a wide-angle 28-112mm equivalent lens with optical stabilization and 2.7 inch LCD in a slim body design. Both cameras feature 12.1 MP sensors and offer HD video recording. Comments Off [link]
Pre-IFA 2009: Next comes the PowerShot S90 digital compact, resurrecting Canon's S-series of compact 'photographers' cameras. It features a 28-105mm F2.0-4.9 stabilized lens with a control ring built around it that enables control of camera settings such as exposure compensation. It also offers a 3 inch LCD with 461k dot resolution in a slim, compact body. Like the G11, it includes the high sensitivity 10MP sensor and Digic 4 noise reduction to make up a 'Dual Anti-Noise System.' In keeping with the photographers' camera brief, the S90 includes manual control and RAW shooting. Comments Off [link]
Pre-IFA 2009: Canon has announced a handful of compact cameras including models aimed squarely at keen photographers. Top of the line is the PowerShot G11, successor to its flagship PowerShot G10 compact released last year. The G11 replaces the G10's 14.7MP sensor with what it describes as a high sensitivity 10 MP CCD though it still uses the same 28-140mm equivalent stabilized lens. The camera also gains a tilt and swivel LCD, though the size drops to 2.8 inches. Flash sync speed increases to 1/2000th of a second and HDMI output is also added. Other features include Dual Anti-Noise System (more sensitive sensor and Digic 4 offering a claimed 2-stop improvement over the G10), RAW shooting and P/A/S/M shooting modes. Comments Off [link]
In addition to its camera announcements, Canon has introduced the Selphy ES40 compact dye-sublimation photo printer with built-in voice guidance. Offering an option of seven different languages, the voice guidance helps users through the printing process and also informs them of common printing issues. It features a similar design of its predecessor, the ES30, including the Easy Scroll Wheel and large buttons, but with a larger 3.5 inch LCD. Comments Off [link]
Canon has also launched the super-zoom PowerShot SX120 IS. Featuring the same 10x zoom lens (36-300mm equiv.) and 3 inch LCD of its predecessor (SX110 IS), but has seen the resolution increase to 10MP. The rest of the features are similar to the the SX110 IS including P/A/S/M shooting modes but with faster Face Detection that can detect up to 35 faces. Comments Off [link]
Canon has announced the PowerShot SX20 IS super-zoom digital compact, successor to the the SX10 IS. Featuring the same wide angle 20x (28-560mm equiv.) zoom lens and 2.5 inch vari-angle LCD of its predecessor, the latest model features a 12.1MP sensor and offers RAW shooting and HD video recording right from the outset. Comments Off [link]
Next come Canon's first touch-screen camera, the Digital IXUS 200 IS, and its slimmest wide-angle compact, the Digital IXUS 120 IS. The IXUS 200 IS features a 3 inch touch-screen LCD and an optically stabilized 5x zoom lens starting at a wide 24mm equivalent. The IXUS 120 IS is bundled with a wide-angle 28-112mm equivalent lens with optical stabilization and 2.7 inch LCD in a slim body design. Both cameras feature 12.1 MP sensors and offer HD video recording. Comments Off [link]
Next comes the PowerShot S90 digital compact, resurrecting Canon's S-series of compact 'photographers' cameras. It features a 28-105mm F2.0-4.9 stabilized lens with a control ring built around it that enables control of camera settings such as exposure compensation. It also offers a 3 inch LCD with 461k dot resolution in a slim, compact body. Like the G11, it includes the high sensitivity 10MP sensor and Digic 4 noise reduction to make up a 'Dual Anti-Noise System.' In keeping with the photographers' camera brief, the S90 includes manual control and RAW shooting. Comments Off [link]
Canon has announced a handful of compact cameras including models aimed squarely at keen photographers. Top of the line is the PowerShot G11, successor to its flagship PowerShot G10 compact released last year. The G11 replaces the G10's 14.7MP sensor with what it describes as a high sensitivity 10 MP CCD though it still uses the same 28-140mm equivalent stabilized lens. The camera also gains a tilt and swivel LCD, though the size drops to 2.8 inches. Flash sync speed increases to 1/2000th of a second and HDMI output is also added. Other features include Dual Anti-Noise System (more sensitive sensor and Digic 4 offering a claimed 2-stop improvement over the G10), RAW shooting and P/A/S/M shooting modes. Comments Off [link]
Tomorrow night's Handmade Music event in Brooklyn will be an a project/work party!
What: An open lab, a special guest, a chance to make stuff, hang out, and be inspired.Read more @ handmademusic.noisepages Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Events | Digg this!
Where: 3rd Ward, Brooklyn
When: Thursday, August 20, 6 pm (early start!) – 11. (We plan to order out for some food; bring a little cash.)We’ve featured some terrific projects at Handmade Music, but the goal is not just to be a showcase for finished work – we also want to help be a testbed for your projects, for things that don’t work yet, for trying out quick projects, and finding inspiration.
That’s the idea behind this week’s Handmade Music Open Lab. Bring projects you want to fix, finish, or start. Bring stuff to work on. Relish in the ability to set aside a few hours without distractions to make things – and to check out what others are making. Or simply stop by to eavesdrop on fellow makers’ workflow.
All are welcome, regardless of skill level. Bring your projects, and be sure to bring your own tools (extra cords / extension cords if you can). We’ll have a PA, a projector, and some space in which to work, plus lots of other people to hang out with and enjoy.
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From the MAKE Flickr pool
Augustson built this classy binary clock using an Arduino board, wood craft case, and translucent white acrylic. More details from the build available here.
In the Maker Shed:
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Nikon has released a statement explaining why some D5000 owners have been asked to return their cameras for a second time. The company says it developed an enhanced preventative maintenance procedure after it had started servicing cameras so 'a small number' of customers will need to send their cameras back again. It has also updated its list of affected serial numbers under the original service notice. Comments Off [link]
This week's dog days of summer deal is our Maker's Notebook. Maggie seems to like them, and we think you will too! You can pick one up for $11.99, that's 40% off.
From the creators of Make & Craft Magazine comes the Maker's Notebook. Put your own ideas, diagrams, calculations & notes down in these 150 pages of engineering graph paper. We've also included 20 bonus pages of reference material, from useful stuff like electronics symbols, resistor codes, weights and measures, basic conversions and more, to really useful stuff like the amount of caffeine in different caffeinated beverages and how to say "Hello, World!" in various computer languages.
Please Note: Don't worry, the one we send you won't be covered in drool!
The dog days of summer are upon us, and you know what that means? Time to hit the beach? Well, maybe. But, it also means that it's time for some special deals in the Maker Shed. Each week we will feature a kit at a special "dog days" discount. The deal will last about a week, so take advantage of the savings while you can.
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Recently, I spent some time with my kids in Disney World. One of the highlights of the trip was discovering the toy robot exhibit at the Japan Pavilion in Epcot. I didn't have my good camera with me, but I was able to snap a few pictures. OK, a lot of pictures. You can check out my flickr set here.
In the Maker Shed:
Make, Volume 19 will reveal hands-on methods for building simple robots. Inside this intriguing issue, you'll find complete instructions for creating robots that are not only lifelike, but are also able to detect and respond to things around them. Create your own DIY Drones and Robotic Flies with projects that will keep you riveted!
Subscribe to MAKE, or log in to check out the Digital Edition.
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Looks like Parallax is catching on to solder-it-yourself kits! The P8X32A-Q44 SchmartBoard Kit comes with surface mount and through-hole components to make a powerful microcrontroller dev board. It says it "makes surface mount soldering easy," but doesn't say how... do those pins look farther apart than in a standard SMD package to you?
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OK, if you have your cooler but are already cold enough or don't plan to take it anywhere, here are a couple more ideas for what to do with it:
Having a party at night? Make it easy to find the right beverage by following vader119's directions and add a light to your cooler!
Trying to maintain an outdoor worm composting bin in the Texas heat? Instructables user coopdaddi shows how he added a water chiller and a fan to make his cooler a perfect place for worms!
Have the opposite problem, and need a way to keep your resin/RTV project warm while it cures? Why not convert your cooler into a low-temperature curing oven by following idmains instructions? Bonus points for adding a mechanism to control the inside temperature.
So, that's just about everything I can think of to do with a cooler. Have any last-minute ideas? Be sure to share them in the Comments for a chance at a prize!
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Chip's website has a lot of his old essays, which are great fun to read. One, called "Don't Blame Me!" has examples of dumb lawsuits. Excerpt:
Chip Rowe's essaysThese days people look for warning labels on everything. When one guy failed to negotiate a milkshake and his steering wheel and crashed his car, he sued McDonald's. Where was the label on the shake, he asked, warning him not to slurp and drive? A student who fell from a window while mooning passersby sued the university because it hadn't posted a caution sign. (Here's my suggestion: "NO ASSES BEYOND THIS POINT.") A bowler who slipped on popcorn sued the alley for $50,000 for not having "watch-for- kernals-on-the-floor" warnings — which could have been placed besides the "don't-drop-the-ball-on-your-foot" sign.
I kid you not: One guy who munched into a Peanut M&M that didn't have a peanut sued the candymaker because he bit his lip. A party guest who tripped over a dog in a kitchen sued the dog's owner for failing to inform him that he would be walking in the house "at his own risk." An elderly woman who injured her hands while trying to turn on the lights demanded the maker of the Clapper give her $50,000. I applaud her ingenuity.
Michael Petrelis submitted a Freedom of Information Act to the FBI for any records in their archive about Michael Jackson.
I expected the agency would reply saying they didn't locate any such records, or that there were only a handful on pages on the late entertainer. I was wrong. A letter from the FBI yesterday informs me they've located close to 600 pages on him. As I've learned from years of filing these sort of FOIAs, it's going to be a while before anything is released, and, when pages are eventually provided to me, they could be quite mundane.I'll be interested to see what they contain, if only for snoopy, gossippy, kitsch value.
(via instapundit)
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Josh Goldberg is working on this touch sensitive interactive mouth; it's a science museum installation, rad!
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