Earlier this year, we wrote about the very cool business model being used by "open source textbook" company Flat World Knowledge. Basically, you could read the books for free online, but there were also other ways to get the book in other formats where you would have to pay. The company seemed to be gaining traction lately, with a nice round of funding, and now it's being reported that 40,000 students at over 400 colleges and universities will be using Flat World texts this fall. That sound you hear? It's an old stodgy market getting disrupted.

Related to this, Slashdot points out that here in California, where the state was running a free digital textbook competition, the results showed that some of the open solutions won the competition and were considered better reference materials than the ones provided by big publishers. In fact, the e-texts from a small company called CK-12 seemed to do quite well -- 3 of the 4 online texts that were deemed to meet 100% of the state's standards all came from CK-12.

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From David Ackley, Liquidware, and Illuminato Labs comes the Illuminato X Machina project -

It’s a small “motherboard cell” that can interchangeably link and connect up to other cells, either rightside up or upside down, to adaptively route packets and power to its neighbors, like a grid of biologic cells, passing nutrients and resources to their neighbors. Also, each board can program its neighbors using a dynamic bucket-passing bootloader that allows any given cell in the grid to over-ride or re-program neighbors.
[…]
Each cell runs a 72 MHz ARM processor with 56 digital I/O pins, and the ability to accept power from any one of its 4 edges. This means that the cellular grid can expand in any direction, and the reversible interconnections mean it can grow like a crystal in any orientation.

An exciting platform for physical computing - definitely be interesting to see how folks put it to use. Read more over @ Liquidware Antipaso.

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adeelarshad82 writes "Chinese court has jailed four people for spreading their bootleg "Tomato Garden" version of Microsoft's Windows XP program, in what the Xinhua news agency called the nation's biggest software piracy case. Off the four men Hong Lei, the creator of the downloadable "Tomato Garden Windows XP" software, was jailed for three and a half years by a court in Suzhou in eastern China, Xinhua."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nothing new in here for slow/sustainable food junkies, but it's wonderful to see this discussion expand beyond alt.food.michael.pollan. Noteworthy in that it's an easy item to forward to friends and relatives who won't have the patience or inclination to read through a dozen Boing Boing posts on the matter, or subscribe to Ethicurean. Snip:

Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won't bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and a stomach-churning stench. He's fed on American corn that was grown with the help of government subsidies and millions of tons of chemical fertilizer. When the pig is slaughtered, at about 5 months of age, he'll become sausage or bacon that will sell cheap, feeding an American addiction to meat that has contributed to an obesity epidemic currently afflicting more than two-thirds of the population. And when the rains come, the excess fertilizer that coaxed so much corn from the ground will be washed into the Mississippi River and down into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will help kill fish for miles and miles around. That's the state of your bacon -- circa 2009.

Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food (TIME, via Wayne's Friends List)

Snip from LA Times article: "Vowing "never to stop pushing" for condom use in porn, AIDS Healthcare Foundation officials said Wednesday that they plan to file complaints today with state officials against 16 California-based production companies they say have violated workplace safety laws." (Thanks, Susannah Breslin!)

(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.)

---

More @BBVBOX: boingboingvideo.com

08.21.09 : playing games zen
funny farm
memory game
xwung
time warp
shift
effing hail
golden republic

previously on web zen:
mind games zen

Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store, Twitter. (Image courtesy Eric Curry. Thanks Frank!)

Well, this is amusing. Remember how the AP is trying to limit how others can report on or make use of AP news? Right. Hold that thought. Now remember how the Southeastern Conference (SEC) is trying to restrict how both the fans and reporters can report on games? Well, you know what's coming next. Stephen points out that the AP is now protesting the SEC's policies. Apparently, the AP is only a fan of such reporting restrictions when it impacts others rather than themselves. The full letter (pdf) sent to the SEC by the AP and some other reporting groups takes issue with many of the restrictions, and apparently doesn't notice the irony in the fact that the AP is trying to restrict others in much the same way.

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An anonymous reader writes "Security researchers at Purewire have leveraged vulnerabilities in malware infrastructure to track the criminals behind it. In a three-month long project, they used security flaws in exploit kits to get operators to expose themselves (Obnoxious interstitial ad between link and content) when they access the kits' admin control panels. Data collected shows that 50% of those tracked use Firefox, while 25% use Opera."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gilad sez,

ReTweet Revolution is a visual exploration of the most popular conversation threads that were passed amongst Twitter users at the time of the events following the recent Iranian elections earlier in June of 2009. The applet displays 372 of the most popular threads extracted from a pool of over 230,000 messages posted on Twitter between June 14th and June 24th, polled from the public timeline at regular intervals.

By clicking on a specific topical thread, it is possible to view its network structure: how the message was ReTweeted from one user to another and how its content changed as it was passed along. It is also possible to see posts that were obviously "retweets" but with no attribution to the original source.

ReTweet Revolution (Thanks, Gilad!)

Happy Friday - Super-Kamiokande (a 50,000 ton water Cherenkov detector).

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Michelle Osmond has posted a thorough step-by-step for this tiny paper Blue Leader by Alex Crosse.

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ZuchinniOne writes "The Wall Street Journal has a very interesting article about the likely reasons that AT&T and Apple killed the Google Voice application." 'With Google Voice, you have one Google phone number that callers use to reach you, and you pick up whichever phone--office, home or cellular--rings. You can screen calls, listen in before answering, record calls, read transcripts of your voicemails, and do free conference calls. Domestic calls and texting are free, and international calls to Europe are two cents a minute. In other words, a unified voice system, something a real phone company should have offered years ago.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Back at the beginning of July we expressed our doubts about GGF's "acquisition" of The Pirate Bay ever actually happening. The quotes from the CEO made very little sense, and he was clearly hedging his language. Some have suggested that the whole thing was just a pump & dump scam (and, in fact, there were early questions about insider trading). As more details came out, the "plan" behind the acquisition just didn't make much sense, and those on the inside started bailing out.

Greg Sandoval's been on the story, and has a few more updates that make the whole deal seem quite unlikely. First, remember how the same day GGF announced a plan to buy the company Peerialism, which would be the key component to making The Pirate Bay function as a legit service? Yeah, well, apparently GGF hasn't actually followed through on that deal at all, and Peerialism notes that GGF hasn't lived up to its contract terms or delivered any of the promised money at all -- and that no development work has been done. Then, this morning, trading in GGF shares was suspended again, as more doubts are being raised about the whole effort. From all this, plenty of people are now starting to realize there's as good chance that the deal itself is never going to happen.

The real question, though, is whether or not it was ever really expected to happen?

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An anonymous reader writes to tell us that while scientists may have learned how to forge DNA, it appears that a group of Israeli scientists has created a DNA authentication method that is able to distinguish between real and faked DNA samples. "The new process was tested on natural and artificial samples of blood, saliva and touched surfaces, with complete success, Nucleix said. It also identifies "contaminated" DNA that has been mixed with two or more samples."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More than 600 "private emails" from the National Socialist Movement, aka NSM88, basically the reincarnation of the American Nazi party, managed to find their way into the hands of the folks who maintain Wikileaks. These don't look so much like "private emails" as the contents of an opt-in email mailing list maintained by the group, but I'm still trying to confirm their origin.

Anyway, Wikileaks has published them all, and you can browse through chronologically, or by author, or download the whole lot of 'em for fun weekend reading. Yeah, there's a lot of what you'd expect in here. The one funny light spot was finding utterly banal spam for Bing.com, and "back-to-school specials" and ancestry.com promotions mixed in with the more sobering stuff like this:

This email is not a calling for a putsch, revolution, or violence of any type, those types of actions will not be necessary; nonetheless, certain events will naturally occur and will need to be taken advantage of by all of us. (...)

Gentlemen, for too long only one race has made gains in their freedom and survival. That race has not been ours. If you look at things objectively, you will see that all of you have been fighting a good fight but our race is losing ground at a very fast rate; Obama running for President is evidence of that. We have a great opportunity in front of us and we need to ensure it is recognized for what it is and can be. The Fuhrer made great strides by knowing when and where to put his foot down, what moves to make and we need to follow his example.

US National Socialist Movement private emails ,until 15 Aug 2009 (Wikileaks)

Tired of informative videos that explain exactly how different kinds of consumer devices are made? Then you will love this "instructional" video by YouTube user HowThingsAreMade!

[via Creative Synthesis]

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Adam sends in a link to a Reddit story where it comes out that someone (not entirely sure who) decided to push Reddit to take down an earlier story. Apparently Sears.com had some oddity in how content on its e-commerce site was displayed, and with a little URL-hacking some folks were able to create a Sears.com e-commerce page for a barbecue grill designed to cook babies: Pretty amusing, and obviously something that Sears wasn't all that happy about. Sears's explanation for what happened doesn't quite make much sense, but what would you expect?

We discovered earlier today that someone visiting our site had defaced a limited number of product pages

It wasn't so much "defacing" from the sound of it, as it was a bug in the way the site was set up, but, what doesn't make much sense is that someone then forced Reddit to remove its original thread discussing Sears' URL hackability. It's not at all clear who specifically got Reddit to take down the thread, though an admin admits that he was told to take it down. The obvious list of culprits, of course, would be Sears and Conde Nast (owners of Reddit).

Still, it should come as no surprise that the Reddit community doesn't take kindly to the idea that someone (whoever it might be) can dictate that a Reddit thread get deleted when it's not spam. So, now they've been pumping up this particular story about Reddit pulling down the thread, giving the whole story much more attention. Wouldn't it just have been better to fix the URL-hackability and let things be?

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From FORA TV, this video of a presentation by George Kembel, co-founder of the Stanford d.school, about the "Embrace," an extremely low-cost incubator for premature newborns. The challenge: design better technology to help keep premature newborns alive. The reality: the most at-risk newborns are in rural areas, far away from hospitals where $25,000 incubators are housed. The solution: a $25 "incubator" with materials that can be heated up in a pot of boiling water.

Awakening Creativity / FORA (thanks, Blaise Zerega)

Our friends at GOOD Magazine have posted a neat item here -- Curt Smith, best known as co-founder of the band Tears for Fears, but now an independent, solo artist with a new set of fans, talks about the "musical value of sharing." Great stuff. Snip:

I got my first record deal when I was 18 years old--next year that will be about 30 years ago, so I have been doing it for quite a while. The industry when I first started was very much one-sided in the sense that it favored the industry and not the musicians. We would sign deals when we were quite young that were pretty bad across the board: from record deals to publishing deals, even management deals and touring. You just didn't make as high of a percentage as you would now. But of course that has changed over the years, especially in the last few years with the internet and sharing your music with people.

Technology has changed so much that now, people are quite capable of making records themselves. It used to be a very expensive process, but its not anymore. In the past, the industry controlled how your music got out there, so if you didn't have a record deal it would never be on shelves; there was no Amazon, there was no iTunes. There was basically just radio, and the record companies controlled that as well. Now, with the freedom of the internet, people can go and discover your stuff.

The down side is that there is now so much music, some form of filtering tool is required.

Curt Smith on the Musical Value of Sharing (GOOD, as told to Eric Steuer, creative director of Creative Commons)

Curt is fun to follow on Twitter. So is GOOD.

I really dig Curt's current solo work, but I have been looking for an excuse to embed the video above on Boing boing for a long time, so I will. It's my favorite Tears for Fears song, and sometimes when I play it in my car, and I'm driving along PCH, it still makes my eyes well up with emo. (link: Pale Shelter)

David Austin built this chess set entirely from chainmail in about a year's time -

One of the first important decisions I made was what wire size to use. I decided that in order to fully articulate the style of traditional chess pieces I was going to have to use thin wire and small rings. So I decided to use .035" wire. This is about the smallest wire size I felt comfortable using for extended periods of time at the time in which I started this project. For metals, I already knew that I would use stainless steel and bronze. These are the two metals I used for the squares on the chess board. Also, both metals have roughly the same amount of springback, which I knew would be vital in ensuring sculptural consistency.

More photos and info on the build process here. [via Geekologie]

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BlizzCon kicked off this morning with a keynote address that brought some major announcements for some of their games. First, World of Warcraft's third expansion, Cataclysm, was officially revealed. It differs from the previous expansions in that they will not be creating an entirely new continent for players to explore. Instead, the two huge continents from the original game will be going through a literal cataclysm, causing some zones to be destroyed, new ones to become available, and existing ones to be entirely revamped. Big news came for Diablo III as well, with the announcement of the Monk class and a trailer showing how it plays. More details for both games as well as StarCraft II will undoubtedly become available over the next few days, but read on for more about what we already know. If you have any questions, don't forget to post them here.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The old LIFE photos on Google always have nice jewels like this...

Slinky like light pattern in the blackness of moonlight sky produced by a time exposure of the light tipped rotor blades of a grounded helicopter as it takes off into the dark sky.

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For many years, music publishers have always hated online lyrics sites. Rather than realizing that such sites help people connect better with songs, the publishers only thought in terms of "copyright infringement." Over the years, they've forced a number of such sites to close down. Chris Takacs points us to the latest such move. At the very least, they're not forcing an entire site offline, but they've forced the owner of a lyrics site to shut off its API. LyricWiki had a nice little API that would allow programmers to embed lyrics from the wiki within their programs... but the music publishers freaked out that people might actually read lyrics without paying for them and sent out the legal muscle. As the article above notes, in an era of digital music, where fewer and fewer people are buying CDs with lyrics in the liner notes, online lyrics sites make more sense than ever before. Why are music publishers so against them?

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I've had a non-productive week, I've been fighting a cold -- but I made a commitment to the web to write at least one post every Friday, so here I am keeping my promise.

I'm worried about the web.

We pour so much passion into dynamic web apps hosted by companies we know very little about. We do it without retaining a copy of our data. We have no idea how much it costs them to keep hosting what we create, so even if they're public companies, it's very hard to form an opinion of how likely they are to continue hosting our work.

A few weeks ago an entrepreneur said to my face that he was the one who made the money and I was the one who worked for free. My chin dropped. I knew most if not all of them secretly believed this, but I had never heard one say it out loud.

I know others who told me their business model was to patent my work.

Shaking my head. This can't work.

This system is terrible. It's a bubble, like the real estate bubble. It's going to burst, and when it does, it will take a lot of our history with it.

But not this blog post if I have any say about it. It's stored as a static file on a Windows XP server running Apache. It could just as easily be stored on a Linux machine running anything. Or even an iPod or iPhone. Text files are the ultimate in stability. The same text file you could read on a mainframe 40 years ago could be read on a netbook today.

I'll post a link to this piece on Twitter, that probably won't last very long. But -- the backup I'm making of it is being stored as a static text file on Apache. So it may well be around for a while.

I'm really obsessed with creating a historic record. I want to feel that our writing has a future. I also don't want to work for people who are as openly greedy as the typical entrepreneur of 2009.

Anyway -- time to go to lunch. I've taken my vitamins on behalf of the web.

It's official, the DIY epoxy surfboard featured in MAKE Volume 19 is my new favorite board! I had a super fun session this morning -- it's fast, skatey, and incredibly light and buoyant. At just 6'5" it catches waves easier than my old 7'4".

Big ups to Greenlight Surfboard Supply and their eco-friendly surfboard kits. The expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam is recyclable, the stringer and fins are bamboo, and the low-VOC epoxy resin is much less toxic than traditional polyester resin. Greenlight's new lamination technique, using a stretchy bamboo fabric instead of fiberglass cloth, is easier and safer. The kits include all materials and hand tools for first-time shapers (like me) plus complete instructional vids. Check them out!

Greenlight Surfboard Supply: Link.

MAKE, Volume 19, DIY Outdoors, "Greener Waves": Link.

Some pix from the build:

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Massive tutorial from Ladyada!

PIR sensors allow you to sense motion, almost always used to detect whether a human has moved in or out of the sensors range. They are small, inexpensive, low-power, easy to use and don't wear out. For that reason they are commonly found in appliances and gadgets used in homes or businesses. They are often referred to as PIR, "Passive Infrared", "Pyroelectric", or "IR motion" sensors.

PIRs are basically made of a pyroelectric sensor (which you can see above as the round metal can with a rectangular crystal in the center), which can detect levels of infrared radiation. Everything emits some low level radiation, and the hotter something is, the more radiation is emitted. The sensor in a motion detector is actually split in two halves. The reason for that is that we are looking to detect motion (change) not average IR levels. The two halves are wired up so that they cancel each other out. If one half sees more or less IR radiation than the other, the output will swing high or low.

Along with the pyroelectic sensor is a bunch of supporting circuitry, resistors and capacitors. It seems that most small hobbyist sensors use the , undoubtedly a very inexpensive chip. This chip takes the output of the sensor and does some minor processing on it to emit a digital output pulse from the analog sensor.

For many basic projects or products that need to detect when a person has left or entered the area, or has approached, PIR sensors are great. They are low power and low cost, pretty rugged, have a wide lens range, and are easy to interface with. Note that PIRs won't tell you how many people are around or how close they are to the sensor, the lens is often fixed to a certain sweep and distance (although it can be hacked somewhere) and they are also sometimes set off by housepets. Experimentation is key!

Read on for more!

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Rich Kulawiec alerts us to the news that Gartner (which absolutely should know better) sent a legal nastygram to a Network World blogger, Larry Chaffin, for the mortal sin of mentioning Gartner without Gartner's permission. Specifically, Gartner is claiming full control over its research reports, and saying that a reporter cannot quote them. Gartner is almost certainly wrong about this. If the information is newsworthy (and it sounds like it was), then a reporter absolutely has the right to post it. Also, Gartner seems confused about how all of this works. It first claims that posting such info was a violation of its own policy... but it's a policy that Chaffin had not agreed to. Perhaps Gartner had a claim against the vendor who gave Chaffin the report, but that doesn't preclude posting the information. On top of that (of course) Gartner is pulling a bit of copyfraud, by claiming that copyright gives it many more rights than it really does:

Gartner's published research is proprietary intellectual property of Gartner, Inc., and is protected by the copyright laws of the United States and other countries. Your company's mention of our research in your material does not comply with our Copyright and Quote Policy (available at the link below) and so this is an infringement of our copyrights. I ask that you take immediate and effective steps to remove this blog posting and also any other unauthorized mention of Gartner's research in any other venue which you control.

There's just one (big) problem with that. Copyright law doesn't really give a hoot what Gartner's own "Quote Policy" is. Copyright law has built in exceptions that can't just be written away like that.

Chaffin actually did take down the posts after being threatened, claiming that in doing so he's showing how meaningless Gartner is. He also promises never to post about any Gartner reports ever again in the future -- but did talk up Gartner's ridiculous policies and demands (amusingly referring to the company as Gar-ner).

Beyond just being of questionable legality, Gartner's actions also seem incredibly short-sighted (especially for a firm that's supposed to be known for being forward looking). Everyone knows the real value in a Gartner report is not in any actual analysis, but in the PR it might generate for companies that find their way into the infamous (and silly) "magic quadrant." By forcing reporters not to talk about who's in that magic quadrant, Gartner has just made its reports significantly less valuable. Now that's foresight.

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Barence writes "Following his blog last week about the home-made hard disk destroyer, Bustadrive, Mike Jennings was deluged with comments from readers, both on the blog and here on Slashdot. Most seemed to like the product, but also offered up far more innovative and madcap methods of hard disk destruction, with a wide range of implements used — household and otherwise. In this follow-up post, he rounds up the best of an imaginative bunch of hard disk destruction methods."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bill Gurstelle is your MAKEcation counselor for the make-a-trebuchet Family Challenge. Build a trebuchet and post pictures tagged "MAKEcation" in the MAKE Flickr pool to enter to win a $100 Maker Shed gift certificate!

Catapults are wonderful, exciting examples of technology. (I use the catapult to mean any projectile hurling device of ancient descent. Such devices may use springs, counterweights, or human energy.) They are simple yet complex; delicate yet brutal. Unlike looking at say your computer or an airliner, you can pretty much look at a trebuchet or ballista and kind of understand what's going on. On the other hand, the physics and kinematics are complex and intricate.

Tips for building a catapults:

• Purity of concept aside, it pays to use modern materials. While it might be cool to build a coiled rope torsion spring like the ancient Greeks, you'll probably find it difficult to get enough spring power without torquing down the ropes so much that you'll crush the frame., Experiment with the use of bungee cords if you build a torsion or tension spring powered model.
• I find hardwoods and metal frames work better than softwoods. Practically speaking though, dimensional lumber is what most people wind up using. Overbuild if you can, doubling up the wooden frame pieces. You'll be glad you did.
• If you're making a gravity powered trebuchet, consider forgoing the pouch on the sling and simply attach a cord to the object you're hurling:. That way, when the projectile flies, then so does the cord. I call that "a sacrificial sling." It's way, way easier.
• Consider your release mechanism carefully. For bigger catapults, consider a pelican hook (it's a peice of hardware that sailors use, and you get them at stores that cater to boating) or possible an archer's arrow release. You get those at sporting goods stores. Their fairly cheap and they work well with smaller machines. Much more info on catapult triggers in a forthcoming post.

There's a lot of historical information and plans for many sorts of catapults in my book, The Art of the Catapult which is on sale at the Maker Shed.

More:

• MAKEcations: deadline extended!
• Maker Workshop - Portable Trebuchet on Make: television
  
• MAKEcation trebuchet bundle in the Maker Shed
  

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caffiend666 writes "A newly found deep ocean worm 'can cast off green glowing body parts, a move scientists think may be a defensive effort to confuse attackers. Researchers have dubbed the newly discovered critters "green bombers." ... The first of the new species has been given the scientific name Swima bombiviridis. ... [T]he worms are able to regenerate the body parts.' So, it's a naturally occurring animal that rips off its arms and throws them, and we're not talking about a game from ID Software?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Maple prototype looks very interesting...

This is the Maple prototype, our first version of an Arduino-compatible board with an STM32 ARM Cortex-M3 processor. We’re chomping at the bits to release it as soon as we tie up a couple loose ends to make it what we think it should be. We’ve ported all the Arduino language and are modifying the Arduino environment so that everything works how it should. Notice that Maple does not have an FTDI chip, so serial communication works through a USB Virtual COM Port that’s implemented on the STM32, so it may even be slightly easier to setup than Arduino boards because FTDI drivers aren’t required, and the drivers for the Virtual COM Port are probably already on your Mac or Linux machine; for Windows, you’ll just use the driver that we include with the software download.

We’re also extending the Arduino language to allow users to do things with the STM32 that the Atmega chips cannot do such as easy setting up of different types of USB devices (HID for crazy mouses, mass storage, or full speed USB 2.0 data transfer)  and other communication protocols (USART, SPI, I2C, I2S, CAN), providing higher bandwidth capabilities.

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The Maple prototype looks very interesting...

This is the Maple prototype, our first version of an Arduino-compatible board with an STM32 ARM Cortex-M3 processor. We’re chomping at the bits to release it as soon as we tie up a couple loose ends to make it what we think it should be. We’ve ported all the Arduino language and are modifying the Arduino environment so that everything works how it should. Notice that Maple does not have an FTDI chip, so serial communication works through a USB Virtual COM Port that’s implemented on the STM32, so it may even be slightly easier to setup than Arduino boards because FTDI drivers aren’t required, and the drivers for the Virtual COM Port are probably already on your Mac or Linux machine; for Windows, you’ll just use the driver that we include with the software download.

We’re also extending the Arduino language to allow users to do things with the STM32 that the Atmega chips cannot do such as easy setting up of different types of USB devices (HID for crazy mouses, mass storage, or full speed USB 2.0 data transfer)  and other communication protocols (USART, SPI, I2C, I2S, CAN), providing higher bandwidth capabilities.

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Another day, another example of a musician not freaking out about "piracy" but looking to create innovative reasons to actually buy something. The latest is the artist Moldover, who not only learned how to build circuit boards that display the album artwork and spell out the song titles, but he actually turned the CD case itself into a fully functional instrument. Check it out: It has a button that makes sound, and then you can adjust the sound via light sensor that creates a virtual theremin. On top of that, it has a line-out jack, that lets you listen quietly, or record music via the CD case itself.

It seems like every day we see new and different examples of artists coming up with cool reasons to actually buy product. While some critics insist that these sorts of things only work once, I tend to believe that creativity knows no bounds, and we'll keep seeing more and more unique ideas.

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Another day, another example of a musician not freaking out about "piracy" but looking to create innovative reasons to actually buy something. The latest is the artist Moldover, who not only learned how to build circuit boards that display the album artwork and spell out the song titles, but he actually turned the CD case itself into a fully functional instrument. Check it out: It has a button that makes sound, and then you can adjust the sound via light sensor that creates a virtual theremin. On top of that, it has a line-out jack, that lets you listen quietly, or record music via the CD case itself.

It seems like every day we see new and different examples of artists coming up with cool reasons to actually buy product. While some critics insist that these sorts of things only work once, I tend to believe that creativity knows no bounds, and we'll keep seeing more and more unique ideas.

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murphee writes "Flight delayed again? Shoulda asked FlightCaster, a new site using statistical analysis to predict the delay of your flight in real-time. What's even better, the services is fully buzzword compliant: it's built with Clojure, distributed with Hadoop, served with Rails, and hosted on Heroku. This interview with one of the FlightCaster developers gives the gory details on architecture, Clojure tips, and your boss a reason to let you have all the multimethods and macros you can eat. Seems like now that O'Reilly's publishing a LISP book, the Age of Parenthesus has come..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Instructables user sineSurfer brings us this straightforward process for etching aluminum using the same tools required for PCB etching, but with a milder etchant consisting of hydrochloric acid and peroxide to replace ferric chloride.

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Vigile writes "Performance analysis on solid state drives is still coming into clarity as more manufacturers enter the fold and more of the drives find their way into users' hands. While Intel's dominance in the SSD market was once undoubted, newer garbage collection methods from Indilinx and Samsung are now balancing performance across the the major players. What hasn't been discussed in great detail yet is the effect that drive capacity can have on overall performance. Some smaller drives (64GB versus 128GB) will actually use fewer data channels from the controller chip and thus will have lower transfer speeds. The article compares drives using controllers from Indilinx, Samsung and Intel." Note that PCPer greedily spans this review over 12 pages. Next time maybe they can keep it down to something more reasonable.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Steve Humble of HiddenPassageway.com wants to build your secret lair. For the right price. But even if the United Nations hasn't paid you that ransom yet, it's still fun to browse around his site. Yes, they will build you a rotating fireplace. What you do behind it is your own business. Props to Cara for the link.

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Jeff Malfant points us to a nice little rant over at News.com wondering why ebooks are so damned expensive. He points out that many seem to be priced at about the same going price as the physical books, despite no physical product to produce and ship. My guess is that companies and publishers think they can get away with it for now, since people are "used to" paying the price of books, but it won't last. It just becomes an opportunity for smarter folks to start offering cheaper books (or even free ebooks). And, at some point, a lot of people will just stop paying for the higher priced ebooks.

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Well, Blizzcon 2009 is about to get underway (look for the big news from the keynote in a few hours) and given how fast it sold out I'm sure there are still many rabid fans interested in what Blizzard might have to say that don't want to shell out the $40 for Pay-Per-View access. So, to that end we have interviews scheduled tomorrow with the teams from Starcraft2, Diablo III, World of Warcraft, and Battle.net. If there is anything you wish to know about the progress or juicy details from any of these teams please leave it in the comments below. We'll try to parse through for the best questions and get you answers during our interview slots tomorrow. The usual Slashdot interview rules apply.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• Failing retailer Circuit City made creepy inspirational videos for its workers as destiny loomed. • Apple is, for reasons unknown, selling first-gen iPhones again. • Plantronics' bluetooth headset is modeled an the window crank handle from a 1974 Lincoln Continental. • There is the Benz of Bling. • Steven reviewed the Chrome Warsaw bag. • Kodak wants to call its next HD pocket camcorder something better than Zi10. You can help it. • Behold! The most hideous cellphone in the universe! • Urban Outfitters scored the last Polaroid film kits. • Qclocktwo gives the time in plain English -- for $1,600. • Apple analysts are at is again. Today's prediction: a television set! • Stephen Fry has one of those wristphones from LG. • Oscar Diaz's RGB Vases look like science fiction movie props, hold flowers. • Behold! A Diplo-dock-us. • Sony's WX1 point-and-shoot camera works great in low-light conditions. • Need to fix a typewriter? Ask Andrew Leman if you can borrow his repair kit. • Instructions were found on how to make a steampunk flash drive. Someone's already selling Terminator Skull ones. • "This is going to be such a rad tweet!"

An anonymous reader writes "It is now clear why Nokia has been so slow with S60 updates: the upcoming N900 just left everything else in the dust. Unlike Google's Linux platform, Nokia is not intentionally breaking compatibility with real distros, choosing instead to bring you the unmatchable power of GNU/Linux on your phone. This is the most awesome device I have ever seen: MAP3 CPU/GPU, 3,5" 800x480 touchscreen, keyboard, Wi-Fi, HSPA, GPS; 5-MP camera, CZ lens, 32 GB storage, SD slot; X11, VT100 terminal emulator, APT package manager. Estimated price without credit: $780 (N.5800: $390, iPhone 3GS: $750). Developers should note that even though the current desktop is still GTK+, Qt will be standard across all Nokia platforms in the near future (less powerful phones will use Qt on the Symbian kernel). Users can download flashing software from Nokia, and patches can be submitted at the Maemo site."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A couple people have sent in the news about how Simon Cowell apparently has called in the police to go after hackers who supposedly hacked into a computer at his record company and leaked a new song by a singer named Leona Lewis. It's now clear what evidence there is that there was an actual hack, rather than the leak coming from somewhere else, but that seems besides the point. If the computers were broken into, then it seems fair enough to go after those who did the hacking.

But, either way, it seems that more and more musicians are recognizing that they might as well leak the songs first, so that such things aren't even an issue. Last week, we noted that Radiohead had leaked its own track, and it seems that less well-known bands are doing the same thing. The band Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground apparently wasted no time at all getting their new tracks online. Even though they're still working on the details of the actual album release, the band finished the album last week, and put it online almost immediately. Why wait for some artificial "album release" when the music itself is ready to go?

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theodp writes "A Bloomberg report that Apple CEO Steve Jobs proposed a possibly illegal truce with Palm against poaching their respective employees is sure to pique the interest of the US Department of Justice, which already is investigating whether Google, Yahoo, Apple, Genentech and other tech companies conspired to keep others from stealing their top talent. 'Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other's employees, regardless of the individual's desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal,' former Palm CEO Ed Colligan reportedly told Jobs in August 2007." The article notes that Apple was probably reacting to Palm's hiring of Jon Rubenstein, who had been instrumental in developing the iPod and went on to spearhead the Pre for Palm (and has now become Palm's chairman and CEO). "It's the story about the importance of charismatic engineers," said veteran Silicon Valley forecaster Paul Saffo. "People don't work for Palm. They work for Jon Rubinstein. One has to wonder how Steve Jobs ever let Jon Rubinstein leave."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Launch potato projectiles 200+ yards with this stun-gun triggered, high-powered potato cannon
with see-thru action.
Thanks go to William Gurstelle for the original article in MAKE, Volume 03.
To download The "Nightlighter" Stun Gun Potato Cannon video click here or subscribe in iTunes.

Check out the complete "Nightlighter" Stun Gun Potato Cannon article in MAKE, Volume 03 "Nightlighter"
and you can see that in our Digital Edition.

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A refreshingly lo-fi take on Guitar Hero style rhythm games - behold the breadboarded Arduino Hero with RGB LED matrix + tactile switches. Hmmm … this idea would likely work well on a Meggy Jr. kit.

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Launch potato projectiles 200+ yards with this stun-gun triggered, high-powered potato cannon
with see-thru action.
Thanks go to William Gurstelle for the original article in MAKE, Volume 03.
View the PDF of this project. and then subscribe to MAKE Magazine for other great projects
you can do over the weekend.

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From The Economist, a chart showing "how long it takes a worker on the average net wage to earn the price of a Big Mac in 73 cities."

The more important question is how long you have to work to eat something less gross than a Big Mac, of course.

An alternative Big Mac Index (via Digg)

Sony has issued a service notice for its Cyber-shot DSC-W170 camera. In some cameras, small particles of metal plating peel off from the casing surrounding the lens, resulting in splinters. Sony will offer a free service to replace the front panel, including the bezel, on units that fall within the affected serial number range.

Esther Schindler writes "The Airline Control Program (ACP), introduced by IBM around 1967, predated the term 'open source' by decades. But you may be surprised by how much of its development resembles the FOSS movement today. The ITWorld.com article An Abbreviated History of ACP, One of the Oldest Open Source Applications describes what made it special."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've written a few times about best-selling author Paulo Coelho, and his embrace of file sharing and openness -- and how it helped him sell a lot more books. Reader Esahc writes in to alert us to the text from a speech Coelho gave. The actual speech appears to be from last year, so a bit out of date, but it's still well worth reading:
He talks about the success of his own projects, from "pirating" his own books, to having the community make their own movie out of one of his books. At the same time he discusses the rise of technology and the folly of pretending you can fight the technology. It's really a great overall statement on embracing new technologies for anyone who thinks they need to rely on copyright. On top of that, it again confirms the basic premise that we've stated here time and time again: for those who work to connect with their fans directly, there are plenty of ways to do well, even without specifically relying on copyright to do so.

We are facing a new era, so either we adapt or we die. However, I did not come here to share solutions, but my own experience as an author. Of course, I make a living out of my copyrights, but at this very moment I am not concentrating on this. I have to adapt myself. Not only by connecting more directly with my readers -- something unthinkable a few years ago -- but also by developing a new language, Internet-based, that will be the language of the future: direct, simple, without being superficial. Time will tell me how to recover the money I myself am investing alone in my social communities. But I am investing in something for which every single writer in the world would be grateful: to have his texts read by a maximum of people.

The Internet has taught me this: don't be afraid of sharing your ideas. Don't be afraid of engaging others to voice their ideas. And more importantly, don't presume who is and who is not a creator -- because we all are.

And the key point he makes? In the past, heretics were punished for sharing their ideas. These days, you'll be punished if you don't share your ideas.

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MAKE subscriber Pete Marchetto is on the lookout for prospective members of itHACKa -

Ithaca, NY. It's home to two major institutions of higher learning, Ithaca College and Cornell University, a host of startup companies, a thriving re-use/recycling community, and many, many smart people. However, Ithaca is lacking something: a communal workshop where people who like electronics, mechanical things, bikes, art, and other things you make with your hands, can get together, build things, and share their lore.

Are you an Ithaca, NY based hacker/maker/tinkerer with a desire to share ideas/projects/resources/fun? If so, shoot an email to itHACKa, or just head over to the site.

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eldavojohn writes that though gravitational waves are "predicted to exist by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, the initial tests run by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory Scientific Collaboration (LIGO) failed to find anything. It doesn't disprove their existence although it does rule out a subset of string theory. From the article, 'For example, some models predict the existence of cosmic strings, which are loops in space-time that may have formed in the early universe and gotten stretched to large scales along with the expansion of the universe. These objects are thought to produce bursts of gravitational waves as they oscillate. Since no large-amplitude gravitational waves were found, cosmic strings, if they exist at all, must be smaller than some models predict.' The scientists working in Washington and Louisiana (in tandem to rule out flukes) will now move on to Advanced LIGO which will analyze a volume of space 1,000 times larger. If they don't find any gravitational waves in that experiment, the results will be more than unsettling to many theorists."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally designed to be a mobile media playback device, the iPod now resembles a workstation that fits in your pocket. It may seem passé now, but there was a time when real-time 3D meant desk-sized workstations that cost as much as a luxury car, now it fits in your pocket and costs as much as a decent night out. Of course you're not going to design an engine or skyscraper with an iPod, but with this proof-of-concept instructables you can start to see some of the creative potential of modern hand-held devices. Low-cost paint apps, music apps, video apps, 3D modelers; they may not replace the workstation anytime soon, but creative people are starting to notice the tools laying dormant in their pockets and are starting to use them.

[via James Hudak]

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Alcatraz Island is one of those tourist traps that isn't a trap at all. It is that rare thing: a justifiably famous tourist attraction that lives up to its reputation and exceeds it. When I lived in San Francisco, I relished the chance to take out-of-towners there and re-visit it myself.

The site itself is exceptionally beautiful, a rugged wilderness island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay with unparalleled views of the city. The cellhouse audio tour -- a self-guided tour featuring the narration of former inmates and guards -- is brilliantly produced (I actually bought a copy on cassette years ago and listened to it at home). And the additional museum materials, including a moving film on the history of the Indian occupation, are also superb.

The Alcatraz website does a good job of conveying much of this, but you really have to go to experience it.

Alcatraz Island - Golden Gate National Recreation Area (Thanks, Ranger Craig!)

Michael Geist sez, "Science fiction author Karl Schroeder, Canadian Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart, Wide Mouth Mason drummer Safwan Javed, Lulu.com's Bob Young, and Nettwerk music exec Terry McBride are among the people in this short video talking about copyright reform as Canadians have the chance for three more weeks to speak out on copyright." Speak Out On Copyright: The Video

We've been discussing the Associated Press attempt to DRM the news using some technology it clearly doesn't understand. But the most infuriating part is that the AP simply hasn't been able to answer the myriad questions thrown at it about this silly plan -- and when pressed, suddenly announced it wasn't talking any more.

This seems especially ironic when you realize that the AP is supposedly in the business of explaining complex news events to the world. John Temple, a former newspaper editor, is pointing out, amusingly, that the AP really should have found an editor to go over its plan before it released it -- because that editor would have hopefully done a better job forcing the AP to explain itself:

So why do I say AP's planners needs an editor? Because editors make writing clear and understandable. And this "plan" is neither.

When reporters write news stories about the challenges an industry faces, it's important that they be clear -- and, of course, accurate -- about what the problems are and what steps are proposed to address them. The reporters' job is to help readers understand the problems and evaluate possible solutions. It's also important that reporters be clear about the potential industry or company conflicts that stand in the way of or complicate possible solutions.

The first paragraph of the AP document makes a bald assertion without the facts to back it up that a good editor would require of any reporter. It talks of news content being monetized without fair compensation and "rampant" unauthorized use of AP content on literally tens of thousands of Web sites. It says the problem is quickly spreading. The document goes on in this vein and seems to mix and muddle two concerns: unauthorized use -- the blatant stealing of entire stories or photographs -- and the use of headlines and snippets by search engines and others. It never makes clear how big the first problem is. Is there really that much revenue being stolen from the owners of content as a result of bloggers and others cutting and pasting AP stories? I don't know the answer from reading this document.

Of course, one might argue that the reason the document is so unclear is because the Associated Press itself doesn't understand it.

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MAKE subscriber Dave Vondle wrote us about his LED Glass Block LED Wall Display. Check out the link for a lot more information about the build, including the schematics and source code. Thanks Dave!

I created an interactive LED pixel display out of the glass block wall in the front of my building over the past year or so. The system turns each glass brick into a pixel and uses Flash, Arduino, and BlinkM modules. I happen to work at IDEO so I put it on the IDEO labs blog. I documented it pretty heavily and opened all of the code up as well. Unfortunately I recently had to take the array down, and am hoping someone who reads about it wants to give it a new home!

In the Maker Shed:


LED Light Brick Electronics Kit

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BobB-nw writes "A group of engineering students and their professor at National Taiwan University have built a robot that can map out the area it's operating in and offer guided tours. The robot, named 'Hsiao Mei,' uses laser mapping and GPS technology to navigate on its own, including around corners and obstacles such as tables and chairs. In the first public demonstration on Thursday, an engineering student with a wireless remote control first took the robot through the floor of a small museum on the university's campus so it could create a map for itself. After the initial run-through, the robot was able to make an unaided journey around the floor."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A few days ago, Kyle Brady sent over his blog post wondering if the world would eventually move to a single currency. His suggestion would be that it would be based on the Euro, though can you just imagine the political uproar in the US if anyone actually took a step in that direction? Politically, it's a total non-starter. If you think that people are freaking out over health care reform, just wait until anyone in power suggested something like this. It simply won't happen. Brady's post goes on to suggest that this could help us move to a more digital currency, though I think we're already pretty much there. Actual paper money is a tiny fraction of the real money supply these days. Money is digital for all intents and purposes right now.

However, just after reading that... I came across an article suggesting pretty much the exact opposite: that we're perhaps more likely to move to more splintered currencies as local regions start creating their own currencies. The article, in particular, talks about Brooklyn trying to create a Brooklyn-specific currency. Such things are hardly new. Having spent five years of my life in Ithaca, NY, I was quite familiar with Ithaca Hours, the local currency that is often held up as the model on which such local currencies can work. Of course, we've seen other attempts to do this in the past, and I'm not sure any can really get big enough to matter. But I can see how they are appealing to some during economic downturns, as they look for better ways to try to get people to focus on local businesses. Designing a currency that encourages you to spend locally might seem like a good idea, and it can work in small doses. In the end, though, I doubt either movement (single world currency, splintering local currencies) is likely to become that big of a deal in the near future. The system we have now actually works pretty well (despite the economic mess faced today).

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inkslinger77 writes "Computerworld has a cool slideshow of a Kuka Titan robot and a bunch of AGVs managing the circulation of coins at the Australian Mint. There's also a lengthier article where the head of the project talks about the main reason robots were employed. One of the reasons being that they radically reduce OH&S risk: 'We are finding that the AGVs are much safer and more reliable. Robots are never affected by having a bad night with the baby and falling asleep at the wheel. They are extremely accurate and they always do the same task in the same way.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Back in March, some cable companies announced plans for an offering called TV Everywhere, which was designed not to actually add value to your cable subscription plan, but to pressure TV networks to stop putting their content online for free, and offer it, instead, via cable authentication. For users, it would mean the ability to watch their cable subscriptions online, but only after they authenticate themselves, which seemed like a big hassle. It may be an even bigger hassle. Apparently, in this effort to take on things like Hulu (and, to a lesser extent, YouTube) no one at the cable companies got the message that simplicity is what made those sites work:

CBS Interactive president Quincy Smith this week proclaimed that there's no unified standard among cable companies for the project, and dozens of companies are all approaching back-end technology differently. There's also no real consensus between cable companies on how to proceed. One result? Users not having a central resource for video content.

Bowman suggested that projects like TV Everywhere may not yield a single site that will contain content from dozens of programmers. Instead, the authentication system the industry develops may be used to point pay-TV subscribers to several different sites to view their pay-TV content online.

Now that sounds like a winner.

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Ask MAKE is a weekly column where we answer reader questions, like yours. Write them in to becky@makezine.com or drop us a line on Twitter. We can't wait to tackle your conundrums!

---

Martin writes in:

Why do my incandescent light bulbs buzz when I'm using a dimmer switch? What can I do to stop it?

Household lights run on alternating current (AC), which can be seen as a sine wave on an oscilloscope. To decrease the brightness of the bulb, a dimmer switch takes chunks out of the sine wave. This essentially turns the bulb on and off around 120 times every second, depending on the dimmer swtting. Charging the bulb filament creates an electromagnetic field, and when this field is turned on and off so rapidly, the changing force can cause the filament to start vibrating in sync with the frequency of the ons and offs.

To stop the buzzing, you can try rough service light bulbs, which have the filament anchored in more than two places, unlike regular light bulbs. Think of the filament supports as legs on a table. Two legs would make for a wobbly table, but make that three or four legs, and you've got something more sturdy.

If it's your dimmer that buzzes instead of your light bulbs, you may need a dimmer rated for a higher capacity. Try removing some of the light bulbs connected to the dimmer and see if it makes a difference. If the buzzing is quieter, you may need a stronger dimmer. Common triac-based dimmers are controlling the chopping up of that AC wave, and can also vibrate because of it. Some higher quality dimmers have filters in them to prevent that.

Some more reading on the subject:

• How to stop lighting dimmer switches from buzzing on Ask MetaFilter
• Buzzing lights on Smarthome
• Switches and Dimmers Buying Guide
  

Have you had to fix a noisy light problem in your house? Share with us in the comments.

This week's Ask MAKE has been sponsored by Jameco Electronics.

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Painter Travis Louie has a new show of his lovely phantasmagorical portraits opening tomorrow (Friday, August 21), at Seattle's Roq La Rue Gallery. Louie will be there signing copies of his new monograph, Curiosities. The entire show is also viewable online. You can also purchase the book (unsigned) on Amazon now for $20. Above left, "The Strangler" (24" x 18"); above right, "Chauncey" (20" x 14"). I would love to have an original Louie someday -- it would certainly turn any wall into a wunderkammer.
Travis Louie (Roq La Rue)
Curiosities (Amazon)

All year long we've been hearing story after story of newspapers insisting that they're going to implement a paywall and make readers pay like they used to. Of course, the idea that they ever paid for the news is a myth, but to date the bigger myth seems to be that newspapers are going to start charging. Sure, there are a few that have been charging for a while, but for all the talk about paywalls, they've really just been "saywalls." No one's actually made a move. Alan Mutter seems to be suggesting that the folks who run newspapers are all pretty much paralyzed by fear. They know that charging will kill off ad revenue, and they're not really convinced that the paywall will fix that. They're right. Putting up a paywall is a dumb strategy that will fail for all but a very small number of publications. So why are they all talking about it without doing it? My guess is it's a signaling method. They're hoping that if they can sort of peer pressure each other into it, a bunch of papers may all do it at once and there would be some sort of safety in numbers. In reality, it's a failure of understanding the basic business they're in, and a timid response, rather than a smart one. It's frustrating, but the answer is for newspapers to shut up or put up. If they say they want a paywall, put it up, and let's watch it fail. Or if they want a real strategy, they should try giving us a call, and we'll lend them a hand.

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Check out this beautiful, fetishistic vintage typewriter repair kit:

I borrowed it from my friend Andrew Leman, (actor, prop builder, graphic designer, typographer, and filmmaker) who got it to use in an upcoming Lovecraft film he's producing. I used some of the tools to straighten bars in my vintage typewriters. Now he wants his kit back, so I thought I'd better take some photos of them first. I love the little compartment for the three parts drawers.

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ericatcw writes "Apple Inc. may still be coy about whether it plans to launch a touch-screen tablet computer this year, but Windows PC makers are forging right ahead. In the past three weeks, five leading PC makers have announced or been reported to confirm plans to release touch-screen PCs in time for the multi-touch-enabled Windows 7, reports Computerworld. Many appear to be using technology from New Zealand optical touch vendor, NextWindow, which already supplies HP's market-leading TouchSmart line, and Dell's Studio One. NextWindow's CEO says the company is working with partners on 8-10 products set for launch within two months, in time for Windows 7's October 22nd release."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It came through in a tweet today, and I gotta say it's great news.

"We discovered RSS! More to come soon."

Coool! Can't wait to see what's coming soon.

RSS is totally an FCC kind of thing. It's a package of net neutrality. A level playing field in a box. It's mom and apple pie, baseball, hot dogs, and (do they still make Chevrolets).

If anyone at the FCC is listening, if you liked RSS, wait till you see rssCloud. It makes RSS updates happen in an instant!

Sometimes 140 characters is enough to express an idea.

When I sat down to read through frequent MAKE contributor Cy Tymony's newest book, Sneaky Green Uses for Everyday Things, I was most struck by what a great resource for teachers this book is. In school, the science lessons that were accompanied by memorable, digestible demonstrations are the ones I remember to this day. Tymony's book is filled with a whole array of simple ways to demonstrate energy concepts. Not surprising that the book is officially recommended by the the National Science Teacher's Association.

The "Sneaky Energy Projects and Simulations" section offers over 40 pages of energy demo ideas and illustrations. The writing is simple and clear, and the illustrations helpful. Here's the one that accompanies the explanation of how hydroelectric power plants work. Love the simplicity:

You get to learn the basics of how electrical generators work and then build your very own using paper clips, electrical tape, and a toy car motor.

Part 2 is filled with sneaky product reuse projects for the ultra resourceful, like using an old tissue dispenser and some cardboard tubes to make a desktop sorter and how to canibalize ketchup packets and coffee creamer lids for aluminum. And the last section covers sneaky recycling projects like how to make a solar cooker with some aluminum foil and cardboard.

Get your sneaky learnin on.

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This is the sixth post in a series of posts looking at the question of intellectual property rights in both China and India. We've got one more post to go

Why Intellectual Property Is Insufficient For Economic Development In China And India

The strong focus on intellectual property presented by advisers to China and India miss the ecosystem in which useful innovation takes place. This ecosystem includes, among other things, education, entrepreneurship and openness. For example, intellectual property can only add to growth when coupled with trade liberalization, something India significantly lacks (Gould 1996). However, because a larger market provides a larger incentive for commercial innovation, some researchers have found that with increased market size should come decreased intellectual property (Boldrin 2005). This finding, that for every 2% of economic growth, the duration of IP should be reduced by 0.5% would have significant implications in rapidly growing China and India, but it receives little to no attention amidst the drive for ever stronger intellectual property. Finally, even though intellectual property may stimulate cross-border licensing of technology, it is unlikely to bring a sudden inflow of foreign investment because other facts account for the variation in the behavior of MNCs in different countries (Fink 2005).

Watch out for the Patent Thicket

As China and India are exhorted to increase intellectual property protection and enforcement to higher standards - “harmonization” in the rhetoric of its proponents - they risk emulating the detrimental IP systems of the developed world. The United States, widely viewed as the most innovative nation in the world, has a patent system that  has, according to Jaffe, "become sand rather than lubricant in the wheels of American progress” (Jaffe 2004). Even more worrying, the trend in international intellectual property is actually speeding past the American level of protection, raising concerns that the incredibly strong IP in countries will diminish, rather than promote, innovative capabilities.

Patent thickets - "a dense web of overlapping intellectual property rights that a company must hack its way through in order to actually commercialize new technology" - and the "tragedy of the anticommons" - where "too much ownership... wrecks markets, stops innovations and costs lives" - are useful concepts for policy-makers in China and India to keep in mind as they are encouraged to increase their intellectual property. Instead of being incentives for innovation, 47% of firms are using patent portfolios in negotiations and 50% as defensive protection from lawsuits (Boldrin 2008). If China and India grant patents too broadly, they risk overshooting privatization, likely stunting the domestic growth of complex technologies and innovations whose production will be covered by dozens of competing patent claims (Jaffe 2004). This will only be exacerbated by bad standards that do not restrict exclusive rights to truly novel, useful and non-obvious inventions (Boyle 2008).

Are China and India Overshooting Optimal Intellectual Property?

There is already evidence that the two emerging superpowers are making these errors. East Asian countries are patenting at a per capita rate of 4 times the developed world, leading to quick patent quantity convergence (Brahmbhatt 2007). China, whose patent office led the world with 800,000 applications in 2008, is now also home to the most patent lawsuits per year (“Battle of Ideas”). While, prima facie, the enormous absolute populations of China and India will likely make their patenting activity among the highest, given the relatively small sectors engaged in truly innovative work, these figures are worrying. In fact, the same motivations that have been fingered as the causes of the American patent system’s woes – government downsizing and competitiveness – are currently present in China and India, increasing the likelihood that they follow America’s folly (Jaffe 2004).

Another American policy of uncertain quality that is being emulated in China and India is university commercialization. The Bayh-Dole Act, passed by Congress in 1980, encouraged universities to commercialize their innovations through patents, but its effectiveness is highly suspect. Bayh-Dole changed “academic norms regarding open, swift and disinterested scientific exchange” (So 2008). In India, this is already a concern with 71% of surveyed executives feeling “that lack of collaboration between industry and research institutes was the main hurdle to innovation in India” (Dutz 2007). The facilitators of that exchange, Technology Transfer Offices, have “become gatekeepers that in many cases constrain the flow of inventions and frustrate faculty, entrepreneurs, and industry” (So 2008). Yet, China and India are both encouraging university patents (Graff 2007).

Flying Right Past the USA

Unfortunately, simply recreating the flawed American system is unlikely. The world’s largest economic force, the USA, is actively using its trading power to increase international IP standards beyond the current TRIPs-mandated level. Through bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) and the multilateral Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, currently being negotiated in secret, the United States is promulgating even more expansive intellectual property policies. The FTAs have strengthened intellectual property rights beyond the high standard already set by TRIPs in dozens of countries. These measures include extending copyright for an additional 20 years, preventing parallel importation of patented pharmaceutical products, limiting compulsory licensing ability, limiting copyright exceptions and limitations through the illegalization of technological circumvention measures, and explicitly extending patents to biological innovations (Fink 2005 PDF). Countries accept these provisions in return for lower tariffs and better quota allotments, but while those are temporary, the expansive intellectual property policies are not.

In addition to all the previously explained reasons why this is likely detrimental to the developing nations who agree, it is useful to note that these policies promoted by the USTR are deeply hypocritical, especially when it comes to copyright. The United States copyright laws give considerable breadth to consumers through the fair use provision. This limitation on exclusive rights has been estimated to contribute $4.5 trillion per year to the US economy (Rogers 2007 PDF). Consumer International, a nonprofit, ranks the United States as among the best copyright policies in regards to consumer protection; notably, it is joined by China and India, condemned by the USTR and copyright industries as too permissive (“IP Watch List” 2009).

Speaking of intellectual property as unidirectional makes little sense when one recognizes that the benefits are neither clear-cut nor absolute. Additional costs of further strengthened IP in China and India will be higher administrative costs, less imitation, and a decrease in the incremental innovation that provides real growth (Reichman 1997).

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Other posts in this series:

• Do China And India Really Want Stronger Intellectual Property?
• A Brief History Of Intellectual Property In China And India
• Why Might China And India Want To Strengthen National Intellectual Property Policy?
• Why Increased IP In China And India Is Likely To Disproportionately Benefit The Developed World
• In China And India, Stronger Intellectual Property Is Unnecessary
• There Is No Harmony In A Patent Thicket

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

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MAKE commenter whitehead made this neat project that he calls a patio cooler. He turned an ordinary plastic cooler into a nice piece of patio furniture by building a frame for it out of cypress wood and spare sheet metal roofing. It even comes complete with a vintage bottle opener!

Have you started your cooler hacking project yet? Remember to add your photos, tagged "MAKEcation," to the MAKE Flickr pool to enter to win a $100 Maker Shed gift certificate! If you need a little extra time, you are in luck, as the deadline has been extended to Wednesday, Sept. 9.

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Earlier this year, we talked about how some magazines were really making an effort to make the physical magazine worth buying by doing cool things with the physical product. Most of those were niche publications, but there's some evidence that much more mainstream magazines are experimenting as well. Last year, Esquire Magazine experimented with an e-ink cover. However, it looks like Entertainment Weekly is going even further, by allowing CBS to embed video within an ad in the magazine. Yes, you read that right. Basically, a small video screen is installed in between two pages, and seen through a cutaway. Apparently, it works pretty well, with full-motion video, including sound (apparently somewhat loud, with no volume control, which is a bit annoying). While a bit gimmicky (and probably quite expensive), it does get you thinking about some other possibilities for actually making physical magazines a bit more worthwhile.

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