Earlier this year, we wrote about how some of the taxi companies in Tampa, Florida were upset about free competition. Some smart business folks had setup local transportation options, that subsisted on advertising and tips, rather than fares, and thus were able to avoid having to buy a (sold out) taxi cab license. But, of course, the existing cabbies freaked out and complained, and convinced the city council to declare that the free cabs had to buy licenses as well... while conveniently noting that none are available. Basically, the cab drivers got the city council to drive this competition out of town.

But, now there's a bit of a twist. A bunch of folks have sent in the news that one of the guys who pushed the city council the hardest has now suddenly set up his own free shuttle offering in place of the competition that was run out of town. He makes no qualms about the fact that he's copying the idea of the shuttles he just knocked out of business, saying they had a good idea -- he just didn't like the fact that they didn't have to buy a taxi license. Neat trick, huh? Get the government to drive your competitors out of town, and then copy their best ideas.

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space_in_your_face writes "Want to boost the popularity of your latest iPhone app? Ask Reverb Communications! 'When it comes to winning in the App Store, this PR firm has discovered a dynamite strategy: throw ethics out the window. Reverb Communications, a PR firm that represents dozens of game publishers and developers, has managed to find astounding success on Apple's App Store for its clients. Among its various tactics? It hires a team of interns to trawl iTunes and other community forums posing as real users, and has them write positive reviews for their client's applications. ... Reverb claims that their clients have sold over $2 billion of product under their watch.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last Wednesday I wrote a piece that explained how to fix URL-shorteners. Today, with the help of Joe Moreno at Adjix, I implemented it.

Here's how my new URL-shortener works.

1. Joe is running the shortener at adjix.com. It's the same one he's always been running, but it's got a few new features.

2. In the prefs for Adjix, I told it that I wanted to use my own domain, c.oy.ly. I also told it to write copies of all my shortened URLs to a bucket at Amazon, which I had given his app permission to write to. By using my own domain, one which I control the DNS for, and retaining a copy of all the data, I am fully protected against his service going away. And I can decide at any time to take over hosting of my own short URLs by directing the c.oy.ly domain to s3.amazonaws.com instead of partners.adjix.com.

3. When I create a shortened URL, I do it by calling an API routine that works exactly as the APIs of the other shorteners. I give it the long URL, some identifying information so it knows to associate it with my Adjix account, and it returns a token, which I smash together with http://c.oy.ly/ to form the shortened URL.

4. All this is done with a bookmarklet communicating with a web app on one of my servers. It then takes the title of the page I'm linking to and adds the full URL from step 3, and redirects me to twitter.com, where I can edit the tweet before clicking on Update.

5. Then, every few minutes I call the Twitter API and ask if Dave has posted any new tweets. If so, I parse them, store the long and short versions of the URL in my database (by dereferencing the URL). Then I call a second API on Adjix to ask it to give me the counts for the most recent 50 links created by Dave. I then update the counts in my database, sort them, and prepare the familiar Top-40 report.

Bottom-line: I am now using URL-shorteners in a way that does not make the Internet suck. I have done my good deed for the day!

Tristin Lowe is the artist behind this 50-foot whale made of industrial felt over an inflatable form. No jokes about the name, please. Via Supernaturale.

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Unequivocal writes "The FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski, told Congress today that the 'Federal Communications Commission plans to keep the Internet free of increased user fees based on heavy Web traffic and slow downloads. ...Genachowski... told The Hill that his agency will support "net neutrality" and go after anyone who violates its tenets. "One thing I would say so that there is no confusion out there is that this FCC will support net neutrality and will enforce any violation of net neutrality principles," Genachowski said when asked what he could do in his position to keep the Internet fair, free and open to all Americans. The statement by Genachowski comes as the commission remains locked in litigation with Comcast. The cable provider is appealing a court decision by challenging the FCC's authority to penalize the company for limiting Web traffic to its consumers.' It looks like the good guys are winning, unless the appeals court rules against the FCC."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We pointed this out a few years back, but there's this persistent myth behind Craigslist that reporters love to repeat, and it's just not true. The latest is that it shows up in an otherwise excellent profile of Craigslist by Gary Wolf in the latest Wired Magazine. The whole article really is worth reading, though Craig plays up the whole Forrest Gump of the internet schtick a bit more than is fair. However, the article again quotes CEO Jim Buckmaster supposedly brushing off concerns about maximizing revenue:

"Companies looking to maximize revenue need to throw as many revenue-generating opportunities at users as they will tolerate."

But Buckmaster's very next claim belies the fact that he knows the first half isn't really true:

"We have absolutely no interest in doing that, which I think has been instrumental to the success of craigslist."

And, that, really is the point. While it may seem paradoxical, Craigslist actually is being much smarter (on purpose or not) in how it "maximizes profits." It's doing it by not pissing off users and not trying to squeeze them for every possible penny today, knowing correctly that doing so is a horrible long-term strategy. But it's difficult to think of many companies that throw off the sort of profits that Craigslist does on a regular basis. It employs 30 people and most estimates suggest in brings in $100 million in revenue per year. What other companies of that size bring in that much in revenue?

Then look at all the companies that claim they are trying to maximize profits. And compare. I can't see how anyone can take the claim that Craigslist isn't doing that with a straight face. The company knows more about maximizing revenue than probably every celebrity CEO or management consultant out there.

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Matt_dk writes "The first satellite launched by South Korea failed to reach its designated orbit pattern on Tuesday, the the NY Times is reporting. The two-staged KSLV-1 rocket, built in cooperation with Russia, failed to deliver the 100-kilogram oceanic and atmospheric research satellite into its target orbit. The rocket was launched from the Naro Space Center, 300 miles south of the capital Seoul. 'The failure to push the satellite into its intended orbit was announced by Ahn Myong-man, the minister of education, science and technology, at a news conference. Mr. Ahn gave no further details. But South Korean news outlets, citing unidentified sources, said the satellite broke away from the rocket about 22 miles farther from the Earth than had been intended.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A few weeks back, we wrote about the argument over whether or not it was okay that a doctor had uploaded the public domain (and available in pretty much any library) original Rorschach ink blots to Wikipedia. The whole thing was perfectly legal and reasonable in the view of many. But some strong believers in the ink blots seem to think that even though the images are in the public domain, they have some sort of right over them. The thinking, on their part, is that keeping the ink blots secret protects the integrity of the test -- which totally ignores the fact that these ink blots are already widely available (and the fact that it seems rather unlikely that all that many people are going to "study up" for their Rorschach tests.

But, it hasn't stopped a witch hunt against the guy who uploaded the images. Apparently, he's being investigated by his local doctors' organization for "unprofessional" actions. The complaints against him are equally ridiculous. They say that this is "serious misconduct" because he "shows disrespect to his professional colleagues in psychology and disparages them in the eye of the public."

So apparently no doctor is ever allowed to question any methods used by psychologists? Yikes. Talk about a chilling effect.

Even more to the point, I fail to see how sharing public domain knowledge with the world can be unprofessional or an ethical breach. It seems like the exact opposite. I would think it's a hell of a lot more unethical to trump up bogus ethics charges and investigations against the doctor who actually put that content on Wikipedia.

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File this firmly in the "rumor" category for now. the JoshMeister writes (in the third person) "Mac antivirus company Intego broke the story this morning that Apple is apparently including antivirus functionality in its upcoming operating system, Snow Leopard. But which antivirus engine is Apple using? Security researcher Joshua Long discusses the likely candidates."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Carla and I had a nice time at the 2009 San Francisco Zine Fest on Sunday. This week, I'll share some of the photos I took of the zinesters who came to sell their comics and zines. (Yesterday I wrote about Sean Logic and his zine, The Great MySpace Swindle.)

This is Hellen Jo and Calvin Wong. Helen was working on this amazing watercolor while she was there (a commission, she said.) Click on the photo for a closer look. It's beautiful.

Hellen and Calvin were selling their comic books. They're both very talented artists and storytellers. Calvin's comic book, Ramble On is a humorous heavy metal sci-fi fantasy story about a guitar playing beaked critter who battles a grumpy giant tree. Helen's comic, Jin & Jam #1 is about a couple of chain-smoking high school girls who pal up with another girl who gets in a fight with a pair stylish but nasty-tempered conjoined twins. Both comics are excellent. I see good things ahead for both of them. (Also, check out Calvin's interpretation of Cher's pre-Cher song "Ringo, I Love You")

Near as I can tell there are no new features in the new interface. Things were just moved around and everything is way way slower. The UI was always bizarre, but I figured most of it out. Now you're telling me I have to learn it over again? Why? What's the benefit?

All I know now is that my bookmark to the dashboard broke, and to get to the unapproved messages or spam messages, the maintenence I have to do on a regular basis to keep my site working, I have to wait minutes for the page to load. I don't have any idea if there are any new features in this to justify the pain.

I would really like to go back to the way it worked this morning. You know, when it actually worked.

Laura Dekker, age 13, wants to sail around the world by herself in a 25-foot boat, and her parents support her. Social workers in the Netherlands have stepped in to try to make Laura a ward of the court, which would prevent the parents from allowing her to do it.

Laura had a yacht by the age of six and began sailing solo when she was 10.

"Since I was 10 years old, I've known that I would like to sail around the world," she told Dutch television.

"I want simply to learn about the world and to live freely."

Dutch bid to thwart young sailor

An anonymous reader points us to a very detailed post by Geoff Chappell, first put up early this year, explaining how the 4GB memory limit commonly bandied about for 32-bit Windows (he is writing mainly about Vista) is more of a licensing preference then an architectural limit. The article outlines how Chappell unlocked his system to use all the memory that is present, but cautions that such hackery is ill-advised for several reasons, including legal ones. "If you want [to be able to use more than 4GB in Vista] without contrivance, then pester Microsoft for an upgrade of the license data or at least for a credible, detailed reasoning of its policy for licensing your use of your computer's memory. ... [C]onsider Windows Server 2008. For the loader and kernel in Windows Vista SP1 (and, by the way, for the overwhelming majority of all executables), the corresponding executable in Windows Server 2008 is exactly the same, byte for byte. Yet Microsoft sells 32-bit Windows Server 2008 for use with as much as 64GB of memory. Does Microsoft really mean to say that when it re-badges these same executables as Windows Vista SP1, they suddenly acquire an architectural limit of 4GB? Or is it that a driver for Windows Server 2008 is safe for using with memory above 4GB as long as you don't let it interact with the identical executables from Windows Vista SP1?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I'm thinking of making one of these embroidered conductive keyboards by Adrian Freed to go with my Arduino pocket piano! [via Fashioning Technology]

More:

• Crochet potentiometers
• Soft Sensor Spread
  
• Soft stroke sensor

In the Maker Shed:

Lilypad E-Sewing Kit

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Ah, those pesky lobbyists. It seems that the UK gov't really has a way with doing a detailed report on what should be done on the music industry, which gets some of the important points right... and then it all gets tossed out the window once the recording industry lobbyists jump into things. Remember a few years back when the gov't commissioned the Gowers Report, which said copyright terms should not be extended (and Gowers himself later admitted that all of the evidence actually suggests it should be shortened)? Yup, well, then the lobbyists took over, and suddenly the government's Cultural Secretary Andy Burnham is singing the praises of copyright extension. These days, it looks like extension is almost certainly going to happen in the UK despite all the evidence as to why it shouldn't.

Looks like the same thing is happening again. Earlier this year, the UK gov't "Digital Britain" report clearly said that a three strikes regime, whereby ISPs would be responsible for kicking file sharers offline, didn't make sense. While there were other problems with the report, at least it knew better than to drag ISPs into things as copyright cops.

But... then the lobbyists took over. Entertainment industry lobbyists have been working overtime in the UK (the stories we've been hearing are pretty nuts...), and a few weeks ago the British press was noting that UK Business Secretary Peter Mandelson had vacationed with David Geffen (who has ties to both the recording and the movie industries) and suddenly showed an immense interest that hadn't been there before, on changing Digital Britain to make the rules tougher.

So, surprise, surprise... suddenly ISPs are finding out that three strikes is back on the table even after being promised it wouldn't be. The original report had given regulators until 2012 to consider what technical measures ISPs should take -- if any. But Mandelson's department has suddenly declared that timeframe is "too long." The minister for Digital Britain, Stephen Timms, practically comes out and admits that they were lobbied hard:

"We've been listening carefully to responses to the consultation this far, and it's become clear there are widespread concerns that the plans as they stand could delay action, impacting unfairly upon rights holders."

So, expect three strikes to show up in the UK. Of course, it will be a dreadful mistake. I still can't understand why the recording industry thinks this is a good idea. You may kick people off the internet, but does anyone honestly think that will actually get people to buy again? It seems like a strategy designed to piss more people off. And when has that ever been good for business?

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RobotRunAmok writes "The Nielsen Company has been the principal entity tracking TV shows' popularity, and, by extension, their potential profitability. But as our media consumption practices change, some believe that Nielsen's methods have not kept pace. A new consortium including networks owned by NBC Universal, Time Warner, News Corp, Viacom, CBS, Discovery, and Walt Disney — along with major advertisers — is calling for the creation of a new audience measurement service, and planning to solicit bids from outside firms by the fourth quarter of this year. Nielsen says they're not worried about so many of their customers ganging up on them, having just invested more than a billion dollars in research to stay modern. Except that today Nielsen announced they would pointedly not be adding weights to DVR households, and that adding weights for the presence of a personal computer or Internet access in under-represented households would provide 'no significant change or enhancement' to its national TV ratings sample. The pundits deride Nielsen's 'archaic' methodology and 'disco-era tactics,' but others scoff that such a consortium will only 'put the foxes in charge of the henhouse.' Stay tuned..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

400 years ago today, Italian scientist Galileo Galilei unveiled his first eight-powered telescope to the merchants of Venice. A refinement of earlier, lower-powered telescopes, this instrument enabled him to confirm the phases of Venus, discover the moons of Jupiter, and observe sunspots.

Want to try your hand at re-creating these world-changing observations? The folks over at Rice university have a nice tutorial describing how to make your own Galilean telescope. [via guardian]

In the Maker Shed:

Galileo's Telescope Kit

Our Price: $29.95

Build your own working replica of Galileo Galilei's famed telescope and snoop the moons of Jupiter like it's 1609.

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As you know, William Patry, who's devoted most of his professional life to copyright issues, is coming out with a book, Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars. I'll have a full review of the book in early September (though, the short version is "it's great"), but if you want a signed copy of the book (along with signed copies of four other books related to these issues) order soon, since the Techdirt Book Club is almost sold out.

In the meantime, I got a chance to ask Patry some questions about why he wrote the book, and his views on the state of copyright these days. Patry is a world-renowned expert on copyright law, and has written what's recognized as a definitive text on copyright law, Patry on Copyright (read a shot review of that work). Here's our interview. Enjoy:

What drove you to write Moral Panics & The Copyright Wars?

I wrote the book out of frustration; frustration over the way the language of demonization has been successfully used to frame copyright debates in order to achieve results that are anti-consumer and anti-innovation. The importance of framing is well known in political circles. John Kerry was brilliantly framed by Karl Rove in 2004. Barack Obama brilliantly avoided similar efforts in 2008.

Innovative companies have similarly been subjected to the Karl Rove treatment by content owners. We can laugh at some of the metaphoric language used by copyright owners, and think, rightly, that it reveals how out of touch some of them are with the way technology has changed consumer demand. But laughing at such language ignores that such characterizations are coldly strategic; they are not uttered off-the-cuff in the heat of an emotional moment. The strategy is to retain existing business models in the face of disruptive, new business models that respond better to consumer demand. Rather than engage in self-evaluation, rather than examine whether they should change in the face of changed circumstances, too often copyright owners attack change itself, by conjuring up what sociologists call moral panics, hence the title of the book.

You've spent many years in "the copyright business" in a variety of different roles in both the public and private sector. You've discussed in the past why you're a supporter of copyright -- and yet, you are greatly concerned with what copyright has become. Can you explain when you first started to become concerned about the way copyright was being used/portrayed -- and what brought you to that realization? Was there a moment when it occurred, or was it a gradual thing? Or do you feel that your position has remained unchanged?

I certainly began my career as what we would call today a copyright maximalist, based on a view of copyright as inherently good, so why should more of a good thing not be even better? I began to change when I went to work for the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary in the very early 1990s. Taking seriously the job of trying to craft the best possible for the larger public interest, I began to think about what that meant in practice, and this was regarded by some in the copyright industries as heresy. Others were, however, understanding, and I remain friends with many in the industries, which are, after all, populated with a large number of very talented people. 1998 was a watershed year for me, with term extension and the anti-circumvention parts of the DMCA, which, in tandem represent the Rubicon for me, the point at which copyright became unmoored from its fundamental purposes. I doubt it will ever find its way again.

Based on that, in your mind, is there any way we bring copyright back to the purpose of "promoting the progress" rather than being used to prop up business models and prevent innovation? Is it even possible?

I think it will be extremely hard to make significant changes in fundamental areas due to the international commitments we have made not to change fundamentals. The globalization of high levels of copyright has, in my opinion, been quite injurious because it takes away the freedom of countries to admit they made mistakes and to then fix them. The best hope, I think, is that copyright will become irrelevant by virtue of copyright industries responding to consumer demand.

What, then, makes you most optimistic about creativity? Pessimistic?

I am very optimistic about creativity. I think we are in a highly creative period fueled by the democratic means of creating and distributing works to the public made possible by the Internet.

In an ideal world, what would copyright law look like to you?

The 1909 Act. It had a much shorter term, formalities that separated the wheat from the chaff, and fair use wasn't mentioned in the statute because it was regarded as a robust common law doctrine.

Why is it better to have fair use not in the statute, but in common law doctrine?

I think it is better not to have it in the statute (or to say simply "the fair use of a copyrighted work is not infringement") because courts have treated the doctrine as if it is codified in 17 USC 107 and therefore as if their role is to merely interpret it. This is not the case; Congress intended that courts continue to have the freedom to develop the doctrine as they wish, but the statute has scared them off. Judge Pierre Leval of the Second Circuit, one of our greatest scholars on fair use, has written persuasively about this, and from first hand experience.

You and I both feel that the copyright "debate" is really a debate over business models, but is there any way to separate the two things? That is, will copyright debates always be about business models?

Copyright is an economic right, not a moral right so I would hope the debates will be about economics, about the best way to encourage innovation, both in the creation of works and in their distribution.

You say that copyright is an economic right, rather than a moral one, and while that's true in the law, there are many who believe it should also be a moral right (as it is in some other countries). How do you respond to those who say that pointing out that it's really an economic, rather than a moral right, are really just avoiding the issue, since they feel it *should be* a moral right?

I talk in the book about the attachment and endowment effects, which explain part of it, but as my mother used to say "don't confuse me with the facts" remains a strong instinct.

For many of us who are concerned about what copyright law has become, what do you think is the most effective way to change things? Historically, changes to copyright law have been driven by industry, not everyone else. The entertainment industry has spent plenty of time trying to block us out of the public debate by claiming that we "just want stuff for free" or are "defending pirates." What do you believe is the best way to get beyond that, and actually effect change?

I would talk to Michael Geist in Canada. He is, to me, the single most effective advocate for the public voice in copyright debates. He is also respected by many Canadian government officials. We do not have anyone remotely like him. It's not enough to rail about things you don't like, or have a following of people who idolize you. And that, unfortunately, is the rut we are in here.

Those in the "copyright maximalist" camp will often suggest that much of what they're doing is really about "education." For example, the RIAA has repeatedly said that its lawsuit efforts were really an education campaign. But, what your book argues is that the education campaign is part of that moral panic, rather than a true education. So what is the best way to actually educate people on these issues. I agree that Michael Geist has been very effective in Canada, but his efforts have been focused on legislative issues. I'm wondering how (if it's possible) to have people educated on copyright in general. Is it just through books like yours? Is it through education campaigns in schools? Or is it just an education that today's kids are getting on their own online?

In the book, I equate the RIAA's education campaign to the Maoist Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, especially the December 1968, "Down to the Countryside Movement," in which intellectuals living in cities were ordered to go to the countryside, where their bourgeoisie thinking would be worked out of them and they would be reeducated by the masses. That said, I do think that education about copyright is important, but like health care reform, I fear that the sides are so polarized that there is little chance that all could agree on the content. This is what happened in Canada. I think parents have an important role to play in this, and I certainly would not tolerate my twins engaged in unauthorized file sharing. I buy them only authorized works and try to set an example. The industry also has a responsibility to provide people the means to buy legitimate product, in formats and at prices that make sense.

I would think that many in the industry would cry foul at that final statement (about the industry having a responsibility to provide people the means to buy legitimate product), saying that copyright gives them exclusive rights, including how to distribute and sell their own product, and they would then argue that, to many consumers, the "price that makes sense" is "free" and that they cannot build a sustainable business that way. It is a common refrain, "you cannot compete with free." So what do you think is the proper response to such claims?

I think that is no more valid a response than those who offered by filesharers who argue that its OK for them to do what they are doing because the labels screw the artists. Not only does iTunes refute the idea that people just want free stuff, but look at what happened in January of this year when Monty Python started a YouTube channel and gave away free streams of their stuff: their DVD sales on Amazon.com went up 23,000% (not a typo). Here's another example. My wife owns a cafe. She makes espresso there and the guy who makes it used to work at Starbucks. I obviously can get espresso for free there. But I don't, I drive two miles away to a Starbucks store and pay $2.01 for it because I like the way it tastes.

Like you, I'm most optimistic that the real solution to all of this is the innovative new business models that are coming along, that may make the old limitations functionally obsolete, even if legally still in place, but it's very difficult for those who are so immersed in the old way of doing things to see the possibilities there. It's a classic "innovator's dilemma" type problem. So separate from how best to educate "the public" -- do you have ideas on how best to educate "the industry"? Is it just showing success story after success story? Or is there something more effective?

I fear that only the market will educate the industry, but that education won't be even; for example, look at the different approaches taken in the Redbox controversy by Sony and Lion's Gate on on hand, and by Universal and Fox on the other.

This isn't directly related to the book, but an interesting issue that I've been exploring lately are the different ideas on how to reconcile copyright law with the First Amendment. The traditional explanation has been that the idea/expression dichotomy, combined with fair use, allow these two rules to co-exist. What are your feelings on the issue?

I think the two can co-exist only if fair use is robustly and generously applied. The AP v. Shepherd Fairey case is one, therefore, that I view with great alarm.

There are many in our readership who question the need for copyright at all, noting that there are plenty of other mechanisms for incentives to create and business models to support creators. You obviously disagree. How do you respond to those people -- and what makes you confident that 1909-style copyright policy wouldn't eventually lead to the same issues found in copyright today?

I think that there are works that have no need for copyright, such as private letters, works of architecture, and many business documents, to say nothing of emails. I also think the term of protection is way too long for all works. Unfortunately, we have never tried to fit the length of protection to particular types of works. There are works though, especially those involving large investment, like motion pictures that do need the ability to secure financing through the asset of copyright and to go into court to stop massive unauthorized copying. This is also true for commercial label music. I think ideology or displeasure with business practices has interfered with recognition of these legitimate needs.

I want to thank William Patry for taking the time to do this interview. I was tempted to dig deeper on that last question, but already taken way more of Patry's time than was warranted -- and I appreciate him giving such thoughtful answers. As mentioned, I'll do a more thorough review of the book later, but it really is a must read, no matter where you stand on copyright issues.

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wytcld writes "When Verizon spun off its Northern New England lines to FairPoint, FairPoint leased Verizon's computer network to manage them. This was costly, so FairPoint readied its own network. To prove its own network was ready for the switchover a demonstration was prepared for an outside auditor, Liberty. Now a whistleblower claims: '...when Liberty was watching what they thought was "flow thru" within a system and from one system to another, they were really only seeing a small program that was created to assimilate what they wanted the systems to do. They were not actually in the systems at the time nor were they in the test systems. They were in a newly created small program that used screen shots from the real system to deceive the audience into believing that they were watching a real demonstration.' How easy is it to find auditors who can be fooled by such a simple trick? Whether or not the test was faked, the network has proved so unready that FairPoint is close to bankruptcy, and may have its licenses to operate revoked in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On BBG, our Lisa's found the patent application for a 1932 invention that injected ice-cream into bananas. The device was never productized, but I believe at least one working model must have been made to accompany the patent application (working models were a requirement for patenting until recently).

1932 banana-ice cream injector patent

Discuss on BBG

At BB, we've always admired the rulers of micronations, tiny sovereign states that are usually unrecognized by "official" governments and sometimes only recognized by the rulers themselves. The new issue of Smithsonian surveys a handful of these fascinating autonomous zones. From Smithsonian:

Hundreds of micronations exist at any given time, says President Kevin Baugh of the Republic of Molossia, a 6.3-acre micronation established in 1998 within Nevada and California. “Most were started by teenage boys. When they contact me, it’s obvious it’s a kid in his bedroom with a computer; the abysmal spelling usually gives it away,” he explains. “The average lifespan of a micronation is about 90 days, because that’s the average attention span of a teenage boy.”

In this context, a place like Seborga is downright prehistoric. Established in 954 as a seignory of the Holy Roman Empire, the hilltop village near the Italian Riviera managed to maintain its independence largely because it was overlooked by the succession of rulers who took over this part of the world. Seborga issues its own stamps, currency (the luigino, valuable only as a collector’s item), and has consuls in several European nations and Indonesia. The leader of this gorgeous micronation of slightly fewer than 400 people is Prince Giorgio I, first elected in 1963. As far as Italy is concerned, Seborgans are tax-paying residents of Imperia Province.

"Micronations of the World"

Say what you may about about Games Workshop, tabletop wargaming, or the "miniature arts" in general, there's no doubt that GW's annual Golden Demon contests have produced some truly astounding artistry. Demon Winner is an unofficial fan-site that has collected more than 500 photos of winning entries from 9 countries across 15 categories every year since 1987. Shown above is Ben Jarvis's Slanesh Demonette Assassin; below, David Rodriguez's Tyranids!.

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xp65 writes "NASA has invited Russia to carry out a joint manned flight to Mars, the head of NASA's Moscow office said on Tuesday. Russia is currently planning to send its own expedition to Mars some time in the future. Marc Bowman told an international aviation and space conference in Moscow that the Mars mission should take advantage of the achievements made by the International Space Station and use a multinational crew."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael sends in this excellent story of a major record label actually doing right by one of its (former) artists... though, the story really doesn't reflect that well on Warner Music. It's the story of Roxanne Shante, one of the first female hip hop stars, who came out with a hit song in the 80s (when she was 14-years-old), leading the way for other female rappers. Of course, like so many other artists, she found out that the big record labels weren't so great after all. After two albums, when she realized that her label was basically stealing from her, she called it quits from music. At age 19, however, she remembered that Warner Music has put a clause in her contract, promising to "fund her education for life." She figures they put that in as a "throwaway, never believing a teen mom in public housing would attend college." But, attend college, she did. She didn't just get a bachelor's degree, but went all the way through to a PhD. in psychology.

Of course, Warner Music, already having done plenty to try to cheat her out of her contract, worked hard not to pay. But the dean at, Marymount Manhattan College, where she attended for some of both her undergraduate and graduate degrees, read over the clause and simply kept sending bills to Warner Music. Warner (so nice of them, as per usual) ignored the invoices until Shante threatened to go public with the story of Warner Music Group not living up to their contract promises on something so basic as funding her education. In the end, Warner Music had to pay up around $217,000 for Shante's education, and she's put the doctorate to good use, launching a therapy practice focused on urban African-Americans, experimenting with new ways to get them over the taboo associated with therapy. It's nice to see how Warner Music actually did some good in the world, even if it had to be dragged there kicking and screaming.

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I can't tell which NYDN headline is weirder: "Court forces Google to tell model Liskula Cohen identity of blogger that called her 'skank'," or "Outed blogger Rosemary Port blames model Liskula Cohen for 'skank' stink."

The grown-up version of the story boils down to this: a 27-year old fashion student maintained an anonymous blog in which she described a Vogue cover model as a "skank" and a "ho." The model, Liskula Cohen, took legal action. Under court order, Google revealed the blogger's identify. Apparently the two women were previously friends/social acquaintances.

Now, the formerly anonymous blogger, outed as one Rosemary Port of NYC (shown in the photo above) says she plans to sue Google for $15 million for revealing her identity. More online: SF Gate, ZDnet. A Wikipedia entry points to more info on Liskula Cohen's life and career (including a horrible slashing attack she survived in 2007 which maimed her face.)

Now, the nature of the current conflict may seem silly. The behavior of the parties involved may not inspire much empathy. But switch the characters around to, say, Iranian political dissidents, or torture witnesses, or fraud whistleblowers -- and you can see how the privacy issues involved (and liability issues for Google) are worth considering. First they came for the bitchy fashion students...

A young man fishing in Lafayette, Indiana hooked himself a piranha. It was a big one too: 13 inches long and weighing in at 2.5 pounds.

The 21-year-old Lafayette man said he had no idea what kind of fish it was at first.

?“My dad actually stuck his thumb in its mouth, because we didn’t know what it was,” Asbury said. “It bit down on him and he said, ‘It’s got teeth...’ ”

(Indiana Department of Natural Resources biologist Dean Zimmerman) expects this is an isolated case, probably of someone dumping their pet in the river.

"Lafayette man catches piranha in Wabash"

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!

Has anyone else noticed a lot of movies with trebuchets and other catapults in them? I sure have. For instance, they were the special-effects stars in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, particularly, the Return of the King. They've been on TV as well: Fox Sports, the Simpsons, Northern Exposure, PBS Nova, Warner Brother's cartoons and probably many others.

I built a fairly large and historically accurate trebuchet a couple of years ago. I named it Ludgar, the Warwolf, after the huge trebuchet built by Edward I of England in 1304. Ludgar was really big, accounts say that Edward cut down an entire forest to obtain enough wood.

Here's my list, admittedly incomplete. If you've got more, send 'em to me.

• Chronicles of Narnia
• Night at the Museum
• Kingdom of Heaven
• Alexander
• King Arthur
• LOTR Return of the King
• Gladiator
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail (I especially like the part of this movie where John Cleese says "Fetchez la vaca" in a cheesy French accent.)
• Robin Hood Prince of Thieves
• Robin and Marian
• Robin Hood Men in Tights
• The Scorpion King
• Flesh and Blood (the Rose)
• Jabberwocky
• Army of Darkness
• Timeline
• Young Einstein
• Willow
• Star Wars #6
• Richie Rich
• The Messenger
• Excalibur
• Joan of Arc
• Troy
• El Cid

Timeline was a so so movie but the trebuchet is wonderful. Kingdom of Heaven and Gladiator have excellent battle sequences with catapults. The LOTR movies have well done CGI trebuchets.

More:

• MAKEcations: deadline extended!
• How to build a catapult part 1
• How to build a catapult part 2: triggers and releases
• Maker Workshop - Portable Trebuchet on Make: television
  
• MAKEcation trebuchet bundle in the Maker Shed
  

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Ganty writes "I recently purchased a Lenovo W500 notebook, and after 'downgrading' to XP and creating a dual partition, I found that I had a battery life of nearly three hours using the long-life battery, at this point I was a happy camper because it means that I can watch a DVD during a flight. I then tried various Linux distributions and found the battery life under FOS to be very disappointing, with an average of 45 minutes before a warning message. After settling on Ubuntu I then spent three days trying various hardware tweaks but I only managed to increase the battery life to one and a half hours. Unwanted services have been disabled, laptop mode has been enabled, the dual core CPU reduces speed when idle and the hard drive spins down when not needed. Obviously Apple with their X86 hardware and BSD based OS have got it right because the MacBooks last for hours, and a stock install of MS Windows XP gives me three hours of life. Why is battery life on notebooks so poor when using Linux? Some have suggested disabling various hardware items such as bluetooth and running the screen at half brightness but XP doesn't require me to do this and still gives a reasonable battery life."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's hard to think of a book more influential to business strategic thinking than Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma. If you haven't read it (or grasped the concept), you are way behind anyone in thinking about innovation and competitive markets, especially in the technology world. I've talked about it in the past, and I'm sure many of you are familiar with it, or have read it, but I'm reminded of one of the key points made in the book that seems to be a key stumbling block in some of the discussions we have around here. The reminder comes from a blog post that Jay Rosen recently mentioned, talking about Christensen's main point, in relation to the new industry, focusing mainly on why so many companies fail at innovating:

The management trap of disruptive technology is insidious because, like all good traps, it doesn't look like one at first. It looks prudent and fits a corporate culture of conservative, data-driven management. But incumbents can't recommend change because it would mean recommending something less profitable, less accepted, and less proven than what they're already doing.

And that's the trap.

Disruptors have no such inhibitions.

This is the key point, and while I'm not going to talk about what that post is actually discussing (the failure of some companies to be able to innovate due to this issue), I am going to use it to try to make a particular point, and hopefully clear up a misperception. There are two points that we're often trying to make around here, and the problem is that those two points often get conflated.

1. What's happening in the market is going to happen anyway.
2. The end result will actually be better for everyone, which is why it's important to embrace the innovation

The two points are related -- and, it's actually one of the key points made in Christensen's famous chart -- but they are different points: So the first point that we talk about all the time is that these changes in the market are happening -- no matter what. As much as the legacy providers don't like it, they don't seem to offer any serious alternatives, other than denial or screaming about how much they don't like it. They don't offer any serious alternatives.

But, the second point is also important. Historically, pretty much every disruptive innovation has followed Christensen's curve, meaning that the eventual outcome really is a better overall solution for the market, and thus makes the market much bigger, even if it doesn't look that way at first. But, the problem is that it's difficult to see that. So, when we get industry defenders (whether it's the recording industry, the movie industry, the newspaper industry or others) insisting that it doesn't make sense to jump off that cliff and embrace these new offerings, because the market just isn't big enough (or, as short-sighted Hollywood execs have taken to saying: "turning analog dollars into digital dimes"), we note that they're absolutely making the management trap described above.

They're refusing to make the leap because of a misunderstanding of both of those points -- but they're often focusing too much on arguing against point two, that they ignore point one. If you want to believe that point two isn't true, that's fine (even if you turn out to be wrong). That doesn't excuse not being able to respond to point one. If you really think that the market is turning into digital dimes, you at least need to do something about point 1: what are you going to do about it. Because, for the most part, it seems like those legacy industry's aren't doing a hell of a lot, other than complaining about what's happening, and then confusing that with point number 2.

They're refusing to do anything because they think that the new market is too small -- not realizing that the existing market is going to zero anyway. So even if you believe that the new market isn't going to be as big (on which point you're almost certainly wrong), you're making a mistake in thinking you can just do nothing. What's happening is you're comparing the new market to the old market -- which no longer exists.

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chrb writes "BBC News is reporting that the British Video Recordings Act 1984 is invalid due to a 25 year old legal blunder. The Thatcher government of the day failed to officially "notify" the European Commission about the law, and hence it no longer stands as a legal Act. There will now be a period of around three months before the Act can be passed again, during which time it will be entirely legal to sell any video content without age-rated certifications."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Modded from the 64 Fingers Monome sequencing software, Charlie Visnic's 64 (Video) Fingers, adds video manipulation to the popular controller's open-source arsenal - download here. [via Matrixsynth]

More:
Open-source grid controller - the monome

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Frequent contributor Bennett Haselton writes with an idea that he thinks could help keep broswing on Microsoft's browser more secure for users — and benefit Microsoft as a result. "Tests show that IE's malware filter performs well against other browsers that use the Safe Browsing blacklist from Google. But wouldn't IE's filter be even more effective if it used both filter lists at the same time? And are the political obstacles to that, really so insurmountable?" Read on for the rest of a plan that seems a lot more than half-baked.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's sad that Lessig is "hibernating" his blog, but there's always hope. It's easy to say goodbye, but what's he going to do when he has something that has to be said right now. Wait two years to write and publish a book? I sure hope not!

In his supposedly last blog post (heh) Lessig points to his first post, which was a response to something I wrote in response to something he said. In 2001 and 2002. It's interesting to recount the exchange, because only seven years later things have changed a lot.

1. First Lessig tells a story of Hemingway and source code, an analogy that I feel is flawed. And I say so, very strongly, but hopefully not in a personal way.

2. Then in August 2002, I expanded it, and on re-reading it -- I said some things that were a bit too much. A difference of opinion between two learned people shouldn't involve throwing people out and "up yours."

3. This got Lessig to write his first blog post! So there is a silver lining.

Now the hindsight.

1. In 2002 I said in five years every member of the US House will have a weblog and will be communicating directly with the electorate. I'd say that's been realized now, only they're using Twitter and Facebook and blogs, and they have to communicate directly with the electorate because the news industry is crumbling.

2. The controversy betw Lessig and myself in 2001 and 2002 was over whether software developers should be required to release their source code to get copyright protection (at least that's how I interpreted it). I was vehement in saying no, that we were already putting our ideas out there and that putting the source code out there too would give us nothing to sell. I still believe the logic of that, but since then I gave up on commercial software and in 2004 I released my main work under the GPL. There was no parade, no new respect or even thanks from people outside the community that already used the software. Did it inspire any young would-be designers? Time will tell, but it's looking doubtful. Just saying it's harder to influence the future than it should be, or maybe not -- who knows.

3. I like to think that Lessig and I have now become friends. Just goes to show that when there's a spark between two people, it may express itself in a variety of ways. I admire Lessig, I've come to see him as an open-minded, generous person who really listens. All good things!

4. I don't believe for a second that he's given up blogging.

A new game for the iPhone from IconFactory and DS Media Labs. Looks to be beautifully designed, with a unique UI and icon prizes. Also digging the faux gold-trimmed woodgrain iPhone used for screenshots. Class. #

I'm usually not much of a sucker for bling, but daaaaaaaaaaamn. Kees Engelbart does some amazing things with precious metals.

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I still cannot understand the antagonism that many seem to feel towards skill foreigners getting jobs in the US. The job market is not a zero-sum game, and there are two important things to understand when it comes to these foreigners:

1. Studies have shown, repeatedly, that bringing in such skilled foreigners helps create new jobs by expanding the economy. In fact, 25% of all tech startups these days are done by foreign-born workers, and in Silicon Valley that number is over 50%.
2. The even bigger point: it's not as if these skilled workers suddenly disappear if they're not in the US. Instead, they remain in their home countries (or other countries) where they're still just as skilled and now more likely to be competing with US companies, who were hindered in hiring the best employees. Getting beat in the market by a foreign competitor isn't good for US jobs. It's terrible for US jobs.

And yet, thanks to the economy and our own immigration policies, guess what's happening? Not only is it incredibly difficult for skilled foreign workers to get jobs, many foreigners aren't even trying to go to US grad schools any more, knowing how difficult it is to get visas and jobs in the US. As many are noticing, this is undeniably bad for Silicon Valley and bad for innovation. Can someone please explain why it's somehow better to let those people compete with US companies, rather than work with US companies to grow them?

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iandoh writes "According to a group of Stanford researchers, people who frequently multitask don't pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time. In other words, multitaskers are bad at multitasking. The research team is also studying how to design computer voices for cars that result in safer driving." Reader AliasMarlowe adds "The comparison involved multitasking with a number of attention or context related tests. For the study, multitasking was defined as consuming multiple media sources at once — gaming, TV, IM, email, etc. Interestingly, the habitual multitaskers were much worse at multitasking than the single taskers in these relatively straightforward tests. In self-assessment the multitaskers considered themselves good at it and the single taskers considered themselves bad at it. An extreme case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, perhaps, with consequences for business and society."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brandon Blommaert's eco station photo series is equal parts playful & eerie. His handmade scrap monsters take on a pretty awe-inspiring presence in these massive airy landscapes. Have a look at his build process to brings things back down to earth. [via Kitsune Noir]

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I thought about writing a more creative headline, but opted instead for a direct request for help.

1. Yesterday I pre-ordered a family pack of Snow Leopard. As I understand it, the new version of the Mac OS will run PPC apps only with special software loaded, the way earlier versions of the OS ran Mac Classic apps.

2. The OPML Editor for the Mac is a PPC app.

3. It is also an instance of the GPL'd Frontier kernel, which I understand has been converted to be an Intel app.

4. I can build the Windows version of the OPML Editor. However, I cannot build the Mac version. It's been a long time since I worked at the C level, last time I did was with THINK C on the Mac in the mid-90s. I've tried to build the Mac app on XCode, but I always hit a problem that I don't know how to work around, and honestly I don't want to struggle at this level. I'm going to stick to developing in the OPML environment. When I can do a kernel build on both Mac and Windows, I may look at working inside the C codebase.

5. I need someone to get a build of the Mac OPML Editor together asap and to do some basic testing to be sure it works with the current opml.root.

Resources: The Frontier Kernel project website. Source download of the OPML Editor from August 2008.

Thanks in advance!

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "With the main Pirate Bay website experiencing DNS issues, downtime and uncertainty about both the lawsuits and potential sale to GGF, a Pirate Bay clone has already gone online. True to their principles, someone at TPB put up a torrent with a 21.3 GB copy of the site as it exists today. And now that archive is alive, at BTArena.net. Linus' old adage about backing up everything by putting it on FTP and letting the world mirror it may need to be updated. Torrents are much more efficient." "Downtime" may be a nice word for it; reader Underholdning writes "The Register has a story about a Swedish court ordering ISPs to disconnect The Pirate Bay or face a massive daily fine. The reason for the shutdown was an upcoming civil lawsuit by copyright holders. As usual, Torrentfreak has an updated story. It seems like the takedown until now has been successful." Believe what you will; the site itself says they'll be back up "in a few hours."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Inspired by EMSL's classic oscilloscope gaming project, Romain Christophe's put his own spin on the project. A Dedicated CRT + customized drive circuitry dress up right nicely in the wood & acrylic enclosure - and the controllers he built exude a fine blend retro-class.

Check out more pics + his mods to the original project schematics over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.

More:
Remaking a video game from 1958

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Glyn sez, "People accused of breaking copyright over the internet will have their internet connections cut off under tough new laws to be proposed by the UK government today. The decision is noteworthy since it was ruled out by the government's own Digital Britain report in June as going too far. The Open Rights Group believes the government is breaking its own consultation guidelines by bring in the proposals in the way they have and asks people to write to their MPs."

Yet again, we see knee-jerk reactions and policy swerves, this time in direct contravention of the government's own consultation guidelines. Those guidelines are there for a reason: to make sure government policy is balanced and considered. We will be making a formal complaint.

The result of these proposals is likely to be protest, challenges and public arguments in the run-up to the General election. Popular movements in France, Sweden and elsewhere have kick-started over similar measures.

That will do nobody any good, neither politicians nor rights-holding industries, as copyright's reputation suffers further damage.

Copyright is under threat: from heavy handed business lobbying and simplistic enforcement proposals.

New fast-track P2P clampdown proposals announced today (Thanks, Glyn!)

snydeq writes "A federal appeals court has overturned a 2007 decision that Novell owns the Unix code, clearing the way for SCO to pursue a $1 billion copyright infringement case against IBM. In a 54-page decision (PDF), the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals said it was reversing the 2007 summary judgment decision by Judge Dale Kimball of the US District Court for the District of Utah, which found that Novell was the owner of Unix and UnixWare copyrights. SCO CEO Darl McBride called the decision a 'huge validation for SCO.'" The case over who owns Unix will now go to trial in Utah.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Even if you've got a newer phone with an auto-focus lens you may still be able to take advantage of this resourceful macro lens hack. Disassemble an old DVD player for the lens, fabricate a lens holder out of cardboard, and place it before the standard lens with some poster mount, and you've got yourself a decent DIY macro lens.

[cnflikt via DIYphotography]

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We've heard from more than a few journalists over the last few months, thinking that the best way to save the newspaper business is for newspapers to get a special antitrust exemption from Congress that would allow them to collude and all agree to put up paywalls. The latest to join the chorus is Tim Rutten at the LA Times, and it's basically more of the same. For people who are supposed to be great journalists, you'd think they could think more than one move out, and realize what the inevitable response would be to newspapers all ganging up and putting up a paywall. The problem that Rutten, and the others before him, have made is assuming (incorrectly) that if they put up paywalls, people will suddenly, magically, want to pay. This sort of conceit is seen in a poll put together by a Canadian TV producer by the name of Wodek Szemberg. Over the weekend he set up a poll asking people how much they would pay per month for the news they read... and the price starts at $10. As Mathew Ingram pointed out, Szemberg's post is missing zero as an option (I'd argue it's also missing a lot of other numbers -- starting at $10 is incredibly presumptuous). Szemberg responded to this criticism by saying that zero isn't an option because zero will not exist for access to sites. Trust me, for many people, zero will absolutely exist as an option.

It's difficult to think of anything to say to people who think these ways, other than "good luck." The real world doesn't believe in such limitations. If the newspapers collude and come up with a pricing scheme where the lowest option starts at $10 per month -- fine. Just go do it, and then let's see what happens. Because talking about it is getting pretty silly.

But here's my guess as to what happens:

1. Smart news publications break off from the "charge 'em" pack and remain free and/or experiment with more creative business models.
2. Traffic to the paywall sites drops to ridiculously low levels.
3. Those sites realize that the revenue from subscriptions is a blip and barely noticeable.
4. In removing much of the audience, those sites also lose pretty much all leverage with advertisers, and discover that their online ad revenue drops quite a lot as well.
5. Meanwhile, remember those smart publications that didn't join in the suicide party? They're soaking up plenty of traffic, and working hard to provide more value to readers.
6. On top of that, newer startups spring up to fill in the void left by the paywall crew.
7. Smart journalists start jumping ship from the legacy papers behind the paywall to those who actually get them some public recognition (which are a lot more fun anyway).
8. Without competition from, or the legacy business structures of, the paywall newspapers, the smarter publications start bringing in both audience and revenue (not all of it advertising).
9. The paywall crew goes back to complaining to the gov't, though people start to wonder why they're still around, when there's so much useful journalism going out without paywalls.

So, go ahead. Just get it over with, so we can stop writing this post over and over again, and you guys can clear the field for the real innovators.

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Gizmodo has a pretty interesting contest that I think a Maker could easily win, just figure out a way to flatten food, likely with industrial equipment... I bet there's already an instructable on this :)

Help! We want to flatten food. I mean, really flatten it. Maybe even fuse foods together in the process. And to do it, we'll need your ideas.

Many culinary innovations come out of the Alinea kitchen after asking basic questions: How can we create a temperature contrast in the diner's mouth? How can we transform maple syrup texturally? How can we remind a patron of their childhood? What does "winter" mean to you?

One of the ideas that Chef Achatz had was to significantly flatten or fuse foodstuffs using a very high-pressure press. The goal would be much like that of tenderizing meat by pounding it, but in a far more controlled yet extreme manner. For example, what would happen to asparagus if you could smoothly press it between two sheets of steel, flattening it into a thin pasta-like noodle? Could sufficient pressure fuse meats together?

The answer, of course, might be that we just create a mess. But really there are only a few ways you can manipulate food—you can heat it or cool it, or cut it or beat it in some manner, or perform basic chemistry by combining ingredients that act upon each other. Chef Achatz posits that by applying significant pressure to foods, he can create unexpected textures and combinations.

1) A table-top method to press foods with greater force than a typical manual vise or wine press (note: we have already tried both of those)
2) It needs to be safe, measurable, controllable and relatively fast, as we need to serve 85 to 90 portions of its results each night
3) It needs to press the food withing a contained six-sided box so that the food doesn't go all over the place—ideally, the box itself could be adjustable

I think one of these will do....

Previously, laser etched foods...:

HOW TO - MAKE:sushi

Spock Matza

Laser etched chocolate bar

Laser-etched coffee beans

HOW TO - Laser cut (and cook) meat

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Each week we're bringing you some of our favorite posts from our friends over at TreeHugger. Enjoy!

Ex-Enron-er Goes On The Road
Ex-Enron speech writer starts a cross-country tour with a surprisingly heated message about how the world is not hot.

Cob House Built For Less Than $3,000
And you thought there was no way out of the housing market crash... You can build your own charming house for next to nothing.

Vanishing Creatures Chocolates Feature Packaging with a Bonus Surprise
Waste not, want not. This zero waste packaging is an extra transformer treat to go with your sweet.

Goat Patrol Revisited: The Transportation Question Answered
The idea of using goats for landscaping maintenance always begs one question: What's the carbon footprint of getting them to your garden? Mystery solved...

Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad... 1963 via DF.

Alan Kay presenting Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad, one of most influencial programs in the history of graphical user interfaces. Sutherland developed Sketchpad in 1963. This video was extracted taken from a longer one (here)...

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And you thought the insane nightmare was over. Two years ago it seemed like the long national nightmare that was SCO's claims of copyright infringement in Linux were over. A judge ruled that SCO did not actually own the copyrights it claimed it did, and that they still belonged to Novell. While SCO received a slap on the wrist ($2.5 million) for this, it basically wiped out the key part of SCO's lawsuit against IBM, and led SCO to file for bankruptcy. Some investors supposedly pumped some money into SCO to keep it breathing, but later details on that made the whole deal seem very, very sketchy. However, now SCO might have a very slight chance to turn things around.

A judge has overturned part of the lower court's original ruling on who owns the copyrights to Unix, and ordered a full jury trial take place to determine who actually owns the copyright. Oddly, the court did not overturn the part where SCO has to pay Novell $2.5 million -- which could push the company over the final edge. If, however, SCO can stay alive, and it does go to trial, the company could (and likely will) still lose that trial (and, we're still twiddling our thumbs and waiting for any evidence from SCO that IBM actually infringed on the UNIX copyrights... but that's another story and another lawsuit). SCO's Darl McBride (how he's still running the show is beyond me) is claiming this is a validation for SCO, but that's not even close to true. All the court is saying is that there wasn't enough for the summary judgment on the copyright ownership, and the issue should be taken up in a full jury trial. That's not a "validation" of SCO's position -- it's a small, and likely temporary, lifeline.

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Uncle Alex writes "My niece just turned one year old and her parents have asked that, instead of the usual gifts, we each contribute something to a time capsule to be opened on her 17th birthday. Multiple members of my family want to contribute digital data — text, video, music files. They came to me (the closest thing to a geek our family has) wondering: what's the best way to save the data to ensure she'll actually be able to see it in 16 years? Software might be out of date, hardware may no longer be used... any suggestions?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Uncle Alex writes "My niece just turned one year old and her parents have asked that, instead of the usual gifts, we each contribute something to a time capsule to be opened on her 17th birthday. Multiple members of my family want to contribute digital data — text, video, music files. They came to me (the closest thing to a geek our family has) wondering: what's the best way to save the data to ensure she'll actually be able to see it in 16 years? Software might be out of date, hardware may no longer be used... any suggestions?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is a really simple and dirt cheap wireless system that you can use for your next micro-controller project.

its super simple (and CHEAP!). super nice thing is that you can block the signal with your hand (mirrors? lenses?) this is real cool for my project, as this means that you can jam musical data coming from one unit to another. jam as in trash / mash up. also one unit will interfere with another. yeah: data chaos!

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino

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GyroMagician sez, "After Kingsnorth and the G20 climate change protests in the UK (and subsequent police violence), the police are trying to present a new, kinder, fluffier image. A protest is due in London this week, and the police would like to know where it will be. Climate Camp reply, and I don't think they're buying it. Result is hilarious. Linking to Guardian because they have been big supporter of activists, publicising police abuse."

Context: Climate Camp is a lawful, peaceful gathering of people (old, young, men and women) to talk about alternatives to environmentally devastating ways of producing and consuming. Earlier Climate Camps have been met by unprovoked and savage police assaults and harassment.

Climate Camp's YouTube letter shows the police's charm offensive has failed (Thanks, GyroMagician!)

One of the common refrains from folks in the newspaper industry is that, despite their inability to react to the changing market in front of them, they need to be kept alive, because of their civic duty of serving the public and preserving democracy. At least that's how the argument goes. However, Steve Yelvington points us to a good point made by Rick Edmonds, noting that if it's so important for the newspapers to serve the public, doesn't it make it much harder for them to do that behind a paywall. In other words, in their zeal to lock up the content, they're proving that they don't mean what they say when they talk about just serving the public. They really only mean that they're serving the segment of the public willing to pay -- which doesn't quite have that same noble civic duty feel to it, now does it?

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ptorrone writes "Hacker extraordinaire Ladyada (whose open source hardware projects we have discussed before) has just published a complete how-to, with design document, on making your own open source Russian vacuum fluorescent clock. The vacuum fluorescent tubes aren't as dangerous as (high-voltage) Nixie tubes, and there seem to be more of them available in the world. If you're not interested in building a clock from scratch, you can also pick up a kit version. All the schematics, source code, and files are available on the project's page."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I love this garage surf song that Steve Lodefink, a broad-spectrum DIYer, recorded. The vocals are unwittingly provided by Paul J. Meyer of the Success Motivation Institute, Inc. "Garage Surf Motivational"

The body of a mutilated murder-victim was positively identified by matching the serial numbers on her breast-implants:

Fiore's body was found last Saturday in a Dumpster behind an apartment complex in Buena Park, just outside Anaheim, California. Her teeth had been extracted and fingers removed in what police said was an apparent attempt to conceal her identity.

Law enforcement sources have told CNN that Fiore was identified through the serial numbers on her breast implants.

Suspect in model's murder found dead in Canada (via Freakonomics)

Salon's Glenn Greenwald has been through the Inspector General's report on US torture on terrorism suspects and pulled the highlights. These are the atrocities whose architects and perpetrators Obama has refused to prosecute: threatening to murder a suspect's wife and children, threatening to rape a detainee's female relatives in front of him, beating prisoners, simulated execution, threats of execution, hanging suspects by their arms until interrogators believed their shoulders had dislocated, stepping on ankle-shackles to cause severe pain and injury. The IG reports that these detainees came into custody on the basis of "assessments that were unsupported by credible intelligence" (e.g., random accusations from untrustworthy sources, such as grudge-bearing neighbors who turned them in for cash bounties), and the Obama administration has announced that it will continue the CIA's program of "extraordinary rendition" (kidnapping suspects and sending abroad to be tortured in other countries).

Before saying anything about the implications of this Report, I want to post some excerpts of what CIA interrogators did. Every American should be forced to read and learn this in order to know what was done in their names.

What every American should be made to learn about the IG Torture Report

Gary Wolf's feature on the idiosyncrasies of craigslist, its founder Craig Newmark, and its CEO Jim Buckmaster perfectly captures the thing that makes the site so wonderful: the quirky, zen character of its executives who love the heroically ugly, creaking beast and refuse to change it.

But if you really want to see a mess, go visit the nation's greatest apartment-hunting site, the first likely choice of anybody searching for a rental or a roommate. On this site, contrary to every principle of usability and common sense, you can't easily browse pictures of the apartments for rent. Customer support? Visit the help desk if you enjoy being insulted. How much market share does this housing site have? In many cities, a huge percentage. It isn't worth trying to compare its traffic to competitors', because at this scale there are no competitors.

Each of these sites, of course, is merely one of the many sections of craigslist, which dominates the market in facilitating face-to-face transactions, whether people are connecting to buy and sell, give something away, rent an apartment, or have some sex. With more than 47 million unique users every month in the US alone--nearly a fifth of the nation's adult population--it is the most important community site going and yet the most underdeveloped. Think of any Web feature that has become popular in the past 10 years: Chances are craigslist has considered it and rejected it. If you try to build a third-party application designed to make craigslist work better, the management will almost certainly throw up technical roadblocks to shut you down.

Why Craigslist Is Such a Mess

From Make:

The Sèvres Vase Clock, a design by Georgios Maridakis at the Royal College of Art, taps a vase you already have, every hour, and its tone can be adjusted by varying the amount of water inside.

Knocking clock

Jessy sez, "In 1983 my friends and I made a Doctor Who movie using somebody's dad's video camera. We've put pieces of it up on YouTube. The URL above is for the "Mind Battle" (pronounced "mind bottle") sequence. Another, earlier piece is here (starts with the exterior of our TARDIS, made from a refrigerator box) and here (starts with the TARDIS interior, with working machinery -- I believe one of us hid inside the mechanism to make it go).

Mind Bottle Sequence from Inner Earth take 2

Wired's Steve Silberman explores the fascinating and increasingly important placebo effect, which appears to be getting stronger:

The upshot is fewer new medicines available to ailing patients and more financial woes for the beleaguered pharmaceutical industry. Last November, a new type of gene therapy for Parkinson's disease, championed by the Michael J. Fox Foundation, was abruptly withdrawn from Phase II trials after unexpectedly tanking against placebo. A stem-cell startup called Osiris Therapeutics got a drubbing on Wall Street in March, when it suspended trials of its pill for Crohn's disease, an intestinal ailment, citing an "unusually high" response to placebo. Two days later, Eli Lilly broke off testing of a much-touted new drug for schizophrenia when volunteers showed double the expected level of placebo response...

Part of the problem was that response to placebo was considered a psychological trait related to neurosis and gullibility rather than a physiological phenomenon that could be scrutinized in the lab and manipulated for therapeutic benefit. But then Benedetti came across a study, done years earlier, that suggested the placebo effect had a neurological foundation. US scientists had found that a drug called naloxone blocks the pain-relieving power of placebo treatments. The brain produces its own analgesic compounds called opioids, released under conditions of stress, and naloxone blocks the action of these natural painkillers and their synthetic analogs. The study gave Benedetti the lead he needed to pursue his own research while running small clinical trials for drug companies.

Now, after 15 years of experimentation, he has succeeded in mapping many of the biochemical reactions responsible for the placebo effect, uncovering a broad repertoire of self-healing responses. Placebo-activated opioids, for example, not only relieve pain; they also modulate heart rate and respiration. The neurotransmitter dopamine, when released by placebo treatment, helps improve motor function in Parkinson's patients. Mechanisms like these can elevate mood, sharpen cognitive ability, alleviate digestive disorders, relieve insomnia, and limit the secretion of stress-related hormones like insulin and cortisol.

In one study, Benedetti found that Alzheimer's patients with impaired cognitive function get less pain relief from analgesic drugs than normal volunteers do. Using advanced methods of EEG analysis, he discovered that the connections between the patients' prefrontal lobes and their opioid systems had been damaged. Healthy volunteers feel the benefit of medication plus a placebo boost. Patients who are unable to formulate ideas about the future because of cortical deficits, however, feel only the effect of the drug itself. The experiment suggests that because Alzheimer's patients don't get the benefits of anticipating the treatment, they require higher doses of painkillers to experience normal levels of relief.

Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why. (Thanks, Steve!)

Microsoft's Bill Gates once famously pointed out that if software patents had been used back in the early days of Microsoft, the personal computer revolution almost certainly never would have occurred. But, over the last few years, Microsoft has become quite aggressive in the patent space, not just working hard to acquire as many patents as possible, but also waving them around at times and threatening other companies with them. Now, some will point out that, in the software space at least, many feel the need to stockpile patents, just for the sake of having something to use to threaten those who threaten you with patent infringement (the nuclear stockpiling theory).

However, now it seems that Microsoft may be trying to stockpile outside of its core industries, and it has some folks up in arms. A bunch of folks sent in the story about how Microsoft is trying to patent clustering phylogenetics methods (here's the application) that supposedly are quite common in the evolutionary biology industry. Of course, it's just an application -- so one would hope that, if it's so widely used, that the examiner will knock it out with plenty of prior art. But, the Patent Office isn't always known for doing such a good job on these sorts of things. And just the fact that such a patent is being attempted should be troubling enough.

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This Blackberry trackball with breakout board from Sparkfun looks super fun! I could see this little guy adding some real pizazz to my next Arduino project.

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What happens when the government blankets London with surveillance cameras at a cost of £500m?

Only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city's surveillance network has claimed.

1,000 cameras 'solve one crime'

Jayson Blair, the disgraced former NY Times reporter who got caught fabricating stories, is now a "certified life coach" in Ashburn, Virginia. Bradley Novicoff of Dangerous Minds writes:

Blair, if you recall, wrote in his four years at the Times nearly 600 articles about the war in Iraq, many of them factually suspect or, worse, distorted by design.  Well, who better to handle your “career crisis” than someone like that?!   Oh, and Blair’s also able to guide you through the choppy waters of substance abuse and bipolar disorder!  Blair’s website makes no mention of his past misdeeds, but there’s no mistaking his still-evident talents as a writer:

"I firmly believe in harnesses the beautiful things about mental illness—whether its creativity and depth, or energy and daydreaming—so that the client can live a safe and healthy life without giving up the things that make them unique."

Jayson Blair: From Liar To Life Coach

coondoggie writes "NASA and the Air Force said today they had successfully launched a 9-ft. rocket 1,300 feet into the sky, powered by aluminum powder and water ice. This combination of fuel elements, referred to as ALICE, has the potential to replace some liquid or solid propellants. The technology is being developed at Purdue University and Pennsylvania State University. Aside from its environmental benefiits, ALICE has the advantage that it could be manufactured in far-away places, such as the moon or Mars, instead of being transported to distant horizons at great cost, researchers said."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Following a bunch of other countries, it looks like Switzerland is the latest to freak out over Google Street View and to ban it, just a week after it was introduced. Google is apparently surprised by this move, noting that it had been talking to the Swiss gov't and had a bunch of privacy safeguards in place, which seemed to be working. Of course, you have to ask, are there surveillance cameras in Switzerland? If so, why is that okay when Google's Street View is not? Surveillance cameras are real-time. Street View is not. Surveillance cameras do not blur faces/license plates. Street View does. Why is one allowed and the other not? Of course, given how many local gov'ts have freaked out about Street View, it does make you wonder why Google would launch it these days without first having assurances from the gov't that it would be okay.

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The NY Times reports on an epochal move by Wikipedia — within weeks, the formerly freewheeling encyclopedia will begin requiring editor approval for all edits to articles about living people. "The new feature, called 'flagged revisions,' will require that an experienced volunteer editor for Wikipedia sign off on any change made by the public before it can go live. Until the change is approved — or in Wikispeak, flagged — it will sit invisibly on Wikipedia's servers, and visitors will be directed to the earlier version. ... The new editing procedures... have been applied to the entire German-language version of Wikipedia during the last year... Although Wikipedia has prevented anonymous users from creating new articles for several years now, the new flagging system crosses a psychological Rubicon. It will divide Wikipedia's contributors into two classes — experienced, trusted editors, and everyone else — altering Wikipedia's implicit notion that everyone has an equal right to edit entries."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There aren't many details about the build of this drawing robot by David Williamson, however I really like the concept of using two simple (and presumably high-repeatability) actuators to do the drawing, rather then trying to force a conventional two-wheeled robot to do the job. I also appreciate the fact that his site shows a large number of different prototypes, and explains the features and drawbacks of each one.

My idea is to make little courier bots out of these, that you could program with a secret message and send off to someone as a surprise. Have you seen or designed any other bots that would be capable of this? Any other ideas about what to do with them?

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Remember that discussion a few months ago about how most lawyers apparently understood the Streisand Effect, and knew better than to file bogus lawsuits against individuals putting up "gripes" sites about their business? We've already seen that's not quite true, but it takes a special level of thoughtlessness to lose such a bogus lawsuit (badly) and then file an appeal. We recently wrote about lawsuit filed by Sedgwick Claims Management against a guy who was upset with the company. Part of his griping, involved taking photos of Sedgwick execs and putting them on a fake "WANTED" poster. The judge, correctly, threw out most of the lawsuit as being a SLAPP and tossed out the ridiculous "copyright infringement" claim on the use of the photos, noting that it was certainly a case of fair use. Most impressive? The guy fighting Sedgwick and its big law firm won the case defending himself (pro se).

Perhaps because of the pro se nature of defense, Sedgwick has decided to appeal, but Eric Goldman can't figure out what they're thinking as all it does is call more attention to the complaints against the company:

Put this one in the "Are you kidding me?" file. Last month I blogged about Sedgwick Claims Management v. Delsman involving a small-time griper who had the temerity to cut-and-paste some company executive headshots to create his griping material. Sedgwick went after Delsman in a big way, hiring a big national firm (Lord Locke) to take Delsman down, apparently unaware of or unconcerned about the Streisand effect. Delsman defended pro se. Despite the long odds, Delsman nevertheless got a rousing dismissal of the claims. The court held the use of the headshots was a fair use (a clearly correct ruling, IMO), and the court casually tossed all of the other claims using California's anti-SLAPP law.

That should have been the end of it. Instead, surprisingly, Sedgwick has decided to appeal the ruling to the Ninth Circuit. This sets up a potentially important Ninth Circuit showdown over how copyright fair use and anti-SLAPP doctrines apply to Internet gripers. It also gives Sedgwick extra time to bask in the glow of the Streisand effect.

Some people apparently never learn.

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Matt Mosher writes:

I was upset. Everywhere I turned was an ipod. On display, in someone’s hand, strapped to an arm, hidden in a pocket (the head phones are a give-away), in the train, on the bus, walking down the street. I kept thinking to myself, “What happened to that guy from the 80’s with the HUGE book box on his shoulder?” Well, no more! We’ve been isolating each other from our musical tastes for too long, and have been acting far too respectable. Enter the Boom Bag.

Sure you can buy these. For $150.00. Which is insane. So here’s how to make one. It cost me five bucks, but then I had the back pack and speaker already.

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(Download / Watch on YouTube, video duration: 20 min.)

Today in Boing Boing Video: David Tennant and Russell T. Davies of Doctor Who, interviewed by BB guest host Richard Metzger of Dangerous Minds. Richard is a *very* knowledgeable Doctor Who trufan, so the resulting conversation -- which we're presenting here in extended 20-minute form -- is deep and comprehensive, with lots for hardcore Doctor Who junkies to love. Recently, both Russell and David left the show, and this amounts to the definitive "exit interview." Let the fangasms commence.

Metzger says,

I'm one of those guys who downloads Doctor Who and Torchwood within seconds of them hitting the torrent trackers. Just a few hours after they air in the UK, I'm watching them in Los Angeles. My wife asked me what I wanted for Christmas last year and I said "A new Doctor Who episode, but I'm getting that already." That's how much I love the show (She's a fan too, but drew the line at me using the TARDIS landing for my ring tone).

So it was great fun for me to meet Russell and David. A real treat. They're both friendly, charismatic guys who who were really easy to interview. They clearly enjoy each others company and there was a nice, loose banter between them that I think will be fun for the fans to watch here. They've got their double act down pat, let's just say.

This interview took place at an interesting moment in time for both men as they've only just left behind their respective starring roles in one of the biggest television successes in the world today. As difficult as that may sound, you can only imagine how much pressure is off them after four years of practically non-stop work. I think it shows in this interview, as they're both very relaxed and jovial. David had just come from Comic Con where he was treated with fan adulation bordering on Beatlemania and Russell is starting a new phase of his life here in Los Angeles.

The week we shot this he was just coming off the double whammy career high of Torchwood practically *taking over* British television for an entire week with his brilliant Torchwood: Children of Earth mini-series (read my review here) and then seeing it launch BBC America's new HD service with a resounding success right afterward here.

How lucky Hollywood is to have Britain's answer to Rod Serling in such close proximity these days and I'm sure it won't be long before we're reading in Variety what David Tennant will do next. He's an interesting actor and a lot of big people will want to work with him, so expect that it will be something worth watching!

Like I say, I think it's an interesting glimpse into a transitional time for both David and Russell and these were the questions that I wanted to ask them, not as a journalist on assignment, but as a big Doctor Who fan ("David, isn't leaving Doctor Who like Sean Connery quitting James Bond?").

I hope other Who fans around the world will enjoy this as much as I did."

(Special thanks to Mark Kleiman and Stefanie Fletcher for their generous support of Boing Boing Video.)

We've seen plenty of crowdsourced anti-spam apps, but Jesse points us to a company called Immunet that claims to be launching a free "cloud-based, collaborative anti-virus" solution. The idea is that people install it, and as soon as anyone detects a virus problem, that info is shared with all of the other users, thereby (in theory) working much faster than today's brand-name anti-virus products. However, I have to admit I can't figure out how this works. For anti-spam stuff it makes sense -- since anyone can recognize spam. But how can it work for anti-virus? Who's determining what the actual virus is? How is it protected against false positives? None of that's clear. I went through the company's website, and it seems to just skip right over the question of actually detecting the virus. It makes fun of the established anti-virus providers for taking too long in examining suspected viruses in their lab, but never explains how the detection occurs otherwise. In fact, about the only thing I can figure out from the company's own language is that it's going to simply use the virus definitions found in those other products installed on people's computers. If that's true, then it won't actually be any better or faster than those companies it was making fun of earlier. The whole thing sounds full of buzzwords and hype, but appears to have little substance.

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