Apparently the Prince George County high school spent over $4 million on a nice new computer system... and the system is so buggy that students have been unable to attend class for the first two days of school, since the computer system refuses to give them their schedules. The kids still went to school, but just got to hang out in the gym or hallways since no one seemed to be able to figure out where they were supposed to go. The thing that gets me... is how did they get to the beginning of the school year and just realize this? I know I went to school way back before all this was computerized, and we got our schedules sent in the mail a few weeks before school. You have to think that the school would have realized this was a problem earlier and at least figured out some sort of manual way to get schedules to people?

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dan_johns writes "Only one month after Microsoft released Linux code to improve the performance of Linux guests on Windows, Red Hat has done the reverse. Red Hat has quietly released a set of drivers to improve the performance of Windows guests hosted on Linux's Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor. The netkvm driver is a network driver and viostor is a Storport driver to improve the performance of high-end storage. This release includes paravirtual block drivers for Windows. Linux and Windows — virtually coming together at last."

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 and next, I'm sharing some of the photos I took of the zinesters who came to sell their comics and zines. I'll post a new photo each day.

This is Amy Martin; she's autographing a copy of her comic book, The Single Girls, for Carla. Amy's business card says she's "obscenely feminist." She's not obscene, though. The characters in her comics mainly discuss their hang-ups, lets-downs, and infrequent moments of joy regarding dating and sex. Her drawing styles is loose and lively. If Jules Feiffer were a woman and had a comic book based on Sex and the City, it might be something like The Single Girls. I liked it!

The Single Girls cost $6 and you can order it from her website, Amy Martin Comics.

Previous San Francisco Zine Fest photos:

Sean Logic and his zine, The Great MySpace Swindle

Hellen Jo and Calvin Wong

Kit Karter is a 1962 comic book about a "teenager who "eats, sleeps, and drinks GO KARTS." His pal Axil Greez has an impossible haircut.

The first issue is available for download here.

UPDATE: Holy Roger Kaputnik! I just learned that Kit Karter was written and illustrated by Dave Berg, the "Lighter Side of..." cartoonist from MAD.

mcgrew writes "New Scientist reports that a steam-powered car has broken the 1906 record of 204 km/hr (127 mph) for the fastest steam-powered automobile, the Stanley Steamer. The Inspiration made a top speed of 225 kilometres per hour (140 miles per hour) on August 26. 'The car's engine burns liquid petroleum gas to heat water in 12 suitcase-sized boilers, creating steam heated to 400C. The steam then drives a two-stage turbine that spins at 13,000 revolutions per minute to power its wheels.The FIA requires two 1.6-km-long runs to be performed in opposite directions — to cancel out any effect from wind — within 60 minutes.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earlier this year, we noted that torrent search engine Mininova was being sued, with Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN asking the court to force Mininova to block certain content. It's difficult to see how or why this should be Mininova's responsibility. As a search engine, it has no way of knowing which content is authorized and which is infringing. Yet, a court has sided with BREIN and told Mininova it needs to remove all infringing torrents from its site. The court is giving the site 3 months to implement a filter system, or face a fine of 1,000 euros per infringing torrent. Of course, Mininova already takes down torrents when alerted to the fact that they're infringing. Demanding that the company pre-determine which torrents are considered "infringing" doesn't make much sense (especially since the torrents themselves are not the "infringing" content). This seems to be yet another ruling with a court finding that assisting with potential copyright infringement somehow needs to be stopped.

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Ranjit Bhatnagar took one of those punched-strip programmable music box kits, put a half-twist in the strip, and looped it back on itself to make an endlessly-looping Möbius strip music box. The melody plays through once, and then a second time with the ordering of the notes on the scale reversed. An interesting compositional challenge, if nothing else.

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An anonymous reader writes "Last week Slashdot posted on the Flickr censorship case where Flickr removed the controversial Obama/Joker image from their site. A representative from Flickr claimed that they only removed the image because they received a DMCA takedown notice over the image and then accused the press and blogosphere of being 'makey uppey,' subsequently locking the thread where Flickr users were complaining about the takedown. But now it appears that Time, DC Comics, and the photographer of the original photograph used to make the parody image are all denying having issued Flickr a takedown notice. Flickr was asked who issued the notice by the Los Angeles Times and told the Times that they were not able to provide that information. The original artist says Flickr has not told him who filed it either, despite the fact that Yahoo has in the past provided the information to people when DMCA takedown requests are issued. So if Time didn't file the DMCA notice, and DC Comics didn't file the DMCA notice, and the original photographer did not file the DMCA notice, then who exactly did?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Robots don't know zines ... Or do they? We're in the midst of celebrating robots this month, with our new issue of MAKE magazine featuring DIY drones, rovers, and bots of all kinds. So imagine our delight when we saw Doctor Popular's robot zine at last weekend's San Francisco Zine Fest.

The graphic zine is actually a 24-page comic book, with each page drawn by a different artist, all in 24 consecutive hours. Doc Pop was even nice enough to sign a copy and then gift it to the office. Thanks much, Doctor Popular!

In MAKE, Volume 19: Robots, Rovers, and Drones, learn how to make a model plane with an autopilot and a built-in robot brain. We'll also show you how to make a comfortable chair and footstool out of a single sheet of plywood, a bicyclist's vest that shows how fast you're going, and projects that introduce you to servomotors. All this, and plenty more, in MAKE, Volume 19! Subscribe to MAKE, or log in to check out the Digital Edition.

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It's amazing what a little competition can do. Apparently, up in Canada, cable company Shaw started running a promotion a few months ago where they dropped the price of 15Mbps broadband, 200 channels of TV, or voice service to about $10. However, apparently, this was (conveniently) only done in places where Shaw was going head to head with competitor Novus. In response, Novus put together an amusing marketing campaign, using all sorts of social media, encouraging Shaw customers in other regions (where they couldn't get this phenomenal deal) to contact Shaw to ask why not. It's a bit cheeky, but it makes the point: Shaw appears to be dumping its product in areas where it competes with Novus to cause trouble for Novus via predatory pricing.

Now, I'm all for competition, so I don't necessarily think that such pricing is a bad thing (though, people should be aware that it's unlikely that those prices can last), but that also means that the ad campaign by Novus is fair game as well. Not to Shaw, apparently. The company has now sued Novus for its marketing campaign, claiming that it's defamation. It's difficult to see how it's defamation to point out your competitors' own promotional pricing, but perhaps I'm missing something. Or maybe Shaw just figures that the defamation suit itself will get more publicity for its $10 offer. Marketing via lawsuit? Still, it seems that in going to court, Shaw may open up some legal doors it's best to avoid. A quick stroll through some online sources suggests that Canada does, in fact, have laws against predatory pricing. Getting this whole campaign more attention might also end up drawing the attention of some regulators, too...

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BenEnglishAtHome writes "Nearly all US government employees and contractors are subject to mandatory annual information security briefings. This year the official briefing flatly states that all downloaded music is stolen. The occasionally breathless tone of the briefing and the various minor errors contained therein are funny but the real eye-opener is a 'secure the building' exercise where employees stumble across security problems and resolve them. According to the material, the correct response to an employee who is downloading music is to shout 'That's stealing!' No mention is made of more-free licenses, public domain works, or any other legitimate download. If this were a single agency or department that had made a mistake in their training material it might not be so shocking. But this is a government-wide training package that's being absorbed by hundreds of thousands of federal employees, both civilian and military. If you see a co-worker downloading music, they're stealing. Period. Who woulda thunk it? Somebody should mirror this. Who wants to bet that copies will become hard to find if clued-in technogeeks take notice and start making noise?" Warning: this site gives a whole new meaning to "Flash heavy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BenEnglishAtHome writes "Nearly all U.S. government employees and contractors are subject to mandatory annual information security briefings. This year the official briefing flatly states that all downloaded music is stolen. The occasionally breathless tone of the briefing and the various minor errors contained therein are funny but the real eye-opener is a 'secure the building' exercise where employees stumble across security problems and resolve them. According to the material, the correct response to an employee who is downloading music is to shout 'That's stealing!' No mention is made of more-free licenses, public domain works, or any other legitimate download. If this were a single agency or department that had made a mistake in their training material it might not be so shocking. But this is a government-wide training package that's being absorbed by hundreds of thousands of federal employees, both civilian and military. f you see a co-worker downloading music, they're stealing. Period. Who woulda thunk it? Somebody should mirror this. Who wants to bet that copies will become hard to find if clued-in technogeeks take notice and start making noise?" Warning: this site gives a whole new meaning to "Flash heavy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sculptor Brandan Tang combines Chinese Ming dynasty vase design with pop Asian mecha motifs. He calls the work "Manga Ormolu." See more at Hi-Fructose. "Brandan Tang's Manga Ming "Ormolu" Vases"

Dreweatts auction house in Bristol, England, is holding an auction tomorrow that includes several choice lots. The two most desirable items in the "Collection of Curiosities" auction, at least in my opinion, are a two-headed calf taxidermy mount and a mummified hand. With a guide price of less than £100 for the hand, I'd be surprised if it's real. But well-done vintage gaffs are fun too! From the auction descriptions:

Lot No 456: Taxidermy, a scarce conjoined twin calves head, on an oak shield wall mount, inscribed verso 'Born 1911 Lymington Terr., Esh Winning, Durham, Mr A Haig, Farmer', the shield 35.5cm high, guide price £300-400

Lot No 415: A mummified hand, approx. 16cm long, in a leaded perspex case with a wooden base, guide price £50-100

Collection of Curiosities auction

natehoy writes "According to the US News and World Report, a recent study has shown a link between obesity and the loss of neurological tissue. The brains in elderly patients who were obese had an average of 8% less brain tissue than their trimmer counterparts. Overweight patients suffered about half the impact, or 4%. This could have implications for the onset of dementia illnesses such as Alzheimer's. Just one more risk factor to add to the growing body (no pun intended) of reasons to try and stay trim."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I enjoyed this lighthearted insider's guide to germs called The Invisible Kingdom: From the Tips of Our Fingers to the Tops of Our Trash, Inside the Curious World of Microbes.

Author Idan Ben-Barak describes microbes that live in hotter-that-boiling-temperature water, inside rocks, and in and on your body (you've got between two to four pounds of microbes hitching a ride with you). He explains how diseases are transmitted, why germs make us sick, and why the cure for a cold is a long way off ("the common cold is not really a disease. It is a general name for a collection of symptoms that can be caused by over a hundred types of viruses from several different families.")

I'd love to shrink down to microscopic size to see some of the odd lifeforms described in this book. Pilobolus crystallinus is a fungus that lives in cowpatties and propagates by turning into a water cannon to shoot spores onto nearby grass, so cows will eat them and crap them out someplace else. Myxococcus xanthus uses a pushing-motor and a pulling-motor to move over soil. And Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus, which preys on other bacteria, rams into its quarry to kill it, then uses the materials to produce offspring. 

I was glad the book was under 200 pages, but it left me hoping Ben-Barak will write a follow up book about microbes that drills a little deeper in a specific topic, such as antibiotics and disease resistance.

The Invisible Kingdom: From the Tips of Our Fingers to the Tops of Our Trash, Inside the Curious World of Microbes

As book publishers are starting to struggle with the same business model issues facing the music industry and others, it seems at least one publisher has come up with a unique "reason to buy" -- though, it may be slightly out of your price range. johnjac points us to the news about the $1 million wine book. It is, as described, a book about wines that will run you a cool $1 million. Why? Well, because it comes with the wine it talks about. The book will list out the world's top 100 wineries, and with the book you'll get a six bottle case from each winery listed in the book. So, the book, plus 600 bottles of wine from the 100 best wineries in the world. They're only making 100 copies of the book... and 25 have already been pre-ordered, so hurry up and order.

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A 55-gallon barrel makes a great grill, check out how johnnyblegs made his.

Lucky for me on my last day of work at The Bakery, the 55-gallon honey barrel I'd been waiting for was finally empty. Getting laid off wasn't going to stand in the way of my dream to make my own barbecue.

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Agg writes "Well the slab gets poured on Wednesday so I thought I would sink 6 meters of copper pipe in the slab so that I can run my water loop through it when the house is finished. I hope to have water year round at about 16deg. No need for radiators or fans with chilled water coming straight out of the slab!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For four decades, Charles Gatewood has trained his camera on underground scenes, from the Beats and the dark alleys of 1970s Mardi Gras to modern primitives and extreme sexual fetishists. He is a photographic anthropologist at the fringes of Western culture. I feel privileged to have Charles's marvelous portrait of William Burroughs and Brion Gysin gazing into their dreamachine hanging above my desk. Charles Gatewood's photos of celebrities -- Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, Allen Ginsberg, Al Green, Abbie Hoffman, and others -- will be on display at San Francisco's Robert Tat Gallery from September 3 to October 31. The exhibition is in conjunction with the release of Charles's new limited edition artist's book on Bob Dylan, titled "A Complete Unknown." You can preview the full exhibition online. Top, "William Burroughs and Scientology E-Meter" (1972). Above left, "Bob Dylan, Stockholm (with cigarette)" (1966). Above right, "Abbie Hoffman, NYC" (1969).

Charles Gatewood's "Celebrities!" at Robert Tat Gallery

Brad is building this pretty rad GPS/accelerometer tracking device to measure the performance of his model rockets. The telemetry data will also be used to help recover the rocket. His current version uses an ADXL330 accelerometer (also found in the Wii nunchuck), a long-range xBee transmitter, and a PIC 18F microcontroller.

I particularly like the way the surface-mount-only accelerometer chip is mounted.
Update: The chip is mounted in a slotted header, or alternately a DIP component carrier. Thanks!

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Barence writes "Mozilla's Security team has disclosed a very interesting piece of research which suggests people refused to upgrade to Firefox 3 because they were afraid the browser would expose their porn collection. Mozilla's research found that the number one reason for not upgrading was the new location bar, and the fact that it delved into people's bookmark collections to suggest sites as they typed. 'When we expanded the capabilities of the location bar to search against all history and bookmarks in Firefox 3, a lot of people contacted us to say that they had certain bookmarks they didn't really want to have displayed,' Firefox's principal designer, Alex Faaborg, tactfully explains. 'In some cases users had intentionally hidden these bookmarks in deep hierarchies of folders, somewhat similar to how one might hide a physical object.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earlier this year, we wrote about the ridiculous situation that Nina Paley faced in trying to release an amazing film, Sita Sings the Blues. Basically, some copyright holders of the music used in the film put positively insane terms on the use of their music. This made no sense, considering that the music (from the 1920s) was mostly unlistened to these days -- and the only thing the movie would likely do is increase demand for people to get legitimate versions of the music. Eventually, Paley worked out a plan to release the film under a Creative Commons license and put in place a business model like the ones we've talked about for years: give away the infinite, sell the scarce.

And apparently, it's working. Pistol points us to a talk that Nina Paley just gave revealing some of the results. You can see the video here (it's a bit over 20 minutes): The key quote, on how she describes the business model sounds pretty much exactly like what we talk about here:

The business model -- and I do want to make money -- I very much want to make money, and I chose this because I felt I'd make more money doing this than with a conventional distribution deal. What I'm doing is that I'm not selling the content. The content is free. The content is Sita Sings The Blues. It's digital. It's made of 0s and 1s and 0s and 1s can be copied freely and easily by lots of people.... Containers are not free. And where the money comes from is the containers. And the containers, for example, are DVDs, merchandise, t-shirts, 35 mm film prints, physical screenings. The film is free, but the container of that film is not free. And that's what we're selling...

The more the content flows freely, the more demand there is for those containers. So I want as many people as possible to share Sita Sings the Blues because that drives up the demand for the containers... That was the theory when we started this, and so far it has proven correct. Yes, I love money.

So, how much money? Well, she details all the different areas of where the money came from, and it comes out as follows:

• $21,000 in donations (most at the very beginning)
• $25,100 from the store for merchandise (which cost $8,500). So, net: $16,600
• $3,000 from Channel 13 for broadcasting it (even though they didn't have to pay)

And that's not all. She also talks about a theater that downloaded her film online to show it and then sent her a check for $1,900 (as she said "the dream scenario"), and the fact that her success with the model has created all sorts of paid speaking gigs as well. Oh, and there's other things as well.

She's done some commercial distribution deals in a variety of different regions (and admits that she'd love it if she didn't have to handle all the distribution). So even though anyone can download the content online, actually distributing a 35mm print of the film (the container) uses a full distribution deal -- and, in fact, they've found that many people who downloaded and watched the film, still go and see it in the theater, because it's a different experience to go see it in the theater. Most of those deals are new, so she didn't have data on sales from that yet.

On top of that, she's done deals with DVD distributors. She offers up a special edition (signed) DVD that she distributes herself for $100. Or there's the regular version (sold via Question Copyright) for $20. This is being done to basically prove that you can sell DVDs of content that can be downloaded. In 2 months, they've sold 700 of them -- with no marketing. Then they signed a professional DVD distributor, who put it on Amazon, Netflix and stores... and they were able to sell way more than Nina or Question Copyright -- as you'd expect (though, the distributor got a bit confused and asked about trying to take the film down from YouTube, and had to be told not to do that -- old habits die hard, perhaps). Once again, this shows that having good partners helps, but also shows that just because something is available free (even from "competitors") it doesn't mean someone with a strong marketing effort can't seriously outsell the others.

Finally, there's another interesting element which is worth discussing. For the goods sold directly from Nina's site, they're using a special Creator-Endorsed Mark, so that buyer's know some money is going back to the creator. This is the sort of thing that always freaks people out when we talk about this stuff. They insist that others will make t-shirts and things and who will want to buy the official versions then? Well, it turns out lots of people. Because they want to support the artist, and having the Creator Endorsed mark does that. As Nina says:

It is entirely legal for others to sell unendorsed products. It is entirely legal to sell Sita Sings the Blues t-shirts or sippy cups or whatever, but they cannot claim that the money goes to me, unless they work out a revenue share with me first, they cannot display the creator endorsed mark. We believe that this mark increases the value of the merchandise, because people want to support the artist.

This is really great info, and she notes that within a few months, she'll have a lot more info on the theatrical distribution revenue as well. But, all in all, it looks like she'll easily be able to pay off the $50,000 it cost to officially license the music (no matter how ridiculous it was that she needed to do that), and should be able to earn a nice profit from it. And... I'll bet that her next movie (or whatever she does next) will have a nice built-in audience as well.

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At a recent Ignite show, designer Jeff Veen gave an entertaining talk on iPhone copycats as a kind of cargo cult.

Ignite Show: Jeff Veen on Great Designers

ezabi writes "TrendWatch, the malware research arm of TrendMicro, has posted a white paper titled 'A Cybercrime Hub' (PDF, summary here) describing the activities of an Estonian ISP acting as a cover-up for a large cybercrime network. It's involved with malware distribution and DNS hijacking, which leads to credit card fraud. The story's interesting, and a typical internet user would be exposed in such a situation. What security measures should be taken to prevent normal users from falling victim to such malicious bodies? Note that they are represented legitimately and are offering real services like any other internet company."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Every other week, MAKE's awesome interns tell about the projects they're building in the Make: Labs, the trouble they've gotten into, and what they'll make next.

By Ed Troxell, photo intern

When I landed my internship here at MAKE it was my real break into the magazine industry. I remember telling myself that if I could just get my foot in the door, the rest would fall into place. Well, it did. Since joining MAKE over a year ago, my life has not been the same -- not only have I worked at a great magazine, I've launched my own magazine, MIX IT UP.

I was hired a MAKE editorial intern, which really helped me get a sense of what goes on when putting together a magazine: finding topics to write about, finding writers, assigning deadlines, making sure people meet those deadlines, fact-checking articles, proofing them, all while having staff meetings and conference calls with those who work in other locations.

While learning all this, I was finishing up my studies in communications at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, Calif., where I was photo editor on the school newspaper, The Star. About 6 months later, I was switched over to become MAKE's photo intern, which turned out to be perfect since I was already doing photography.

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8linx.com features a 5-part tutorial on building a CNC hot wire cutter for polystyrene foam, using parts that come from the hardware store. The original market for these CNC foam cutters was R/C airplane modelers, who use them to cut wing profiles, but in combination with lost foam metal casting techniques they could be much more versatile.

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Details has an article about a guy who lived like a high roller by printing more than $7 million with an ink-jet printer and supplies from Staples.

When Talton set out to circumvent the U.S. Treasury's security measures, he had no experience in counterfeiting, printing, or graphic design, and he didn't even own a computer. His first attempts were made with a Hewlett-Packard all-in-one ink-jet printer/scanner/fax/copier, which could be picked up at the time for less than $150. Early experiments, printed on regular copy paper, were fuzzy, so he cleaned up the original image on a computer. But there was a problem, Talton says: "It wouldn't take the mark." Counterfeit-detection pens mark yellow on genuine currency but brown or black on fake. Talton didn't know why. At first he thought the Treasury treated the paper, so he experimented with chemicals he found at the body shop and even tried dipping his notes in fabric softener. Nothing worked. Frustrated, he began taking a detection pen everywhere he went, trying it on whatever paper he came across. He was about to give up when one day, sitting on the toilet, he found himself staring at the roll of tissue beside him. He took out the pen: The mark showed up yellow. Talton discovered that toilet paper, the pages of Bibles and dictionaries, and newsprint are all made from the same kind of recycled paper pulp, and all take the mark. Newsprint is strong, and it has an additional advantage for the large-scale buyer: "Newsprint is real cheap," Talton says.

Ink jet counterfeiter

Last week, we noted that LyricWiki had been pressured to kill its API after music publishers threatened it with a lawsuit. In the comments to that post, someone insisted that there haven't been any lawsuits over lyrics online. If that's true, it just changed. Apparently the removal of the API wasn't enough, as the parent company of LyricWiki, Motive Force Web, along with LiveUniverse (the site run by former MySpace exec Brad Greenspan) have both been sued by a group of music publishers, who are insisting that such sites are unfairly "profiting on the backs of songwriters." I'd really like to see them prove that. These sites aren't profiting off the backs of songwriters, they're helping more people find and understand the lyrics of songs they like. That gives fans a closer connection to the music and more reason to buy things which will actually bring songwriters money. It's stunning how shortsighted and backwards the music publishers are being here.

Even worse, the music publishers didn't stop at just suing the two companies here. They also sued the individuals behind them personally. This is a trick that the record labels have been pulling lately as well. It's legalized bullying. These companies realize that by suing execs of these companies personally, it puts that much more pressure on those execs to settle, even though there's no basis whatsoever to go after those execs personally.

So, nice job Peermusic, Warner/Chappell, Bug Music and your lobbying buddies at the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA), you've pissed off more music fans, made them less likely to find or be interested in music of the songwriters you represent, and have filed misguided lawsuits against individuals who dared to try to provide useful information to the public.

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mindbrane writes "Once in a while, a sidebar will throw a lot of light on a difficult problem. The BBC has a short piece on British ISPs' anger over proposed new laws governing file sharing in the UK. The new laws would include cutting repeat offenders off from the Internet. Early response suggests such tactics would fail: 'UK ISP Talk Talk said the recommendations were likely to "breach fundamental rights" and would not work. ... Virgin said that "persuasion not coercion" was key in the fight to crack down on the estimated six million file-sharers in the UK. ... Talk Talk's director of regulation Andrew Heaney told the BBC News the ISP was as keen as anyone to clamp down on illegal file-sharers. ... "This is best done by making sure there are legal alternatives and educating people, writing letters to alleged file-sharers and, if necessary, taking them to court."' The article also mentions a statement issued by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills which 'proposes that internet service providers are obliged to take action against repeat infringers and suggests that the cost of tracking down persistent pirates be shared 50:50 between ISPs and rights holders.' Unsurprisingly, said rights holders are in favor of the idea."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Farhad Manjoo sez, "I just wrote a piece about why office IT restrictions hurt productivity. There's a great deal of research showing that people are more creative and driven when they feel some sense of autonomy at work; locking down their computers works against that goal."

The restrictions infantilize workers--they foster resentment, reduce morale, lock people into inefficient routines, and, worst of all, they kill our incentives to work productively. In the information age, most companies' success depends entirely on the creativity and drive of their workers. IT restrictions are corrosive to that creativity--they keep everyone under the thumb of people who have no idea which tools we need to do our jobs but who are charged with deciding anyway.

If I sound a bit over-exercised about what seems like an uncontroversial practice, it's because I am--for too long, office workers of the world have taken IT restrictions sitting down. Most of my co-workers at Slate labor away on machines that are under bureaucratic control; they need special dispensation to install anything that requires running an installation program, even programs that have been proved to be safe--anything that uses the increasingly popular Adobe AIR platform or new versions of major Web browsers. Other friends are blocked from visiting large swaths of the Web. IT departments install filtering programs that block not only adult sites but anything that might allow for goofing off on "company time," including e-mail and chat programs, dating sites, shopping sites, and news sites like Digg or Reddit (or even Slate).

Different IT managers have different aims, of course. At some companies--like Slate--the techs are mainly trying to keep the network secure; preventing people from installing programs is a simple and effective (if blunt) way to ensure that corporate computers don't ingest scary stuff. Other firms want to do something even more sinister: keep workers from having fun. These companies block the Web and various other online distractions on the theory that cowed a workforce is an efficient one. But that's not really the case.

Unchain the Office Computers! (Thanks, Farhad)

Google asked what tech bloggers read, MAKE is up there! I found some new feeds in the food category, too.

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An anonymous reader writes "I recently replaced my old laptop. The owner of my company heard about this and offered to reimburse me for it, since he knows I have and will continue to do company work on my own hardware. I'd like the extra $1,250, but I think if I accept his offer that legally he has the right to any data on it (personal emails, files, blog posts, etc.). Even if I decide to put my personal stuff on a second drive, I'm worried that using company property to save and write to separate storage still gives them the right to it. The apps (Office, etc.) are my own licenses. We do not have a policy that intellectual property developed using company assets belongs to the company. But, if I figured out the One Great Internet Business Idea or write the Great American Novel and used the company laptop to do it, it's an avenue they could use to claim they own it. Unlikely, but scary. How many Slashdotters have been in this situation, and what agreement did you and your management come up with?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

To Sam Diaz who says RSS was "a good idea at the time but there are better ways now," I have many things to say.

1. People confuse RSS with Google Reader. Let's be clear that there's a difference. Google Reader is an application that reads RSS-formatted data. There are many other applications that read and write RSS.

2. I think Google Reader was, on the whole, a good thing. It's probably the best reader of its variety. You have to go find the new stuff in Google Reader. I prefer a reader that finds the new stuff for me, and presents it in reverse chronologic order. This is known as a river of news reader.

3. Diaz more or less says that's his preference too. Interesting.

4. My newspaper doesn't tell me how many articles I haven't read going back to the date of my birth. I bet it would be in the millions. Why should I care. This was the worst idea ever in news readers.

5. The core problem -- so many programmers who write RSS software are not themselves news junkies. If they were they'd know when they got it wrong. News is about what's new! Show me the newest stuff first. Sorry to all the articles I didn't read, maybe in the next lifetime.

6. He may not use a RSS reader, but the news is still getting to him through RSS.

7. If all the RSS on the planet were all of a sudden to stop updating (key point) the news would stop flowing. Any news guy or gal who thinks they could get by without RSS -- think this through a bit more. We all love the Internet, but don't shut off your gas and electric because your computer and router wouldn't work without electricity. Same with RSS and news. RSS is how the news flows, whether you see it or not. If not RSS, something exactly like RSS.

8. The Internet is layered. New technology comes on line building on tech that already existed. RSS was like that. It built on XML and HTTP, which built on text and TCP/IP. The new things that Diaz likes so much, in exactly the same way, build on RSS.

9. When news authors don't understand how technology evolves, they propagate incorrect notions to everyone else, including would-be inventors, who have to figure it out for themselves, and then convince investors and partners they know what they're doing -- when they just read in ZDNet that things don't evolve at all. So Mr. Diaz does us all a disservice.

10. I object when technology writers tell the story of technology incorrectly. People say I should just be happy to see my name in the story, or in this case something that I fathered. No deal. I want the accurate story out there. I want people to understand how technology really works, because that's central to users being empowered by it, instead of being controlled by it.

Bonus: Marshall Kirkpatrick, my partner in the Bad Hair Day podcast (tomorrow 7PM Pacific) has his own excellent rebuttal to the Diaz piece.

With a Swedish court trying to shut down The Pirate Bay by forcing what it thought was the site's main ISP to block it, many folks are talking about how quickly the site came back, and the site's rather defiant response to the attempt. There's also some buzz about the fact that an antivirus company, Avast, has started blocking The Pirate Bay as being "malicious." While Avast defends the decision, it certainly makes me question Avast's competence as a security company. It should be looking at actual malicious behavior -- not just blocking a site that you could go to where you might possibly if you did something dumb get some malicious files on your computer. Why not just do what a security product is supposed to do and stop the actual maliciousness from occurring, rather than blocking the entire site?

But, more to the point, this highlights one of the slippery slope problems with The Pirate Bay ruling and others. When you start to blame the tools for the problem, where do you stop? Peter Sunde made this point with a short Twitter message about the order against the ISP (I think that's what it's about):

It's now decided that Assisting with assisting with assisting of eventual copyright infringement is a crime.

Indeed. This is the problem when you allow for some sort of "inducement" or "contributory copyright infringement" standard. Where do you stop? The Pirate Bay itself doesn't infringe on copyrights. It's the users who do. But, the courts blamed The Pirate Bay. And when that didn't work, it went after the site's ISP, who is so tangentially related to the actual infringement that it's ridiculous to put the burden on it. Who's next? Already we have the entertainment industry trying to get individual ISPs to block their customers from The Pirate Bay. Basically, it seems like anyone in the chain, no matter how loosely connected can now get pulled into this as potentially violating copyright law.

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Last Wednesday I did a Random Links post, and here goes another. A tradition begins?

Very little flamage over my What is an Asshole piece from last night. Guess people got the point. If you fail to understand Hitler, you deserve to get Hitler. Their only sin, beyond stupidity, is their inability to imagine that it could happen here.

Lars Sobiraj writes "Ruben Unteregger has worked for a long time as a software-engineer for the Swiss company ERA IT Solutions. His job there was to code malware that would invade PCs of private users, and allow the wiretapping of VoIP calls — in particular, calls made through Skype. In the German-spoken areas, the trojans were called 'Bundestrojaner' because the Swiss government was involved with their development and use. Unfortunately, Unteregger has to remain silent about the customers of the company. Last night, he published the source code of his Skype-trojan under the GPL."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Clever woodworking project @ woodgears.ca, a Jenga pistol! Matthias writes -

The game of Jenga was possibly designed to be a more contemplative and strategic game. But sliding those blocks out carefully without knocking over the stack is just entirely too fiddly a task to perform. I figured it would be much more fun to just be able to shoot the blocks out with some sort of pistol.

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Syst3mX posted instructions for building an affordable 8x10 matrix display for use with Arduino -

In this instructable I will show you how to build a quite fancy 8 by 10 L.E.D matrix(with scrolling text and animations) using the Arduino and 4017 decade counter. This type of matrix is easy to make and program and it is a good way learn how to multiplex.

4017 chips can be had for a quarter or so - alternatively, the popular MAX7219 display driver goes for about 10 bucks! Of course each approach has its merits. Project steps plus excel layout sheet over @ Instructables.

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Lenore @Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories writes-

My grandfather used to make portable stools from a couple of thin pieces of wood that tied together with a simple string. Growing up we usually had a couple of these "tie stools" conveniently stashed around the house, and we always got them out for backyard barbecues and took them with us when we went camping.

Although my woodworking skills are nowhere near what my grandfather's were, we've been inspired by that stool to play around with making small, lightweight furniture that can be disassembled, stacked flat and tied together for easy transport. My first try was pretty wobbly, and felt like a little twist would splinter it. A couple of revisions later, I have a reasonably sturdy stool that is held together with a nylon strap. The leg pieces are notched on the sides so that when they are stacked together, the strap on the seat piece can be used to hold all the pieces together. There are handles cut into the leg pieces as well for easy carrying.

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Sure, why not? The artist is Frankie Flood. Via Neatorama.

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blackbearnh writes "It seems like everyone focuses on the latest and greatest killer Internet applications, but the underlying infrastructure that all of them run on is showing its age. That's the claim made by a recent article in the Christian Science Monitor. IPv4 is relatively ancient, and even stalled improvements like IPv6 aren't significant enough to matter, according to some researchers. With no one 'in charge' of the Internet, it's almost impossible to get any sweeping technical improvements made, especially since there's no financial incentive on the part of the ISPs and telecoms to invest in basic infrastructure. CalTech Professor John Doyle puts it this way: 'To the extent I've been working in this field for the last 10 years, I've been mostly working on band-aids. I'm really trying to get out of that business and try to help the people, the few people, who are really trying to think more fundamentally about what needs to be done.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When we talk about business models here, we often use music as an example, since the music industry is facing many of these issues a bit ahead of the curve from many other industries. However, some other industries are actually facing many of the same issues, and it's good to see what they have to say as well. For example, one of the key complaints that many people have when we show and discuss models that involve connecting with fans, is this odd claim that doing so means that the "creators" have to spend all their time "connecting" or "selling" or "running a business," rather than doing more creating. However, I've never thought that to be the case. I've said from very early on that the real point is that an artist can do that if they want, but that partners can and have sprung up to fill those roles. This is why I still think there's a big role for a "record label" to play, in handling much of that for the artists, so they can continue to focus on creating.

JLJ points out that a similar debate appears to be happening in the webcomics community, with Scott Kurtz, the author of PvP discussing the swinging pendulum between handing over nearly all control to a syndicate or marketing partner to a completely DIY model, and then hopefully back to some happy medium.

I think that's definitely what's happening in the music space -- but the nice thing is that it's not just a pendulum, but a spectrum, so that different artists can pick and choose what makes the most sense for them. Sometimes you come across artists who really want to be involved in the marketing and connecting and the selling. And sometimes, they don't. But the point is now they have the choice. And, even beyond that choice, within each aspect of the spectrum, there are many more options in terms of who to partner with and how to structure the deal. In the old system, you had a very small number of record labels or comic syndicates -- and, as such, they held all the power and could structure deals that were bordering on indentured servitude. But, with so many more options these days, the creators are actually taking back control. There's competition in the marketplace, and even if a creator wants nothing to do with the business and marketing side at all, it doesn't mean they have to sign a life sentence over to a business manager. And that's a very good thing for content creators.

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While technically quite similar to a tabletop MAME cabinet, Russ' NES arcade console really nails that classic Nintendo look in all its boxy glory -

Inside is an old PC and a 17" LCD monitor. The back of the cabinet has two USB ports and two NES controller ports. You can connect regular, un-modded NES controllers and play with those or use the joystick and buttons on the control panel.

The front end is a simple VB program that auto loads when the PC boots. You never need to connect a mouse or keyboard to load your games. The VB program gives a list of games installed. Using the joystick, you can select the game you want to play.

Full build instructions available here.

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Hugh Pickens writes "Foreign Policy magazine reports that a research team from the SINTEF Group, an independent Norwegian think tank, has warned oil companies worldwide that offshore oil rigs are highly vulnerable to hacking as they shift to unmanned robot platforms where vital operations — everything from data transmission to drilling to sophisticated navigation systems that maintain the platform's position over the wellhead — are controlled via wireless links to onshore facilities. 'The worst-case scenario, of course, is that a hacker will break in and take over control of the whole platform,' says Martin Gilje Jaatun, adding that it hasn't happened yet, but computer viruses have caused personnel injuries and production losses on North Sea platforms. The list of potential cyberattackers includes ecowarriors aiming to jack up an oil firms' production costs, extortionists drawn to oil firms' deep pockets, and foreign governments engaging in a strategic contest for ever-more-scarce global oil reserves, says Jeff Vail, a former counterterrorism and intelligence analyst with the US Interior Department. 'It's underappreciated how vulnerable some of these systems are,' says Vail. 'It is possible, if you really understood them, to cause catastrophic damage by causing safety systems to fail.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This enterprising Linux user wrote a script that rhythmically opens and closes the CD tray on a tower PC; the CD tray is connected to the baby's rocking seat. As the tray cycles, the baby rocks. Lovely.

Linux Baby Rocker (via Neatorama)

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Holy Wow - Marcus' love for digital organ emulation inspired him to emulate the instrument's physicality as well. Modeled closely after the Hammond B3 organ, the B4 Controller is designed specifically for use with Native Instruments B4 (II) virtual organ software. On top of a hefty amount of good ol' woodworking, funcionality was developed with Arduino/etc -

Most of the electronics had to be custom developed as there was nothing available to cover all the functionality of a classic Hammond B3 with the full drawbars set, preset keys and all switches. The Arduino platform was of great help for doing all the prototyping. […] The electronics for the white keys section of the two manuals as well as the actual manuals where bought from Doepfer. The manuals are the same as used in the Nord C1 and Nord C2 combo organs and are manufactured by Fatar.

Much more info a photos from the build right over here.
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Mr_Blank writes to mention that the United States' largest business lobby is pushing for a public trial to examine the evidence of global warming and have a judge make a ruling on whether human beings are warming the planet to dangerous effect. "The goal of the chamber, which represents 3 million large and small businesses, is to fend off potential emissions regulations by undercutting the scientific consensus over climate change. If the EPA denies the request, as expected, the chamber plans to take the fight to federal court. The EPA is having none of it, calling a hearing a 'waste of time' and saying that a threatened lawsuit by the chamber would be 'frivolous.' [...] Environmentalists say the chamber's strategy is an attempt to sow political discord by challenging settled science — and note that in the famed 1925 Scopes trial, which pitted lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in a courtroom battle over a Tennessee science teacher accused of teaching evolution illegally, the scientists won in the end."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There are numerous DIY iPhone tripod mount projects out there, but this modified design by Jason Quinn is quite slick. His introduction of a silicon case to replace rubber bands in an existing design and good attention to finish pay off in overall esthetics. It's a good riff on a great hack.

[via sampletheweb]

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A year ago, we noted that Hillcrest Labs was going after Nintendo, claiming that the Wii violated its patents. And, like so many other patent holders, Hillcrest got to take two separate cracks at Nintendo, suing in court and also filing with the ITC to block imports. Recognizing just how ridiculously costly it is to defend both the lawsuit and the ITC process, it looks like Nintendo has just agreed to pay up. The company still insists that the Wii doesn't infringe, but the system is stacked against companies who actually innovate. It's so costly to defend yourself, that it's usually just cheaper to settle. Consider it a tax on innovation... except the tax doesn't even go to anything useful.

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This low-cost water sensor project was developed at the Carnegie Mellon University Human Computer Interaction Institute by Stacey Kuznetsov and Eric Paulos. It's a clever way to use a cheap microphone to measure vibration.

This is an instructible on how to crudely detect water flow in a pipe and drive an ambient display. We are using a cheap mic, some LED's and an arduino. The device is a rough prototype of what we hope to be a persuasive technology that motivates sustainable behavior and raises awareness about water use.

In the Maker Shed:


DIY Design Electronics Kit

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Teddy Jam and Eric Beddows's 1988 classic picture book Night Cars has me absolutely charmed. It's a beat-poetry story of a little boy who drifts in and out of sleep while, on the commercial road below him, cars and people pass by in the night.

The writing is beautiful ("Night cars humming through the snow/Night cars drifting/Night cars slow/Night cars calling out your name/Night cars in your dreams"), and begs to be read aloud, metronomic and soothing.

It's not just the writing that's so enchanting here, it's the sweet, nostalgic paintings, tinged with Dick-and-Jane pastel qualities, but with a dreamlike softness that makes me yawn and want to put my head down on them (click above for a larger scan).

One of the coolest things about fatherhood is discovering some of the really tremendous art -- in all media -- that's targetted at small children. This is a book that begs to be read to a small child in her jammies snuggled in your lap, sweet-smelling hair tickling the underside of your chin.

Night Cars

Several sources are reporting that Red Hat has spun the 2.x release of the JBoss messaging protocol off as HornetQ. The 1.x version of JBoss is still being supported in maintenance mode and will continue to be known by its original name. "HornetQ is an open source project to build a multi-protocol, embeddable, high performance, clustered, asynchronous messaging system. HornetQ is an example of Message Oriented Middleware. [...] HornetQ is designed with flexibility in mind: It's elegant POJO based design has minimal third party dependencies: Run HornetQ as a stand-alone messaging broker, run it in integrated in your favorite JEE application server, or run it embedded inside your own application. It's up to you."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is an interesting look at the inner workings of a vintage electromechanical metronome. Even if you couldn't get it to work, or didn't want to, it would make a great enclosure for your next electronics project. I suspect the warranty is officially voided!

Passing behind a church-operated thrift store a month or two ago, I saw a black bakelite box in the area where they discard stuff they don't want, about to get rained on. After seeing that it was a metronome, I rescued it and made it mine. This weekend I tried it out for the first time and ended up repairing the motor. The motor's workings were unfamiliar to me, but its repair was self-evident.

In the Maker Shed:


MAKE: Warranty Voider - Leatherman "Squirt" P4 (plier version)

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BullJustin points us to a Columbia Journalism Review article that tries to do some back of the envelope calculations on the difference in per user revenue both print and online. The end result, not at all surprisingly, is that a print reader is "worth" a lot more than an online reader. But, that's totally meaningless. It's a classic innovator's dilemma mistake. Concentrating on the small group of people who will pay me $1,000 and ignoring the massive group who will pay me $5 isn't very smart... especially when the first group is rapidly shrinking and the latter is growing (and that the "value" of each moves in the same direction as the user growth rate). Not to mention the fact that the cost of acquiring a user in both scenarios is entirely different.

But the bigger point is that it's not the users who are paying here, it's the advertisers. Breaking out the revenue on a per user basis is meaningless, because it's not the actual marginal value of the user. Getting one more print subscriber doesn't increase the ad revenue by the amount discussed unless they can actually sell more advertising.

Rather than looking at revenue per user, the real goal should be looking at maximizing revenue, period. And to do that you look at the overall trends of where revenue is growing and where it's shrinking -- not on the average revenue per user. Focusing on ARPU simply makes you ripe for disintermediation from someone who focuses on where the market is heading, rather than how to squeeze the most out of each user.

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Gamasutra is running an article with a collection of anecdotes from game developers who had to employ some quick and dirty fixes to get their products to ship on time. Here's a brief excerpt: "Back at [company X] — I think it was near the end of [the project] — we had an object in one of the levels that needed to be hidden. We didn't want to re-export the level and we did not use checksum names. So right smack in the middle of the engine code we had something like the following. The game shipped with this in: if( level == 10 && object == 56 ) {HideObject();} Maybe a year later, an artist using our engine came to us very frustrated about why an object in their level was not showing up after exporting to what resolved to level 10. I wonder why?" Have you ever needed to insert terrible code to make something work at the last minute?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There are many like it but this one is mine...

Originally made by Austrian watchmakers as decorative pocket watch chain fobs or as cufflinks, these miniature pinfire pistols are now prized collector's items. These are some from my own collection dating from 1904 to the 1970's. All of them fire 2mm blank pinfire cartridges. The revolvers are the world's smallest working double action blank firing pistols. They measure just 38mm in length and are smaller than the famous Swiss Mini Gun which measures 55mm.

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This rolling Lego cookie-cutter turns out edible 2x2 Legos*!

Rolling Cookie Cutter (via Neatorama)

*I know. But millions of people call them "Legos." Usage trumps formal correctness every time.

Wired's Gary Wolf follows up yesterday's story on craigslist's unrelenting simpleness with a story about how bad newspapers are at attaining the simplicity and usefulness of craigslist, even when they explicitly set out to do so. It's a good look at how some organizations are constitutionally incapable of changing in fundamental ways, even when they recognize that they must.

But advertising and upselling are not promising ways to support what Jacobson, et al, confidently call a "craigslist killer." Advertising on classifieds puts the newspaper in direct competition with its users, and creates an environment in which the classifieds are swamped by blatant, cheesy come-ons from paid advertisers trying to distract buyers. The image below is the from the apartments-for-rent page at the Bakersfield Californian, one of the papers that has tried this approach. What you see here is nearly the entire visible section of the page on a reasonably large laptop screen.

The Craigslist Credo: Bad Advice for Newspapers

It's seemed like a foregone conclusion that the US gov't was going to hand over lots and lots of cash to Connected Nation -- a group favored by the telcos -- to handle all of the "broadband mapping" needed for a better national broadband plan. There have been plenty of concerns about Connected Nation's close relationship with the telcos, as well as its proposal which wouldn't give a very fair or accurate picture of actual broadband offerings around the US. But a funny thing just happened. Connected Nation is really based on Connect Kentucky, where this experiment was first run, and the cable companies there have suddenly stood up to oppose Connect Kentucky, questioning its ability to accurately map broadband in the state. Looks like maybe the telcos should have cut the cablecos in on the deal before backing Connected Nation.

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Joe "Girls Gone Wild Dirtbag" Francis has a new tactic for resolving the lawsuits against him: he pretends not to understand common English words while farting loudly and attempting to video-record female court officials.

Q. Have you ever been convicted of a felony?
A. I don't understand what that means...

Q. You don't understand what being a convicted felon is?
A. No. Can you explain it to me?
Q. Did you serve any time in jail?
A. What do you mean "serve"?...

Q. Do you know what a prisoner is?
A. No.
Q. Do you know what a cellmate is in jail?
A. No.
Q. Do you know what a jail is?
A. Sort of.

Defendant Gone Wild

Here's Saturday Morning Central's roundup of Beatles covers from the Muppet Show, including a surprisingly sensitive version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and the Sesame Street "Letter B" (Let it Be) cover.

The Best Muppet Show Beatles Covers (via Making Light)

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Takram designed this robotic insect to mimic the motion of a live insect instead of it's shape. It's hard to tell from the video, however the website mentions that it follows a tripodal gait, meaning that at any time, it has three legs on the ground, two on one side and one on the other. To move forward, the other three legs are rotated forward and then lowered, causing the original three legs to lift off of the ground. This enables the robot to move about quickly while remaining stable, because it always has at least three points touching the ground. Their project was inspired by Stanford's SPRAWL robots.

[via Pink Tentacle]

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Dan Trommater sez, "I was recently asked to orchestrate a very cool marriage proposal on the streets of Toronto. I normally perform at corporate events, but I jumped at this chance to get back on the streets. Arvin Ross contacted me and asked that I set up a street magic performance in the Harbourfront area of Toronto. I had to gather a crowd and somehow get him on one knee, then magically produce the wedding ring. No one saw it coming - especially Cindy Sukhram, the would-be fiancee. I've been involved in some really creative weddings before, but this was the first time I've helped anyone pop the question."

Dan performed the ceremony at my wedding -- reciting Jabberwocky in a Knights Templar robe, making gouts of fire appear from his fingers at "eyes of flame" and then again when he produced the rings (he also did some great thematic magic later in the evening!).

Wedding Proposal with Toronto Magician Dan Trommater (Thanks, Dan!)

wanted writes "If you look at Microsoft's Poland business solutions Web site, you will probably not notice anything odd about the main picture. However, when you compare it with the original English version, you can see that someone decided that showing black people in Poland is probably not going to be convincing to business. They just Photoshopped the head of a white guy in for the black one, in an amateurish way, leaving his hand unchanged. (Here's a mirror in case something should happen to the original.)" We noted a few months back that the city of Toronto had done something similar.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This gentleman is Aaron Castro, who was arrested with his brother Alfonzo for allegedly selling speed in the Denver, Colorado area and laundering the drug money through rare comix. That'll be one police auction not to miss. From CNN:

While arresting the alleged ringleaders... law enforcement officers seized about 100 boxes of first-edition collectible comic books. Investigators say one title alone is worth $3,500 and the total collection of comics is worth half a million dollars.

"It appeared they were working on a startup company for high-end comic books," said Don Quick, the district attorney in Adams County near Denver.

Quick said the seized comic books included some first-edition Superman and Batman titles. The fragile, vintage comics were stored in plastic bags for protection.

"Meth ring used comic books to launder cash, authorities say"

It's good to see judges getting things right -- and more often than not, they're being both quick and smart when it comes to misguided lawsuits from plaintiffs against sites that host content, but don't publish it. The latest involves the owners of a bodybuilding forum website, bodybuilding.com, who were sued by a nutritional supplement maker, claiming that competitors had posted negative reviews on the site. But the judge tossed out the lawsuit against the forum operator using section 230. The supplement maker tried to argue that the forum owners had teamed up with the competitor in a conspiracy to say bad things about the supplement, but the judge didn't buy it. The only question was whether the website owners posted the content. They didn't. There's no case.

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An asshole is someone who says Obama is like Hitler because he wants everyone in the US to have health insurance.

These people are so stupid they need to be slapped in the face to wake them up. They need to have their mouths washed out with soap and be sent to bed without dinner. They need to be sent into hard labor and allowed to die of starvation.

Hitler gassed my people and incinerated them in ovens. Hitler came very close to wiping us out. Hitler was a monster. Hitler was the human race going insane on a mass level.

If you think Obama is Hitler you deserve to meet with others who agree with you, starving and freezing and dying in a cattle car, sitting in each others' excrement, on your way to a concentration camp and its ovens and gas chambers, along with your children.

You will not be allowed to bring your assault rifle.

Andurin writes "Sunlight Labs has announced three finalists for its $25,000 Apps for America 2 competition. Forty-seven apps were submitted, each relying on Data.gov and providing a useful spin on government data. This We Know compiles federal information on a local level; govpulse is a searchable version of the Federal Register; and DataMasher allows simple mashups of government data sets. Voting is now open to determine the winner in the contest."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Instructables user Hextor writes:

Long story short, I was brand new in my office, they hadn't given me and office key yet, and I was the last one in the office option 1 was wait 4 hours for a coworker to return, or find a way to lock the door. Jump a few years into the future, and I just recently found myself in the same circumstance, last one in the office with my wife's car (and keys) so I had no office key. I was on my way in less than 5 minutes.

Check out how he used a piece of packing tape to lock the door.

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Lots of fun stuff today over at Boing Boing Gadgets. For example: * A burrito app for the iPhone; * Beautiful pizza cutters; * Glasses that let graffiti writers tag with their eyes; * How many Brompton folding bikes fit in one car parking spot? * Sony's new touchscreen 3G e-book reader; * A note on Steve Jobs' attention to detail; * New Mac ads; * A new line of Sanyo Xacti's; ...and Robocop on a unicorn.

Well, we've already joked about how the Associated Press seems to have a bit of a double standard in complaining about the Southeastern Conference's (SEC) restrictions on journalistic activity during SEC sporting events, but it's nice to see the Associated Press and the Gannett chain of newspapers both take a stand and tell the SEC that it simply won't sign the agreement. It's not entirely clear what happens next. The SEC is likely to change the policies and try to come to some sort of compromise, but I'd love to see news organizations get a backbone and tell such sports leagues that there's no compromise and no deal to be had. They're reporters and they'll report as they see fit.

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Colin Webb, a semi-retired teacher in England, makes homegrown guitars. I like the reso-rific sound of his cookie tin 3-stringer.

Cookie tin guitar demo

This year, it seems, there's been a big trend for restaurants to experiment with free food promotions. While I've been a bit skeptical about some of them, they do seem to be working wonders. David sends in yet another story of free food doing quite well for a restaurant. In this case, it's a pair of restaurants in Texas that are offering free entrees on Mondays. It's not all entrees, but apparently it's a pretty decent selection. Diners are still required to pay for any other food (appetizers, desserts, drinks, etc.) and (of course) tip. Apparently the promotion is doing amazingly well -- increasing the revenue on Mondays by 300%. While the profit margin is obviously down a bit due to the food giveaway, it's not that bad. The giveaway stuff was the lower margin items -- the paid food is higher margin. Plus, the restaurant is actually saving a lot of money because it killed its marketing budget, recognizing that this acts as a better promotion.

But, perhaps the most interesting phenomenon of all is that the restaurant has really used this "free Mondays" to better "connect with fans." Apparently, there's now a group of regulars, and it makes the overall restaurant feel more like a family gathering -- as patrons keep coming back, saying that "It makes it feel like it's a neighborhood restaurant." Those same people are coming during other days as well, now that they feel so comfortable at the restaurant, so it appears that it helps boost revenue on other days. Once again, when used properly, free absolutely makes sense as a part of a larger business model.

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tsu doh nimh writes "Organized cyber-gangs in Eastern Europe are increasingly preying on small and mid-size companies in the US, setting off a multimillion-dollar online crime wave that has begun to worry the nation's largest financial institutions, The Washington Post's Security Fix blog reports: '"In the past six months, financial institutions, security companies, the media and law enforcement agencies are all reporting a significant increase in funds transfer fraud involving the exploitation of valid banking credentials belonging to small and medium sized businesses," reads a confidential alert issued by the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an industry group created to share data about critical threats to the financial sector.' The banking group is urging that commercial bank customers 'carry out all online banking activity from a standalone, hardened, and locked-down computer from which e-mail and Web browsing is not possible.' The story includes interviews with several victim businesses, and explains that in each case, the fraudsters — thought to reside in Eastern Europe — are using "'money mules,' unwitting or willing accomplices in the US hired via Internet job boards. The blog has more stories and details about these crimes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.