blackbearnh writes "Corporations know that part of launching a successful project is projecting the right image to the media. But a lot of open source projects seem to treat the press as an annoyance, if they think about it at all. For a reporter, even finding someone on a project who's willing to talk about it can be a challenge. Esther Schindler over at IT World has a summary of a roundtable discussion that was held at OSCON with pointers about how open source projects can be more reporter-accessible. 'Recognize that we are on deadline, which for most news journalists means posting the article within a couple of hours and for feature authors within a couple of days. If we ask for input, or a quote, or anything to which your project spokesperson (you do have one? yes? please say yes) might want to respond, it generally does mean, "Drop everything and answer us now." If the journalist doesn't give you a deadline ("I need to know by 2pm"), it's okay to ask how long you can take to reach the right developer in Poland, but err on the side of "emergency response." It's unreasonable, I know, but so are our deadlines.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A bunch of folks are sending in this News.com story about a draft of the latest cybersecurity bill, that still includes bizarre and totally unnecessary language that would allow the President to declare a cybersecurity emergency and then be able to take control over private computer networks. First, the idea of the whole "cybersecurity emergency" that would require such a thing still remains a science fiction idea. Yes, there can be cybersecurity attacks and they can cause all sorts of problems, but these are problems that generally are not life-threatening or that can't be handled reasonably.

But the bigger issue is why the government should be taking control over private networks. This is the same gov't that doesn't let people in the State Department use Firefox and which thinks that RealPlayer is the state of the art in online video streaming. Even if there were a "cybersecurity emergency," I would think the last people I'd want to take charge would be the federal government.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

While we definitely knock the major record labels for their legal strategy and occasional business blunders, in the last two years or so, there has actually been some recognition within the record labels that finally they need to focus on giving fans what they want, rather than just suing them and hoping that the old CD business model magically returns to its former highs. There have been hints and glimmers of hope from the major record labels -- though, even those inside the labels who seem to get it will quietly admit that it's sometimes a struggle to get some of this through to "the old guard."

The question, though, is how much of this is real, and how much of it is the old guard putting on a show, picking up on a buzzword and insisting that this time, they've got it. A few years ago, all the talk was about "360 Deals" and how that would get the labels off of the CD revenue IV drip. But, many artists (smartly) balked, seeing such deals not as an industry adapting to change, but one looking to just get a larger piece of the pie -- and doing so without adding much value, and after decades of screwing over the artists. So that hasn't worked out so well for the most part.

It appears that the latest buzzword that the majors are picking up on is this concept of the "direct-to-fan" model. This is a bit of an offshoot of my own mantra of getting creators to connect with fans. And, for more independent artists, a number of platforms and companies have sprung up to help them more easily connect with fans, whether it's MySpace or BandCamp or TopSpin or TuneCore, or whoever else. And, of course, most of those companies also have relationships or deals with the major record labels, but it seems that the majors are realizing that they need to have a real "direct-to-fan" strategy themselves.

Just recently, we saw Warner Music sign a deal with Cisco to use Cisco's EOS platform for direct-to-fan efforts. And, more recently, Universal Music announced that it was working with Echospin to provide direct-to-fan offerings. I have no doubt that EMI and (probably way way way at the end of the line), Sony will get around to making similar announcements.

While I think it's a great thing that the labels are experimenting with smarter models that actually do focus on bringing the musicians closer to the fans and providing a much more compelling offering that goes beyond brochureware, I'm a bit skeptical that they'll really pull it off successfully in the short term. Direct-to-fan offerings is more than a platform. It's an actual business model and marketing strategy and it's unclear if the labels have actually figured that part out yet. Yes, they're adopting platforms and they're taking steps in the right direction -- so let's give them some credit. But until they really understand what fans want and how to better help musicians provide it, setting up a "direct-to-fan" platform won't make a big difference.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

olsmeister writes "The US Court of Appeals Friday threw out the FCC's cap on the number of cable subscribers one operator can serve, saying the FCC was 'derelict' in not giving DBS its due as a legitimate competitor. 'We agree with Comcast that the 30% subscriber limit is arbitrary and capricious. We therefore grant the petition and vacate the Rule,' said the court, which concluded that there was ample evidence of an increasingly competitive communications marketplace and that cable did not have undue control on the programming pipeline. The FCC commissioner's statement (PDF) is available online."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We were a bit confused over the claim recently that Flickr (Yahoo) had taken down a Photoshopped image of Obama as "the Joker" superimposed on a Time Magazine cover. It didn't make much sense, because it wasn't clear who's copyright was even at issue. It didn't seem likely that Time Magazine would have any claim, even though that's what many assumed. So, some folks started asking around -- and all of the "obvious" candidates said no. Time Magazine, DC Comics and the original photographer who took the image on which the photo was based all insisted they didn't send the takedown. That resulted in some fingerpointing at Flickr, but some more digging by Thomas Hawk turned up a guy named Edward Przydzial (though Yahoo's takedown notification called him Przydzia, which resulted in even more confusion initially. But, no one seems to know who he is and what copyright he might hold in the matter, making the whole story quite bizarre. Hawk contacted Przydzial, who responded claiming that he created the image... but also that he doesn't own the image, and refused to say whether or not he filed the DMCA notice (and some bizarre stuff about needing a court order to find out who filed the DMCA notice). Once again, this highlights some of the inanities of the whole DMCA takedown process.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

The Cable Guy writes to mention that Russel Smith, one of Australia's principal criminologists, is pushing for first-time computer users to be required to earn a license to browse the web. "The Australian Computer Society launched computer driver's licenses in 1999. It aimed to give users a basic level of competency before they started using PCs. But the growth in cybercrime has led to IT security experts such as Eugene Kaspersky to call for more formalized recognition of a user's identity so they can travel the net safely. Last week Dr. Smith sat in front of a Federal Government Inquiry into cybercrime and advised Australia's senior politicians on initiatives in train to fight cybercrime. He said that education was secondary to better technology solutions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A number of interesting assembly puzzles can be made from pieces consisting of simply joined cubes in various numbers and arrangements. Piet Hein's Soma Cube is a notable example, consisting of all the simply joined non-convex polycubes having four or fewer units. Generally, a polyomino or polycube puzzle is presented as an outline or volume to be filled in with a certain set of pieces. It is up to the solver to figure out how to pack the pieces to fill the specified form.

Among the more interesting of the polycube puzzles are the solid pentominoes. The flat pentominoes are commonly used in early elementary education programs, so many readers will doubtless be familiar with them. Extruding the flat pentominoes by one unit in the Z-dimension gives the set of what are traditionally called "solid pentominoes." They can be used to solve any flat pentomino puzzle, but also to create various 3D shapes. The 3D puzzles are considerably more challenging.

To make a satisfying polycube puzzle requires that the pieces be dimensioned very accurately, so they will always pack closely regardless of their arrangement. To achieve this accuracy with common hand tools is very difficult. However, blank dice provide a convenient and inexpensive source of accurate, precise unit cubes which may be joined to create the various pieces. The use of translucent dice is recommended, both because they look cool and because they're gauranteed to be acrylic and hence strongly bondable with standard acrylic cements. All the opaque dice I've tried to glue have proven highly resistant to adhesives of all types; I suspect they're made out of polyethylene.

Tools:

• Combination square or other accurate inside right angle
• Steel cookie sheet or other magnetic surface
• About a dozen 1/4" cylindrical supermagnets
• Small paintbrush, e.g. #0

Materials:

• 60 blank translucent dice (I used 16mm dice, 20 of each in red, green, and blue)
• Acrylic cement
• Soap & water
• Isopropyl alcohol

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in MAKE Projects | Digg this!

Gianna Borgnine writes "NVIDIA is predicting that GPU performance is going to increase a whopping 570-fold in the next six years. According to TG Daily, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang made the prediction at this year's Hot Chips symposium. Huang claimed that while the performance of GPU silicon is heading for a monumental increase in the next six years — making it 570 times faster than the products available today — CPU technology will find itself lagging behind, increasing to a mere 3 times current performance levels. 'Huang also discussed a number of "real-world" GPU applications, including energy exploration, interactive ray tracing and CGI simulations.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If there were any gov't body that you would hope would have a handle on basic things like online streaming of video and audio, it would be the FCC, which is supposed to be regulating communications, right? But... that's not how the government works. During yesterday's meeting, in which it announced plans to investigate the wireless industry, apparently the online stream required the use of RealPlayer (welcome to 1999) and only allowed 200 simultaneous connections. Perhaps instead of investigating the wireless carriers, the FCC should investigate its own broadband connections and streaming setup.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

The Men Who Stare At Goats is UK journalist Jon Ronson's terrific, absurd, scary, and funny nonfiction book about the United States military's weird experiments with psychic spying, "Jedi" powers, subliminal sound weapons, and, er, the ability to kill an animal just by looking at it (hence the title). The book is coming to the big screen November 6 in the form of a dark comedy starring Ewan McGregor, George Clooney, and Jeff Bridges. What fun!

"The Men Who Stare At Goats" movie trailer (Thanks, Jason Tester!)
Buy "The Men Who Stare At Goats" book

I recently came into a nice bottle of absinthe (OK, it was a very strange Father's Day gift, if you must know). The classic way to drink the green stuff is an Absinthe Drip, which is composed of a couple of ounces of absinthe, and a few ounces of ice water dripped over a sugar cube into the drink.

You can do the sugar and water bit through any strainer, but the stylish way is on a dedicated piece of gear called an absinthe spoon. I don't make this drink with great enough frequency to warrant buying one, so I joked with a friend about laser cutting one instead. Why just joke about it? This here is for you, Tod.

I traced a photo of a Toulouse Lautrec-designed spoon in CorelDraw. I modified the design a bit, and added my initials at the top. I then used this vector file to cut a piece of 1/8" acrylic on an Epilog Zing laser cutter. I'm very pleased with the results! However, I would warn against setting your sugar cube on fire over an acrylic absinthe spoon.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

Underholdning writes "With the DOJ approving Oracle's Sun buyout the question arises what Oracle might want to do with Sun's hardware business. It's no secret that what Oracle wanted was the software part. Now The Inquirer is running a story claiming that Oracle will sell the hardware business of Sun to HP. This will give Oracle a juicy check while HP can increase its services. Larry Ellison denies that it will take place, but a source for CNN claims otherwise."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With the rise of the DVR and the death of the captive audience, it's no surprise that product placement has become more and more popular. But would you believe that ad agencies are trying to patent forms of product placement? Apparently, big ad firm WPP is being sued by a company for violating its patent in an ad campaign run for Microsoft's Bing search engine. The patent in question (6,859,936) is for "a method and system for producing program-integrated commercials." Basically, the idea is to use the actors and sets from a TV show to film a regular commercial spot, and then run that during the show itself. Yes, someone got a patent on that. Why? Who the hell knows. This is a perfect example, by the way, of how just because something's "new" it doesn't mean it's not obvious. It's just that it's so obvious most people wouldn't even bother thinking about patenting it.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Complaints about "lack of transparency" from publishers have prompted Italian competition authorities to begin an investigation of Google's search and news services. I'm sure their motives are completely altruistic. "Because Google does not disclose the criteria for ranking news articles or search results, he said, newspapers are unable to hone their content to try to earn more revenue from online advertising. Ad revenue on the Web is directly proportional to the size of the audience, which is heavily influenced by search or Google News rankings."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's been plenty of concern over the past few years with regards to Homeland Security's claims that it has the right to inspect the contents of your laptop at the border, even without any probable cause. While it may be well established that the 4th Amendment doesn't apply until you're actually in the country, that doesn't mean there aren't some serious questions raised. I, like many others, have no problem with border searches of actual physical containers and luggage at the border. That makes perfect sense, because it's physical goods that you're purposely trying to bring directly into the country. You packed them with the specific idea of bringing them into the country.

But stuff on your laptop is different in two very important ways:

1. You mostly store everything on your laptop. So, unlike a suitcase that you're bringing with you, it's the opposite. You might specifically choose what to exclude, but you don't really choose what to include.
2. The reason you bring the contents on your laptop over the border is because you're bringing your laptop over the border. If you wanted the content of your laptop to go over the border you'd just send it using the internet. There are no "border guards" on the internet itself, so content flows mostly freely across international boundaries. Thus if anyone wants to get certain content into a country via the internet, they're not doing it by entering that country through border control.

Thus, it makes little sense for border control to search the contents of your laptop other than if the gov't wants a random "free pass" at checking out some content about you. DHS' insistence that it needed the right to search laptops at the border made little sense, and some of our elected officials pushed out bills to curb such border searches, though none have passed.

Instead, the new head of DHS has "revised" the rules for laptop searches, but they're only slightly better in that the old rules were "anything goes," while the new rules are "we're still searching laptops, but we have a few rules." The main components of the new rules are that you're allowed to be present in the same room as your laptop, phone or device as it's being searched -- but not necessarily to see what border patrol is doing. Also, they can't keep your laptop for more than five days, which seems pretty damn long to me. Though, as some note, this basically means that you should make sure any encryption on your laptop takes more than five days to crack.

DHS boss Janet Napolitano's reasoning for the searches is hardly compelling:

"Keeping Americans safe in an increasingly digital world depends on our ability to lawfully screen materials entering the United States,"

Um... right, but, again, the contents of the a computer laptop can easily enter the United States via the internet with no border control process whatsoever. The whole claim that this has anything to do with screening materials entering the US is totally bogus.

On top of this, the other thing that's not at all clear is how far the "search" can go. With a growing number of "cloud" based services in use, many of which act as if they're local, can the border patrol search those as well? For example, I use Jungledisk, which gives me a virtual drive that shows up in my file system as if it were a local hard drive, even though it's hosted in some data center somewhere. It looks like a local drive... but it's not actually on my laptop. Would border patrol have the right to search that, even though the contents of that drive are not actually traveling across the border?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Go back to school with the support of makers in education! Make: Education is a Ning social network for teachers interested in connecting around hands-on projects. Connect with like-minded teachers and get ideas and support for your classroom! We hope you'll pop on by and sign up.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Education | Digg this!

It seems that Swedish regulators have decided to extend the requirement of not calling yourself a bank to the registration of domain names. Now anyone that tries to register a .SE domain name with the word "bank" in it will need to prove they are a legitimate bank. Hopefully there are no blood banks or anyone with the last name of "Banks" that might want a .SE domain. Here is a Google translation of the demand issued by the authorities to the .SE registry.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's really funny to watch the old record labels try to understand the whole music blogging culture. The folks in the promotions department send music bloggers mp3s and encourage them to post them, knowing that it'll get the musician attention. That's a good thing. But the folks on the legal side go the other way... often sending takedowns to the very same bloggers. Rafi Kam points us to a ridiculous situation involving Warner Music Group, who hired a firm called Gray Zone to help "deal with" unauthorized tracks being shared online. Apparently Gray Zone tracked down a song by Gucci Mane that was on well-known music reviewer Andrew Noz's website and sent an angry cease-and-desist to both Noz and his hosting company using all capital letters, including the phrase: "IMMEDIATELY REMOVE ALL LINKS, REFERENCES, DOWNLOADS, VIDEOS, STREAMING AUDIO, AND MP3 FILES ASSOCIATED WITH GUCCI MANE."

Noz didn't see the email, which his filter assumed as spam, but his hosting company did and suspended his entire site. Nice of them. When Noz contacted them, they told him that, based on the above sentence, he needed to go through his blog and remove every reference to Gucci Mane (after all, that's what letter said). Apparently, Noz had written about Gucci Mane quite a bit, so that was a lot of work. Of course, the letter is wrong. While there may be a copyright issue with downloads, it's difficult to see where there would be any copyright claim at all when it came to links, embedded videos (hosted elsewhere) or references. That's actually copyfraud by Gray Zone, on behalf of Warner Music Group, by claiming copyright on things that it does not have rights over.

Either way Noz scrambled and spent hours deleting everything on his site about this particular artist. After all of that, he spoke with a VP at Gray Zone who said that Gray Zone and Warner were really only demanding that he take down a single track. But, of course, that's not what the takedown notice said. Noz points his anger at Warner Music, asking why folks from Warner Music email him tracks all the time... but then get his entire site taken down for those very same songs? This isn't just the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, it's the right hand shaking someone's hand, and the left hand smacking that guy in the face for shaking the right hand. And people wonder why the big labels are so hated?

I actually spoke with both Warner Music Group and Noz to try to find out more about this. Noz says that he's not sure if the one particular song was actually sent by someone from WMG, but that he gets hundreds of songs a week, many of which come from WMG, and he helps promote many of those tracks, so he finds it pretty ridiculous that rather than just contact him and politely ask him to take down the song, they had his entire site taken down. WMG noted that it, as a corporate entity, wasn't directly involved with this, but that it was handled by a subsidiary, Asylum Records. Asylum then sent over a statement:

Apparently, unauthorized copies of the unfinished and unreleased track "I Got All Of That" by Gucci Mane have been stolen and sent out to certain websites by parties unknown to us. In cooperation with the artist and his manager, we instructed our third-party vendor to notify websites to take down the unauthorized track from their sites immediately. We appreciate the cooperation of sites that recognize that this unfinished song does not represent the artist's complete vision and may have been obtained illegally.

Of course, that doesn't really address the issue. The complaint from Gray Zone didn't just target that one song, but all content related to this artist, and because of that, it forced the guy's blog offline -- all the while he's receiving plenty of songs directly from the record label. You can understand where there might be some confusion there. At the very least, someone should have just contacted the guy directly with a friendly request, rather than sending the immediate ALL CAPITALS cease-and-desist threat.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Poster artist Ward Sutton did a great 12-panel comic strip review of the film Died Young, Stayed Pretty, a documentary film by Eileen Yaghoobian about show posters that opened at the IFC Film Center in NYC July 17. (Here's a trailer for the film.)

Tour dates for screenings can be found here.

Ward Sutton Makes the Case for Posters as Art (Or Junk)

MAKE subscriber Brian Richardson writes in:

Learn to build your own Arduino-compatible board at this introductory class being offered by DorkbotPDX. The class fee includes a kit of parts to make the Dorkboard, a USB programmer, and help with putting it all together.

WHAT: Arduino Cult Induction -- Rev 7 -- Build a Dorkboard
WHERE: Pacific Northwest College of Art (NW 12th and Johnson room 101)
1241 NW Johnson St., Portland, OR 97209
WHEN: Sunday August 30th from 1 to 5pm
HOW MUCH: $35, including parts.

Looking for some cool local events to attend, or organizing one that you want to share? Be sure to check out the event calendar!

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Events | Digg this!

TheZid writes "A newly proposed bill would give Uncle Sam the power to disconnect private sector computers from the internet in the event of a 'cyber security emergency.' As usual, our government is trying to take away our privacy by citing security. What actually counts as a 'Cyber-Security Emergency?' Does the president now have the option of disconnecting people when they disagree with his policies? How about disconnecting bloggers that criticize his health care reform? What counts as an emergency? Can political opponents be deemed a cyber-security emergency?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Time and time again, we've heard about people claiming "plagiarism" when the truth is that it's just someone else who happened to have the same, or a similar, idea. It often happens with books and movies. For example, multiple people are suing over the claim that only they could have come up with the idea of a child who has a secret life as a rockstar, and Hannah Montana stole their idea. But actual copyright infringement or plagiarism (two different things) require some actual copying -- not just people having the same idea. Given that, it's not entirely clear what's going on with the claim (found via Michael Scott) that the ex-wife of the singer Usher, Tamika Foster, may have "plagiarized" a self-published author when she wrote a blog post for the Huffington Post called "She's Pretty for a Dark-Skinned Girl..." The author claiming plagiarism had written a book, similarly titled "Pretty for a Black Girl."

But is it plagiarism, or just two people coming up with the same idea? Unfortunately, the report at the link above never bothers to tell us! It simply repeats the claim from the woman that it's plagiarism, but her quotes suggest that it's not:

"My heart sank into my stomach. All the hard work, all the sleepless nights I had endured was playing back in my head as I read this article written by a woman I didn't even know," [Aisha] Curry told BV Buzz. "Why did I feel so connected to this article? Suddenly, it came to me. It was my work! It was my work, my voice, but in her words."

Well, there's a problem there. If it's her words then it's not plagiarism. Also, Curry seems to undermine her own argument in explaining how she came up with the idea for the book:

"One day about five years ago, I was absolutely tired of being told that I was pretty for a black girl," she explained. "I started asking my friends if they had heard this statement before, and as time went on, I realized how prevalent the issue was."

Right. The comment is apparently prevalent, meaning that Tameka Foster certainly could have heard the same thing on her own, and could have decided to write her own essay about it. That's not plagiarism. That's multiple people recognizing something that's prevalent and deciding to write about it. Foster's representatives claim they've never heard of the book. But the real question is whether or not it's actually plagiarism, and that could have been determined by finding out if there were any passages actually pulled from the book. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like anyone actually decided to do that. However, as you read Foster's article, much of it seems to be about her own personal experiences, not Curry's, which again suggests this isn't plagiarism at all, but two people writing about a similar concept that is (as admitted by Curry) already "prevalent."

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

o'reor writes "As more cases of iPhone screen explosions emerge in the news on this side of the pond, Apple is now facing official inquiries and lawsuits in France. This situation has forced Apple finally to break silence and acknowledge the incidents: 'We are aware of these reports and we are waiting to receive the iPhones from the customers. Until we have the full details, we don't have anything further to add.' Following those reports, the European Commission had already decided last week to step in, while Apple tried to dismiss the problem as 'isolated incidents.' Meanwhile, iPhone explosion-related sites are now popping up on the Internet, releasing games such as iPop to chill out and relax on the subject, but also giving users advice on preventing iPhone accidents, or detecting imminent explosions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Moleskine version of my Thermochromic Maker's Notebook was recently exhibited in Hong Kong at the headquarters of Moleskine Asia. Apparently they think Texas is part of Mexico. Oh well.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Paper Crafts | Digg this!

Cigar Box Nation founder Shane Speal has posted four great videos to teach you how to play your 3-string cigar box guitar. Above, how to play leads (blues and Middle Eastern) on one string.

Shane Speal's cigar box guitar lessons

A team from McGill University, Montréal are exploring the use of ice as a rapid prototyping medium. Their project, New Architecture of Phase Change: Computer-Assisted Ice Construction focuses on computer-controlled techniques for constructing objects at varying scales out of ice.

Currently, the practical applications of this project include commercial and industrial part modeling, and construction for the ice-tourism industry. For instance, small-scale ice models represent economical alternatives to intricate 3D models of architectural objects, be they scale models of buildings, site models, or building details. Presently, casting techniques are being investigated in order to produce high-quality metal copies from ice originals. In the long term, inhabitable, environmentally-friendly structures will be built at the architectural scale using computer-assisted techniques, thus increasing the level of automation in an industry that is currently very labour intensive.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Science | Digg this!

IronicToo writes "The US Government has updated its policy on the search and seizure of laptops at border crossing. 'The long-criticized practice of searching travelers' electronic devices will continue, but a supervisor now would need to approve holding a device for more than five days. Any copies of information taken from travelers' machines would be destroyed within days if there were no legal reason to hold the information.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Talk about the wrong way to go about things. Apparently musicians who are upset about the rates of unauthorized file sharing in Nigeria chose to go on a hunger strike to protest such things. It's really difficult to think of a worse, less productive idea. Hunger strikes are used to "call attention" to a problem -- but usually the idea is to call attention to a problem not enough people care about. The thing is, most people understand what's going on with file sharing, and they think (accurately, in my opinion) that the real issue is that musicians need to embrace newer, better business models. The fact that they've failed to embrace new business models isn't exactly a "cause" that will get people excited because someone is refusing to eat. The file sharing will continue. Perhaps instead of starving themselves, these musicians could have put a bit more effort into a better business model.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Introducing Make's Fascination series: Adam Summers' Fascination with Sharks! Editor and Publisher Dale Dougherty writes:

What fascinates you about science and technology? Do you remember something that caught your interest as a kid and fascinated you? What fascinates you today in the work you do? These are basic questions that get at how we're personally motivated to explore, learn and ultimately create new ideas. I wanted to ask a group of scientists and technologists these questions and present their answers in this Fascination video series. I hope you find them and their stories as fascinating as I do.

This summer, O'Reilly organized an event with Google and Nature called SciFoo where scientists from around the world are invited to a open-ended, unstructured event on the Google Campus in Mountain View, California. At SciFoo, I interviewed a dozen or so scientists and/or technologists across a range of disciplines and interests. I wanted to know what fascinated them as a child and how that might be connected to work they do today. Each one of them demonstrates the truth of Emerson's maxim: "Nothing great is achieved without enthusiasm."

The first interview in the series is Adam Summers who works in the field of Comparative Biomechanics, a field he didn't know existed when he graduated from college. He didn't even graduate in biology. It wasn't until he found himself collecting fish on the Great Barrier Reef as a self-proclaimed "bum" that he discovered that he wanted to become a biologist. Now, "I'm interested in how sharks swim fast." Sharks don't have a rigid skeletal structure like bony fishes. "Comparative Biomechanics is one of those fields at the interface" between disciplines, says Adam.

Fascination with Sharks: Adam Summers.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Science | Digg this!

Well, we loved them all, and agonized over choosing two winners to receive a ticket to next month's Handcrafted CSS workshop. But decide we did!

Winner #1 is @wilto, waxing poetic about a place we've all been, surely:

IE6 lives on.
Box model—and heart—broken.
position: fetal;

And Winner #2 is @squaregirl , who in three perfectly penned lines reminds us of the importance of validation during development:

Curly braces sound cute.
Until you leave one out. Oops!
I fracked my stylesheet.

Congrats to the winners! And thanks again to the fine folks at Campaign Monitor for sending them to the workshop. Which, by the way, is only a little over two weeks away. Spaces are being filled up, so grab a ticket and join us in Salem, won't you?

A police office in St. Paul, Minnesota is under investigation for feeding Pop-Tarts to gorillas during an unauthorized after-hours tour of the Como Zoo. The cop was caught on CCTV. From MyFox Twin Cities:

Surveillance video captured the incident last January, around 2 a.m., when two zoo security guards snuck four to eight people into the zoo. Among the unauthorized visitors, was an off-duty St. Paul Cop.

The Como Zoo isn't sure if the gorillas actually ate the Pop-Tarts or not. Regardless, the gorillas appear to be doing just fine.

"Cop Investigated for Feeding Gorillas Pop-Tarts?"

Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that a treasured piece at the Dutch national museum — a supposed moon rock from the first manned lunar landing given to former Prime Minister Willem Drees during a goodwill tour by the three Apollo-11 astronauts shortly after their moon mission in 1969 — has been revealed as nothing more than petrified wood, curators say. A jagged fist-size stone with reddish tints, it was mounted and placed above a plaque that said, 'With the compliments of the Ambassador of the United States of America... to commemorate the visit to The Netherlands of the Apollo-11 astronauts.' The plaque does not specify that the rock came from the moon's surface. Researchers from Amsterdam's Free University said they could see at a glance the rock was probably not from the moon. They followed the initial appraisal up with extensive testing. 'It's a nondescript, pretty-much-worthless stone,' wrote Geologist Frank Beunk in an article published by the museum. Beunk says the rock, which the museum at one point insured for more than half a million dollars, was worth no more than $70. The 'rock' had originally been been vetted through a phone call to NASA. As the US Embassy in the Hague said it was investigating the matter, the Rijksmuseum says it will keep the piece as a curiosity."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just before the whole mess -- including an FCC inquiry -- of why Apple rejected Google voice on the iPhone, we were among those who wondered if Apple would approve Spotify, the well-hyped (perhaps over-hyped) music app that in many ways competes directly with iTunes. Well, it looks like Apple has approved the software, though Spotify is still only available in certain European countries (though there are promises of a North American launch later this year). You really have to wonder, though, how much of the approval was due to the mess and attention that Apple received following the rejection of Google Voice. It seems likely that the company is now (finally) a bit more sensitive to this issue, and may have decided that it didn't need another PR headache... or to give any more fodder to the FCC. Spotify probably owes Google a nice bouquet of flowers.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

MIT researchers are designing a school small robotic fish that could be used to explore underwater spots difficult for humans to reach. For example, they could act as remote sensors, traveling through oil pipes or shipwrecks, or collecting environmental data. The 5 to 8-inch long prototypes, made from soft polymers, mimic real fish that swim by tensing and relaxing muscles to produce a vibration in their bodies. From MIT News Office:

"With these polymers, you can specify stiffness in different sections, rather than building a robot with discrete sections," says (mechanical engineering professor Kamal) Youcef-Toumi. "This philosophy can be used for more than just fish" - for example, in robotic prosthetic limbs... Later this fall, the researchers plan to expand their research to more complex locomotion and test some new prototype robotic salamanders and manta rays. "The fish were a proof of concept application, but we are hoping to apply this idea to other forms of locomotion, so the methodology will be useful for mobile robotics research - land, air and underwater - as well," said (grad student Pablo) Valdivia Y Alvarado.

"Robots swim with the fishes"

Everybody give it up for Papercraft Keyboard Cat! Wooh-ooOOh!

Bonus awesome points to those who keep dancing throughout the assembly process. Grab the pattern over TubbyPaws blog. [via Kitsune Noir]

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Crafts | Digg this!

Mike Sauter sends in a piece from Wired profiling research by Andrea Lunsford, a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford, from which she concludes that we don't need to worry about computers and the Internet causing a decline in general literacy. "[Lunsford] has organized a mammoth project called the Stanford Study of Writing to scrutinize college students' prose. From 2001 to 2006, she collected 14,672 student writing samples — everything from in-class assignments, formal essays, and journal entries to emails, blog posts, and chat sessions. Her conclusions are stirring. 'I think we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization,' she says. For Lunsford, technology isn't killing our ability to write. It's reviving it — and pushing our literacy in bold new directions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sam sez, "This is a Google map that tracks all the events from issue 1 to 64 of the Walking Dead comic. The comic actually takes place in the real world and this map has markers for everything that has happened and where it happened, complete with references to the comic and images. "

Map (Thanks, Sam!)

Irving, Texas, is the home of this clever sculptural fountain by Robert Glen. A fountain jet beneath each hoof gives the illusion, particularly in still photographs, that the bronze horses are splashing through the water.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!

For my latest essay on GOOD, I profile the Global Lives Project, a volunteer effort to create an online video library of human life experiences. From GOOD:

Rumi Nagashima, 22, navigates Tokyo in her wheelchair on the way to a girl scout meeting where she’s the troop leader. In Ngawle Village, Malawi, Edith Kapuka, 13, is playing ball with her school friends before walking a trail to her small hut. Across the world in San Francisco, James Bullock, 57, steers his cable car up San Francisco’s steep hills. And you? You’re in the middle of it all. An array of video projectors immerses you in a day in the life of everyday people around the world. Look left, and there’s Israel Feliciano, 23, a hip-hop singer in a favela of São Paulo, Brazil. Behind you is Muttu Kumar, 18, a postcard vendor hawking his wares in Hampi, India. This is an installation of the Global Lives Project, a volunteer effort originally launched to “record 24 hours in the lives of ten people that roughly represent the diversity our planet’s population.”

Think Globally, Record Locally

chrb writes "New Scientist is reporting that researchers at IBM Zurich have managed to image a single molecule in detail for the first time. In the images of a pentacene molecule, the bonds between the carbon atoms are visible as five linked rings."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A bunch of folks have been sending in the news that Italian regulators have begun an investigation into Google, at the request of some Italian newspapers. The complaint is a typical one from newspapers who seem slightly clueless about how Google works. They say that Google News is unfair -- even though they can opt-out, but don't. The newspapers falsely claim that if they opt-out of Google News, they also have to opt-out of Google Search. That's simply untrue. But even if it were true, I'm not sure what the point would be. Getting traffic is a good thing. It's unclear why Italian newspapers (or any newspapers) don't like it.

In fact, the whole idea that Google News is unfair for sending traffic is undermined by the other complaint from the newspapers: that Google doesn't reveal how it ranks stories:

Because Google does not disclose the criteria for ranking news articles or search results, he said, newspapers are unable to hone their content to try to earn more revenue from online advertising.

Of course, that's silly. First, plenty of people have figured out how to optimize for Google -- there's a whole industry called SEO that does that. That doesn't mean that Google needs to reveal the secret sauce. But the best response to the demand for Google to reveal how it ranks stories comes from Danny Sullivan, who turns the story around, and wonders how newspaper would feel in the other direction:

No newspaper editor of any quality would allow an external interest to walk into their newsroom and demand to know exactly how to guarantee a front page article about whatever they want. But that's what the Italian papers seem to desire. Google has an editorial process for producing rankings, one that's done using automation -- but the papers seem to want to bypass those editorial decisions.

Exactly. The newspapers are basically demanding that their stories get ranked higher, but how would newspaper editors feel about the subjects of stories in the paper demanding that their stories be on the front page. After all, being on the front page would get the subject of a story more attention, and the newspaper isn't paying those subjects -- so the newspaper is "getting all the value." -- at least according to newspaper logic.

Sullivan also does a good job highlighting how useless it would be if the newspapers did get the details on how Google ranks stuff, because then everyone would just start writing stories to get to the top of the list, and any "advantage" would be lost. Separate from that, shouldn't we be just a bit troubled to find out that the newspapers are interested in figuring out how to write stories that top Google, rather than writing stories to better inform the populace?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

This, my friends, is one of the most innovative (and cute) multimedia artist of our time - Videohuahua. He travels the world as apprentice & sidekick to video artist Fernando Llanos, performing with a variety 'onboard' projection & camera gear. I'm guessing we'll see some pretty edgy guerilla-art from the duo down the line. [via Create Digital Music]

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!

Save money while helping the environment with this rustic, wine barrel water collector.
Thanks go to Chris & Michri Barnes for the original article in MAKE, Volume 18.
To download The Barrel Water Collector click here or subscribe in iTunes.
Check out the complete Barrel Water Collector article in MAKE, Volume 18
and you can see that in our Digital Edition.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Weekend Projects | Digg this!

Save money while helping the environment with this rustic, wine barrel water collector.
Thanks go to Chris & Michri Barnes for the original article in MAKE, Volume 18.
View the PDF of this project. and then subscribe to MAKE Magazine for other great projects
you can do over the weekend.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in MAKE PDF | Digg this!

willy everlearn and several other readers let us know that Slackware 13.0 is out. 'Wed Aug 26 10:00:38 CDT 2009: Slackware 13.0 x86_64 is released as stable! Thanks to everyone who helped make this release possible — see the RELEASE_NOTES for the credits. The ISOs are off to the replicator. This time it will be a 6 CD-ROM 32-bit set and a dual-sided 32-bit/64-bit x86/x86_64 DVD. We're taking pre-orders now at store.slackware.com. Please consider picking up a copy to help support the project. Once again, thanks to the entire Slackware community for all the help testing and fixing things and offering suggestions during this development cycle. As always, have fun and enjoy!'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sam Brown points out this video visit to the workshop of high-end knifemaker Joel Bukiewicz. It's a nice little documentary that avoids rushing through the topic, covering a bunch of excellent details from an otherwise private, happily-obsessive process. Plus Joel gives his take on some aspects of the craft few know about. Some more info over @ CHOW.

Related:

How knives are made

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Makers | Digg this!

itwbennett writes "The FBI is trying to find out who is sending laptops to state governors across the US, including the governors of Wyoming and West Virginia. The West Virginia laptops were delivered to the governor's office on August 5, according to the Charleston Gazette, which first reported the story. Kyle Schafer, West Virginia's chief technology officer, says he doesn't know what's on the laptops, but he handed them over to the authorities. 'Our expectation is that this is not a gesture of good will,' he said. 'People don't just send you five laptops for no good reason.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earlier this summer, we wrote about how SJSU computer science student (and Techdirt reader), Kyle Brady, had won a fight with one of his professors, over Kyle's decision to post the code he had written for the class online. He had only done so after the assignments were due (so as not to reveal the answers to other students), and did so to show off his coding skills and to help him get a job. Yet, the professor threatened him, claiming he was "cheating" and that he would get a failing grade. After taking the issue up the administrative chain, Brady was told that he had done nothing wrong and had not violated any academic policy.

At the end of the post, I noted that I was a bit surprised that a separate issue hadn't come up. The entire discussion had been about school policy, and not about copyright. Yet, many schools these days now try to claim the copyright on code written by students. Perhaps I spoke too soon.

Kyle alerts us that, with the new school year beginning, the same professor has added a new copyright policy to his assignments. Thankfully, it doesn't sound like he's claiming copyright over the code, but over the assignments themselves. You can see the policy for yourself, where it states:

The homework assignments in this class are copyrighted by Dr. Beeson, including the names of the assignments, and the names of all the required classes and methods, all the examples that are posted with the assignment, and the problem descriptions and programming hints that are posted. Your solutions are your own, but if you want to post them publicly, you must change the names of the classes and methods, and you cannot post the problem descriptions. This should enable you to show your work to a prospective employer, and possibly allow me to re-use the assignments without future students being able to Google your solutions.

Now, to give Dr. Beeson credit, he appears to be trying to come up with a reasonable compromise here, allowing Kyle to do the sorts of things he wanted to do, without making it so that he would have to come up with new assignments every semester. So, I can respect that. But, I'm not sure that he's got a legal right for all of that. It's not entirely clear if the names of the assignments are enough "creative expression" to warrant a copyright. Ditto for the names of required classes and methods. Even if they were, I would imagine any student would have a pretty strong fair use argument in reposting them.

I think it's fair for Dr. Beeson to request students not post info that makes it so easy for future students to Google the answers from former students (though, let's face it, students will always find ways to get similar info anyway), but claiming it's due to copyright seems like a stretch.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

A reader writes, "The second of two Canadian copyright townhalls was held last night in Toronto and it was clear from the beginning that the recording industry stacked the deck. Four Warner Music executives spoke, two from Sony Music, one Universal Music, along with multiple music industry lawyers, spokespeople, and collectives. Given that there were a limited number of seats, packing the room meant that many alternative views were excluded from participating. Time to speak out now on copyright - two weeks left in the consultation and the industry is ready to overrun the process unless Canadians take the time to have their voice heard at sites like speakoutoncopyright.ca, digitalagenda.ca or ccer.ca."

With just over two weeks left in the consultation, there should be no doubt that the lobby groups will be engaging in a major effort to push for their DMCA-style reforms. The calls for three-strikes and you're out, notice and takedown, DMCA anti-circumvention legislation, and no flexible fair dealing will only get louder. Now is the time for Canadians - many of whom could not get a seat at the townhall since it was filled by industry reps just days after the consultation launch - to speak out. Don't wait - send in your comments today and encourage others to do the same.

The Toronto Music Industry Town Hall

It's quite common for regulators around the world to insist that no company can call itself a "bank" unless it's an official, regulated bank. In fact, that's often why you see companies (including holding companies of real banks) that use the word "banc" instead of "bank." It's to get around such regulations. However, it looks like regulators in Sweden have gone a step further, telling the Swedish domain registrar, that it can't even allow any domain name to be sold with "bank" in it, unless it's sold to an official bank (found via Michael Scott). Of course, the whole thing seems ridiculous. There are plenty of legitimate reasons why a site might want to use the word "bank" in a domain name without being a bank themselves. A domain could be a site about banks, a service site like Bankrate or simply contain a surname like Banks -- which shouldn't confuse too many folks.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

The repentant former KKK leader Johnny Lee Clary explains how Reverend Wade Watts, an NAACP leader, disarmed him by being cool, funny and brave, engaging in some first-rate psy-ops. Be sure to listen through to the end for the chicken story.

Former Ku Klux Klan leader Johnny Lee Clary (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

This is a really nice instructable about using a PIC to read the direction of rotation from a digital rotary switch. I like the idea of dialing in a variable, instead of using button.

The objective for this Instructable is to illustrate how to interface a digital (quadrature coded) rotary switch with a microcontroller. Don't worry, I'll explain what quadrature coded means for us. This interface and the accompanying software will allow the microcontroller to recognize the direction of rotation for each move from one detent to another.

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

Last month I blogged about Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim, a glorious, gritty revenge novel from hell, tinged with Aleister Crowley, Tom Waits and Raymond Chandler. Sandman Slim, AKA Stark, is one of Los Angeles's magicians, and 11 years ago, his fellow magicians sent him to hell because they were jealous of his power. He's spent the past 11 years fighting in Hell's gladiator pits and working as an assassin for one of Hell's Dukes, but now he has escaped to Earth and is on a quest to hunt down and execute his betrayers.

I've just finished listening to the unabridged, 10-hour audiobook of Sandman Slim, which is available on a single MP3 CD without DRM from Brilliance Audio. The reading is performed by Macleod Andrews, who does the narration in a perfect whiskey voice that's 80 percent Tom Waits, 20 percent Clint Eastwood. The performance and production are marvellous, a great interpretive reading that really brought the novel to life for me. I also love that I could get it without having to suffer through either DRM through one of the audiobook download stores or through ripping ten CDs' worth of material, which is how I normally get my audiobooks onto my computer.

Sandman Slim Audiobook MP3 CD

angry tapir writes "Apple has approved a streaming music application from Spotify for use on the iPhone, even though the program will compete with Apple's own iTunes service. Spotify is an advertising-supported music service that lets end-users stream music to their computers free of charge. The service is available in the U.K. and by invitation in countries including Sweden, Norway, Finland, France and Spain. Users can opt to pay for a version of the service without ads." The BBC also has a story on the app's acceptance.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a world where almost every new expression is automatically covered by copyright once set in fixed form, you get some really odd situations -- highlighted by a recent ruling pointed out by Michael Scott. Apparently, in a lawsuit between bunch of plaintiffs and the city of Albuquerque, the city paid for a court reporter to record transcripts of some hearings. An attorney for the plaintiffs who wanted to use the transcripts did the smart thing and used New Mexico's Inspection of Public Records Act to gain access to the transcripts.

The problem? The city and the court reporter who recorded the transcripts would have charged a much higher fee for a copy of the transcripts, and felt that the lawyer's use of the law to gain access was somehow unfair. The court then ordered the lawyer to pay the court reporter over $4,000 to make up the "difference." The lawyer, however, appealed, and the appeals court has thrown out the lower court ruling, saying that forcing the lawyer to pay the higher fee would mean that the court reporter effectively was given a copyright to the transcripts:

In broad terms, [the court reporter's] fee claim rests on the tacit premise that court reporters in some legal sense own the content of the transcripts they prepare, such that they are entitled to remuneration whenever a copy of a transcript is made (even if they played no role in making the copy). To accept this premise would effectively give court reporters a "copyright" in a mere transcription of others' statements, contrary to black letter copyright law. See 2 William F. Patry, Patry on Copyright, Ch. 4 Noncopyrightable Material, § 4.88 (Updated Sept. 2008) (court reporters are not "authors of what they transcribe and therefore cannot be copyright owners of the transcript of court proceedings").

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Slatterz writes "We might sometimes complain about the limitations of today's technology, but there's nothing like seeing photos of a 27Kg hard drive with a capacity of 5MB to put things into perspective. PC Authority has toured the Computer History Museum in California, and has posted these fascinating photos, including monster 27Kg and 60Kg drives, and a SAGE air-defense system. Each SAGE housed an A/N FSQ-7 computer, which had around 60,000 vacuum tubes. IBM constructed the hardware, and each computer occupied a huge amount of space. From its completion in 1954 it analyzed radar data in real-time, to provide a complete picture of US Airspace during the cold war. Other interesting photos and trivia include some giant early IBM disc platters, and pics of a curvaceous Cray-1 supercomputer, built in 1972. It was the fastest machine in the world until 1977 and an icon for decades. It cost a mere $6 million, and could perform at 160MFLOPS — which your phone can now comfortably manage."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

YA author Scott Westerfeld's next novel is Leviathan, a remarkable YA steampunk adventure story that pits Darwinists (the English side, with their evolved war-machines created by splicing and dicing various animals' genomes to make zeppelins) against the Machinists (the German side, who use enormous, precision-made, steam-driven mecha and the like) in an alternate WWI.

The book is fantastic -- I read an early galley some months ago, and my full review is going up on Oct 6 when the book comes out -- but even better is the unabridged audiobook, read aloud by Alan Cumming. Simon and Shuster audio have just released the first chapter as a free stream, and I'm enjoying it immensely.

Chapter 1 of Leviathan, Read Aloud!

In Scientific American, Paul W. Andrews and J. Anderson Thomson, Jr. sum up a paper they've recently published in Psychological Review that argues for depression as a pro-survival adaptation that allows for a kind of intense, isolated problem-solving introspection that, when combined with analytical techniques similar to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, resolves complex troubles:

Analysis requires a lot of uninterrupted thought, and depression coordinates many changes in the body to help people analyze their problems without getting distracted. In a region of the brain known as the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), neurons must fire continuously for people to avoid being distracted. But this is very energetically demanding for VLPFC neurons, just as a car's engine eats up fuel when going up a mountain road. Moreover, continuous firing can cause neurons to break down, just as the car's engine is more likely to break down when stressed. Studies of depression in rats show that the 5HT1A receptor is involved in supplying neurons with the fuel they need to fire, as well as preventing them from breaking down. These important processes allow depressive rumination to continue uninterrupted with minimal neuronal damage, which may explain why the 5HT1A receptor is so evolutionarily important.

Many other symptoms of depression make sense in light of the idea that analysis must be uninterrupted. The desire for social isolation, for instance, helps the depressed person avoid situations that would require thinking about other things. Similarly, the inability to derive pleasure from sex or other activities prevents the depressed person from engaging in activities that could distract him or her from the problem. Even the loss of appetite often seen in depression could be viewed as promoting analysis because chewing and other oral activity interferes with the brain's ability to process information.

But is there any evidence that depression is useful in analyzing complex problems? For one thing, if depressive rumination were harmful, as most clinicians and researchers assume, then bouts of depression should be slower to resolve when people are given interventions that encourage rumination, such as having them write about their strongest thoughts and feelings. However, the opposite appears to be true. Several studies have found that expressive writing promotes quicker resolution of depression, and they suggest that this is because depressed people gain insight into their problems.

Depression's Evolutionary Roots (via Neatorama)

WAHHA GO GO is a mechanical Japanese laughing robot that uses a flywheel and bellows; the accompanying text says something like, "Moving the bellows with the rotation of the flywheel energy in the wind 'artificial vocal'. Rashitsutsu the 'Pitch' 'formant' "amount of air flow' to control the machine like a human laugh."

WAHHA GO GO (via JWZ)

Art Donovan from the Oxford University Museum of the History of Science sez, "I have been given the great honor of curating the world's very first Museum Exhibition of Steampunk Art. Seventeen artists from seven countries- The Steampunk creators that you know best. Opening October 13, 2009 and running continually through February 21, 2010. The Museum Director, Dr, Jim Bennett has scheduled events, art competitions and lectures through the exhibition."

Steampunk Art @ Oxford (Thanks, Art!)

Flickr user Claire_issa uploaded pictures of these stupendous Where the Wild Things Are cupcakes that she made for her roommate, noting, "These are texas-sized snickerdoodle cupcakes. For frosting and decorations I used chocolate ganache (Moishe), canned vanilla frosting (Max), sprinkles, store-bought gumpaste eyes, and fondant colored tinted by hand."

Now that is love.

Where the Wild Things Are cupcakes (via Neatorama)

This one is from a few weeks back, but I just saw it. Apparently, Mort Zuckerman, owner of the NY Daily News has an interesting (and somewhat different) idea on how to save newspapers: have them be able to take sports bets via their websites. This isn't currently legal, but he thinks it would work:

There is something that can be done, and the federal government ought to do it: allow sports betting on newspaper Web sites. That would save every newspaper in America. The New York Times.com could do it. Plenty of British papers do this; for them it's a crucial part of their net revenue stream. I know a major newspaper in London that makes $15 million a year from sports betting alone.

I think it's a lot better of an idea than a paywall (though, Zuckerman likes the paywall idea, but tellingly notes, "I'll be the second or third to do it. Not the first."), but I'm not sure why a newspaper is any better at doing it than other sites. Perhaps because they have the sports reporting, but it's not clear how that's really unique to them. On top of that, given the way the US gov't treats online gambling as being something somewhat close to pure evil, combined with the powerful casino lobby, it's difficult to see this actually getting anywhere.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

They Might Be Giants is one of my favorite bands of all time, and over the past few years they've made some really top-notch kids' albums, each of which I make sure to buy for my nephew. The newest one is called Here Comes Science, and the song above is called "Electric Car." I love the recycled papercraft animation style. [via BBG]

More:

• Bamgoo: electric car built from bamboo
  
• The $672 Electric car
  
• Gav's electric car

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Science | Digg this!

Matthew Paul Thomas "Why Free Software has poor usability, and how to improve it".... Interesting article via Tom-

When I wrote the first version of this article six years ago, I called it “Why Free Software usability tends to suck”. The best open source applications and operating systems are more usable now than they were then. But this is largely from slow incremental improvements, and low-level competition between projects and distributors. Major problems with the design process itself remain largely unfixed.

Many of these problems are with volunteer software in general, not Free Software in particular. Hobbyist proprietary programs are often hard to use for many of the same reasons. But the easiest way of getting volunteers to contribute to a program is to make it open source. And while thousands of people are now employed in developing Free Software, most of its developers are volunteers. So it’s in Free Software that we see volunteer software’s usability problems most often.

That gives us a clue to our first two problems...

I hear this a lot, one example that a maker was struggling with the other day was Inkscape, folks love it but many complain about usability. It's a valuable tool for any maker, but many that I talk to end up using CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator for their laser cut designs, etc.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Open source hardware | Digg this!

Here is Alan Moore's tribute to bOING bOING patron saint Robert Anton Wilson (1932-2007), delivered at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in March 2007. (Thanks, Chris Arkenberg!)

Here is an interesting video documentary about the carnivorous pitcher plant. Of course, a new species of pitcher plant recently discovered on Mount Victoria in the Philippines made headlines as a "rat-eating plant," but that was apparently bullshit. While pitcher plants do sometimes nab small rodents, as in this other delightful clip, the researchers who found the new species in the Philippines have never observed any rodents inside its pitchers. The giant pitcher plant, Nepenthes attenboroughii, was named in honor of celebrity naturalist Sir David Attenborough, narrator of the above video. (Thanks, Mark Pescovitz!)

A young chimp is impressed by magic tricks. (Via Bits and Pieces)

I'll be the first to admit that I actually agreed with the stance of telcos a few years back that local "franchising" rules were a problem. If you don't know, for a long time, if you wanted to offer cable-based television in a market, you had to get a "franchise" agreement from a local (town/city/region) authority. For many years, this meant a single cable company offering service with absolutely no competition. When the telcos came along with plans to offer television over fiber or DSL lines, they realized (accurately) that having to get approval in every tiny region would be cost prohibitive. This was all absolutely true, and it was also true that it was silly and unproductive for telcos to have to get so many different approvals and abide by so many different rules just to finally give the cable companies some serious competition in markets.

The telcos were successful in making their case, but, of course, these things never happen without a catch. Various states wiped out local franchises, and put in state-wide franchises... but, in doing so, the telcos were often able to dictate the terms of the state-wide franchise rights, making them quite friendly to the telcos, but not so friendly to others or to actual consumers. Apparently, states are now realizing that the promises given to them by telco lobbyists haven't been shown to be true. The insistence that statewide franchising would lead to lower prices for TV service, for example, hasn't been validated at all.

I recently got to hear first hand how the statewide franchise law in California is leading to serious problems for some really amazing local municipal and school networks, which will now get shut down, since the statewide law doesn't require it, as the local franchise rule did. I'm not convinced that the answer is to return to local franchising, which still seems like a process that is too convoluted for innovation. Perhaps the real answer is that none of this will matter eventually, once television all runs through your browser, anyway...

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

coondoggie writes "Nearly a year after announcing the plan, new Federal Trade Commission rules prohibiting most robocalls are set to take effect Tuesday, Sept. 1. With the rules, prerecorded commercial telemarketing robocalls will be prohibited, unless the telemarketer has obtained permission in writing from consumers who want to receive such calls. Hopefully the rules will go a long way to helping consumers eat dinner in peace without being interrupted by amazingly annoying telemarketer blather or in this case prerecorded blather. The requirement is part of amendments to the agency's Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) that were announced a year ago. After September 1, sellers and telemarketers who transmit prerecorded messages to consumers who have not agreed in writing to accept such messages will face penalties of up to $16,000 per call."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

About a year ago, Phil posted about Telstar Logistics' rockin' custom Tonka truck mods. As it turns out, Todd Lappin wrote a how-to for turning this classic toy into a one-of-a-kind ride for MAKE Volume 19. Todd has a longstanding tradition of presenting this durable classic to all friends and family members upon arrival of their firstborn child. When Todd had his own firstborn baby girl, there was no doubt she was getting a Tonka, but naturally he wanted to mod hers to be extra special, and his Tonka modding days began full force. First came the Rat Rod Tonka detailed by Oakland pinstriper Eric Kirby (my favorite, pictured above), followed by a pink Hello Kitty Tonka and a whole pink Tonka brigade:

In the article, Todd shares his extensive Tonka modding knowledge garnered from numerous mods. Deconstruct, prep, paint, rebuild, add flair, repeat. Why reinvent the (plastic) wheel when you can learn from a pro?

Pick up your copy of MAKE Volume 19 in the Maker Shed or on a newsstand near you.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Toys and Games | Digg this!

Defenders of installing surveillance cameras everywhere often insist that they're necessary and useful in stopping and solving crime. Yet, even that's being called into serious question, as a study of London's widespread use of CCTV cameras, found that for every 1,000 cameras installed, only one crime has been solved. On top of that, when faced with a crime, the CCTV cameras are rarely that useful. The report found that CCTV cameras were used to catch just 8 out of 269 suspected robbers. And these cameras aren't cheap to install or maintain, making some begin to question if anti-crime budgets couldn't be spent more wisely.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Grab your friends, your relatives, and your robots, and get ready for a great time this Saturday at the Ann Arbor Mini Maker Faire! Don't let the mini in the title dissuade you, there will be plenty of cool things going on. From the event website:

Local "Makers" will demonstrate robots, bookbinding, electric vehicles, computer-controlled machinery, high-altitude balloons, vortex cannons, and other projects, devices, and inventions at the first Ann Arbor "Mini" Maker Faire, Saturday August 29, at the Washtenaw Farm Council Fairgrounds. Visitors can silkscreen their own t-shirt and learn to solder by making their own "Wee Blinky" electronic circuit to take home. Admission, parking, and all activities are free. Over 25 different groups and individuals from the Ann Arbor and surrounding area are scheduled to exhibit.

I'll be exhibiting a few of my projects there, be sure to stop by and say hi!

WHAT: Ann Arbor Mini Maker Faire
WHERE: Washtenaw Farm Council Fairgrounds
5055 Ann Arbor Saline Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48103
WHEN: Saturday, Aug. 29 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
HOW MUCH: Free!!!

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Events | Digg this!

Our special guest for the Bad Hair Day podcast at 7PM Pacific is Joe Hewitt the author of Facebook for the iPhone. What a great day to talk with Joe!

You can listen live on BlogTalkRadio.

I had lunch with him yesterday in Santa Cruz. I said that if Facebook wanted to compete with Twitter they needed a vastly simpler version of Facebook. Little did I know that 24 hours later I'd be looking at it.

If you have any questions for Joe, please post them as comments here, and Marshall and I will try to get to them.

You can listen to the show live on BlogTalkRadio, and of course it will be available as a podcast from the badhair.us site.

Here we go!

Droops of the Daily Duino shows off this painting created by a student enrolled in his Summer Arduino class. Wow - must be a pretty enthralling curriculum to inspire microcontroller art! Now he gets to use it as a reference chart with his next round of students.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arduino | Digg this!