andylim writes "Recombu.com has pitted the iPod Nano's video capabilities against an iPhone 3GS, a Nokia 5530 XpressMusic and Flip Mino HD. This simple test shows how the camera deals with motion, colour and audio. The iPod Nano's camera seems to offer a basic yet decent video experience and some might say delivers a higher picture quality than the iPhone 3GS's camera. What's interesting is how well it deals with close-ups."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From a 2007 Vancouver Sun article:

VANCOUVER - A Campbell River man has received $63,000 in damages for an "out-of-body experience" in which he said he saw God after being accidentally overdosed with the painkiller Ketamine while recovering from back surgery in Vancouver General Hospital.

Shouldn't he actually have paid the hospital extra for that experience? (I kid... kinda.)

Damages set at $63,000 in drug mishap (via Dose Nation)

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

Wild and Wacky Places to Stay in the Countryside
There are some strange places to sleep out in the country side, but not necessarily in a creepy Deliverance sort of way. More like in the "Hey, a hay hotel!" sort of way.

Rm w Vu: Tall, Terrifying and Terrific Towers (Slideshow)
Speaking of strange structures, check out these really cool architectural wonders.

Green Porno 3 with Isabella Rossellini Now Live
In case you missed the announcement a couple weeks ago, Green Porno has been renewed for a 3rd season (and a book), and today is the official launch online, with the TV launch scheduled for next week (September 21st).

PETA Has Pamela Anderson Stripping People at Airport (Video)
Because apparently there was a lot of sex in green news last week, we can't fail to mention this video from PETA.

Chrome, IE8, Safari...New Study Shows Which Browser is Best for Laptop Batteries
But because we think of more things than porn and erotic commercials, we can't fail to mention this survey that tells you which browser will take it easiest on your laptop and extend battery life.

An anonymous reader writes "With Sun busy being swallowed up by Oracle, should Linux geeks pay any interest to OpenSolaris? TuxRadar put together a guide to OpenSolaris's most interesting features from a Linux user's perspective, covering how to get started with ZFS and virtualisation alongside more consumer-friendly topics such as hardware and Flash support."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a ruling that has to make the folks at Google/YouTube happy (despite not being a part of the case), a judge has granted summary judgment to Veoh over Universal Music, claiming that Veoh's video hosting site is protecting from liability of infringing videos due to the DMCA's safe harbors. This case, which has many similarities to Viacom's lawsuit against YouTube, has gone against Universal Music in almost every way. This is now the second time that Veoh has had such a lawsuit dismissed, and hopefully the judge in the YouTube case recognizes that this is, in fact, the right decision under the DMCA. This latest ruling isn't a huge surprise. Earlier this year, the judge seemed to reject all of Universal's arguments for why safe harbors shouldn't apply. Universal also got smacked down (twice) in its attempt to separately sue Veoh's investors for the actions of the company's users.

While Veoh, as a company, may be struggling, this is a huge victory for common sense. This case describes exactly the sort of situation that the DMCA safe harbors were designed to deal with. A service provider who has no direct say in what content is uploaded by users should not be liable for that content. It's great that judges are seeing this, and hopefully the judge in the YouTube case sees it the same way. Veoh's case isn't "over" yet, though, since Universal will appeal -- and has already claimed the ruling is "wrong." Yet, so far odds of a successful appeal are not looking good. Hopefully, the appeals courts will also correctly interpret safe harbors (and common sense) to recognize that a service provider should never be liable for the content put up by users.

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Christophe Bisciglia, Google's former infrastructure guru and current member of the Cloudera start-up team, has commented on Google's latest iteration on their GFS file system and deemed its features well within the evolutionary capabilities of open-source competitor Hadoop. "Details on Google's GFS2 are slim. After all, it's Google. But based on what he's read, Bisciglia calls the update 'the next logical iteration' of the original GFS, and he sees Hadoop eventually following in the (rather sketchy) footsteps left by his former employer. 'A lot of the things Google is talking about are very logical directions for Hadoop to go,' Bisciglia tells The Reg. 'One of the things I've been very happy to see repeatedly demonstrated is that Hadoop has been able to implement [new Google GFS and MapReduce] features in approximately the same order. This shows that the fundamentals of Hadoop are solid, that the fundamentals are based on the same principles that allowed Google's systems to scale over the years.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Greg Sandoval, over at News.com, ran an interview with me about both Techdirt and our CwF+RtB experiment. The only quibble is that "full of rage" bit. As most people who know me will tell you, I'm about as far from "filled with rage" as just about anyone. I'm a pretty laid back, happy, optimistic guy. Can't think of much to have rage about -- but I could see how some might misinterpret some of my writings that way. Anyway, I'm way behind on posting about some of our findings (though, the interview reveals a few), and will try to get to it very soon. There isn't much left to buy (and we're down to limited sizes on t-shirts/hoodies of what is left), but we'll try to do a refresh with some new offerings soon. In the meantime, we've started shipping stuff out, but we're still waiting on all the signed books/music to get that out, so please hold on if you haven't received yours yet...

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snydeq writes "Novell has announced MonoTouch 1.0, a commercial SDK kit that allows developers to build iPhone apps using Microsoft's .Net Framework instead of the Apple-designated C or Objective-C languages. The SDK leverages Novell's Mono runtime for running Windows apps on non-Windows systems, allowing developers to utilize code and libraries written for .Net and programming languages like C#. With MonoTouch, the Mono runtime provides such developer services as garbage collection, thread management, type safety, and Web services, said Mono leader Miguel de Icaza."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I've just finished listening to the fantastic unabridged audiobook adaptation of Ariel, Stephen Boyett's classic post-apocalyptic swords-and-sorcery adventure novel that was just reissued. The recording was produced by Deyan Audio, and read by Ramon De Ocampo who really nailed it. The incidental music came from Boyett's wife, Maureen Halderson, who clearly has a handle on how to produce the accompaniment to the much-loved tale.

Ariel is a natural for adaptation to audiobook -- a nonstop, tightly plotted adventure novel with lots of exciting, well-told combat sequences that De Ocampo just nails. And, of course, the book is available as a DRM-free download (Boyett's something of a copyfighter, which makes it great all around.

Incidentally, Boyett's holding a competition in which he's asking for readers to send in photos of their "ganked out" original copies of Ariel (mine's much-loved and has been read literally dozens of times), with the owners of the most beat-up copies winning signed new editions. Sweet deal!

Ariel audiobook

Free Sample Chapters

See also: Ariel: post-apocalyptic sword-and-sorcery adventure that rocked my world

Lucas123 writes "Three-year-old start-up Pliant Technology today announced the general availability of a new class of enterprise SAS solid state disk drives that it claims without using any cache can achieve up to 180,000 IOPS for sustained read/write rates of 500MB/sec and 320MB/sec, respectively. The company also claims an unlimited number of daily writes to its new flash drives, guaranteeing 5 years of service with no slowdown. 'Pliant's SSD controller architecture is not vastly different from those of other high-end SSD manufacturers. It has twelve independent I/O channels to interleaved single level cell (SLC) NAND flash chips from Samsung Corp. The drives are configured as RAID 0 for increased performance and the controller.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Famed rapper 50 Cent (Curtis Jackson) was apparently on CNBC recently talking about his "business acumen." I have to admit that having three different people all trying to interview him at once is rather annoying -- as they almost never let him complete a thought. However, when they ask him about piracy, and whether or not it makes him angry (around 2 minutes), he responds that: he sees it as a part of the marketing of a musician, because "the people who didn't purchase the material, they end up at the concert." He says that people can fall in love with the music either way, and then they'll go to concerts. He notes that you can't stop piracy either way, so why try to fight it? He also talks about other business opportunities for musicians.

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Tomorrow sees the release of Dan "Da Vinci Code" Brown's long-awaited new novel The Lost Symbol. Apparently, one big theme of the book is the influence Freemasonry had on American history. (In fact, one of the Boing Boingers is a Freemason. Can you guess which one of us? ANSWER: IT'S MARK!) Pegged on the book's publication, Mitch Horowitz wrote a brief essay for US News And World Report about the "real" impact of Freemasonry on this country. Of course, Mitch is the author of his own new book, "Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation." In a couple of weeks, he'll be guestblogging here on Boing Boing and I can't wait! From US News And World Report:

(George) Washington and other early American Freemasons rejected a European past in which one overarching authority regulated the exchange of ideas. And this outlook is found in one of the greatest symbols associated with Freemasonry: The eye-and-pyramid of the Great Seal of the United States, familiar today from the back of the dollar bill. The Great Seal's design began on July 4th, 1776, on an order from the Continental Congress and under the direction of Benjamin Franklin (another Freemason), Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. The Latin maxim that surrounds the unfinished pyramid—Annuit Coeptis Novus Ordo Seclorum—can be roughly, if poetically, translated as: "God Smiles on Our New Order of the Ages." It is Masonic philosophy to the core: The pyramid, or worldly achievement, is incomplete without the blessing of Providence. And this polity of man and God, as Masonry saw it, required a break with the religious order of the Old World and a renewed search for universal truth. In its symbols and ideas, Masonry conveyed a sense that something new was being born in America: that the individual's conscience was beyond denominational affiliation or government command.

Masons and the Making of America (US News & World Report)
Buy "Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation" (Amazon)
Buy "The Lost Symbol" (Amazon)

On August 19, I had a heart attack. As the EMTs were muscling me into the back of the ambulance, a lot of things went racing through my mind as I struggled against a seizing heart. Amongst the expected themes of possible death, leaving my son and loved ones, meeting my maker, and such, a strange thought took center stage: "I'm going to miss the roll-out of the Make: Science Room!" It wasn't a stray thought from a fear-driven brain on random access, either. It seriously concerned me to think that I would miss out on introducing you all to this new area of Make: Online that we've worked so hard to build over the last two months. We're really that excited about it! Luckily, I pulled through (er... after triple-bypass surgery and almost dying of a donor blood mismatch) and my compadres were kind enough to delay the launch until I came back.

The idea of doing a hands-on science education area on Make: Online has been floating through our collective imaginations for awhile. It got a big boost when we published Bob Thompson's Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments (O'Reilly/Make: Books, 2008) and it was met with near-universal enthusiasm and praise. It seemed to really touch a nerve in those of us who grew up with the chemistry sets of the 60s and 70s. (BTW: Home Chemistry has 5/5 starts on Amazon and is still ranked #7,631 overall and #2 in Chemistry/Technical.) Everywhere we went to show off the book, people would offer up their misty-eyed memories of books like the Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments and of their beloved Gilbert, Lionel-Porter, Skil Craft chemistry sets. Inevitably, the talk always ended on "they don't make them like that anymore" and similar laments for generations of young people robed of the hands-on exploration of real science. When we published a piece by Keith Hammond on vintage chemistry sets in MAKE, Volume 16, the same thing happened - more rapturous remembrances of chem sets past and more decrying the lack of decent amateur science materials and tools for today's budding citizen scientists.

In the midst of all this, an idea started to percolate around the office: how cool would it be if we created a microsite on Make: Online that would serve as a virtual classroom to teach our readers the fundamentals of science and offer lots of fun and challenging experiments and hands-on projects for them to try and discuss with each other? And, what if we brought back the legitimate chemistry kits of yore by assembling a curated collection of serious but affordable science kits, laboratory equipment, chemicals, and supplies in the Maker Shed?

Bob Thompson in his home laboratory

So that's exactly what we've done. The Make: Science Room is our new DIY science destination, with everything from how-tos on setting up a lab, evaluating and buying equipment and supplies, to conducting all manner of fun and educational home science experiments. And we'll be providing a forum for our readers to share and collaborate on their own experiments and discoveries. To help accomplish this, we brought Bob Thompson on board to translate content from his Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments and the (not-yet-published) Illustrated Guide to Forensics Investigations and to create original content for the site. As time goes on, we'll expand the Science Room to include sections on astronomy, Earth sciences, biology, and other disciplines.

We think the timing for this couldn't be better. Just as the open source hardware movement took off a few years ago, building on the ideas and ethos of open source software (and a profusion of affordable microcontrollers), there seems to be a movement afoot (albeit a likely more modest one) of geeks and DIYers turning from hardware and software to wetware -- biology/biohacking/"synthetic biology," chemistry, general citizen science, and approaching it all with a similar open source/collaborative ethos. As a prime example, see the article in the September 3, 2009 Economist on "biohacking." It covers groups and initiatives such as DIYbio, a Dorkbot-like international organization that wants to do for citizen science and biohacking what Dorkbot did for art/engineering, and MIT's annual International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGem) competition. We also know of at least one hackerspace that's already setting up a full-featured lab and wants to be the first hackerspace to explore "open source chemistry hacking." We're betting that the Make: Science Room, the Maker Shed science kits and tools, and exciting new projects like DIYbio, are going to inspire other groups and individuals to build labs and to collaborate and engage in citizen science.

We're kicking off the Make: Science Room with 19 articles and a video demonstration. Four of the articles detail how to set up a lab, spec and buy equipment, and how to buy and make chemicals for your lab. Ten more cover chemistry (covering various methods of separating mixtures and acid and base chemistry) and five cover forensics, all dealing with various tests to analyze and characterize soil samples. We have dozens more articles already in the works and will be posting new content weekly, so check back often. We'll also be adding more video tutorials soon.

Make: Science Room and the Maker Shed
Besides all the effort that's gone into building the Science Room, another huge effort went into acquiring some 500 new science-related products for the Maker Shed. Bob Thompson, Marc de Vinck, Rob Bullington, Heather Harmon, Dan Woods, and everyone in the Shed have worked really hard to find high-quality science equipment, tools, materials, and supplies at the best possible prices. They've put together amazing bundles of lab equipment and chemical sets. The Shed also now carries everything from high-quality microscopes and all manner of fancy beakers and flasks to lab aprons and splash goggles.

The Basic Laboratory Equipment Kit, one of the new science kits available in the Maker Shed.

We're all really jazzed about the product line we've put together and how it supports the material in the Make: Science Room. But we want to be perfectly clear: The purpose of the Science Room is not to sell you the beakers and test tubes you need to do the labs in the Science Room. If you already have the equipment, have other vendors you like, can find a better price, want to make your own chemicals instead of buying them, that's perfectly fine -- you can still come and slosh chemicals around in our virtual lab. You won't hurt our feelings. Yes, Maker Media is a commercial concern and we certainly like it when you ring our cash register, but that's not ultimately why we do what we do. If it was, I can guarantee you that, knocking around on a gurney in the back of an ambulance, careening through the heart of Arlington, VA, I wouldn't have been worrying about missing out on all the inspiration, education, and fun this project is poised to deliver. I'm just thrilled I get to be around to see how it all shakes out.

If you have ideas for what we can do with the Science Room going forward and things you'd like to see us cover, please let us know in the comments.

This way to the Make: Science Room >>
Check out the new Science section in the Maker Shed >>

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Several sources are reporting that The Data Liberation Front, a new engineering group within Google, is trying make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products. They have already "liberated" about half of Google's offerings (including Blogger and Gmail) and have plans to liberate Google Sites and Google Docs in the near future. "In a blog post this morning, Data Liberation engineering manager Brian Fitzpatrick, uses a good analogy to explain why the company sees this is an important step: 'Imagine you want to move out of your apartment. When you ask your landlord about the terms of your previous lease, he says that you are free to leave at any time; however, you cannot take all of your things with you - not your photos, your keepsakes, or your clothing. If you're like most people, a restriction like this may cause you to rethink moving altogether. Not only is this a bad situation for you as the tenant, but it's also detrimental to the housing industry as a whole, which no longer has incentive to build better apartments at all. Although this may seem like a strange analogy, this pretty accurately describes the situation my team, Google's Data Liberation Front, is working hard to combat from an engineering perspective.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I became interested in the Masons after reading Robert Anton Wilson's books. I also thought Masonic pocket watches were cool looking. When I told my friend's father that the Masons intrigued me, he revealed that he was a member and invited me to join ("To be one, ask one"). I joined about 6 or 7 years ago, but have been inactive ever since my second daughter was born. (I'm just a Fellowcraft at this point; I need to complete my 2nd degree proficiency!)

A lot of histories of Freemasonry have been written over the years. I tried reading a few, but they seemed fake and/or boring. The book Born in Blood, by John Robinson (linking the Knights Templar to the Masons) was the only one that was interesting, but according to Jay Kinney, author of a new, terrific book called The Masonic Myth, the claims in the Robinson's book (and most other Freemason histories) are unsubstantiated.

I've known Jay for many years. He was the publisher of the late, great Gnosis Magazine, the author of several books on Western esoteric and occult traditions, and the author of The Masonic Enigma, "a journey of discovery into the real facts (and mysteries) of Masonry's history and symbols." He's also an amazingly talented cartoonist, and contributed to The Whole Earth Review. (His 1987 WER article, "If Software Companies Ran the Country," where he compares Al Capp's Shmoos to infinitely-copyable software, remains as fresh and powerful today as it did 22 years ago).

In the introduction to The Mason Myth, Kinney (a Mason himself) wrote that he wanted his book to be an antidote to both the "imaginative speculations of 'alternative historians,'" and to those Masonic histories that "succumb to the tyranny of minutiae, where a never-ending stream of names, dates, jargon, and organizational details numb the brains of all but the most dedicated reader." In my opinion, he succeeds in both counts, having written a book that's both highly-readable and down-to-earth. Backed up by much scholarly research, Kinney methodically examines, and then busts common myths about Masons (the dollar bill design, links to satanism and the occult, conspiracy to take over the world), replacing the phony facts with the real story.

Jay's latest book comes out at the same time as Dan Brown's new novel The Lost Symbol, which reportedly distorts the history of the Masons. (I plan to read Brown's new book, anyway. My friends heap scorn and ridicule on me for the fact that I enjoy Brown's novels. Is it my fault they have no taste?)

The Masonic Myth: Unlocking the Truth About the Symbols, the Secret Rites, and the History of Freemasonry

Late last year, Joe Satriani sued Coldplay, claiming that the band's song Viva La Vida violated the copyright on his song, If I Could Fly. This resulted in all sorts of back and forth arguments, and eventually the realization that a bunch of other songs -- even many that predated Satriani's -- were quite similar. In fact, Yusuf Islam/Cat Stevens later jumped in claiming that a song of his from the 70s was the real inspiration for the Coldplay song. Oddly... rather than recognize that this proved Satriani wrong, Islam insisted that he was going to see how Satriani did in court. He later claimed that he forgave Coldplay, even if there's no evidence at all that they actually copied -- and he admitted to coming up with song melodies that were first done elsewhere.

But the main event was supposed to be the lawsuit between Coldplay and Satriani -- scheduled to take place early next year. It looks like that's not happening. Blaise points to a blog post noting that the two sides appear to have come to a settlement. There aren't any details yet, just filings to dismiss the case, signed by both parties, suggesting a settlement has been reached. At this point, it's not at all clear what that settlement means, but the most likely scenario is that Coldplay handed over some cash to make Satriani go away.

In the end, that's really too bad, as it would have been quite an interesting court case. Without an official ruling on the matter, we can expect to see other, similar lawsuits filed in the future, every time some musician gets jealous of another musician for using a similar melody.

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Check out these animations of cranes being erected, one even erects itself! And for a little crane game fun, check out Crane Wars.

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Scientists claim to have identified a master gene which is able to transform blood stem cells into disease-fighting immune cells. The hope is that this discovery will allow for new treatments for cancer. "The researchers have 'knocked out' the gene in question, known as E4bp4, in a mouse model, creating the world's first animal model entirely lacking NK cells, but with all other blood cells and immune cells intact. This breakthrough model should help solve the mystery of the role that Natural Killer cells play in autoimmune diseases, such as diabetes and multiple sclerosis. Some scientists think that these diseases are caused by malfunctioning NK cells that turn on the body and attack healthy cells, causing disease instead of fighting it. Clarifying NK cells' role could lead to new ways of treating these conditions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Released in 1971, Computer Space was the first commercially-sold coin-operated video game. Essentially a variation on the digital computer game Spacewar!, Computer Space was created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney who would go on to found Atari the following year. Two units just sold on eBay: a rare yellow model that went for $3000 and also a two-player (but not entirely functional) green version that sold for $1500. That yellow one would have gone perfectly with my Fender Rhodes Student Model keyboard. (via Technabob)

Jesse Brown, a BoingBoing guest-blogger, is the host of TVO's Search Engine podcast.

A few years ago I hosted a mini-series for CBC Radio called The Contrarians, a show about "unpopular ideas that just might be right". Each week I'd take a controversial opinion and try it on for size. Sometimes the show was serious, sometimes it was silly- I rarely agreed with the positions I took, but operated on the principle that no idea is so radical or offensive that we should be forbidden to contemplate it (if only to learn why we should discard it). The CBC brass was incredibly supportive of the project and I was given license to explore a lot of unorthodox subject matter. Topics included:

• *Multiculturalism doesn't work (we just eat each other's sandwiches).
• *Feminism isn't dead, it's just finished (take a bow, ladies- you won!).
• *It's a myth- Canadians aren't funny.
• *Copyright should be abolished.

I'd love to link to these shows now, but I can't. They were never posted online or offered as podcasts. I tried posting them on my personal website, and was instructed to take them down by CBC management. I was told I was violating their copyright. Every now and then I'll get an email from a teacher or listener requesting an episode of The Contrarians, and I have to explain that I'd be breaking the law to send one.

Let's put aside my personal frustration at having my work locked away. The real question here is, since CBC content is funded by the public, shouldn't the public own it? Or at least have access to it? Actually, the CBC archives are just the tip of the iceberg: the overwhelming majority of stuff made for Canadians with Canadians' money is inaccessible to Canadians.

In Canada, movies are supported by Telefilm, TV by the Canadian Television Fund, books and art by The Canada Council for the Arts, and so on. But most of this stuff isn't distributed very well or for very long, and you can only get your hands on a fraction of it.

So I want to put forth one more contrarian position: I think that any publicly funded content should (within, say, 5 years of its creation) be released to the public domain.

Thoughts? (Un-Canadians welcome. Let's open an international discussion about this.)

Chuck Barris used to announce The Gong Show as just some stuffff.

Of course our stuffff is very serious.

A new Rebooting The News with guest Dan Gillmor. One of our best. Dan drills into just what rssCloud is and realtime. He's one of the best interviewers out there. It was my turn this week to name inspirations, and I chose Young People, as exemplified by Blake Ross, Joe Hewitt, Matt Mullenweg and Joseph Scott. You can skip to the last five minutes of the podcast, it's worth listening to. Usually we choose older folk as inspiration, but we have to remember that youth, in the right hands, is itself inspiring.

I posted a proposed addition to the rssCloud walkthrough.

Typepad announced support for Pubsubhubub. I predict on Twitter that we will bridge it with rssCloud so support of one will get you compatibility with th'other. Earlier I admitted to being a dork and not seeing them as being in competition. After all, they're not commercial products. What I care about is decentralizing the realtime web, so we're not dependent on one company. Both methods accomplish that. The real problem is centralization.

Andy Oram at O'Reilly wrote a stirring ode to decentralization. At one time O'Reilly was a big proponent of P2P. Maybe they will be once again?

Janna Levin, a professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College of Columbia University, narrates this two-minute video about The Big Bang. Watch it in high definition here.

Last week, I spent some time highlighting some of the more ridiculous claims found in the RIAA's "classroom materials" which it hopes teachers will use to brainwash students. In the comments, someone pointed out that Tarleton Gillespie wrote up a paper last year examining such "educational materials" from the RIAA, MPAA, BSA, ASCAP and others, and found them to be quite lacking. Rather than actually teaching the ins and outs of copyright, most were focused on normative statements of a world those industries want to exist, as well as seriously questionable descriptions of what copyright is supposed to do and how those industries work. None of the materials seem to recognize that technology has also changed the production, promotion and distribution of new works, and none seem to recognize that content creation can come from those outside of the big corporate entities who paid for these materials in the first place. Again, it's worth asking: why does any educational institution or education professional use such obviously biased (and at times misleading) educational materials?

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Design firm AWARE built this neat clock concept that plots your energy usage over the course of the day. The qualitative radial display allows one to quickly see what times you use the most energy. They don't appear to have released a product, however it seems like it would be pretty easy to put together using the Tweet-a-Watt and an extra computer.

Looking at the clock gives me an idea- if it can be made to show the previous few days of history, you could use it to play an energy conservation game, where you work together to use less energy than the previous day. I also think I would want to fire up the stove periodically, in order to make energy drawings! [via technabob]

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Samuel Seide made this charming little replica of an arcade machine for his son.

Jonathan Gleich submitted this hilarious/awesome (hilariawesome?) rolling "Zoltar" fortune teller costume to our 2009 Make: Halloween Contest. Zoltar took first place in the "Motorized Float" division at the 2009 Coney Island Mermaid parade. See more at Flickr and YouTube.

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It's official. The first entry in our 2009 Make: Halloween Contest is in, and it's a hum-dinger. Submitted by Phillip Burgess, this dragon costume uses an Arduino + Wave Shield to make stomping, biting, roaring, and belching noises on command.

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Ars Technica has an interesting look at the recent book Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, a collaboration between Chris Mooney, writer and author of The Republican War on Science, and scientist Sheril Kirshenbaum. While it seems the book's substance is somewhat lacking it raises an interesting point; how can science be better integrated with mainstream culture for greater understanding and acceptance? "We must all rally toward a single goal: without sacrificing the growth of knowledge or scientific innovation, we must invest in a sweeping project to make science relevant to the whole of America's citizenry. We recognize there are many heroes out there already toiling toward this end and launching promising initiatives, ranging from the Year of Science to the World Science Festival to ScienceDebate. But what we need--and currently lack--is the systematic acceptance of the idea that these actions are integral parts of the job description of scientists themselves. Not just their delegates, or surrogates, in the media or the classrooms."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Both Schlage and Kwikset offer exterior-grade door locks that can report and update their statuses wirelessly via e-mail. So you can check, after you get to the office, if you remembered to lock the front door or not, and do so if you forgot. I want a kitchen stove that does the same thing.

Of course, to be fair, I'm not sure I want my house to be no more secure than my e-mail account, so I'll probably be waiting until the technology is well established, personally, to consider such an upgrade.

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There's been significant growing opposition to red light camera programs, which have a long history of showing absolutely no safety benefit, and are often run for-profit by local governments in combination with private companies. That opposition is leading more and more cities and towns to dump the red light cameras -- while some operators are getting caught illegally decreasing the time of the yellow or amber lights to try to issue more fines.

Jeff Nolan alerts us to the news that one of the biggest players in the space, Redflex, has announced that public opposition to its cameras has created a real drain on revenue, and its profits were down significantly. This would be the same Redflex that just so happened to fail to live up to its contract in Denver to deliver data that could be used to determine whether or not the cameras were really effective.

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Three MIT students grabbed pics from space using basic off-the-shelf parts and minimal hacking -

On Sept. 2, 2009, we launched a digital camera into near-space to take photographs of the earth from high up above. (see "Flight")
Several groups have accomplished similar feats (see "Other Launches"), but as far we know, we are the first group ever to:

(1) Complete such a launch on a budget of $150 total. All of our supplies (including camera, GPS tracking, weather balloon, and helium) were purchased for less than a grand total of $150.

(2) Create a launch vehicle without the use of any electronic hacking. We used off-the-shelf items exclusively (i.e., no electronic chips or soldering) to create our launch vehicle

They used a cooler + chemical hand-warming packets to keep the electronics operating at low temperatures. Head over to 1337arts for the flight pics & details. [via Slashdot]

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Xbm360 writes "A report from researcher Canalys said 13.5 million netbooks were sold globally in the 1st half of 2009. Telecom companies have several bundling deals, with about 50 operators selling netbooks. The success of Netbooks also surprised Microsoft & forced them to lower the prices of their XP Home licenses, to regain marketshare over Linux."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Japanese toymaker Osamu Kanda made this elegant machine. His YouTube channel has oodles of wooden mechanical goodies.

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Miroslav Ambrus-Kis wrote in to tell us that Inter-orbital Systems has announced that Nebojsa Stanojevic and Miroslav Ambrus-Kis will be the astronauts aboard the first completely private orbital flight. This is part of their bid for the Google Lunar X-Prize.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've discussed in the past the inherent conflict between the First Amendment's right to speech free from government interference and copyright law -- and there are entire books on the subject that are worth reading, like No Law and Copyright's Paradox. But there are other policy questions around copyright as well, and Boing Boing points us to an important one about how modern copyright law seems to inherently be at odds with any rights to privacy, thanks to copyright maximalists who are constantly pushing for every online action to be monitored in some manner or another:

It is increasingly apparent that modern copyright law is utterly and completely incompatible with the right to privacy.... What has changed? Before home computers, compact discs and Internet file sharing, it was conceivable for copyright laws to be enforced in a manner that did not bring the state to any-one's doorstep. If there was an illegal copy of a book in a bookshop, one could report it to the authorities. If someone brought a video camera into a theatre or a concert, they could be readily seen.

Given today's technological realities, this is no longer the case.... the problem lies in the fact that current copyright laws are completely unenforceable unless the government or industry groups start to read every e-mail and analyze every form of online communication done by citizens.

It's worth thinking about. It's also why the positions held by the various "Pirate Parties" around the globe aren't necessarily about encouraging people to get free stuff, but about the importance of protecting free speech rights and privacy rights, in a world where the industry is increasingly using copyright laws to chip away at both.

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Watch a man use the Unbreakable Walking-Stick Umbrella to chop through a watermelon at 1:12...

The Unbreakable Umbrella works just as well as a walking stick or cane but does not make you look funny or feel awkward. Whacks just as strong as a steel pipe but it weighs only 1 lb. and 11 oz. (775 g).

   * Legal to carry everywhere

   * Never raises suspicions

   * Does not make you look silly (no strange looks if carried by an able-bodied person)

Our Unbreakable Umbrella has no unusual parts, no more metal than an average umbrella, it does not arouse suspicion, can be carried legally everywhere where any weapons are prohibited, unlike a walking stick it does not cause strange looks if carried by an able-bodied person, and it does protect from rain. Anyone who can use a stick for defense can use this umbrella.

[via Core77]

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Eugen writes "A Microsoft Software Engineer has posted the results of tests the company performed to the upgrade time of Windows 7. The metric used was total upgrade time across different user profiles (with different data set sizes and number of programs installed) and different hardware profiles. A clean 32-bit install on what Microsoft calls 'high-end hardware' should take only 30 minutes. In the worst case scenario, the process will take a bit 1220 minutes. That second extreme is not a typo: Microsoft really did time an upgrade that took 20 hours and 20 minutes. That's with 650GB of data, 40 applications, on mid-end hardware, and during a 32-bit upgrade. We don't even want to know how long it would take if Microsoft had bothered doing the same test with low-end hardware. The other interesting point worth noting is that the 32-bit upgrade is faster on a clean install than a 64-bit upgrade, regardless of the hardware configuration, and is faster on low-end hardware, regardless of the Data Profile. In the other six cases, the 64-bit upgrade is faster than the 32-bit ugprade."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Artist Luke Jerram recreated the HIV, Smallpox, and Swine Flu viruses in glass -

These transparent glass sculptures were created to contemplate the global impact of each disease and to consider how the artificial colouring of scientific imagery affects our understanding of phenomena. Jerram is exploring the tension between the artworks' beauty and what they represent, their impact on humanity.
The question of pseudo-colouring in biomedicine and its use for science communicative purposes, is a vast and complex subject. If some images are coloured for scientific purposes, and others altered simply for aesthetic reasons, how can a viewer tell the difference? How many people believe viruses are brightly coloured? Are there any colour conventions and what kind of 'presence' do pseudocoloured images have that 'naturally' coloured specimens don't? See these examples of HIV imagery. How does the choice of different colours affect their reception?

More photos and explanation Jerram's Glass Microbiology page. [via BoingBoing]

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jole writes "The newest iPhone 3.1 update intentionally removed tethering functionality from all phones operating in networks that are not Apple partners. This is not limited to hacked or jailbroken phones, but also includes expensive 'officially supported' factory-unlocked phones. To make the problem worse, Apple has made it impossible to downgrade back to a working 3.0 version for iPhone 3GS phones."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

jole writes "The newest iPhone 3.1 update intentionally removed tethering functionality from all phones operating in networks that are not Apple partners. This is not limited to hacked or jailbroken phones, but also includes expensive "officially supported" factory unlocked phones. To make the problem worse Apple has made it impossible to downgrade back to working 3.0 version for iPhone 3GS phones."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've pointed to research in the past that shows how a robust used goods market boosts the primary market, because the buyers know they'll be able to resell the goods at a later date, if they choose to do so. In other words, it makes the purchase less risky and lowers the bar for making that purchase. Yet, for some reason, many content execs -- especially those in the video game space -- continue to insist that not only are used markets bad for the content creators, but that they're bad for consumers as well. Yet, now there's yet another study showing how a robust used market can be quite helpful to a primary market -- specifically in the video game space. In this case, the research done by Game Crazy found that nearly 20% of sales on primary goods were purchased with dollars from trade-ins:

We did a study not too long ago for a very large vendor who we managed to figure out for them 20 percent of their sales inside the first 28 days were paid for with trade dollars. So you got 20 points of their sales that wouldn't happen unless we had a trade business going. And that's specialty retail. Game specialty retail is maybe a third of the channel, 35 percent of the channel. So you got 10 percent of your sales that wouldn't happen unless somebody was out there trading games with your customers.

Now, you could argue that the source is biased, but at least this is one more suggestion of how a used market can help improve the primary market.

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The Oscar-winning producer of a celebrated biopic about Charles Darwin says that the reason his movie -- which is being shown all around the world -- can't find a US distributor is that evolution is still too controversial in the USA.

US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution...

Movieguide.org, an influential site which reviews films from a Christian perspective, described Darwin as the father of eugenics and denounced him as "a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder". His "half-baked theory" directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to "atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering", the site stated.

The film has sparked fierce debate on US Christian websites, with a typical comment dismissing evolution as "a silly theory with a serious lack of evidence to support it despite over a century of trying".

Charles Darwin film 'too controversial for religious America' (Thanks, Fef!)

An anonymous reader writes 'Jupiter's gravity captured a comet in the mid-20th century, holding it in orbit as a temporary moon for 12 years. The comet, named 147P/Kushida-Muramatsu, is the fifth body known to have been pulled by Jupiter from its orbit around the Sun. The discovery adds to our understanding of how Jupiter interferes with objects from the 'Hilda group', which are asteroids and comets with orbits related to Jupiter's orbit.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jesse Brown is a guest-blogger on BoingBoing. He is the host of TVO's Search Engine podcast.

Noticing that most cartoon characters lack genitals, I made a short animation explaining where new cartoon buddies come from...

The Birth of Century Sam from Jesse Brown on Vimeo.

Grad Conn sez, "My wife -- Suzy Conn -- is heavily involved in musical theatre as a lyricist, composer, and librettist. This fall, she is working with local Seattle musical theatre star Rich Gray to launch a new cabaret show called 'COCKTAIL NUTS with your host Rich Gray.' Rich and Suzy's dream is to bring back the sophisticated era of fancy cocktails, good food, and excellent entertainment that was common in America in the '50s and '60s. The show is designed to profile artists from local productions, and to offer support to the theaters and actors. For this first show, the show is sponsored by ACT Theatre. Rich and Suzy are doing a pilot show on Monday, September 28 in ACT Theatre's Bullitt Cabaret. ACT Theatre is located at 700 Union Street (Union & 7th)."

"COCKTAIL NUTS with your host Rich Gray" is where cabaret meets TV variety show. Hosted by long-time Seattle-area favorite, composer and performer Rich Gray, COCKTAIL NUTS is a cross between the spontaneity of Jim Caruso's Cast Party and the sophistication of Feinstein's at Loews Regency, with a nod to Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas.

Elegant cocktails and snacks provided by VESSEL, the local Seattle nightspot that Esquire magazine has called one of the "Best Bars in America."

Cocktail Nuts-Landing the Gig (Thanks, Grad!)

Few people are as qualified to write a book about the copyright wars as William Patry: former copyright counsel to the US House of Reps, advisor the Register of Copyrights, Senior Copyright Counsel for Google, and author of the seven-volume Patry on Copyright, widely held to be the single most authoritative work on US copyright ever written.

And Patry has written a very fine book indeed: Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars is every bit as authoritative as Patry on Copyright (although much, much shorter) and is absolutely accessible to a lay audience.

There are many legal scholars who've written about the copyright wars, from Pam Samuelson to Larry Lessig to Jonathan Zittrain to James Boyle, and in this exalted company, Patry's Moral Panics stands out for the sheer, unadorned calm of his approach. Patry doesn't have a lot of rhetorical flourish or prose fireworks. Instead, he tells the story of copyright in plain, thoughtful words, with much rigor and grace. Reading Moral Panics is like watching a master brick layer gracefully and effortlessly build a solid wall: no wasted motion, no sweat, no missteps. Patry knows this subject better than anyone and can really explain it.

As the title implies, Patry places the copyright wars amid other moral panics -- think of witch-hunts (both the "Communist" and the old-fashioned "witch") -- and he devotes much of the book to the sociology of moral panic, the views of the Greeks on language and metaphor, and the weaponizing of language (and the especial use which the terms "theft" and "piracy" have in this regard) and the ways that historical figures like Jack Valenti used this rhetoric to shift the debate. Patry uses his immense knowledge of the law and history to show how publishers and entertainment companies have spent literally centuries arguing for "artist rights" when it comes to fighting technological innovation, but deriding those same rights in their dealings with actual artists.

Patry also shows how artists have stolen, borrowed and copied from one another for all of history, and how even the most "original" artists derive their works from those around and before them.

He shows how the debate has been skewed through the use of shoddy statistics (for example, the oft-touted $250 billion/750,000 jobs in annual US piracy losses, which turns out to be a decades-old, half-remembered, vastly inflated, and entirely unscientific extrapolation of a rough estimate of the losses due to fake tractor parts.

He reserves his greatest arguments for the US 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the attempts to expand its remarkable control into new realms -- the newspapers who want the right to stop you from quoting even five words from their stories, the movie studios who want to disconnect you from the Internet because they believe -- but can't prove -- that you're infringing copyright. This is the part of the debate that usually has me frothing at the chops, but Patry remains admirably calm as he carries this off, explaining in terms that anyone can understand the terrible violence that this kind of monopoly control does to our discourse, the arts, and competition and innovation.

Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars

SanDisk has released a series of Extreme Pro CompactFlash cards with the super-fast read and write speeds of up to 90MB/s. The line supercedes the Extreme IV range and will start shipping this week in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB capacities at a MSRP ranging from $300 to $800. The company has also released another line CF and SDHC cards called the Extreme series, replacing the Extreme III series, offering up to to 60MB/s transfer speed that will be available from 8GB to 32GB with their price ranging from $130 to $375.

Haywan worked all summer on a truly impressive piece of papercraft art. His 5'8" tall Link model is based on the character's as he appears in the Super Smash Bros series - and looks to be amazingly spot on! A series of videos and photos documents the build in-depth, here's just a sample -

[via Geekologie] Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Crafts | Digg this!

Leila Johnston's Enemy of Chaos is a geekily hilarious modern choose-your-own-adventure novel in which you play a middle aged bitter geek who is drafted into a branching narrative in which your goal is to save reality, while negotiating many of the familiar indignities of modern geekish life, from over-exuberant role-players to nuclear apocalypse.

This is a sneakily funny book, a book that is so funny on a sentence-by-sentence level and so silly on its face that it's easy to lose track of the fact that there's an enormous amount of nostalgic heart here, a really affectionate remembrance of the whole RPG boom.

If you like smart obscure statistics jokes, wickedly funny observational humor about geeks and their place in society, and if you are filled with nostalgic warmth at the thought of a choose-your-own-adventure story written for the adult you became, this is for you.

Enemy of Chaos (Amazon UK)

Enemy of Chaos (Amazon US)

Xerfas writes "If you ever dreamed of owning your own dinosaur, here's your chance. Possibly the most impressive natural history auction ever is set to take place Oct. 3 at the Venetian Casino in Las Vegas. Here you can find everything from the T.rex, Duck-billed dinosaur and a Mammoth skeleton."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NiteMair writes "The Haiku project has finally released an official R1 alpha, after 8 years of development. This marks a significant milestone for the project, and it also debuts the first official/publicly available LiveCD ISO image that can be easily booted and used to install Haiku on x86 hardware. Haiku is a desktop operating system inspired by BeOS after Be, Inc. closed its doors in 2001. The project has remained true to the BeOS philosophy while integrating modern hardware support and features along the way." Eugenia adds this link to an article describing the history of the OS, along a review of the alpha version."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Maker Sidekickx91 disassembled an Eee PC 4G 701 netbook, added a 7" USB touchscreen, some extra RAM, and mounted it in a custom-built cabinet enclosure to create this very functional and attractive case mod.

[via jkkmobile]

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I guess once you get old, all that "new stuff" is suddenly "bad" -- even if you used to be a rebellious rocker. With the recent launch of "The Beatles" version of Rockband, it seems that all sorts of other classic rock musicians have had to step up and talk about how awful such video games are. Bill Wyman from the Rolling Stones, Nick Mason from Pink Floyd, and Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin have all come out as being against these games for one reason or another:

"It encourages kids not to learn, that's the trouble.... It makes less and less people dedicated to really get down and learn an instrument. I think is a pity so I'm not really keen on that kind of stuff." -- Bill Wyman, The Rolling Stones

"It irritates me having watched my kids do it - if they spent as much time practising the guitar as learning how to press the buttons they'd be damn good by now." -- Nick Mason, Pink Floyd

After first saying there was no way that Led Zeppelin would ever put out a similar version of Rock Band: "Obviously, there have been overtures made to Led Zeppelin, but if you start with the first track on the first album, 'Good Times Bad Times,' and you think of the drum part that John Bonham did there, how many drummers in the world can actually play that, let alone dabble on a Christmas morning?" -- Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin

This sort of strikes me as the old rockers' equivalent of "hey you kids, get off my lawn." I'm sure when these guys were first growing up, learning their instruments and playing with their guitars and drums, that elderly musicians from a bygone era were complaining that what they were doing wasn't music and wasn't the sort of things kids should be mixed up in, because it didn't encourage them to play a symphony or something. Time to get with the times.

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From the MAKE Flickr pool

• How-To: Freeform Atari Punk Console
• Vector graphic schematic symbols
• Hangmanduino
• Circuit bending work station
• Arduino Pro housing in aluminum

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Carl Zeiss has announced the price and availability of the Canon-mount version of its 18mm F3.5 lens. The 'ZE-mount' version of the Distagon T* 3.5/18 super-wide angle lens was first shown in March at the Photo Imaging Expo in Tokyo and will be available in Autumn 2009 for a suggested retail price of €1049.

Stephen "Doc" Combs of Bricks in my Pocket fame pieced together this fully functional LEGO rotating dock for an iPod/iPod touch. Besides watching video in landscape mode it's perfect for use with an alarm clock app.

As I began to create this little contraption I said to myself, "How could this be a bit cooler and more functional?" The answer was to make it a rotating dock so I could watch movies and apps in landscape mode.

[via hackaday]

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There is a mythology in the US about the value and importance of patents -- and because of that, it's not surprising that patent trials involving juries quite often end with the patent holder being declared victor, and a huge amount being awarded by the jury. Microsoft and Alcatel-Lucent have been involved in a whole series of patent battles recently. Two years ago, a jury found for Alcatel-Lucent on a patent related to MP3 technology, and it awarded Alcatel-Lucent a stunning $1.5 billion. It didn't take long for a judge to toss out that award. More recently, in another patent dispute involving the same parties (but a totally different patent), a jury awarded Alcatel-Lucent $358 million because Microsoft included a "date-picker" calendar tool in Microsoft Outlook. Yet, once again, an appeals court has now tossed out the jury's award amount, noting how ridiculous it is that such a tiny, minor feature should get such a huge dollar value:

The portion of the profit that can be credited to the infringing use of the date-picker tool is exceedingly small.... In short, Outlook is an enormously complex software program comprising hundreds, if not thousands or even more, features. We find it inconceivable to conclude, based on the present record, that the use of one small feature, the date-picker, constitutes a substantial portion of the value of Outlook.

So why do we (as a matter of policy, not law) allow juries to make such decisions when they seem to have trouble picking reasonable amounts, given the nature of the patents and the lawsuits?

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thrill12 writes "Almost 178 years ago, Charles Darwin set sail in the HMS Beagle, to do the now famous explorations that formed the basis for Darwin's On The Origin Of Species. Now, a group of British and Dutch scientists, journalists and artists set sail again to redo the voyage of the Beagle. This time, they are taking modern equipment with them and they have live connections through Twitter, Youtube, Facebook and Flickr. As they re-explore, and (re)discover, we can join that 8-month-long trip, live over the internet."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The MAKEcation Trebuchet Bundle combines Bill Gurstelle's book, The Art of the Catapult, our Mini trebuchet kit, and a Maker's Notebook. It's everything you need to learn more about these ancient weapons of war. Use the included Maker's notebook to sketch your ideas for making your own trebuchet. The bundle is available for $40 in the Maker Shed. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Maker Shed Store | Digg this!

An anonymous reader writes "The Japanese Music Industry is currently in talks with Japanese cell phone providers to introduce a new anti-piracy system in all cell phones in Japan. This new system would make DRM software mandatory in all cell phones; this would connect to a DRM server on the Internet whenever the cell phone user would try to play a song. The song would only play if the response of the server would be positive. Otherwise no song would be played. The system raises several questions and concerns that the Financial Times article did not address. These include ripped legally bought music and music that has been released under a CC license or similar. Who would pay for the costs of the DRM checks, and what would happen if no connection could be established?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chris from the wonderful indy comics publisher Top Shelf sez,

Top Shelf's MASSIVE $3 SALE kicks off today to celebrate the release of the SURROGATES on September 25th.

For the next twelve days -- thru Friday September 25th (the opening day of the film!) -- Top Shelf is having a giant $3 graphic novel web sale. When you visit the site, you'll find over 100 graphic novels and comics on sale -- with 55+ titles marked down to just $3 (!) and 45 other titles slashed! All we ask is that you hit a $30 minimum on sale and/or non-sale items (before shipping). It's a great opportunity to load up on all those graphic novels you've wanted to try, but just never got around to picking up. Get 'em while supplies last!

Please note that this sale is GOOD for retailers as well, and shops will get their wholesale discount on top of these sale prices. Certain minimums apply, so retailers please email us for details.

THE 2009 TOP SHELF MASSIVE $3 SALE! (Thanks, Chris!)

The Philadelphia Free Library system is broke, and they're shutting it down, including cancelling "all branch and regional library programs, programs for children and teens, after school programs, computer classes, and programs for adults" and "all children programs, programs to support small businesses and job seekers, computer classes and after school programs" and "all library visits to schools, day care centers, senior centers and other community centers" and "all community meetings" and "all GED, ABE and ESL program."

Just look at that list of all the things libraries do for our communities, all the ways they help the least among us, the vulnerable, the children, the elderly. Think of every wonderful thing that happened to you among the shelves of a library. Think of the millions of lifelong love-affairs with literacy sparked in the collections of those libraries. Think of every person whose life was forever changed for the better in those buildings.

Think of the nobility of libraries and librarianship, the great scar that the Burning of Alexandria gouged in human history. Think of the archivists who barricaded themselves in the Hermitage during the Siege of Leningrad, slowly starving and freezing to death but refusing to desert their posts for fear that the collections they guarded would become firewood.

Think of the librarians who took a stand during the darkest years of the PATRIOT Act and refused to turn over patron records. Think of the moral unimpeachability of those whose trade is universal access to all human knowledge.

Picture an entire city, a modern, wealthy place, in the richest country in the world, in which the vital services provided by libraries are withdrawn due to political brinksmanship and an unwillingness to spare one banker's bonus worth of tax-dollars to sustain an entire region's connection with human culture and knowledge and community.

Think of it and ask yourself what the hell has happened to us.

All Free Library of Philadelphia Branch, Regional and Central Libraries Closed Effective Close of Business October 2, 2009

Lars made an Arduino baby rocker... via Little Bird.

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Normally I wouldn't look twice at this toy from Hammacher-Schlemmer, as I can't really imagine that the novelty value of metal-detecting by remote control would last more than seven or eight seconds. But as a platform for an autonomous bot that could hunt treasure while I do more productive stuff? Hmmm..... [via The Automata / Automaton Blog]

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proslack writes "In a study presented at the Human-Computer Interaction conference in Cambridge, England, British researchers Beale and Bond found that plot and graphics are not critical to the success of video games; price and the inclusion of social aspects (e.g. multiplayer or chat) were found to be more important." An unfinished version of the paper (PDF) is available from the researchers' web site. They said, "One of the most unexpected findings was that gameplay was not featured as one of the most important categories to fulfill," though they acknowledge that variety and cohesion were measured separately from gameplay, which past studies have not done.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What a sad loss. He will be remembered, respected, and missed. NYT obituary. Patti Smith, another personal idol of mine, says of Carroll, "I met him in 1970, and already he was pretty much universally recognized as the best poet of his generation. The work was sophisticated and elegant. He had beauty."

Photo: Patti and Jim (via ifcharlieparkerwasagunslinger, no image credit given)

The Steel Yard just wrote in to let us know that registration is open for their Fall courses in Providence, RI:

Registration is now open for the Steel Yard's Fall 2009 Course Season!

The Yard is gearing up for another great season of building, cutting,
bending, and throwing. In addition to our regular lineup of courses we
have some really exciting new offerings.

In Hollowware with Patrick McMillan students will explore metalsmithing
and learn basic raising, sinking, and fabrication in order to form their
own vessels from copper sheet.

Students working with Heather Guidero in Casting: Jewelry and Other Small
Objects will learn the art of lost wax casting, a great method for
producing one-of-a-kind objects as well as a whole run of identical
copies. This course is a must for anyone interested in starting their own
jewelry business.

Eye of the Beholder is wheel and hand-building course just for 14 to18
year-olds. This new offering encourages students to look beyond simple
cups and bowls and explore the creative potential of the ceramic vessel.

The Steel Yard Course Listings

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