Organizers of the "Out In Africa" gay and lesbian film festival in South Africa are seriously pissed: some homophobic jerks tore down all the posters for the fest, some 700 of 'em attached to poles and lamp-posts about town. There are two reasons this is upsetting: one, it is a clear message of intimidation and intolerance. Two: nobody should desecrate good graphic design, and these posters are really nice.

An outraged Out in Africa South African Gay and Lesbian Film Festival director Nodi Murphy has lodged a complaint with police. "Some stupid twits with more time on their hands than brains trashed our gorgeous posters. And for what?"

Our gorgeous posters have been trashed (Out In Africa, via Kalaya'an Mendoza)

Mike writes "Today Washington D.C. based company Envion opened a $5 million dollar facility that they claim will be able to efficiently transform plastic waste into a source of oil-like fuel. The technology uses infra-red energy to remove hydrocarbons from plastic without the use of a catalyst, transforming 82% of the original plastic material into fuel. According to Envion, the resulting fuel can then be blended with other components, providing a source for gasoline or diesel at as low as $10 per barrel."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

To hear the US entertainment industry talk about it, China doesn't respect any intellectual property at all. The truth, of course, is a lot more nuanced than that, but it's still a bit odd to read that China is proudly cracking down on the threat of "pirated teaching materials," which the government deems dangerous because it "harm[s] the healthy development of the country's youth." It's unclear how cheaper or even free teaching materials "harm" youth, but the speculation is that it's more about the government not liking the content than any real worry about "piracy." But, these days, due to pressure from other countries, China doesn't mind an excuse to pretend that it's being tough on piracy.

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An anonymous reader writes "In Manhattan this fall, a batch of lucky sixth-graders will start at Quest To Learn, the first public school in the US with a curriculum built around playing games. They'll play Spore and Civilization, board games such as Settlers of Catan, and learn 3D modeling in Maya and Google Earth as well. Each semester concludes with a two-week 'Boss Level.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Junktion is a boutique in Tel Aviv featuring locally-made recycled products. Recyclart put me on to these cool baskets made from chopped up liquid propane gas bottles.

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Economist David Levine (author of the book Against Intellectual Monopoly) has a column up at the Huffington Post, where he explains why abolishing pharma patents would be a great way to reform healthcare. He runs through many of the arguments against such a move, and explains why they don't make much sense:

But, perhaps, without all those extra monopoly profits we wouldn't have such great new products? The fact is there aren't so many great new products - a well known fact among health economists is that while big pharma's spending has soared the last decade, as patent control has tightened, drug discovery has plummeted. Pharmaceutical innovation is not lower in Europe, despite of big pharma's lower monopoly profits. While the market for pharmaceuticals is now largely a global one, so local rules may not be so important, this was less true in the past. Historically, before pharmaceutical patents were introduced in Italy in 1978, that country accounted for about 8% of new pharmaceutical discoveries worldwide. After the industry was strangled by patents, that percentage dropped to practically zero. Switzerland, a powerhouse in the world drug industry, introduced pharmaceutical patents at about the same time. While Switzerland's fall has not been as dramatic as Italy's, it too is much less of a powerhouse today than it was before 1977.

Patents do not seem to lead to the innovation their proponents claim. The list of examples goes on and on: the discovery of the one-dose HIV cocktail that replaced the complicated multi-pill regime? That took place in India a country that at that time did not allow pharmaceutical patents. Of the fifteen great medical milestones recently identified by the British Medical Journal - only two were patented or could be attributed to the "incentive" that patents supposedly provide. Numerous technical studies by economists of the effect of stronger patents on innovation have failed to find any consistent increase. Put it plainly: while the social gains from abolishing patents on drugs are obvious and computable, the losses are dubious and, on the basis of empirical evidence, probably nil.

Pharmaceutical patents and the resulting monopolies have many other corrosive effects, over and above raising the prices of prescription drugs. Pharmaceutical companies spend far more money promoting their products than on R&D. Some of the giants spend as much as four times on marketing as they do on research and development. How do these companies market their products? Most of the money goes to "scientifically convincing" the medical profession to prescribe patented products. How? Well, for example, by inviting doctors and their families to week-long conferences in exclusive resorts, where two hours are for a marketing presentation (the "medical symposium") and the rest for (all-included) leisure. A spectacular - but hardly unique - example of the level of corruption is the conviction of Pfizer for encouraging doctors to bill the government for drugs they were provided for free. These practices not only raise the cost of drugs, but corrode trust in the medical profession.

He also goes on to suggest some other ways to lower the costs of "drug development," as well. There's probably not much new in there if you've read his book, but it's a good, straightforward description of the problem with pharma patents. While the writing is a bit flippant, if you go through the related chapter in Levine's book, and then start reading some of the other source material and studies, it's all backed up quite strongly. There's almost no evidence that patents do anything to promote more drug discovery -- and plenty to suggest it makes medicines significantly more expensive. Ditching pharma patents would make a much more efficient market in drugs that would end up saving a lot of lives.

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Images from the Rodarte Spring 2010 collection. The models were literally "kept under wraps" during smoking breaks before the runway show. "Every model had her arms painted with makeup to appear like tribal tattoes, goth lips, and their hair wrapped in webbed wool." The official Rodarte site is here, but it's a slow-loading Flashblob. There's always Wikipedia. (via @reversecowpie)

Geoffrey.landis writes 'In Britain, libel laws are censoring the ability of journalists to write stories about bogus science. Simon Singh, a Ph.D. physicist and author of several best-selling popular-science books, is currently being sued by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) for saying that there is no evidence for claims that visiting a chiropractor has health benefits. A year earlier, writer Ben Goldacre faced a libel suit for an article critical of Matthias Rath, who claimed that vitamin supplements can treat HIV and AIDS in place of conventional drugs like anti-retrovirals. In Britain, libel laws don't have any presumption of innocence — any statement made is assumed to be false unless you prove it's true. Journalists are running scared.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This trailer for a notional 1951 version of Raiders of the Lost Ark has my head nigh-exploding with recursive delight: a retro movie that hearkens to 1950s adventure serials remade as a 1950s adventure serial!

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1951) Trailer (via Neatorama)

Video: "Angeles Crest Highway after the Station Fire," by Hal and Susan McAlister, who were joining staff at the Mount Wilson Observatory.

We were escorted by LA County Sheriff's deputies. We were stunned by what we saw, and inattentive to keeping the little Flip video camera stable and accurately pointed. The devastation speaks for itself.

(via YouTube user Lndacurtss)

Ukrainian steampunk maskmaking collective Bob Basset has just posted their latest: a sweet, fetishy little number with glass-and-brass portholes. I own two of their earlier efforts now, and they're among my most favorite objects.

Steampunk mask. Leather, cuprum, glass. ???????? ?????. ????, ????, ??????.

Interested in the future of mobile computing? Have a killer application or art project that incorporates a wireless element, but don't know where to get started? Then you don't want to miss the Mobile Art && Code Symposium, which is taking place this November in Pittsburgh. Unlike traditional conferences, this one is aimed at anyone who has an interest in the subject, young and old. From their website:

ART && CODE is an event series and online community dedicated to the democratization of computer programming for artists, young people, and the rest of us.
This November 6-8, we continue our successful workshop/lecture series with MOBILE ART && CODE: Mobile Media and Interactive Arts - a symposium on the aesthetic and tactical potentials of mobile, networked and locative media. The three-day event will feature intimate, practical, arts-oriented programming workshops for popular mobile platforms (such as the iPhone, Android, Nokia S90, PBX telephony systems, and SMS hacking) along with an all-day series of free lecture presentations that contextualizes the use of these technologies in a variety of contemporary critical, artistic and design practices.

Conference registration is not yet open, but will be soon.

[photo by Golan Levin]

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German hacker Ray has shown that he can print working Dutch police handcuff keys from plastic on his 3D printers, and has released the 3D files so you can print your own:

He used a 3D printer to print handcuff keys. And not just any ordinary handcuff key ... no, it's the official handcuff key from the Dutch police! At first the police officers at HAR were a little reluctant to event try out the plastic key he printed. But he found another way to verify the key he printed was the correct one. I guess these officers never thought about wearing keys concealed, especially when talking with Mr. Handcuff himself. Given the megapixel camera's on the market today it was not so difficult to verify the key he printed was the correct one.

At the end of the day he talked the officers into trying the key on their handcuffs and ... it did work! At least the Dutch Police now knows there is a plastic key on the market that will open their handcuffs. A plastic key undetectable by metal detectors....

Printing police handcuff keys ... (via Schneier)

The first-ever XKCD book, "xkcd: volume 0" is now officially out and available. Part of the profits go build schools in Laos. XKCD is my favorite geeky webcomic of all time, and Randall Munroe, its creator, is a swell guy. I'm very glad about this indeed.

It's been fun putting it all together. It was neat to go back through various huge stacks of old drawings, some on the back of school assignments, and scan them at print resolution. I also had fun with the marginal notes. I'm really excited to finally have it in print, and I'm looking forward to seeing people and signing copies at the release events this weekend. I'm also excited about getting back to work on some other projects which have been on hold for a bit, at least one of which will involve lakes and a recently-acquired Arduino.

xkcd: volume 0 (Thanks, Arbitrary Aardvark!)

Here's an unparalleled gluttony opportunity in the UK:

Mario's Cafe in Westhoughton do a big breakfast for £10! Eat it all in 20 mins without a drink to wash it down with and you get it free!

It's 10 eggs, 10 bacon, 10 sausage, 10 toast, 5 black puddings, tomatoes, beans and mushrooms.

The £10 Breakfast!!! (via Making Light)

The in-game economy in EVE Online is teetering after the mismanaged, embezzlement-plagued player bank froze user-accounts, tying up much of the game's capital so that players can't buy stuff.

Early this summer, it came to light that a veteran EVE player (known only as "Ricdic") had embezzled --and then sold in the real world-- over 200 billion ISK from Ebank, causing a run on the virtual financial institution. However, this was just the beginning of the problems for the player-owned bank. Recently installed Ebank Chairman Ray McCormack admitted that the bank had been mismanaged, and rules, safeguards, and controls were not enforced. As a result, it's been revealed that Ebank is 380 billion ISK poorer thanks to a number of defaulted loans. Because of the aforementioned mismanagement, it apparently took the bank's new officers a while to figure out just how far in the red their institution is.

At the moment, customer accounts will remain frozen until the bank manages to stabilize. According to McCormack, "withdrawals will be allowed once the bank achieves a maintainable equity status of 90% (1.8t currently); they will be stopped again should that fall below 80%."

Virtual bank in EVE freezes accounts due to deficit

Engineers in Los Angeles are baffled by the recent epidemic of failing underground water pipes throughout Los Angeles. Every time you turn on the local TV news around here, over the last few months -- there's new footage of a "major blowout." After examining "dozens of ruptures, some of which flooded streets, damaged vehicles and buildings and created a sinkhole so big that it almost swallowed a firetruck," officials and city engineers have agreed that something odd is going on, but they don't know exactly what, or why so many points of failure in such a compact window of time. Snip from Los Angeles Times:

Los Angeles' water system was put in place by William Mulholland, who figured out how to tap water from the Eastern Sierra and the Owens Valley and designed an aqueduct system that let it flow to Los Angeles on the force of gravity alone. The influx allowed semi-arid Los Angeles to boom -- and subdivisions marched outward in the 1920s and the years just after World War II.

The system remains a marvel to many engineers and still sends water over the Santa Monica Mountains from Sylmar to San Pedro using gravity. But parts of it are now almost 100 years old, and many of the pipes are wearing out.

One note on which most agree: a bankrupt state and a city crippled by slashed budgets are ill-equipped to solve the problem.

Here's one LA Times story, and here's another from this morning after two more pipes burst. (Image: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Louisiana native Clayton Cubitt blogs about the story behind a new nonfiction book by Dave Eggers, Zeitoun:

In the days after Hurricane Katrina, thousands of American citizens were rounded up and imprisoned at a makeshift fenced-in holding area at the city's bus station. The prison was nicknamed "Camp Greyhound." Citizens were not allowed phone calls. They were not given lawyers. Their property was confiscated, and they were held without charge. Prisoners were sometimes beaten, pepper-sprayed, and forced to sleep in the open-roofed cages on the greasy pavement that was once bus parking spots. Some went on to serve months in Louisiana prisons, only to have all charges eventually dropped.

spmallick writes "Researchers at the University of Washington, in collaboration with Microsoft, have recreated the city of Rome in 3D using images obtained from Flickr. The data set consists of 150,000 images from Flickr.com associated with the tags 'Rome' or 'Roma,' and it took 21 hours on 496 compute cores to create a 3D digital model. Unlike Photosynth / Photo Tourism, the goal was to reconstruct an entire city and not just individual landmarks. Previous versions of the Photo Tourism software matched each photo to every other photo in the set. But as the number of photos increases the number of matches explodes, increasing with the square of the number of photos. A set of 250,000 images would take at least a year for 500 computers to process... A million photos would take more than a decade! The newly developed code works more than a hundred times faster than the previous version. It first establishes likely matches and then concentrates on those parts."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

You would think that the various entertainment industry rights organizations around the world would recognize how badly attacking consumers has failed and wouldn't continue to do it in every other country, but apparently common sense travels a lot slower than unauthorized content these days. Roni Evron alerts us to how a bunch of Israeli YouTube users are pissed off after rights holder Unicell convinced YouTube to pull down a bunch of content and close user accounts, even for content that just isn't available anywhere else:

One of the more prominent Israeli users of YouTube is 40-year-old Guy, who has been operating his own homepage there for three years. Guy says that he spends about two hours every day uploading content. He focuses on old archival material: Israeli music which is now considered classic.

"I do it out of love and I have no commercial interests," he says. "The idea behind this is ideological, romantic, to expose older cultural material, to make it accessible to as many people as possible. In most cases it is not readily available anywhere else."

For example, he has uploaded the contents of singer-songwriter Matti Caspi's first album from 1974, and material from the "Siba L'mesiba" ("Excuse for a Party") television program, which aired on the Channel One from 1984-1990.

Most of the responses he gets, according to Guy, are from former Israelis who live abroad; they are enthusiastic and ask him to add more material.

He admits that he is not current on copyright law, but believes removal of the content from the Internet is proof of narrow-mindedness.

"Perhaps exposure to this material in fact increases demand," he says. "YouTube is no substitute for purchasing music in higher quality formats; it simply provokes nostalgia. This work is a community service."

You have to wonder if the recent Israeli ruling that found that the rights of users should be respected, and that copyright claims should only be dealt with if they were "especially severe, wrongs committed in aggravated circumstances," will come into play in these sorts of situations.

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In this new report, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) digs deep into the unsolved murders of 17 journalists in Russia: Anatomy of Injustice: The Unsolved Killings of Journalists in Russia (via @carr2n)

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC.org) has released the Privacy Report Card for the Obama Administration. The new administration got "an "Incomplete" for Consumer Privacy, A- for Medical Privacy, C+ for Civil Liberties, and a B for Cyber Security. Participating organizations included US PIRG, Consumer Federation of America, the Liberty Coalition, Association of American Physicians and, Surgeons, and the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. Read the full report here (PDF). Bottom line: according to EPIC, Obama is better than Bush so far, but if that's the yardstick we're using -- boy, are we in deep 5h1t. (EPIC via Privacy Revolt via @oxbloodruffin)

Above, BoingBoing.net after receiving the kanyelicio.us treatment. (Via @GreatDismal)

Related reading, on a more sober note: "It's Kanye's Fault," by Ta-Nehisi Coates in the Atlantic: "It's virtually impossible to be a black person and believe that Americans were somehow more humble in the past. Our very existence springs from an act of immodesty."

Meet Michael Vroegop, aka "Vrogy." He made this set of Halo 3 marine armor for the last Dragoncon. His site doesn't include a lot of details about his process, but I'm pretty sure he starts with digital 3D models, converts them using Pepakura, has them CNC cut, and then folds them up for use either as direct parts or as molds. Vrogy, if you see this, you might take a sec to fill us in down in the comments about how it's done. Also, please consider this a gilded invitation to submit a project to our 2009 Make: Halloween Contest.

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An anonymous reader writes "Copyright law has previously been used by some states to try to prevent people from passing around copies of their own government's laws. But in a new level of meta-absurdity, the attorney general of Oregon is claiming copyright over a state-produced guide to using public-records laws. That isn't sitting well with one frequent user of the laws, who has posted a copy of the guide to his website and is daring the AG to respond. The AG, who previously pledged to improve responses to public-records requests, has not responded yet." The challenger here is University of Oregon Professor Bill Harbaugh.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Copyright law has previously been used by some states to try to prevent people from passing around copies of their own government's laws. But in a new level of meta-absurdity, the attorney general of Oregon is claiming copyright over a state-produced guide to using public-records laws. That isn't sitting well with one frequent user of the laws, who has posted a copy of the guide to his website and is daring the AG to respond. The AG, who previously pledged to improve responses to public-records requests, has not responded yet." The challenger here is University of Oregon Professor Bill Harbaugh.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

(Ed. Note: The Boing Boing Video site includes a guest-curated microblog: the "BBVBOX." Here, folks whose taste in web video we admire tweet the latest clips they find. We'll post roundups here on the motherBoing.)

---

More @BBVBOX: boingboingvideo.com

We've been joking that the latest moves from Google designed to "help" the newspaper industry have been anything but helpful. Instead, they seem more designed to make newspapers irrelevant faster, while making it look like they're helping. It's a cynical view to be sure. And, while I'm not a huge fan of the whole "Fake Famous CEO" meme that's been hot since Dan Lyons created the Fake Steve Jobs, Shane Richmond has posted an amusing email to newspaper folks sent from a "Fake Eric Schmidt" that's too good not to share:

MESSAGE FOR THE NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY

Listen assholes, all we ever hear from you is whining and we're getting sick of it: "Waaah! Google's killing our business! Waaah! Google sends us traffic we can't monetise! Waaah! All our readers are going elswhere!"

---- you. Seriously, ---- you. You're a sorry-assed bunch of internet-misunderstanding ------------- and I'm getting tired of waiting for you to die.

So we've launched a new product that we think will help. It's called Google Fast Flip.

First, let me explain the name because this email is going to Rupert Murdoch who I think is a Brit or something and won't get the joke.

When you give someone the finger in America, you're "flipping them off". Since this new section is essentially us giving the news industry the finger, I wanted a name that reflected that. We were going to calling the site "flipping the news" but we thought that was too obvious. We toyed with "flipper" for a while but we've settled on "fast flip". It still makes me chuckle every time I say it.

Anyway, you ink-stained ------- whine on and on about how the internet doesn't provide "serendipity". I had to look it up (yeah, I Googled it, -------------, see what the internet can do for you?) and it seems that what it means, in a newspaper sense, is that sometimes you turn over the page and the next section doesn't suck.

Most of the time, of course, the next section does suck. But people forget that. It's like when you think of someone and then they call you. You never think about all the times that you thought of them and they didn't call you. Serendipity makes newspaper readers forget that most of the time the next section does suck.

Somehow you goons have based an entire business on making people pay for ---- they don't want. Well done. Our business model is based on building the best ------- search engine on the planet so that people get what they do want. And you morons wonder why our business is booming and yours is going to hell.

Well we've replicated serendipity for you. Fast Flip jams together a bunch of articles based on a secret algorithm we've developed. Ok, ok, it's random but that's serendipity right?

And here's the part you --------- will love: we'll share the revenue with you. Of course the ads will be ours, not yours. Oh, and Fast Flip shows enough of the article that readers will decide not to click through and read your pages at all.

But you'll thank us for it because we've saved your business model. Happy now bitches?

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At this year's Maker Faire, the Maker Shed offered a unique product, a Chumby in kit form. Created expressly for Maker Shed by Chumby, the kit contains everything needed to build your own Chumby, or alternatively, hack it into into any form of your own choosing. The price for the kit was $99. We sold out almost immediately.

Through a special arrangement with our pals at Chumby, the Shed recently managed to order another batch of Chumby Kits. Last week, the Shed sent out a mailing to a select group of loyal customers, again offering the kit. And again, the positive response was swift. They sold a bunch, but they still have some left, so there's still time if you want to pick one up. This is a great opportunity to get the guts of a versatile Internet appliance, on the cheap, that you can use for all sorts of experimentation, custom projects, and cool casemods. They're still $99 and you can get yours here (there's a limit of 3 per customer).

Note: These kits are still being produced at Chumby, so this is a pre-order. The Shed expects to have them by the end of the month.

BTW: The Maker Shed mailing list is a great way to stay informed of special offers, new product offerings, clearance, and other Shed happenings. The Shed will be offering juicy deals like this from time to time via the newsletter, so it's a good idea to sign up. Here's the newsletter submit form:

Name:

Email:

Maker Shed Interest(s):
Arduino
Back Issues & Books
Craft Kits
Smart Materials
Electronics
Make Kits
Robots
Science
Stuff for Kids
Miscellaneous

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

Here's notorious Toronto lubricator Kathryn Borel Jr. teaching us how to festively slice open a bottle of bubbly without swallowing a single shard of glass!

Borel's memoir Corked just came out. It's really funny and makes wine seem interesting and meaningful (even to an oenophobe like me). Check it out! (link)

Check out this pedal-powered rice thresher at Maker Faire Africa, shown off by Hazwan Razak.

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Neilio writes "What systems would Slashdotters recommend for staying connected while RV'ing across the US and Canada? While a 3G data plan seems obvious, the intrepid RV'er wants to get remote and into those parts of the coverage map that are usually gray (no coverage). But satellite can be expensive, includes high latency for VoIP and gaming, and requires a clear view of the southern sky. I've come across some intriguing products that use an amplified 2G/3G signal and bridge to WiFi, like WiFi In Motion, and CradlePoint's MBR1000 (I have no affiliation with either). Do folks have any experience with these, or can you recommend another approach (even homebrew)? While I am an electrical engineer by degree, you have to go back a few decades since I last expertly sported a soldering iron, so the less DIY the better. My wife and I now run a web-based business, so nearly daily connectivity is a must, no matter where we are."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

LENA is a technology that analyzes speech patterns of young children to detect autism.

What is LENA? LENA is the only technology that automatically collects and analyzes information about a child’s natural language environment and development. The LENA feedback reports help parents improve a child’s cumulative language experience and accelerate that child’s language and cognitive development, and preparedness for school.

Who is LENA for? Parents and caregivers of children ages 0 to 4.

Why is it important? Several hundred research studies over the last 50 years document the importance of talking to and interacting with your baby, especially during the first three years. Groundbreaking research by two renowned university researchers, Drs. Betty Hart, Ph.D., and Todd Risley, Ph.D., revealed that the quantity of talk a child experienced between birth and age 3 directly correlated with the child’s IQ and vocabulary size. The LENA Foundation was founded based on the key elements of this study and our own normative study shows that saying 17,000 words per day, which is equal to the 85th percentile, will greatly enhance your child’s potential.

Who developed it? A team of world-class scientists, including experts in linguistics, speech recognition technology, computer engineering, speech analysis, statistics, speech language pathology, language research and developmental pediatrics. Recognizing that achievement gaps already exist at kindergarten entry, LENA was developed to give parents useful information to help ensure they are providing the richest language environment possible to their children during the critical years between birth and age 4, before they enter school.

How does it work? Parents follow a simple three-step process, 2-3 times a month:

1. In the morning, slip the LENA Digital Language Processor (DLP) into the pocket of specially designed LENA clothing.?
2. At the end of the day, plug the DLP into your PC. The audio data will transfer and software analysis begins.?
3. View your reports to analyze your conversations, identify patterns of talk throughout the day and receive percentile rank information.

Pocket-sized gadget for detecting autism in children

Miss Cellania of Mental Floss wrote a brief entry about flapper girls of the 1920s.

Being a flapper wasn’t all about fashion. It was about rebellion. In this article from 1922, a would-be flapper (but still a “nice girl”) explains her lifestyle choices to her parents. Flappers did what society did not expect from young women. They danced to Jazz Age music, they smoked, they wore makeup, they spoke their own language, and they lived for the moment. Flapper fashion followed the lifestyle. Skirts became shorter to make dancing easier. Corsets were discarded in favor of brassieres that bound their breasts, again to make dancing easier. The straight shapeless dresses were easy to make and blurred the line between the rich and everyone else. The look became fashionable because of the lifestyle. The short hair? That was pure rebellion against the older generation’s veneration of long feminine locks.

The rise of the Flapper

Polyghost is a simple and fun iPhone app that brings collectible vinyl toys into the virtual realm. In development for a year, it features the delightful artwork of BB pal Tim Biskup along with FriendsWithYou and DEVILROBOTS. Developed by Last Legion Games, the $3.99 app comes with Tim's infamous "Helper" character (top left) and you can buy others within the app itself. They range in price from $.99 to $9.99, depending on the value of their real vinyl counterparts. I don't think I'd pay $9.99 for a virtual vinyl character, but I bet some hardcore collectors would. Once you download a character, you can pose it, change the lighting to set a mood, and easily composite the critter into any image in the iPhone's photo album. PolyGhost also offers one-click sharing of your creations on Facebook and Twitter. Polyghost

netbuzz writes "Following a torrent of customer complaints, bad publicity and the threat of a class-action lawsuit, T-Mobile has abandoned a plan announced this summer to charge any customer wanting a paper bill $1.50 per month. While the news is being cheered by many T-Mobile customers, it's not going to be as popular with others who praised the extra fee as an environmentally sound inducement to reduce paper use."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jack Schulze and Timo Arnall made this video of an RFID-based, touch-free Rube Goldberg machine. While I don't think it would win a middle school Rube Goldberg competition (something about not using enough different kinds of energy transfer), it's a neat idea, and an excellent use for RFID tags. And they slipped an Arduino in at the end. [via boingboing]

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I still can't figure out the reasons why content owners allowed Hulu to offer up TV shows in a browser... but then absolutely flipped out when they realized that the very same content can be seen on browsers on other devices as well. In the past, we've noted that Hulu was pressured to block the Boxee browser (which lets you view content on your TV) and the PS3's browser (also for TVs). Now, via hamill8152, we learn that Hulu is also blocking content on Skyfire, a mobile browser for Windows Mobile phones. The reasoning is the same as always (and, at the very least, kudos to Hulu for being upfront about the idiotic pressure it comes under from clueless content owners). Hulu explains the whole "windowing" thought process of the folks in Hollywood, and suggests that these windows will eventually go away. Of course, it's worth pointing out that Hollywood so disagrees with this that the MPAA has been pushing for ways to add more windows. Either way, the whole thing is silly. If you're putting your content on the internet, you're putting it on the internet. Pretending that televisions or mobile phones can't also view content on the internet makes no sense. One day, people in charge will understand this. Until then...

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This, in all sincerity, is what I expect in return for my taxes: a five-year-long absurdist theater performance about a magically, awesomely, mesmerizingly powerful nipple that was revealed for less than one second to millions of half-drunk spectators on a Sunday afternoon in 2004. The budget: Millions of dollars and rising. Starring: the FCC, the highest court in the United States, major media companies, and a cast of thousands of lawyers. Script: A 12-foot-high stack incomprehensible legal documents. I hope the show never ends. Bravo!

The commission also reasserted that the reveal was off limits for broadcast TV between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. "[The FCC] reasonably determined in this case that the graphic and shocking, albeit brief, exposure of Janet Jackson’s bare right breast to a nationwide audience composed of millions of children and adults was indecent," the FCC said.

Back in June, the court asked for new briefs in the case after the Supreme Court's May 4 decision to vacate the Third Circuit's ruling that the Jackson fine was arbitrary and capricious.

The FCC relied  heavily on the Fox decision in its brief, saying that "as the Fox Courts interpretation of the pertinent regulatory history now makes clear, the  repetition requirement that exempted fleeting expletives from enforcement has  no logical application to images."

We have always been at war with the one-second glimpse of Janet Jackson's nipple

It took me a few minutes staring at it to figure it out.

With a hat-tip to David Rowland, iPhone developer, who sent it to a mail list I'm on.

My pal and IFTF colleague Jake Dunagan spotted this amazing image in an older post on the excellent Cocktail Party Physics. The doll is wearing a diffuse optical tomography (DOT) rig, an emerging technology used to scan an infant's brain using light. From Cocktail Party Physics:

Light passes out of one fiber optic cable, diffuses through the tissue, and is received by another cable. Yes, light does diffuse through tissue, as anyone who has ever held a flashlight up to his hand can attest. According to Joseph Culver, an assistant professor of radiology at WUSTL, "The flashlight's white light becomes visibly reddened because there's a window in the near-IR region of the spectrum where human tissue absorbs relatively little of the light." Anyway, based on this diffusion data, the machine's computer creates a 3D tomographic image based on whether the hemoglobin in the blood is oxygenated or deoxygenated to determine brain activity.

"From the minds of babes"

NickFortune writes "The EFF's Danny O'Brien has pointed out that the BBC has asked a UK regulator for permission to add DRM to their high-definition broadcasts. Apparently, this is at the behest of content providers. 'BBC is proposing to encode the TV listings metadata that accompanies all digital TV channels with a simple compression algorithm. The parameters to this algorithm would be kept secret by the BBC: it would ask manufacturers to sign a private agreement in order to receive a copy. This license would require the implementation of pervasive DRM in the equipment they build.' Ofcom, the regulatory body in question, has detailed the proposal asked for comments, but the window closes today."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New research suggest that exposure to bizarre, surreal storylines such as Kafka's "The Country Doctor" can improve learning. Apparently, when your brain is presented with total absurdity or nonsense, it will work extra hard to find structure elsewhere. In the study by the University of British Columbia psychologists, subjects read The Country Doctor and then took a test where they had to identify patterns in strings of letters. They performed much better than the control group. From Science Daily (Wikimedia Commons image):

"People who read the nonsensical story checked off more letter strings –– clearly they were motivated to find structure," said Proulx. "But what's more important is that they were actually more accurate than those who read the more normal version of the story. They really did learn the pattern better than the other participants did."

In a second study, the same results were evident among people who were led to feel alienated about themselves as they considered how their past actions were often contradictory. "You get the same pattern of effects whether you're reading Kafka or experiencing a breakdown in your sense of identity," Proulx explained. "People feel uncomfortable when their expected associations are violated, and that creates an unconscious desire to make sense of their surroundings. That feeling of discomfort may come from a surreal story, or from contemplating their own contradictory behaviors, but either way, people want to get rid of it. So they're motivated to learn new patterns."

Reading Kafka Improves Learning, Suggests Psychology Study (ScienceDaily)

Connections From Kafka: Exposure to Meaning Threats Improves Implicit Learning of an Artificial Grammar (Psychological Science)

I'm trying to understand where the legal issue is here, but a "freelance artist" and alumnus of NYU is apparently suing the school because it used the bobcat mascot she designed. But here's the thing: she designed it while she was employed by the school's athletic director. In this case, she was just an equipment room clerk, but the associate director (a superior) asked her to create the mascot. And then the school used it. How is that possibly a copyright violation? She was employed by the school. Her boss asked her to do some work for the school. She did it. I'm having trouble understanding where there's a copyright violation.

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destinyland writes "In 'My New Sense Organ,' a science writer tests 'a new sense' — the ability to always know true north — by strapping a circuit board to her ankle. It's connected to an electronic compass and an ankle band with eight skin buzzers. The result? 'I had wrong assumptions I didn't know about ... I returned home to Washington DC to find that, far worse than my old haunt San Francisco, my mental map of DC swapped north for west. I started getting more lost than ever as the two spatial concepts of DC did battle in my head.' The device also detects 'the specific places where infrastructure interferes with the earth's magnetic fields.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you've ever wanted to experiment with low-melting-point metal alloys, for casting toy soldiers or other purposes, Rotometals, Inc is a great online resource. Their Low-Melting-Point Bismuth Based Ingot 158-190-ALLOY, for instance, can be melted in a pot of boiling water. If you're concerned about lead or cadmium toxicity, their slightly-higher-melting 281-ALLOY contains only bismuth and tin. The also carry pure bismuth, indium, magnesium, and other metals and casting supplies in convenient quantities for small users.

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

Here's a cartoon I made starring my adorable little cousins. The person they're beating up is me.

The "30 mosques in 30 days" blog documents Aman Ali and Bassam Tariq's "Ramadan journey through NYC's Muslim Community." It's a really neat project, and ends on September 19th (the last day in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan). Snip from one post, each one is about a different mosque, all are delightful.

After the dhikr session, we broke our fast with dixie cups of water and prayed. The imam's recitation was incredible. This may sound hokey, but his voice sounded a lot like a perfect pitch violin, the way his voice glided seamlessly from letter to letter in his recitation. You couldn't help but close your eyes and take it all in. (...)

After a few minutes of breaking the ice, I mentioned the word "Call of Duty 4" and immediately a group of kids swarmed me. We had a blast during dinner cracking jokes. One thing I really love is seeing younger kids come to mosques because they genuinely enjoy being there, not because they are dragged by their parents. Its kids like these that make me feel good about where the Muslim community as a whole is headed in this country.

(via @ethanz via Global Voices)

Here's Kipp Bradford talking about the planning behind Providence's DIY Maker Faire Rhode Island, which concludes this weekend!

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Barence writes "British chip designer ARM is launching an outright attack on Intel with the launch of a 2GHz processor aimed at everything from netbooks to servers. ARM claims the 40nm Cortex A9 MPCore processor represents a shift in strategy for the company, which has until now concentrated on low-power processors for mobile devices. In the consumer market, ARM is pitching the Cortex A9 directly against Intel's Atom, claiming the processor offers five times the power while drawing comparable amounts of energy. 'It's head and shoulders above anything Intel can deliver today,' ARM VP of marketing Eric Schom claims. However, it has one major hurdle to overcome: it doesn't support Windows. 'We've had conversations with Microsoft and you can imagine what they entail,' says Schom."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Motion graphics studio DarkroomTV created some great eye candy at a recent festival -

We got invited along to do some video mapping projections at a secret festival in the North East of England. The theme and logo of the party was the heart. We spent a couple of weeks in the studio creating the show which opened the party.

[via Geekologie]

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JJ sends in the news that Fox News apparently paid some guy $60,000 for some video footage he took of Bernie Madoff on a yacht in 2003 for use on Fox News and Fox Business, and the guy is now suing Fox for more. Specifically, the guy licensed the work for 45 days for $10,000. After that period ended and Fox was still using the video, the guy sent a cease & desist, and Fox paid him another $50,000 for a bit over another month. Once that ended, Fox was still using the video, and the guy sued, demanding at least another $500,000. First of all... $60,000 for the use of a single video of Bernie Madoff on a yacht for ~90 days of usage? Damn.

But, separate from that, I would think that, even though it licensed the video originally, Fox could make a decent fair use argument, claiming that the video was for reporting purposes. On top of that, the guy is demanding to know how much ad revenue Fox brought in from certain advertisers, as if the video alone drove the ad revenue. Still, it seems odd that Fox would license video for news purposes for a limited time only. Does anyone really think it's still possible to put video online for just a limited time?

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On Monday, someone had burglarized college student John Pontolillo's Baltimore house and nabbed two laptop computers and a videogame system. Late that night, Pontoilillo heard noises in his garage. So he grabbed his samurai sword and went to check it out. When the prowler lunged at him, Pontoilillo killed him with the sword. The state's attorney's office will consider whether to bring any charges against Pontoilillo. From the Washington Post:

The student "was backed up against a corner, and either out of fear or out of panic, he just struck the sword with force," said city police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.

Pontolillo, who rents the off-campus home, nearly severed the man's left hand, inflicting what police called a "spear laceration."

Donald D. Rice of Baltimore, 49, a repeat offender who had been released from jail Saturday, died at the scene.

Hopkins Student With Samurai Sword Kills Theft Suspect (Thanks, Sean Ness!)

Hugh Pickens writes "For years there have been rumors that the mafia was sinking ships with nuclear and other waste on board as part of a money-making racket. Now, BBC reports on a sunken vessel that has been found 30km off the coast of Italy. Murky pictures taken by a robot camera show the vessel intact, and alongside it are a number of yellow barrels with labels indicating the contents are toxic. The ship's location was revealed by Francesco Fonti, an ex-member of Calabria's feared 'Ndrangheta crime group, who confessed to using explosives to sink this vessel and two others as part of an illegal operation to bypass rules on the disposal of toxic waste. Experts are now examining samples taken from the wreck, and an official says that if the samples prove to be radioactive then a search for up to 30 other sunken vessels believed scuttled by the mafia would begin immediately. 'The Mediterranean is 0.7 percent of the world's seas. If in this tiny portion there are more than 30 (toxic waste) shipwrecks, imagine what there could be elsewhere,' says Silvestro Greco, head of Calabria's environment agency."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Check out this amazing photograph of a chunk of lightly oxidized bismuth metal. Wikimedia Commons identifies the author as Alchemist-hp, who has produced some other really cool element sample photos.

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Scouting NYC posts pics from his visit to the lost town of Goverthing, partially unearthed on NYC's Governors Island -

This winter, during demolition works on Governors Island in preparation for the site of the future park, contractors by accident discovered the remains of a disappeared hamlet. Since then, an archaeological team from Flanders (Belgium) has been examining this part of the island.
For safety reasons, the archaeologists conducted their excavations out of public sight until September.
The site will be exclusively open to the public, until the closing of Governors Island on October 11th.
The archaeologists are really amazed by their discoveries, and thrilled to be able to share the site with the public during this unique opportunity.

Though much of the story and artifacts seem amazing but believable, Goverthing is in fact the fictitious subject of "The Archaeological Dig" art project. Still, looks like a fun exhibit for those in the NYC area.

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Matt_dk writes "The confirmation of the nature of CoRoT-7b as the first rocky planet outside our Solar System marks a significant step forward in the search for Earth-like exoplanets. The detection by CoRoT and follow-up radial velocity measurements with HARPS suggest that this exoplanet has a density similar to that of Mercury, Venus, Mars and Earth, making it only the fifth known terrestrial planet in the Universe. The search for a habitable exoplanet is one of the holy grails in astronomy. One of the first steps towards this goal is the detection of terrestrial planets around solar-type stars. Dedicated programs, using telescopes in space and on ground, have yielded evidence for hundreds of planets outside of our Solar System. The majority of these are giant, gaseous planets, but in recent years small, almost Earth-mass planets have been detected, demonstrating that the discovery of Earth analogues — exoplanets with one Earth mass or one Earth radius orbiting a solar-type star at a distance of about 1 astronomical unit — is within reach."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

JohnForDummies alerts us to Broadcom's latest patent infringement suit, this time against Emulex. Broadcom is quite aggressive on the patent front, so at first this didn't seem like a big deal. But, this time it's more interesting, because Broadcom just spent about a year trying to do a hostile takeover of Emulex, which failed. Basically, this seems like a sour grapes patent lawsuit. Emulex wouldn't agree to be taken over, so Broadcom decided to throw the patent book at them. Patent lawsuits as revenge? Just like Thomas Jefferson intended...

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sholto writes "US intelligence agencies are advising top US IT executives to weigh their laptops before and after visiting China as one of many precautions against corporate espionage. Symantec Chief Technology Officer Mark Bregman said he was also advised to buy a new cellphone for each visit and to throw it away after leaving. Bregman said he kept a separate MacBook Air for use in China, which he re-images on returning, but claimed he didn't subscribe to the strictest policies. 'Bregman said the US was also concerned about its companies employing Chinese coders, particularly in security.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

shrik writes "After having it struck down as 'unconstitutional' by the Conseil Constitutionnel once, Sarkozy's controversial 'three-strikes' law (known as HADOPI) was once again passed by the French National Assembly, this time allowing for a judge to order the disconnection (without requiring the presence of the accused party!), thus placating some of the administrative concerns. Opponents say they will 'challenge the law again in front of the Constitutional Council because it deprives the accused of being able to defend themselves properly.' Coverage at Ars also points out a provision that says, 'all Internet users must keep their connections 'secure' and are responsible for what happens on them.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Flickr member victorf built this simple adapter to capture the view from a Kodak Duaflex II with his digital camera. Check out some of the results in his Through the viewfinder photoset.

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CWmike writes "Apple missed a golden opportunity to lock down Snow Leopard when it again failed to implement fully a security technology that Microsoft perfected nearly three years ago in Windows Vista, noted Mac researcher Charlie Miller said today. Dubbed ASLR, for address space layout randomization, the technology randomly assigns data to memory to make it tougher for attackers to determine the location of critical operating system functions, and thus makes it harder for them to craft reliable exploits. 'Apple didn't change anything,' said Miller, of Independent Security Evaluators, the co-author of The Mac Hacker's Handbook, and winner of two consecutive 'Pwn2own' hacker contests. 'It's the exact same ASLR as in Leopard, which means it's not very good.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Maker Shep pieced together this faithful representation of an ABB Robotics FlexPicker in LEGO. Though, not remotely as fast as the real thing, it's a brilliant functional recreation that should serve as an inspiration to aspiring LEGO roboticists everywhere.

In case you were ever curious how some of your food is packed:

[via singularityhub]

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Arizona has become ground zero with the backlash against redlight cameras, with plans to get rid of them across the state. And yet... Dave Records alerts us to the news that the annual "Governor's Celebration of Innovation" includes a variety of companies nominated for awards... including Redflex, the redlight camera maker who was just complaining that its revenue was dropping due to public opposition to such cameras. Oops.

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You can still pick up a great deal on a Mystery MAKE T-Shirt. You pick the size, and we pick the shirt. Let us surprise you! Hey, what do you want for just $3? Yep, $3, that's 80% OFF. Also, if you purchase more than $30 in the Maker Shed, along with your Mystery MAKE T-shirt, we will throw in a FREE Maker's Notebook! Read all the details here.

Grab your very own "Mystery Make T-Shirt", we have different shirts left over from promotions, obsolete colors & styles, heck, stuff we just found in a box in the warehouse! The catch is we get to pick 'em. Logo & color will vary, but you choose the size and style: man, woman or child, all for $3. What a deal! ...But wait there's more, if you buy a Mystery shirt with any other items and the order total is more than $30, we'll throw in a free Maker's Notebook ($20 Value) as well. Just type "Mystify Me" in your order comments (NOT in the coupon code field -we don't want the boss to know) and we'll take care of the rest.

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chrb writes "The NY Times Magazine has an interesting article about research, based on the long-running Framingham Heart Study, modeling real world social networks. It seems that tendencies to be happy, not to smoke, and not to become obese are passed between nodes in a directed graph in a way that suggests such concepts are 'contagious.' Well-connected nodes in the graph (i.e., people with more friends) are more likely to be happier than less-connected nodes, even when the edges represent more distant friendships. Individuals quitting smoking, or becoming obese, influence not only their immediately connected friends but also friends of friends, with the effect sometimes skipping the intermediary node. The contagion effect is most noticeable when a tendency is passed from one person to another of the same sex — friends of the opposite sex, including spouses, are not as influential."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There have been plenty of stories concerning judges warning jurors not to research any additional items about a case online, but JJ points us to what is apparently a first (at least in California). A judge has ordered the jury to sign a document that they will not use the internet to research the case, and they can face perjury charges if they're caught doing so. Apparently, the reasoning is that most jurors tend to ignore the spoken warning. My guess is that many will ignore the signed promise as well -- in fact, as some behavioral research has shown, just telling them not to do it, may make them even more likely to do so. At some point, the courts are going to have to realize that you simply can't prevent people from looking up more info, and will have to come up with ways to adapt.

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Artist Jennifer Harrison of Masks by Jen hand-tools and -paints leather to make this and other amazing custom masks.

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Tinker.it! recently teamed up with Hyper to create a series of projects that are all based on hacks of the Nokia N900 & Maemo. They range from an Arduino powered Viewmaster that generates 3D images, to the Talk & Text which is a hacked Speak & Spell that sends SMS messeges. They even posted a Hackers Guide to the N900.

Tinker.it! built 4 discrete interventions, using the theme of much-loved 1980s toys and products, to highlight the new and impressive functionalities of the N900 and encourage a wider audience to take part in that conversation with the PUSH competition.

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino

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Er, I mean, "Professor Fate's Patent Ocular Beautification Device." These were submitted as an entry in our 2009 Make: Halloween Contest but regrettably disqualified for failure to include a microcontroller. Professor Fate himself, aka Instructables user sluggoweezul, shows you how to make your own. "No Home Should Be Without!"

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Mike writes "As lighting manufacturers phase out the incandescent bulb, and CFLs look set to define the future of lighting, Panasonic recently unveiled a remarkable 60-watt household LED bulb that they claim can last up to 19 years (if used 5-1/2 hours a day). With a lifespan 40 times longer than their incandescent counterparts, Panasonic's new EverLed bulbs are the most efficient LEDs ever to be produced. They are set to debut in Japan on October 21st. Let's hope that as the technology is refined their significant cost barrier will drop — $40 still seems pretty pricey for a light bulb, even one that promises to save $23 a year in energy costs."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I've been having an email debate concerning newspaper business models with the David Carr of the NY Times for PBS' MediaShift, which I believe will be published later this week, so I won't reveal too much now. However, the key points are that Carr believes paywalls/micropayments make sense and I don't. We've gone back and forth on it, and I think it's been quite an interesting discussion, but one key point that I keep trying to make is that Carr seems to think enough people will pay to make such things a viable model. I have trouble believing this, and some recent research (highlighted by Steve Outing) suggests that many newspaper execs have a stunningly large disconnect between how they think readers will react to paywalls, and how readers themselves actually say they'd react to paywalls: If you can't see that image clearly (you can click on it to get a larger image), newspaper execs believe that if they took down their web content, 75% of readers would switch to the paper version of the newspaper. Meanwhile, readers who were asked the same question had only 30% saying they would go to paper sources. Above that? 68% said they'd go to other local sources first. 45% said television. 37% said other regional/national online publications. 35% said radio. I believe a key point of disagreement between Carr and I reflects this same sort of issue. Carr suggests that there aren't many outlets for people to go to if the newspapers walled up. I argued that there are an immense number of options -- and they're growing daily. The problem is if you think of the market as being "newspapers" or "sources that people go to for news." I believe that it's the latter. Many newspaper people seem to think it's the former.

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I like this list of "backpackers books," compiled by Bookride.

I am not sure which books backpackers carry with them these days so this list may be a little out of date. The concept of backpacker books goes back to the days of the hippy trail when travellers would carry such classics as the I Ching, the Tibetan Book of the Dead or anything by Herman Hesse. A backpacker classic should have an element of profundity, preferably mystical -if not it should have cult status or be a statement about who you really are. There is an element of self discovery in setting off - the path to enlightenment, the journey inwards...A backpacker book is not a 'beach read'--the book must be worth the weight and space it takes up and should be reverentially handed on to other travellers or left in a hotel or bus station for another seeker to chance upon.

Here's a snippet of the list:

Patrick Suskind. Perfume

Umberto Eco. Name of the Rose (also Foucault's Pendulum)

Virginia Woolf. To the Lighthouse

Irvine Welsh. Trainspotting.

Borges. Fictions

Tolkien. The Hobbit (sometimes seen read until it has fallen apart)

Bolano. The Savage Detectives (heavy)

Dan Brown. The Da Vinci Code (light)

Maldoror & A Rebours (for the decadent traveller)

Shakespeare. King Lear ( a teacher at my school read it every morning or so he said)

The Duke of Pirajno. A Cure for Serpents (for the traveller in Libya)

Di Lampedusa's deathless 'The Leopard' - another book by an Italian duke. Why can't any of our dukes write a decent book?

Tao te Ching

Popol Vuh: A Sacred Book of the Maya

Cormac McCarthy. All The Pretty Horses

Backpacker Classics

Pratt students were faced with the challenge to create smart, awesome works without spending more than a dollar. The results are some neat re-use ideas! [via BoingBoing]

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Danny O'Brien sez,

In the US, the movie and TV industry tried to get mandatory DRM into digital TV receivers by pressuring regulators and standards groups to enforce a "broadcast flag", a nonsensical "anti-copying" bit that would never have stopped piracy, but would have given the copyright industry a veto over new digital video technology. Now they're trying the same tactic in the UK. The BBC has written to Ofcom telling them rightsholders want DRM, and asking them if they can implement a crazy scheme to require it.

Ofcom is taking responses to this plan UNTIL TOMORROW -- if you don't want a broadcast flag in your country, read the proposal, and write to Ofcom! The details include:

1) Taking the TV metadata in digital TV signals (which include TV listings), lightly scrambling it -- and then demanding that any tech manufacturer who wants to unscramble it sign a contract with the BBC.

[Ed: it's worse than this -- it's not just TV listings, it's the instructions for decoding the video streams, without which they can't be viewed. In other words, the BBC, which is prohibited from encrypting its TV signal, wants to encrypt its TV signal]

2) The contract itself requires the manufacturers to implement DRM.

3) Profit.

The only people will be affected will be companies and individuals who want to sell consumers settop boxes that do what *they* want, not rightsholders. That includes open source developers like the MythTV project, who'll never be able to get a license, because there's no-one to sign, and DRM demands that software and hardware be locked down and unalterable by end-users.

License to Kill Innovation: the Broadcast Flag for UK Digital TV?

Graham sez, "Given the current building chaos for the new transport hub around Ground Zero, I thought the following might be of interest. It's a series of photos from what appear to be the early construction work on the Beekman Street Subway in 1916/1917. I've scanned them and mapped them according to the handwritten annotations on each one. Daunting to think about what the engineers were about to negotiate - the level of chaos already achieved in a relatively young infrastructure is impressive."

Photos tagged with "beekman street subway" (Thanks, Graham!)

London design firm Berg (formerly Schulz and Webb) is working on a series of provocative videos exploring "designerly applications for RFID." The first one is this lovely Rube Goldberg machine running on RFID: "With RFID it's proximity that matters, and actual contact isn't necessary. Much of Timo's work in the Touch project addresses the fictions and speculations in the technology. Here we play with the problems of invisibility and the magic of being close."

Nearness

The phrase "ta ta" is a well known way of saying goodbye. So, it was a cute idea for an Indian online travel site to use the domain name OkTaTaByeBye.com. Except... of course, one of the biggest companies in India happens to be called Tata. So, of course, the Tata corporation went to WIPO complaining of trademark infringement. And WIPO, as it almost always seems to do, sided with the big company, and said that the domain name infringes (thanks, stat_insig). The travel site is planning to appeal, and hopefully whoever hears the appeal will recognize that the site is pretty clearly not associated with Tata. Still, it's yet another example of a big company thinking that its rights extend quite far.

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benz001 writes "The Minister who has pushed the ridiculous broadband filter plan has at least won a few brownie points with yesterday's press conference, in which he promised to force Telstra to split its network and wholesale businesses. Australia's largest ISP, and the country's main infrastructure owner, will be given a chance to implement the structural separation voluntarily; if it does not, the Government will step in with legislation. Here is the Minister's official press release." And speaking of the filtering program, reader smash writes "After several years of debate and electioneering, some statistics on the Australian national web filtering effort have been disclosed. Apparently, the typical Aussie web surfer is 70 times more likely to win the national lotto than stumble across a blocked page. Additionally, despite the claim that the main aim of the filter is to block child pornography, only 313 of the 977 total sites blocked is on the basis of child porn. At $40M AU so far in taxpayers funds, the cost so far is around $40,900 per blocked URL. Government efficiency at work..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Umbrellas for the Civil but Discontent Man designed by Bruce and Stephanie Tharp of Materious... via Core77.

In Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud contends that aggressiveness is a fundamental human instinct whose inhibition is a necessary obligation of social life: “Men are not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love, who simply defend themselves if they are attacked, but that a powerful measure of desire for aggression has to be reckoned as part of their instinctual endowment.” Fundamentally there is a tension between the freedom to gratify these natural desires and the conformity demanded by civilization.  What results is a muted, guilty, and ultimately a discontent populous in which the possibility of a more complete happiness has been traded for a degree of security. Umbrellas for the Civil but Discontent Man combines a symbol of gentlemanly refinement—the full-sized, dark umbrella—with an element of more manly sword-bearing times.  The umbrellas offer brief psychological respite from the dictates of social amiability; aggressive fantasies are allowed and encouraged on the daily commute to the office.  The effete civilian’s grasp of the handle takes him into the world of the masterful samurai, the medieval barbarian, or the triumphant cavalryman.

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Buy Coilhouse #3 right here. We're big fans of Coilhouse Magazine over here at Boing Boing, so it was a special honor and delight when the gothtastically beautiful ladies who run the publication told us they were planning a feature on me/BB. I swear I'm not just vanity-blogging here -- this whole issue is awesome, and the insane illustrations by Stuntkid (aka Norfolk, VA-based artist Jason Levesque), including the unicorny one above, are the coolest ever. I love his work!

The physical thing itself is gorgeous: rich colors, lush print quality, embossed glossy cover, beveled corners. The articles are wonderful stuff, and the same sort of material we'd cover here on any given blog-day: a photo-essay on the "pirate ghetto," Walled City of Kowloon; an avatar fashion spread shot by Gustavo Lopez Mañas (this is the cover shot), Marina Bychkova's creepy ball-jointed porcelain dolls, and an interview with Battlestar Galactica's conceptual captain Ron Moore. There's lots more.

I know the Coilhouse folks have been struggling of late to keep putting out such a high-quality, densely-packed publication in this crappy economy. Y'know how, some magazines, you buy 'em, then toss 'em right when you're done reading them -- but others, you stick on your bookshelf and keep 'em forever? Coilhouse is a keeper. They're doing amazing work in the true Boing Boing spirit of Happy Mutantry, and I hope you'll support them by buying a copy (or a t-shirt!) today.

* Link to Coilhouse issue #03 preview
* Flickr set with details of Stuntkid's illustrations.

(Special thanks to photographer Clayton Cubitt, whose work appears in the aforementioned feature; to Courtney Riot, who did the graphic design on this issue, and to Nadya Lev, Meredith Yayanos, and Zoetica, the co-editrix trifecta behind Coilhouse.)

Bas Grasmayer alerts us to a paper he's written as part of the research for his thesis on the future of music distribution. This isn't the full thesis, but is a quick analysis of 5 different musical acts (pdf) and the new music launches they did. All five are ones that we've talked about here: Radiohead's name your own price deal for In Rainbows, Trent Reznor's tiered reasons to buy for Ghosts I-IV, Groove Armada's spam your friends EP sponsored by Baccardi, Danger Mouse's blank CD-R and book given out after EMI wouldn't release his latest project and Mos Def's t-shirt album. The paper gives a pretty good summary of all of them, and concludes with some key points:

What does NOT work (well)

• Not going all the way. Fans love free music and so do people that are not familiar with an artist's work, but if you're going to give something away then really give it away. If you don't, you won't get the attention you were hoping for and might even disappoint some fans instead of connecting with them.

Creating unnecessary mediums instead of utilizing existing ones. While the Bacardi B-Live Share application looked cool (now offline), it was completely unnecessary. Instead of creating a digital dashboard with meaningless graphics, it could have been executed in a much simpler fashion by utilizing existing social networks or filesharing websites. IF you're going to set up such a thing, then at least make it interactive, social (in terms of enabling users to interact with each other) and add value (with videos or a game for instance). You could even use it to sell other products of the band or artist.

Expecting people to pay for what they can get for free. People might pay, but most will pick whatever way is most convenient. Usually, this is by remaining seated at your computer and by avoiding complicated online payment procedures. Sure, people should use legal ways to buy music, but the reality is that people go for convenience.

What does work (well)

• Giving fans a reason to buy. Instead of expecting people to pay for something which they can, perhaps more easily, get for free, create added value. This is what Nine Inch Nails, Mos Def and Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse all did very well. Instead of expecting people to pay for the music, they all created something besides the music which people would be more willing to pay for.
• Freemium. By offering something for free, one connects with fans and they will spread the word about you (as long as what you're offering has value). Once attention has been garnered, and perhaps sympathy has been won, you can offer a premium product. This is how Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have been successful with aforementioned albums. First you give something for free, then you market your premium; freemium.
• Understanding that the package IS the product. This goes for all of the cases, except for Groove Armada. In the case of Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse as well as Mos Def, the package was actually the reason to buy the product. In the case of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, they marketed the package as premiums, perhaps understanding that it's hard to make money if you have to compete with free, meaning music downloads.
• Buzz. By generating buzz, you can turn people just turned on to your product into fans. These fans can then later be marketed to when trying to sell premium packages (or subscriptions for example). Even if they don't buy, having them talking about your brand or product increases the buzz. This works best if they can give others free samples (free music) to see for themselves how great the brand or product is.
• Co-branding. By co-branding, the two brands can both benefit of each others' resources and skills. In the case of Groove Armada and Bacardi, the latter benefits mostly from Groove Armada's image and the ability to promote themselves on all Groove Armada-related products, this includes live performances. Groove Armada on the other hand, benefits from the resources Bacardi has, for instance to set up the website and network for the distribution of the music, as well as their marketing capacities. Both are connected to different audiences and by working together, they can promote each other to their respective audiences, perhaps new ones.

I think this is a fantastic list -- and the results of other experiments we've seen seem to support many of the points on this list as well. The rest of the paper is also worth reading, and I look forward to the final thesis. Of course, two small quibbles: the paper cites me a couple times, including claiming that I coined the term "competing with free." I can't take credit for that, though I have no idea who coined it. I was under the impression the phrase was in widespread and common usage prior to me ever mentioning it. Second, it claims that to get In Rainbows that the "minimum donation" was a penny. Perhaps that's technically true, but the real minimum donation was nothing at all -- and you could still download the album. Bas seems to recognize this, because later in the paper it mentions that many people got the album for free. Overall though, for folks who are paying attention to this stuff, this is a nice summary.

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snydeq writes "Ongoing Microsoft hype around its Surface touch technology has suggested that, with Windows 7, a touch-based UI revolution is brewing. Unfortunately, the realities of touch use in the desktop environment and the lack of worthwhile development around the technology are conspiring against the notion of touch ever finding a meaningful place on the desktop, as InfoWorld's Galen Gruman finds out reviewing Windows 7's touch capabilities. 'There's a chicken-and-egg issue to resolve,' Gruman writes. 'Few apps cry out for a touch UI, so Microsoft and Apple can continue to get away with merely dabbling with touch as an occasional mouse-based substitute. It would take one or both of these OS makers to truly touchify their platforms, using common components to pull touch into a great number of apps automatically. Without a clear demand, their incentive to do so doesn't exist.'"

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This whimsical art sculpture, by Art Energy Design, is also a renewable energy display. By incorporating small solar cells into the leaves, and building a small wind turbine out of the flower petals, it is able to store enough energy to keep itself lit by LEDs at night. I can't imagine that it is technically a very efficient generator of power, however the idea of a rotating flower/wind turbine is neat. Next, I'm hoping for some solar-powered singing flowers a la Alice in Wonderland.

[via Gwendolyn Schmidt on twitter]

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Brad Fitzpatrick did what I used to do, say what he really thinks in a blog post about RSS stuff. It's fine, but it is just his point of view. There are other points of view that are valid, like mine.

About "just happen to work at Google" -- come on, man -- how many people who don't happen to work at Google can add code to the following products: 1. Feedburner, 2. Google Reader, 3. Blogger.

Further, prior art is really important, it's how you keep the breadth of the pile of tech we create as small as possible, allowing us to build higher with the finite brain capacity each of us has. The cloud element was right there in the spec. And when we talked, you knew about it. So to say you never heard of it, well -- I think you had.

It's true -- I was pretty freaked when I saw the note at the top of your spec that RSS didn't matter. Sometimes I think Google really believes that. Now I'm here to say RSS does matter. You can't pretend it doesn't because it does. You blew every kind of smoke at it when we talked. That's really good motivation for a guy like me who takes pride in his work.

Now why did I get busy with rssCloud? Primarily because I wanted to remember how it worked. Once I got started, I remembered why I liked it, so I kept going. That's all.

Brad, we should get together and talk about bringing our projects together. This is what you were going to have to do whether I reactivated rssCloud or not, because RSS is there, and it's huge, and you were trying to ignore it.

Last week, I had seen the news that a defamation lawsuit from an ex-Congressman in NY against an "anonymous" online critic had been dismissed as an anti-SLAPP violation. This is good news, and we really could use a national anti-SLAPP law that prevents the filing of bogus lawsuits designed to shut people up. However, Sam Bayard, over at the Citizen Media Law Project, digs into the details on this case, noting that an earlier judge had already revealed the anonymous commenter. The whole thing is pretty odd, but basically, it looks like the first judge relied on a lower bar in determining whether or not anonymity should be allowed -- claiming that no actual malice needed to be proved. However, when the revealed commenter filed an anti-SLAPP claim, the new judge had to take "actual malice" into account, and couldn't find any, thus tossing out the case. Still, it does seem like an odd, and vaguely troubling, result to find out that an anonymous commenter was unmasked... only to have the case thrown out on anti-SLAPP grounds at a later date. Just the fact that the guy was revealed may serve as disincentive for future critics to speak their minds.

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Smithsonian.com covers research that began with the study of birdsong and ended by overturning the common belief that adult animals can't produce new brain cells. "Deconstructing birdsong may seem an unlikely way to shake up biology. But [Fernando] Nottebohm's research has shattered the belief that a brain gets its quota of nerve cells shortly after birth and stands by helplessly as one by one they die — a 'fact' drummed into every schoolkid's skull. [Nottebohm] demonstrated two decades ago that the brain of a male songbird grows fresh nerve cells in the fall to replace those that die off in summer. The findings were shocking, and scientists voiced skepticism that the adult human brain had the same knack for regeneration. ... Yet, inspired by Nottebohm's work, researchers went on to find that other adult animals — including human beings — are indeed capable of producing new brain cells. And in February, scientists reported for the first time that brand-new nerves in adult mouse brains appeared to conduct impulses — a finding that addressed lingering concerns that newly formed adult neurons might not function."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

My second SPARK project is going to be slightly different than my first. I've learned a lot about Windows Embedded CE 6.0R2, and have a better idea of it's strengths and weaknesses. It is a sophisticated tool with a lot of capabilities. I continue to explore those capabilities, but from a much simpler starting point. I've also been working closely with Bill Mar of Special Computing to help navigate the tools and training, and hopefully create a clean roadmap for others to explore these tools. I invite you to join me in a lively discussion about Windows Embedded and real-time operating systems!

Continue on to read the full post here.

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Our Basic Laboratory Equipment Kit includes the essential specialty labware you need to perform a wide variety of experiments in chemistry and the other sciences. It's an excellent choice for home schoolers on a tight budget or DIY science enthusiasts who are just getting started putting together a home lab.

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When it was leaked last week that Google is offering up a micropayment solution for newspapers, my cynical side noted that this seemed like Google giving the newspaper industry tools to commit suicide faster. Then, earlier this week, Google unveiled its new "Fast Flip" application, which tries to make the process of skimming news more like reading a physical paper. Sorta. Or, as many people have pointed out, it mimics the old "microfiche" machines that we old folks used to have to use to scan archived newspapers in the library. It was inconvenient and annoying then, and it doesn't seem that much better now (though, at least we don't have to deal with getting the whole negative/positive thing straight).

I almost wasn't going to say anything about it, but Jeff Sonderman points me to a post at the Online Journalism Blog that suggests (similar to my thoughts on the micropayment stuff) Google's Fast Flip is a cruel joke being played on the news industry (on purpose or not). At that link, Paul Bradshaw argues that the cruel joke is that Google would benefit more from this than any newspaper -- and that might be true, but I get the feeling this is more about false hope for newspapers. Google has taken some criticism for "not helping" newspapers. So now it wants to show the world that it's doing something. But the problem isn't Google. The problem is that newspapers aren't doing anything to help themselves. Working with Google on some gimmick isn't going to change that, even if it does give them false hope.

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Hoppy the hopping bot... Seems like it would make a cool toy...

Video footage has been released of a robot that can leap over obstacles more than 7.5m (25ft) high. Most of the time, the shoebox-sized robot - which is being developed for the US military - uses its four wheels to get around. But the Precision Urban Hopper can use a piston-actuated "leg" to launch it over obstacles such as walls or fences. The robot could boost the capabilities of troops and special forces engaged in urban warfare, say researchers.

Visit the site to watch the video!

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