darthcamaro writes "While the internet may know no borders, the US government does. There are a number of rules that affect software vendors, including encryption export regulations from the US Department of Commerce and export sanctions by the Department of Treasury. But what do you do when your application is open source and freely available to anyone in the world? Do the same the rules apply? It's a question that Mozilla asked the US government about. The answer they received could have profound implications not just for Firefox but for all open source software vendors. 'We really couldn't accept the notion that these government rules could jeopardize the participatory nature of an open source project, so we sought to challenge it,' Harvey Anderson, VP and General Counsel of Mozilla, told InternetNews.com. 'We argued that First Amendment free speech rights would prevail in this scenario. The government took our filing and then we got back a no-violation letter, which is fantastic.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While all federal documents in the US are under the public domain, state governments don't always follow that rule, and the state of Oregon has a history of trying to lock up its documents. Last year, there was some attention generated when some people uploaded copies of certain Oregon laws. Yes, it seems positively ridiculous that the state might claim copyright over the laws people are expected to follow. The state claimed that it was just complaining about the fact that the laws were scanned from its own book, with its own notes and page numbers -- and that it wouldn't complain if people had just copied the law. But that's a weak excuse, and the state backed down later.

However, Oregon is back in the news on a similar issue, as Slashdot points us to the news that a professor is challenging the state's attorney general to sue him after he scanned and posted a state-produced guide to using public-records laws. You would think, again, that the state would want such a document spread as widely as possible, as it would better help Oregonians understand the law. But the state claims it needs to sell the book for $25 to cover production costs. That doesn't seem like much of an excuse. The fact that the state needs to produce a guide to understand its own laws seems troubling enough. Then locking them down with a copyright claim just makes it that much worse.

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wiredog writes "From The Washington Post comes news that the FCC is preparing to propose net neutrality rules on Monday. Quoting: '[FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski] will discuss the rules Monday during a keynote speech at The Brookings Institute. He isn't expected to drill into many details, but the proposal will specifically be for an additional guideline on how operators like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast can control what goes on their networks. That additional guideline would prevent the operators from discriminating, or act as gatekeepers, of Web content and services. ... The agency is expected to review what traffic management is reasonable and what practices are discriminatory. The guidelines are known as "principals" at the agency, which some public interest groups have sought to codify so that they would clearly be enforceable.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As Hollywood keeps asking for permission from the FCC to break your TV with Selectable Output Control, it's picked up an unsurprising ally. Cable companies. NCTA, the lobbying group that represents the cable industry has come out in favor of the request, claiming that it will let them offer movies earlier. This is a myth that they want regulators to believe. The MPAA and cable companies could offer up movies whenever they want. They just don't want people to record them, because they want to introduce yet another annoying window. So, they declare that they need to break your TV and DVR from recording. Hopefully, the FCC knows better than to break TVs and piss off so many people just because Hollywood is upset some people will want to record movies.

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Vrogy, whose cosplay work we featured recently, poured this Decepticon logo in aluminum from his home foundry. He's also done an Autubot logo. I wonder where he got that idea? :)

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Deep Green, the pool-playing robot from the Robotics & Computer Vision lab at Queen's University has been making the rounds on other websites recently. Its robot arm uses a huge gantry to move anywhere over the table, and then a special cue stick tool to hit the ball.

It's hugely impressive, but the size and complexity of the hardware puts it out of reach for most Makers [please -- someone prove me wrong!]. So, that's why I was attracted to the second half of the video: The students developed an equally impressive augmented reality mode that works without the robot. By using a projector and a camera located above the table, it recognizes the position of balls. As the player moves their pool cue, the system projects the predicted trajectory of the balls right on the table. If you can hit the ball consistently, this could be a great help in visualizing & setting up complicated shots!

See also: Roomba Pool
via waxy

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Asmodae writes to tell us about a bill proposed in Congress that could roll back telecom retroactive immunity along with adding other privacy safeguards. The "Judicious Use of Surveillance Tools in Counter-Terrorism Efforts" (JUSTICE) Act advocates the "least intrusive means" of information collection and imposes many limitations on the process. "One of the most significant aspects of the JUSTICE Act is that it will remove the retroactive immunity grants that were given to the telecom companies that participated in the NSA warrantless surveillance program. The companies that cooperated with the surveillance program likely violated several laws, including section 222 of the Communications Act, which prohibits disclosure of network customer information. The immunity grants have prevented the telecommunications companies that voluntarily participated in this program from being held accountable in court."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Way back in 2003, when Linden Lab announced that individuals owned the real world copyright on virtual trinkets they made in the game, we noted that this was a bad idea that would lead to problems. It was, in effect, taking bad real world laws and bringing them into a virtual world. It was even worse, because it was taking real world laws that were designed for a world of scarcity, and bringing them into a world of abundance -- and effectively allowing the laws to reach from the real world into the virtual world. That's a recipe for trouble.

And, indeed, a few years back there were lawsuits over "copied" products, though the main one we know of ended with both sides dropping the case. However, a new lawsuit has been filed, but this time, Linden Lab itself is a target, and the guy suing is claiming both copyright and trademark infringement. It's the same basic story. A guy creates virtual things (in this case, "sex toys") in Second Life, others copy them, and he's pissed off, so he sues. But he's suing Linden Lab, perhaps because it's better to sue a company that actually has money.

But legally, it seems like a huge longshot. The copyright claim should get tossed out pretty quickly due to DMCA safe harbors. The guy filing the lawsuit claims they don't apply "because it is aware of the rampant infringement of Alderman's copyrights and trademarks, and hasn't take proactive steps to prevent that piracy." Unless there's specific evidence of Linden Lab being informed of a particular infringement that Second Life ignored, it's hard to see how this isn't protected by the safe harbor. The trademark claim isn't covered by safe harbors (which is a problem...), but it's difficult to see how anyone could claim that Linden Lab is the one violating anyone's trademark here. Yet again... someone who can't handle the fact that digital goods are copyable feels he needs to lash out and sue everyone, rather than adapt.

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We recently covered voltage dividers in our Ask MAKE column. In the above two videos, done by our pal Jeri Ellsworth, computer industry legend Lee Felsenstein (member of the Home Brew Computer Club and Osborne designer) explains voltage dividers and how to calculate them. Things get pretty thick by part II and I pretty much got lost, but sharper math heads should prevail. These videos are labeled as "Lessons from Industry Legends." What a cool idea. I hope Fatman and Circuit Girl do more of these in the future.

Fatman and Circuit Girl

More:
Ask MAKE: Voltage divider

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What could be wrong with taking an insane killer to the country fair? Oh, yeah.

Insane killer escapes on trip to county fair (Via Bits & Pieces)

Artist Kevin Cyr is building a pop-up camper atop a shopping cart. This is a follow-up to his Camper Bike, a 3-wheeler bicycle with a truck camper on the back. Cyr is looking for donations to help complete the Camper Kart. Cyr writes:

It's a functioning sculptural piece that seeks to explore aspects of housing, mobility, and autonomy. It is also largely about self-reliance and making due with less.

I have always been interested in bikes and vehicles and for many years they have been the subject of my paintings. My paintings document odd and derelict vehicles: old delivery trucks inundated with graffiti and rust, well-traveled RVs, Indian rickshaws and Asian bikes.

Throughout the last year, I decided to build my own type of vehicles. On a trip to Beijing, I conceived and built a CAMPER BIKE: an amalgamation of a Chinese 3-wheeled flatbed bike with an American cabover style camper. Interested in building a series of mobile vehicles and inspired by Cormac McCarthy's novel, The Road, I started sketching plans for CAMPER KART: a mobile unit built into a shopping cart--an ubiquitous urban object.

Camper Kart (Kickstarter)
"Kevin Cyr's Camper kart" (Hi-Fructose)

TechReviewAl writes "Alexey Ponomarev from the University of Augsburg in Germany and colleagues have revealed the blueprints for an electric motor built with just two atoms. The motor would have one neutral atom and one charged atom trapped in a ring-shaped optical lattice. The atoms jump from one site in the lattice to the next as they travel around the ring and placing this ring in an alternating magnetic field creates the conditions necessary to keep the charged atom moving round the the ring. A team from the University of Glasgow in the UK in fact built one of these quantum motors back in 2007, which they called an optical ferris wheel for ultracold atoms. 'The next step, say Ponomarev and co, is to attach the motor to a nanoscopic resonator, such as a spring board or nanomushroom, and make it vibrate. If you can do that, they say, you'd be powering a classical object using a quantum motor.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We recently took a look at the many problems with the RIAA's "educational materials" that it's pushing on schools. The EFF (who has its own -- much more accurate -- curriculum for schools) has noticed one other significant problem with the RIAA's propaganda material. They include an exercise that involves having schoolkids pitch local newspapers and TV stations to present propaganda:

Imagine that you are in the music industry... With your team of fellow music industry employees, plan an information campaign that lets others know why it's important to get their music the right way... You'll want to convince your classmates that your teams' plan is the one that will become the class project!

Challenge: Take your campaign a step further by contacting the editor of your community newspaper or the director of your community cable television station to see if you can submit an article or video about your campaign.

Of course, since we were suggesting more reasonable responses to the RIAA's proposals, why not have those same kids do a class project where they talk about artists who have embraced what their fans want, and have showed that it's possible to do quite well with models that don't involve going to war with your best fans. In the meantime, we're still wondering why any school would use obviously biased materials from an industry association, rather than impartial materials that are actually accurate? Does anyone know of any schools that use the RIAA's materials? We'd love to speak to some teachers who do...

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Researches at the Univerity of Toronto's Dynamics Graphics Project are developing this gesture based 3D sketching program. By interpreting a sketch in 3D, the software allows one to adjust the perspective of the drawing while it is being made. [via core77]

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My latest Guardian column, "Why economics condemns 3D to be no more than a blockbuster gimmick," discusses the difficulty of making truly 3D movies (that is, movies that lose something crucial in 2D) in a world where movies need to find a home on 2D small-screens in order to recoup.

Movies, after all, rely on the aftermarket of satellite, broadcast and cable licenses, of home DVD releases and releases to airline entertainment systems and hotel room video-on-demand services - none of which are in 3D. If the movie couldn't be properly enjoyed in boring old 2D, the economics of filmmaking would collapse. So no filmmaker can afford to make a big-budget movie that is intended as a 3D-only experience, except as a vanity project.

What's more, no filmmaker can afford to make a small-budget 3D movie, either, because the cinema-owners who've shelled out big money to retrofit their auditoriums for 3D projection don't want to tie up their small supply of 3D screens with art-house movies. They especially don't want to do this when there's plenty of competition from giant-budget 3D movies that add in the 3D as an optional adjunct, a marketing gimmick that can be used to draw in a few more punters during the cinematic exhibition window.

I have no doubt that there are brilliant 3D movies lurking in potentia out there in the breasts of filmmakers, yearning to burst free. But I strongly doubt that any of them will burst free. The economics just don't support it: a truly 3D movie would be one where the 3D was so integral to the storytelling and the visuals and the experience that seeing it in 2D would be like seeing a giant-robots-throwing-buildings-at-each-other blockbuster as a flipbook while a hyperactive eight-year-old supplied the sound effects by shouting "BANG!" and "CRASH!" in your ear.

Why economics condemns 3D to be no more than a blockbuster gimmick

The Open Rights Group is hosting a public forum in London on Oct 2 to discuss the new proposal to disconnect Brits from the Internet if anyone in their household is accused of violating copyright:

Peter Mandelson is convinced that disconnecting filesharers will help the music and film industries. He's plain wrong. This extreme option would trample on the rights of internet users - and the rights of their families - without earning a penny for musicians and film-makers. It is clear that Mandelson does not understand the extent to which an internet is now a basic household service, as important as electricity or gas, without which people are handicapped in their ability to work, function, and participate in society.

Open Rights Group, as part of our campaign against the policy of disconnection, is holding a debate on better approaches for public policy and the entertainment industry.

Gerd Leonhard (Media Futurist) will kick off with a presentation on the future of music, media and entertainment. Ben Goldacre (Guardian / Bad Science) will then join Gerd on a panel, chaired by our Executive Director, Jim Killock, to take questions from the audience.

(Thanks, Jim!)

The RIAA has updated its Music Rules! school program -- which contains blatant falsehoods about copyright. The new version asks kids to act as unpaid PR staff: "Take your campaign a step further by contacting the editor of your community newspaper or the director of your community cable television station to see if you can submit an article or video about your campaign."

Last week, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced an update to Music-Rules!, its flagship "curriculum" for teaching copyright law to schoolkids.

We wrote about Music-Rules! and similar industry propaganda efforts in May, outlining some of their falsehoods and biases. For instance, the RIAA tells kids, "Never copy someone else's creative work without permission from the copyright holder" -- omitting the important right to make creative fair use of existing content. It also coins a misleading term, "songlifting," (which the curriculum says is "just as bad as shoplifting") [Ed: if only! The penalties for shoplifting are so much lighter than they are for file-sharing!]. Perhaps most disturbing of all given that the curriculum is supposed to be adopted by schools, it teaches kids bad math as part of its lessons on peer to peer file-sharing.

The updated curriculum goes a step further and asks kids to contact their local media and act as the RIAA's own unpaid public relations staff.

(Thanks, Tim!)

The publisher of R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis Illustrated kindly gave permission to share Chapter 19 with our readers. Click on the thumbnails for an enlargement. Enjoy!

I understand the book will start shipping as soon as September 23rd.

From Genesis: Translation and Commentary, translated by Robert Alter. Copyright © 1996 by Robert Alter. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Copyright © 2009 by Robert Crumb

Sharky2009 writes "IBM is researching an exaflop machine with the processing power of about one billion PCs. The machine will be used to help process the Exabyte of data per day expected to flow off the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope project. The company is also researching solid state storage technology called 'racetrack memory' which is much faster and denser than flash and may hold the secret to storing the data from the SKA. The story also says that the SKA is unlikely to use grid computing or a cloud-based approach to processing the telescope data due to challenge in transferring so much data (about one thousand million 1Gb memory sticks each day)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Kevin Bankston has a post about the new JUSTICE Act:

Today, Senators Russ Feingold and Dick Durbin -- along with eight other Senators -- have taken the Administration up on its offer by introducing the JUSTICE Act, which would rein in the worst excesses of PATRIOT and last year's FISA Amendments Act (FAA). The announcement of the bill's introduction, along with a fact sheet outlining the bill's details, is here; the text of the JUSTICE Act is here (the "JUSTICE", if you're wondering, stands for Judiciously Using Surveillance Tools In Counterterrorism Efforts").

The JUSTICE Act would renew two of the three expiring PATRIOT provisions, PATRIOT sections 206 (John Doe roving wiretaps) and 215 (FISA orders for any tangible thing), but would also add strong new checks and balances to those provisions and to the PATRIOT Act in general, especially those provisions dealing with the government's authority to issue National Security Letters. If passed, the bill would also establish critically important protections for Americans against surveillance authorized under the FAA. Of particular importance to EFF's clients in the Hepting v. AT&T case and to the preservation of the rule of law, JUSTICE would completely repeal the FAA provision intended to legally immunize telecoms like AT&T that illegally assisted in the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program. Last summer when Congress passed the FAA, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stated his intention to revisit that law as part of the PATRIOT renewal debate, and we're very glad that Senators Feingold and Durbin have kick-started that process.

EFF Supports JUSTICE Bill to Reform the USA PATRIOT Act and Repeal Telecom Immunity

This week's Escape Pod podcast story is Madeline Ashby's ?oyfriend, a marvellous, sweetly romantic science fiction story about teenagers who use clever artificial intelligences as "training wheels" on the way to their first real love, but who quickly find themselves substituting the warm companionship of their imaginary friends for the confusing and fraught people around them. It's got Ashby's sly humor, heart and it's got clever to spare. I bought Madeline's first published story for Tesseracts 11 and it's wonderful to see where she's gone since.

EP216: ?oyfriend

A whole bunch of you keep sending in Lilly Allen's MySpace blog post about file sharing, and how she thinks it's bad and destroying the music industry. I'd been avoiding writing much about it, because I didn't think there was much to say. Despite claiming that she's not siding with the record labels, she repeats many of the myths that they spread, claiming that their financial troubles are due to piracy, ignoring the fact that even the economists who are employed by the music industry in her native UK admit that the industry is getting bigger. The real issue is that where the dollars go has changed. Allen complains about the "young people" at record labels losing their jobs, but there are plenty of opportunities for them to go out and hook up with more creative labels or online music services. I have nothing against Allen, who I'm sure is sincere in her thoughts, but I think she's looking at this through a very narrow lens. In fact, at the end, she notes that she's about to head off on a big tour. I'd bet that an awful lot of the "kids" she scolds in her post who will be attending those shows found out about her via file sharing.

She did a followup post as well, where she posts an email that Matt Bellamy from MUSE sent her, where he notes that:

My current opinion is that file sharing is now the norm. This cannot be changed without an attack on perceived civil liberties which will never go down well.

Unfortunately, from there he goes on to suggest that ISPs should just be taxed and hand over the money to musicians. Again, I can understand why musicians might think this is a good idea, but they haven't thought through the details, which suggest this is a a very bad idea that will do a lot more harm than good. In the end, the musicians have to stop stomping their feet and demanding change, and start looking at the many, many, many musicians who have learned to embrace file sharing, by wrapping a smart business model around it.

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Bitartist has written and posted a Processing script that causes the eyes of an onscreen portrait to follow your face as you move past a camera. Primo haunted house material. Thanks man!

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Doug says:

Ji Lee is the founder of the reknowned 'Bubble Project', which started 6 years ago. Borne from frustration at corporate advertising agencies, Lee printed and applied 50,000 renegade speech bubbles to street advertisements in New York and other cities around the world. Passersby would then fill the bubbles with musings and Lee would photograph the results and post them on the Bubble Project website.

Presently, working as a creative director at Google Creative Lab, Lee's job is to promote many Google products and Google brand to the world. Lee continues to work as an independent artist, designer, illustrator and teacher. Lee likes to maintain the delicate balance between professional and personal projects, which he believes compliment each other.

Small Talk No. 1: Ji Lee
Thursday 24 September 2009 6:30–8:00PM
Bumble and Bumble, 3rd floor auditorium
415 West 13th Street, New York, NY.

I received this email message yesterday, regarding Dan Brown's new thriller, The Lost Symbol. It looks like the Illuminati have shut down freemasons.org, to prevent further secrets from being revealed.

Saif writes to let us know that Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the founders of Skype, have filed a copyright suit against eBay for altering and sharing the peer-to-peer source code behind the calling service. The founders managed to maintain ownership of the source and licensed it to eBay in their 2005 deal and are now seeking an injunction and statutory damages which could total more than $75 million per day. "Mr. Zennstrom and Mr. Friis have developed a reputation for litigiousness in some legal circles. They filed three separate lawsuits against Pamela Colburn, an investment banker who represented them in the original sale of Skype, in the United States, the Netherlands and Britain. In May, a British judge dismissed the case and said the two menâ(TM)s reason for pursuing the matter in his country 'remains inexplicable.' The buyers of Skype have not publicly addressed the foundersâ(TM) lawsuit against eBay in Britain or their potential legal liability."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Spy toy gadget maker Brando has this "Magic GIANT 12-Surface IQ Pentagon - Fantastic Edition" for $49.90.

The FANTASTIC SIZE and COMPLEX IQ Cube!! The GIANT 12 surfaces IQ Pentagon! You may never face this complicated one! Your home cannot miss this one. You may not solve it, you can just disassemble it and try it again! This is the most perfect for your Left & Right Brain Training. Let's GRAB and CHALLENGE it!

The Magic GIANT 12-Surface IQ Pentagon - Fantastic Edition

This is the incredible true story of a physicist who believed he could project himself to another solar system and live as a swashbuckling interplanetary adventurer. When he was a teenager and living on a Polynesian island, he had read a series of "strange and adventurous" science fiction / fantasy books by an American writer. The protagonist shared his name, and eventually the physicist started thinking he really was the character. But he was still able to maintain a dual identity -- he sort of "astral projected" into that fantasy world while keeping the appearance of a skinny-tie wearing physicist.

The article was written by the man's psychiatrist, Robert Lindner, and appeared in Harper's in 1954. (It was also a chapter in Linder's entertaining case-history book The Fifty-Minute Hour). The physicist, "Kirk Allen" (his name was changed by Lindner), worked in a government research lab, and his superiors were concerned by his behavior (Allen would often space out at work while his fantastical reveries played out in his head) so they sent him to Lindner.

I don't want to spoil the story (and the excerpt below won't spoil it). You can read it in its entirety at Harper's website (Part I, Part II). Harper's kindly opened access to the article at my request, so now anyone can read it for free. (If you subscribe to Harper's for just $16.97 in the United States and CAN$24.00 in Canada, you'll get access to all the archives dating back to 1850!)

Kirk read the numerous volumes of his “biography” over and over again. Soon he no longer needed the books “to refresh my memory,” but was able to recapitulate them entirely in his mind. While his corporeal body was living the life of a mundane boy, the vital part of him was far off on another planet, courting beautiful princesses, governing provinces, warring with strange enemies. Now, using his “biographer’s” material as a base, he took off on his own. Assisted by the maps, charts, diagrams, architectural layouts, genealogical schemes, and timetables he had painstakingly worked out while using the books for his guide, he filled in spaces between the volumes with fantasy “recollections” of his own; and when this was done, he began the task of his life: that of picking up where his “biographer” had left off and recording the subsequent history of the heroic Kirk Allen.

...

For many days I pondered the question of how Kirk Allen could be restored to sanity–and yet remain alive. For there seemed to be nothing that could compete with the unending gratifications of his fantasy. Meanwhile Kirk turned over to me all of his records.

It is impossible to convey more than a bare impression of these. There were, to begin with, about 12,000 pages of typescript comprising the amended “biography” of Kirk Allen. This was divided into some 200 chapters and read like fiction. Appended to these pages were approximately 2,000 more of notes in Kirk’s handwriting, containing corrections necessitated by his more recent “researches,” and a huge bundle of scraps and jottings on envelopes, receipted bills, laundry slips.

There also were a glossary of names and terms that ran to more than 100 pages; 82 full-color maps carefully drawn to scale, 23 of planetary bodies in four projections, 31 of land masses on these planets, 14 labeled “Kirk Allen’s Expedition to —,” the remainder of cities on the various planets; 161 architectural sketches and elevations, all carefully scaled and annotated; 12 genealogical tables; an 18-page description of the galactic system in which Kirk Allen’s home planet was contained, with four astronomical charts, one for each of the seasons, and nine star-maps of the skies from observatories on other planets in the system; a 200-page history of the empire Kirk Allen ruled, with a three-page table of dates and names of battles or outstanding historical events; a series of 44 folders containing from 2 to 20 pages apiece, each dealing with some aspect–social, economic, or scientific–of the planet over which Kirk Allen ruled. Finally, there were 306 drawings of people, animals, plants, insects, weapons, utensils, machines, articles of clothing, vehicles, instruments, and furniture.

The reader can imagine my dismay at the sheer bulk of this material; I do not know if he can appreciate with what misgivings I approached the task of weaning this man from his madness. Aside from everything else, he was my patient under the most inauspicious possible conditions, for he had not come of his own volition. The authorities had sent him, demanding he be treated not only for his sake but because they feared that in his disturbed condition he was a poor security risk who could neither be kept on the job nor discharged.

Speculation abounds on the true identity of Kirk Allen. Alan C. Elms thinks it could be Cordwainer Smith. It's more fun for me to think Kirk Allen's real name was John Carter and that he had fantasized that being on Barsoom, fighting the bad Martians while Deja Thoris stayed at home hatching the eggs containing his and her children.

"The Jet-Propelled Couch" (Part I, Part II) (Thanks, Paul Ford!)

Mike Outmesguine -- wireless guru, author, and veteran -- is one of the most knowledgeable people out there with regard to post-disaster connectivity know-how. I am digging the instructional piece he has in the current issue of MAKE about "worst-case-internet" kits, with details on what to include, what each component costs, how to set it up, and why.

Check out the winners in the Instructables Gorilla Glue contest, including a cardboard kayak, marble roller coaster, nightstand and trebuchet. Impressive!

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09.18.09 : avast ye! this be pirate zen 2009
talk like a pirate day
british hq
pirate cats
pirate food
pirates vs. parrots
pirate vs. ninja
the pirate comedy show
pirate family wife swap
pirates for jesus

scurvy dog! 'tis pirate zen 2008
arrgh! tis pirate zen 2007
yo ho ho! pirate zen 2006
yar! this be pirate zen 2005
yar! 'tis pirate zen 2004
yar! this be pirate zen 2003

and for a limited time...
david byrne's pirates
(this will disappear on 09.25.09)

Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store, Twitter. (Image courtesy Eric Curry. Thanks Frank!)

Danish artist Ea Borre created these incredible machines out of paper, cardboard, some Meccano bits, and some junked DC motors.

Ea Borre

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You may recall last month that Ben Stein was fired from the NY Times after it was revealed that he was pitching "free credit reports" under the brand FreeScore.com, from a company, Adaptive Marketing, whose parent company, Vertue, has a reputation for figuring out ways to make those credit reports not so free. Reuters' Felix Salmon helped expose this in a blog post entitled Ben Stein, predatory bait-and-switch merchant. An pseudonymous blogger under the name flaneur de fraude linked to Salmon's post, and quoted the "predatory bait-and-switch" part.

Adaptive Marketing didn't go after Felix Salmon for that phrase... but it did go after this anonymous blogger, starting pre-litigation discovery to try to unmask who it is. Perhaps that's because in the blog post agreeing with Salmon, the blogger detailed a rather long and detailed list of instances where Adaptive Marketing's parent company, Vertue, has gotten in trouble for shady practices involving getting recurring charges onto users' credit cards. Among the links on the blog? One to Vertue's Better Business Bureau rating, where it has a solid "F." Paul Alan Levy, who alerted us to this story and is representing the blogger, notes, "When even the Better Business Bureau disses a company, you know there must be a big problem." Levy continues:

Although the burden on a defamation plaintiff would be to prove falsity, in this case, of course, it is hard to believe that what the blogger said isn't true.   Instead of just getting a credit score, consumers are entitled to obtain their entire credit report free of charge at the government-mandated web site annualcreditreport.com.    And the ads in question solicit telephone calls in which the service of credit monitoring is at best hawked, and at worst, as many consumers have complained, slipped in -- it remains to be seen which is true.  Such services "are often overrated, oversold, and overpriced."   But regardless of whether the services are worthwhile, and whether they are charged to consumers' credit cards after a genuine consent, "bait and switch" seems to be a fair characterization of what Adaptive is doing. 

Adaptive and Vertrue have been similarly criticized in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and New York Times, but it doesn't claim defamation by companies that can afford to defend themselves.  So Adaptive's suit seems to be just the latest in a long line of cases in which companies that don't want to be criticized seek to cleanse their reputations through subpoenas sent as a means of intimidation to those who may not be able to defend themselves.  It remains to be seen whether the Streisand effect gives them second thoughts

The WSJ's takedown of the company is pretty thorough. The Washington Post article is actually from a few years ago.

In the meantime, the blogger in question is is pointing out both that Vertrue is also going after Wikipedia (good luck with that) and is now dealing with a Senate subpoena. Perhaps threatening an anonymous blogger for pointing out some questions about the company's past isn't such a wise move. It only seems likey to draw just a bit more attention to these questions than if the company had just left things alone. Or... even better... cleaned up its act.

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yet-another-lobbyist writes to mention that Facebook addiction has finally caused real world consequences, at least for one would-be burglar. It seems that 19-year-old Jonathan Parker couldn't stay away from the popular social networking site, even long enough to rob a house. Parker not only stopped mid-robbery to check his Facebook status on the victim's computer, but left it logged in to his account when he left.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thanks to careful engineering, this blind juggler robot is able to keep a ball bouncing on it's surface without any feedback about where the ball may or may not be. At first glance, it might seem like this is an open-loop control system, however the trick is that the clever design of the bouncing surface and actuation rate actually provide a built-in form of feedback. The curvature of the surface is set up so that a ball with a known springiness (coefficient of restitution) will receive just enough force in the sideways direction to nudge it back towards the center. Additionally, the height of the ball's bounce is kept in check by accelerating the actuator unevenly, so that if the ball hits the plate too early, it receives extra force so that it bounces higher and takes longer to come down next time.

Besides just being a fun experiment, adding this kind of built-in mechanical feedback can make it easier to develop traditional feedback control systems. [via boingboing]

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Just Posted: Our preview sample gallery from the Canon PowerShot S90. We've just got hold of a production version of this latest photographers' compact, so, given the apparent level of interest, have put together a preview samples gallery. Canon made a big play of its 'high sensitivity' 10 megapixel sensor so we've made sure we've tried it at a range of ISO settings, and have included a couple of low-light portraits under challenging tungsten lighting.

eldavojohn writes "Reuters is bringing us news of five civil lawsuits filed by Microsoft against 'Soft Solutions,' 'Direct Ad,' 'qiweroqw.com,' 'ITmeter Inc,' and 'ote2008.info' that allege they 'used malvertisements to distribute malicious software or present deceptive websites that peddled scareware to unsuspecting Internet users.' Microsoft's Tim Cranton outlined the suits and provided links to all the filings for download. 'Cranton added that names of specific individuals behind these activities were not known and the lawsuits were being filed to help uncover the people responsible.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've talked about different aspects of the content business have been shifting to do more "connecting with fans" and giving them "reasons to buy," from the music, movie, newspaper, book and even photography industries. But we haven't talked that much about television -- and that's because TV shows still really don't do all that much to try to embrace their fans. There are a few shows (The Office comes to mind) that have creative online presences, but Dave Title highlights how the cast of the "cult hit" It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is doing a live tour:

Now, to both reward their rather rabid fanbase and to attract new folks to the fold, the gang from Sunny is doing a live tour version of the musical "The Night Man" and screening a new episode from this season at theaters across the country. This not only builds excitement for the new season but creates a far stronger bond with their viewers -- the people most likely to spread the word and build the audience.

Title asks how come other TV shows don't do this sort of thing... and it's a great question. Why aren't TV shows more actively working to connect with fans? Is it because TV shows are often more about selling directly to advertisers than to fans? Or is there some other reason? Or... am I just not paying enough attention to creative TV promotions?

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BB pal Sean Bonner is traveling in Thailand, and spotted this street hawker selling fake identification cards. "Check it," he emails, "For the low price of 3,000 baht I could have bought a California Drivers License!" I dig the assortment of press passes. Pick me up one, Sean, but make sure mine also has the bald white dude's photo on it, just like the one belonging to "Miss Heather Roberts," below (click to enlarge). Flickr image link.

The employees at Tesco seem to be immune to mind tricks, and have kicked out the founder of the International Church of Jediism. Daniel Jones, 23, who founded the religion based on the Star Wars movies, was asked to leave because his robes were against store rules which forbid the wearing of 'hoodies' in their premises. "I told them it was a requirement of my religion but they just sniggered and ordered me to leave," he told The Daily Telegraph newspaper. "I walked past a Muslim lady in a veil. Surely the same rules should apply to everyone." It's exactly this kind of stuff that turns young Jedi's to the dark side.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yesterday morning at GDC Austin, Blizzard's J. Allen Brack and Frank Pearce took to the stage to finally give a peek inside the inner workings of World of Warcraft. Tipping the scales at around 4,600 people utilizing 20,000 computer systems and 1.3 petabytes of storage, Blizzard has created a raging behemoth. The Online Network services group alone has "data centers from Texas to Seoul, and monitor over 13,250 server blades, 75,000 cpu cores, and 112.5 terabytes of blade RAM. [Pearce] points out the picture of the GNOC (Global Network Operations Center) in their slideshow, a data core that even has televisions tuned to the weather stations. They use those to ensure that conditions of the data center are up to their standards; with only a staff of 68 people they ensure connectivity across the globe for the numerous WoW servers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yesterday morning at GDC Austin, Blizzard's J. Allen Brack and Frank Pearce took to the stage to finally give a peek inside the inner workings of World of Warcraft. Tipping the scales at around 4600 people utilizing 20,000 computer systems, and 1.3 petabytes of storage, Blizzard has created a raging behemoth. The Online Network services group alone has "data centers from Texas to Seoul, and monitor over 13,250 server blades, 75,000 cpu cores, and 112.5 terabytes of blade RAM. [Pearce] points out the picture of the GNOC (Global Network Operations Center) in their slideshow, a data core that even has televisions tuned to the weather stations. They use those to ensure that conditions of the data center are up to their standards; with only a staff of 68 people they ensure connectivity across the globe for the numerous WoW servers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Look, just because I have a pink Nano doesn't mean I'm some kind of a...pink necktie wearer! Oh wait, NM: It's British. And the company's name is Pink--Thomas Pink, of London. And to be fair they are sold in eight colors. Pink gets €55 for one such "commuter tie" online, which is like more money than there is in all of America right now, but if you are crafty or have a crafty friend it should be a fairly simple sew job.

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A heads-up on something that's going to prove useful down the road, something you might want to start thinking about now. Credit for this observation goes to the brilliant Frenchman, JY Stervinou.

One of the things about Twitter that really works are the 48-by-48 images they call avatars. They quickly become symbols for the person. When someone changes their avatar it's surprisingly important. I changed mine from King Kong to Don Quixote and people started treating me better. Not kidding. People really want me to use my face, but it bothers me to look at my face all the time. When I figure out how to have two views of myself, one for me and one for everyone else... Anyway.

If we're going to bootstrap a Twitter-like network outside of Twitter we're going to need those avatars. And luckily there's a very nice place to put them, the RSS <image> element. It's as if when Netscape spec'd RSS 0.91 they knew that 10 years later we'd need this.

The only problem is that most RSS images aren't 48-by-48 (of course) and most of them aren't square. That's what you might start thinking about, creating a square graphic that looks good. Since many people and organizations are crafting Twitter versions of themselves, this should be a relatively easy thing to do.

BTW, I include the Twitter avatars in the cloud-enabled feeds I maintain for all the people I follow. Here's an illustration.

selven writes "In a blatant campaign devoid of any subtlety, the RIAA is fighting for the hearts and minds of our children with its Music Rules, a collection of education materials on how to respect copyright. The curriculum includes vocabulary such as 'counterfeit recordings, DMCA notice, "Grokster" ruling, legal downloading, online piracy, peer-to-peer file sharing, pirate recordings, songlifting, and US copyright law.' There is no mention whatsoever of fair use. Compounding the bias, it includes insights such as that taking music without paying for it is 'songlifting,' and that making copies for personal use and then playing them while your friends come over is illegal. On the bright side, it includes math showing that the total damages from copyright infringement by children in the US amount to a measly $7.8 million."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earlier this year, we had covered the news that Ticketmaster was pushing paperless tickets as a way to cut down on scalping, and now that story seems to be getting much wider coverage. The idea is that if you buy a ticket, you have to be the one to show up, with an ID and the credit card you used, in order to attend. Ticketmaster will allow you to transfer... but it can limit the price of a transfer and charge you a fee for the transfer. That makes it seem like this is a lot more about collecting more fees from the secondary market, than really cutting down on scalping. Not to mention that it seems likely to cause problems. How do you handle buying tickets for someone else as a gift? Under this system, you'd need to buy... and then "transfer" at a fee. And what if you really can't go, but the ticket has already been transferred once (a limit they set on the system). Finally, does it really make sense to block out basic market mechanisms? I recognize that there's an issue of scalpers buying up huge blocks of tickets, but there are better mechanisms to deal with that, that don't involve limiting what legitimate purchasers can do with their tickets.

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

Here's some more unpretentious wine instruction from Kathryn Borel Jr.

And here's a link to Borel's new memoir, Corked (link). Free sample chapter here (PDF).

Congratulations to reader MakerDan34 and his family. The trebuchet they built takes first place in the MAKEcation Family Challenge. The European styled, gravity powered, hurling machine is a great example of family making.

Maybe next time, they'll build a bigger one and lay siege to their neighbor's garage. For this group of flingers, the sky is the limit.

Thanks to everyone for participating.

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James sez,

Four Hackerspaces in Ontario have joined forces (Hacklab.TO from Toronto, think|haus from Hamilton, diyode from Guelph, and Kwartzlab from Kitchener-Waterloo) to put on a mini hackerspace conference!

On Friday evening October 2nd and all day Saturday October 3rd, think|haus will host talks, how to sessions, and a projects gallery at which anyone who is interested can give a 20 minute talk on something related to creating projects, show people how to build/take apart/modify something, or show off their cool projects.

Some confirmed talks so far are: You Let Your Kid Do What? / A brief story about children and taking advantage of applied engineering skills in a positive way.

* Intro to Kite Aerial Photography / Come learn about the kinds of kites you can use to fly your camera, what you need to build your own kite, and how to modify your camera to take pictures automatically.

* RF Countersurveillance / A primer on monitoring police and security frequencies using a trunk-tracking scanner, and how it can assist in penetrating a targetMo< * OpenWRT Demo / Unboxing, flashing, and demonstrating OpenWRT on an Asus WL-520GU

* Intro to Electronics Hardware Design By Someone Who Isn't an Expert / It's not nearly as hard as you think it might be, I'll show you the steps and tools you may want to take, and warn you of some of the potential issues you may face.

Southern Ontario Hackerspaces / Makers Mini-Conference (Thanks, James!)

An anonymous reader writes "The DHS's color-coded terrorism risk warning system has often been criticized on a number of grounds. However, it seems that at last DHS has taken note of these criticisms and is finally planning to fix one of its problems. Which one? Well, since the two lowest levels have never been used in the history of the program, the solution is obvious: just get rid of them! In the new system, the lowest level would be yellow, 'guarded,' representing 'A constant state of vigilance to protect against a terrorist attack.' While it's nice that they're at least no longer maintaining a pretense of it being for anything other than fear-mongering, I don't think this was the kind of change most people were hoping for."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Samyang Optics, the Korean manufacturer of industrial optics and photographic lenses has announced a 14mm F2.8 IF ED MC Aspherical super wide-angle lens. It is designed for full-frame cameras, but works with APS-C cameras as well. It features two ED and two hybrid aspherical lens elements. The lens offers an impressive 114° field of view on full frame cameras and 92.5° on APS-C cameras. It will be available in Canon, Nikon, Sony and Pentax mounts.

Samyang Optics, the Korean manufacturer of industrial optics and photographic lenses has announced a 14mm F2.8 IF ED MC Aspherical super wide-angle lens. It is designed for full-frame cameras, but works with APS-C cameras as well. It features two ED and two hybrid aspherical lens elements. The lens offers an impressive 114° field of view on full frame cameras and 92.5° on APS-C cameras. It will be available in Canon, Nikon, Sony and Pentax mounts.

Samyang Optics, the Korean manufacturer of industrial optics and photographic lenses has announced a 14mm F2.8 IF ED MC Aspherical super wide-angle lens. It is designed for full-frame cameras, but works with APS-C cameras as well. It features two ED and two hybrid aspherical lens elements. The lens offers an impressive 114° field of view on full frame cameras and 92.5° on APS-C cameras. It will be available in Canon, Nikon, Sony and Pentax mounts.

John B. Hare writes "Many publishers of public domain content on the Kindle are being turned away for reasons that Amazon declines to clarify. In the past two weeks any publisher posting a public domain book (or a book that appears to be a such) has received the message 'Your book is currently under review by the Kindle Operations team as we are trying to improve the Kindle customer experience. Please check back in 5 business days to see if your book was published to the store.' Amazon claims that this is a quality control issue, apparently believing that readers can't figure out on their own that a five-page Kindle book for $9.99 is a rip-off, or that yet another Kindle edition of 'Pride and Prejudice' is pointless. This was supposed to be the point of user feedback and the Kindle return policy: users can quickly decide what the best choice is, and if they don't like it, back out without any harm done." Read on for details of this reader's interaction with Amazon on the subject of public domain Kindle submissions.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Eric Goldman highlights yet another case where basic technology illiteracy leads a judge to make very questionable statements. In this particular case, a judge declared that because a specific phrase ("spoiled brats") was not found in the metatags of a website, someone who searched on that phrase "would likely not encounter" the page in question. Yes, the actual terms did appear on the page itself -- just not in the metatags. As Goldman notes:

What??? Putting aside the fact that the metatags were ignored by many of the search engines even at the relevant time (back in the late 1990s), this is a backwards way of assessing site visibility for the search term "Spoiled Brats." So what if the term Spoiled Brats wasn't in the metatags if the term was on the page?

Once again, this raises questions about how those who are technically illiterate on specific subjects are able to make rulings where a basic understanding of how the tech works could make a pretty big difference on how a judgment comes out.

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OK, OK, this is probably something you shouldn't try on yourself, a loved one, or even a close friend. Still, it's pretty flippin' amazing: a full-grown animal, permanently (apparently) cured of a genetic defect by a few injections. Can X-people be that far behind?

(That's a rhetorical question, BTW; those of you who know the real answer to that question is "yes," just chill and give me my moment.)

Here is the original abstract at Nature.

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Beyond having what may be the greatest name ever, Suryummy's projection-mapped Laser Cave installation is overflowing with cool! [via Create Digital Motion]

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Once in a while you come across a gem like the Radio Lab podcast. I listened in delight a few nights ago when an episode about death aired on KQED. An hour of philosophical and scientific stories about death, a subject we all must spend a fair amount of time thinking and dreaming about.

A couple of examples.

The three stages of death: 1. Your body dies. 2. It's buried or cremated. 3. Your name is spoken for the last time. They postulate that your soul is in limbo until you reach stage 3. For most people that day is the day you're joined in death by your last loved one. And this makes the point that fame, which so many peope seek, may not be such a great thing. After you reach stage 2, you have no influence on how your name is used. The poor farmer whose property was turned into a college after he died, and was named after him, now must wait until the college closes. And that might not happen for quite a while.

The next idea is about a dead language, Latin. What does it sound like? No one knows, because the last native Latin speaker died centuries ago. But think about pottery. It's spun on a wheel while wet. Maybe, just maybe while it's being spun, the grooves faintly record people speaking around the potter. So a Roman vase might be an ancient phonograph record and contain echoes of long-dead Latin-speakers.

These ideas aren't useful but they touch something inside me that I like.

Bravo!

Once in a while you come across a gem like the Radio Lab podcast. I listened in delight a few nights ago when an episode about death aired on KQED. An hour of philosophical and scientific stories about death, a subject we all must spend a fair amount of time thinking and dreaming about.

A couple of examples.

The three stages of death: 1. Your body dies. 2. It's buried or cremated. 3. Your name is spoken for the last time. They postulate that your soul is in limbo until you reach stage 3. For most people that day is the day you're joined in death by your last loved one. And this makes the point that fame, which so many peope seek, may not be such a great thing. After you reach stage 2, you have no influence on how your name is used. The poor farmer whose property was turned into a college after he died, and was named after him, now must wait until the college closes. And that might not happen for quite a while.

The next idea is about a dead language, Latin. What does it sound like? No one knows, because the last native Latin speaker died centuries ago. But think about pottery. It's spun on a wheel while wet. Maybe, just maybe while it's being spun, the grooves faintly record people speaking around the potter. So a Roman vase might be an ancient phonograph record and contain echoes of long-dead Latin-speakers.

These ideas aren't useful but they touch something inside me that I like.

Bravo!

Once in a while you come across a gem like the Radio Lab podcast. I listened in delight a few nights ago when an episode about death aired on KQED. An hour of philosophical and scientific stories about death, a subject we all must spend a fair amount of time thinking and dreaming about.

A couple of examples.

The three stages of death: 1. Your body dies. 2. It's buried or cremated. 3. Your name is spoken for the last time. They postulate that your soul is in limbo until you reach stage 3. For most people that day is the day you're joined in death by your last loved one. And this makes the point that fame, which so many peope seek, may not be such a great thing. After you reach stage 2, you have no influence on how your name is used. The poor farmer whose property was turned into a college after he died, and was named after him, now must wait until the college closes. And that might not happen for quite a while.

The next idea is about a dead language, Latin. What does it sound like? No one knows, because the last native Latin speaker died centuries ago. But think about pottery. It's spun on a wheel while wet. Maybe, just maybe while it's being spun, the grooves faintly record people speaking around the potter. So a Roman vase might be an ancient phonograph record and contain echoes of long-dead Latin-speakers.

These ideas aren't useful but they touch something inside me that I like.

Bravo!

Once in a while you come across a gem like the Radio Lab podcast. I listened in delight a few nights ago when an episode about death aired on KQED. An hour of philosophical and scientific stories about death, a subject we all must spend a fair amount of time thinking and dreaming about.

A couple of examples.

The three stages of death: 1. Your body dies. 2. It's buried or cremated. 3. Your name is spoken for the last time. They postulate that your soul is in limbo until you reach stage 3. For most people that day is the day you're joined in death by your last loved one. And this makes the point that fame, which so many peope seek, may not be such a great thing. After you reach stage 2, you have no influence on how your name is used. The poor farmer whose property was turned into a college after he died, and was named after him, now must wait until the college closes. And that might not happen for quite a while.

The next idea is about a dead language, Latin. What does it sound like? No one knows, because the last native Latin speaker died centuries ago. But think about pottery. It's spun on a wheel while wet. Maybe, just maybe while it's being spun, the grooves faintly record people speaking around the potter. So a Roman vase might be an ancient phonograph record and contain echoes of long-dead Latin-speakers.

These ideas aren't useful but they touch something inside me that I like.

Bravo!

In 2006, my friend Ken Hollings, author of Welcome to Mars, wrote and presented a BBC Radio 4 piece about Philip K. Dick's weird relationship with God. As Ken says, it's a "a strange tale of madness, machines and attempted suicide." The star-studded list of contributors include Kim Stanley Robinson, Ray Nelson, Brian Aldiss, Tim Powers, James Blaylock, and the PKD android that mysteriously vanished shortly after the program was recorded. The fantastic show, titled Confessions Of A Crap Artist, is now available on Speechification.
Confessions of a Crap Artist

An anonymous reader notes a CNN.com report on Nanocomp Technologies, the first in the world to make sheets of carbon nanotubes. "In April, [CEO] Lashmore had a mechanical multicaliber gun shoot bullets at different versions of his sheet, each less than a fifth of an inch thick. ... Army tests show the material works as well as Kevlar. The military also hopes to replace copper wiring in planes and satellites with highly conductive nanotubes, saving millions of dollars in fuel costs."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Matt_dk writes "Members of a key Congressional committee on Tuesday voiced support for NASA's Constellation program, designed to get astronauts back to the moon. The comments came a week after an expert panel said NASA's plans were not possible, given its current budget. The occasion was an appearance by Norman Augustine, head of a committee formed to consider the future of human space exploration. The Augustine committee sent a summary report to the White House last week saying NASA needs at least an extra $3 billion a year to implement the Constellation moon program. The report also included several alternatives to that program. At a feisty session on Tuesday, Congress was having none of those alternatives, starting just minutes into the two-hour hearing."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you are clinging to Lego as the last uncorrupted innocence of your childhood, look away! This is creepy stuff, and at other time of the year would be totally inappropriate content. Ain't Halloween great?

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We've already discussed how delusional it is to believe that 10 to 15% of online newspaper readers will suddenly convert to paying for online news content, but the numbers may be even worse than that. Jeff Sonderman points us to Alan Mutter discussing a report that suggests newspapers are vastly overcounting their online audiences:

In "nearly every market" included in a study of 118 newspapers of every size in every part of the country, Greg Harmon of Belden Interactive found that publishers on average report the number of unique visitors to their websites is 1.3 times larger than the population of their respective communities -- and fully 10 times greater than their print circulation.

Those numbers are not just moderately overstated. "They are magnificently incorrect," said Harmon

And that's a massive problem. If they're already expecting 10 to 15% of that population to pay, and it turns out that the real population is a lot smaller and a smaller percentage signs up to pay, the numbers that those in the industry are throwing around concerning paywalls are going to not just be bad, but they're going to be downright embarrassing.

On top of this, that same study noted that newspapers don't seem to realize how little of their actual traffic is from loyal visitors, which tend to only represent about 25% of the actual traffic. And, just because someone's a loyal visitor, it doesn't mean they'll pay. This leaves newspapers in a seriously bad spot when it comes to doing any sort of prediction on how a paywall will work:

• You don't really know how many unique visitors you have.
• You have to guess at the percentage of loyal visitors who will be amenable to paying for content.
• You have to guess the price loyal visitors might pay.
• You have to estimate not only how much web traffic you will lose but also how far your ad revenues will tumble in response to the almost certain decline in page views.

It's like watching a train wreck in motion. I'm hopeful that most newspaper execs actually have some inkling of this -- which is why we've heard mostly talk, and seen so little action, on paywalls.

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Create the illusion of a miniaturized world with this photographic technique.
Thanks go to Dennison Bertram for the original article in MAKE, Volume 09.
To download The Tilt-Shift Photography video click here and subscribe in iTunes.
Check out the complete Tilt-Shift Photography article in MAKE, Volume 09
and you can see that in our Digital Edition.

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Hugh Pickens writes "Wired reports that scientists have discovered that insects from cockroaches to caterpillars all emit the same stinky blend of fatty acids when they die and that the death mix may represent a universal, ancient warning signal to avoid their dead or injured. 'Recognizing and avoiding the dead could reduce the chances of catching the disease,' says Biologist David Rollo of McMaster University 'or allow you to get away with just enough exposure to activate your immunity.' Researchers isolated unsaturated fatty acids containing oleic and linoleic acids from the corpses of dead cockroaches and found that their concoction repelled not just cockroaches, but ants and caterpillars. 'It was amazing to find that the cockroaches avoided places treated with these extracts like the plague,' says Rollo. Even crustaceans like woodlice and pillbugs, which diverged from insects 400 million years ago, were repelled leading scientists to think the death mix represents a universal warning signal. Scientists hope the right concoction of death smells might protect crops. Thankfully, human noses can't detect the fatty acid extracts. 'I've tried smelling papers treated with them and don't smell anything strong and certainly not repellent,' writes Rollo in an e-mail. 'Not like the rotting of corpses that occurs later and is detectable from great distances.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When Google patents ideas that have been openly discussed and implemented in the RSS community, and then doesn't understand why this raises objections -- well, I'd say we have had a failure to communicate. At least.

I'm thinking about the patent that Google was granted on September 15 that covers reading lists for feeds. They say it covers other things, and that's probably true, and if so -- if they had to patent something they should have stuck to the new stuff. And I think there's a good argument that they should follow the conventions of the community and not patent their innovations, rather contribute them in the same fashion that others had contributed their good ideas.

It's as if Google ran Linux servers and used the fact in their marketing (no problem). Then five years later it turns out they had forked the Linux code base (which is permitted) and was marketing it under their own brand name (okay) and had not checked their improvements back into the community (there's the problem). This would be a violation of the norms of the community. True, it would also be a violation of the open source license, and perhaps we should have one in the RSS community. But in both cases these licenses would be hard or impossible to enforce. I don't believe the GPL has ever been tested in court. And in the case of open formats and protocols, who knows if such restrictions would even be legal. But clearly the "norms" part of the argument is stronger than the legal one. If Google wants to be part of the RSS community, it should be respectful of it. That means not using their size and legal resources to take what's good about our work, foreclose it, sell it as their own, and control others' use of it (which is the point of a patent).

All of this adds up to nothing if Google's lawyers are like lawyers everywhere, and they probably are. And if all their talk about being supportive of open source is just talk. But, on the chance that they're serious about wanting to work with and support open communities of developers, there are pragmatic reasons why they should be respectful and careful. And they have not been either.

This isn't all about Google...

The rest of us could have taken steps to prevent this problem. And we still can head off similar problems in the future.

1. There is an idea out their called peer-to-patent. The USPTO ran a pilot project that just ended. Seems like a good idea. Basically the patent applications are published before they are granted, giving experts a chance to comment on the novelty of the work, thus providing guidance to the examiner.

2. I've long argued that there must be a parallel patent system, a good one, that works more or less the same way as the USPTO's process with one important difference. At the end of the process the public owns the invention. The creator is given full credit for his or her work, which often is all they want. But a careful document is generated that creates a hole within which there will never be patents. Every one of these unpatents acts to combat the bad kind of patents. (This idea has already been widely discussed.)

3. And perhaps there should be cash awards for those unpatents, to create commercial incentives to produce novel ideas. That would go a long ways to counter the (imho invalid) argument that patents spawn innovation. I think quite the opposite. Most patents in my area are like Google's reading list patent. Filed after-the-fact by a big company, claiming the ideas of engineers working outside of large companies.

alphadogg writes 'Microsoft's new CodePlex Foundation has serious flaws to correct if it wants to become a credible force in the open source industry, and attract a diverse collection of developers and participants, according to an expert in forming consortia and foundations. Andy Updegrove, a lawyer and founder of ConsortiumInfo.org, says Microsoft has created with CodePlex a rigid foundation that has almost no wiggle room and a poorly crafted governance structure that concentrates authority at the top and leaves little power to others who might join the foundation.' Here is Andy's detailed analysis of CodePlex's structure: "Over the past 22 years, I've helped structure scores of open, consensus based consortia and foundations, and represented over 100 in all... In this blog entry, I'll show where I think the legal and governance structure of CodePlex has wandered off the open path, and offer specific recommendations for how the structure could be changed to give people (other than Microsoft business partners) confidence that CodePlex will be an organization worth joining."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dutch maker Mike Thompson designed and built this Wi-Fi dowsing rod by joining old and new to deliver a whimsically arcane device.

Todays technology advances at such a speed that often consumers are left in awe of it all. The high tech terminology, the ultra small, ultra portable, metallic or white devices we carry around with us are, to the vast amount of consumers, simply baffling. The Wifi Dowsing Rod aims to work against this. By basing the design for a wireless internet detector on century's old technology, the user feels immediately at home with the product, whilst feeling less intimidated by the simple shape and natural materials.

[via techchee]

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Here's a simple way to turn a broken lens -- available in plenty at yard sales -- into a fisheye for your point-and-shoot.

Recycling Project - A Broken Glass To A Fisheye Lens

(via Make)

Smokescreen is a privacy game for kids, it runs them through a series of clever online missions that serve to explain how information disclosed on social sites like Facebook can come back and bite you in the ass:

Horror stories about social networks are legion. From teenagers who announce house parties online only for hundreds of gatecrashers to show up and wreck the place to people who've been fired over pictures they posted or Facebook status updates when they're supposed to be ill... and far worse things can and do happen too. But online social networking isn't going away and age restrictions don't really keep young teenagers off websites, so Channel 4 has come up with Smokescreen, a game that teaches players about the potential pitfalls of posting their every thought and action online...

The game, created by Six to Start, uses familiar-looking social networks to tell a story. Players interact with characters in the game to solve a mystery, and while the problematic aspects of social networks are highlighted along the way, it's fun rather than didactic. So in one mission, you use 'Gaggle' search to find the 'Fakebook' and 'Tweetr' accounts of a girl your friend fancies, then dig around to see where she's going out that night, what she'll be wearing, and what her interests are, so that your friend can better chat her up. Each piece of information that she shared seemed totally innocuous until you put it all together and use it to stalk her: it's scary how easy it is, and how totally plausible.

Smokescreen

Game neatly sidesteps social networking horrors (Wired UK)

(Disclosure: My wife, Alice Taylor, commissioned Smokescreen for Channel 4)

Wouter sez,

From October 29 till November 1, the international Forum on Access to Culture and Knowledge in the Digital Age is organised in Barcelona. Exgae, Networked Politics and the Free Knowledge Institute, three renown and respected organisations working in the field of civil rights are behind this important event.

The Forum will be a major international meeting of the most relevant organizations and individuals working on the international scene, who are engaged in reflecting on the social and economic challenges of the dissemination of culture and knowledge in the digital age.

While the European Union discusses legislation and self-regulation proposals, at the state and community level, the forum aims to articulate the valuable proposals that are emerging from civil society, so that it too can participate in this legislative process. The forum is based on the idea of finding ways to harmonise the recognition of creativity, innovation and investment with the civil rights of access to knowledge and culture and with sustainable development.

Free Culture Forum: Organization and Action (Thanks, Wouter!)

Tony from the StarShipSofa podcast sez,

Celebrating the show's 100th episode, show host and editor Tony C. Smith unveiled StarShipSofa Stories Volume 1, an anthology of some of the finest stories featured on the show. The book was released simultaneously in print-on-demand paperback (deluxe and standard versions) and a free downloadable ebook. This is absolutely the first anthology to present writers of this calibre without big publisher backing - from Science Fiction Grand Master Michael Moorcock to Hugo winners Elizabeth Bear and Jeffrey Ford to the SF writer who's just bagged the £1,000,000 ten book deal Alastair Reynolds (that's almost $2,000,000 in the USA).

Speaking of seeing, that's something you've got to do with this book. Don't take my word for it -- download the free ebook or flip through the pages for yourself with the super-cool online widget. This volume is an homage to the tatty old paperbacks of science fiction past, recapturing the visual wonder of the 1950's pulp paperbacks that we all love so well. Original artwork sets off each story, rendered by top artists published by the likes of 2000AD and Neil Gaiman. Sprinkled liberally throughout are original vintage images and magazine adverts from the 1950's. A true homage to classic science fiction and a daring experiment in the publishing revolution, this is nostalgia nouveau and tomorrow today all in one package.

Anthology (Thanks, Tony!)

A North Carolina man who suffered from terrible lung ailments is recovering nicely now that doctors have removed a 1" piece of plastic cutlery from his lung; the man believes it is part of a utensil from Wendy's that got into his drink: "I like to take big gulps of drink."

Doctors at Duke University Medical Center say the plastic fragment of an eating utensil -- with the Wendy's logo still legible on the side -- was likely to blame for the coughing, fatigue and pneumonia spells that plagued John Manley for almost two years.

They pulled the fast-food foreign object from Manley's left lung during a Sept. 10 surgery. The 50-year-old Wilmington resident said he probably inhaled it while gulping a drink from Wendy's.

"I like to take big gulps of drink," the former home remodeler said. "I don't know of any other ways of it getting in there."

NC doctor removes plastic fragment lodged in lung (Thanks, Anonimouse)

A group of five prison guards in Australia wanted to bitch about their boss... and did so in a private group on Facebook. Yet, somehow, their superiors found out about it and accused them of misconduct and threatened to have the guards fired. In response, the guards are suing, and saying they should have a right to speak their mind on a private message board like that. As a union official notes: "It's more like people getting together in a pub and having a beer and bagging the boss because the boss wants to privatize their jobs." Indeed. Though, it seems like these sorts of things are becoming more common. As the entire work/life dividing line continues to blur, expect many more such situations, where things that were previously considered safely on the "life" side of the line, suddenly find themselves thrust into the "work" side.

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storagedude sends in an article claiming that RAID is nearing the end of the line because of soaring rebuild times and the growing risk of data loss. "The concept of parity-based RAID (levels 3, 5 and 6) is now pretty old in technological terms, and the technology's limitations will become pretty clear in the not-too-distant future — and are probably obvious to some users already. In my opinion, RAID-6 is a reliability Band Aid for RAID-5, and going from one parity drive to two is simply delaying the inevitable. The bottom line is this: Disk density has increased far more than performance and hard error rates haven't changed much, creating much greater RAID rebuild times and a much higher risk of data loss. In short, it's a scenario that will eventually require a solution, if not a whole new way of storing and protecting data."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This fisheye lens is made from the innards of a broken Sigma 28-200mm lens. I have come across a few broken, or just old and scratched, camera lenses at garage sales that would be perfect for this project.

Although there aren't specific directions on how to make one, the image above does make it look easy. via - DIYPhotography

In the Maker Shed:


High-Speed Photography Kit Version 4

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We've been discussing a lot of different cases involving anonymity of online commenters lately, and Sam Bayard has the details on a case in California where the judge appears to have come up with a (too?) clever solution to the question of protecting anonymity. Rather than directly reveal the commenters, the judge says that the guy who wants to know their identity can hire an independent third party (at the guy's own expense) who will get the IP addresses and investigate the identities. But, he also has to provide that third party with a list of names who he thinks are responsible. If the names associated with the IP addresses match up with the names on the list, they'll be revealed. If not, the commenters remain anonymous.

Now, the details of this particular case are quite a bit different than the typical cases involving anonymous commenters. Specifically, most such cases involve people pissed off at the commenters and wishing to sue them. In this case, the guy (Calvin Chang) is involved in an employment discrimination/breach of contract dispute with UC Davis, and believes some of the commenters on a certain blog post (about his case) work for the university and posted details that prove a breach of an earlier settlement. So, he's not looking to sue them, but wants to use their identities as evidence in his ongoing case.

Thus, you can sort of understand where the judge is coming from. The identities themselves don't matter at all if they're not employed by the university. But if they are among those employed by the university and prove that the university breached an agreement, then suddenly their identities could be more important. Still, I tend to think that unless the person suing can present full evidence of a violation, the right to anonymity should prevail.

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cheerytt writes "Let this be a lesson to all the broken-hearted geeks out there. A 38-year-old Ohio man is set to plead guilty to federal charges after spyware he meant to install on the computer of a woman he'd had a relationship with ended up infecting computers at a children's hospital. Spyware was sent to the woman's Yahoo e-mail address in the hope it would be used to monitor what his former girlfriend was doing on her PC. But instead, she opened the spyware on a computer in the hospital's pediatric cardiac surgery department. The spyware sent more than 1,000 screen captures via e-mail, including details of medical procedures, diagnostic notes and other confidential information relating to 62 patients. The man will pay $33,000 to the hospital for damages and faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Recently, I wrote about how musicians need both good music and marketing to be successful. That was in response to Bob Lefsetz' recent complaints that too many musicians with neat business models these days seem too focused on the marketing side, rather than promoting the music. But I think it's unfair to play down the importance of the marketing side. While not specifically jumping into that discussion, Hypebot's Bruce Houghton is making a very similar point by debunking the myth that there was some era when musicians could just focus on being musicians:

I'm sorry if this comes as a surprise, but it has never been enough to just make great music. Every generation of musicians has had to face their own challenges which forced them to go beyond creation and recording.

Frank Sinatra made movies to reach a bigger fan base. Elvis's hips and haircut were as much a part of his success as his recordings were. David Bowie learned that image and imagery could propel him to greater heights. After Saturday Night Fever, dance steps helped propel many live shows and for a time MTV made being visual an important component of success.

Whether it's getting in a van and giving an endless string of memorable performances or sitting on the phone for hours talking to journalists, there have always been skills beyond just making music that, if not required, certainly made success more likely

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Check out this triple tall MakerBot, and its maiden print, the Statue of Liberty!

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Joshua-Michele Ross is suggesting that people suggesting new business models for newspapers should give it up, because newspaper companies are simply unable to adapt:

Because the news industry doesn't suffer from a shortage of ideas or possible revenue models, it suffers from a different but more acute malady: being an institution during a time of disruptive change.

While we have all been busy telling the newspaper institution what they should do differently we have missed one big point: Institutions are structured to precisely NOT do much of anything different.

I have to say, I don't find this convincing. While I think it's true that most newspapers won't do enough to change and will face more trouble because of it, claiming that they cannot change is questionable. Yes, it's quite difficult for companies in an industry being disrupted to make that shift, but there are cases where companies do make the shift. Intel switched from a memory business to a processor business. IBM has pretty much made the shift from a big tech company to a services company. Nokia used to make rubber boots. Companies with good and visionary management (and a healthy appetite for taking some big risks) can make, and have made, tectonic shifts. Yes, it's true that most don't do this, it does not mean that it's impossible. Claiming that they're structured not to make the change isn't true. They do have legacy issues, but it doesn't mean they can't make a big move to fix that.

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Better Living With MakerBot - Episode 1: Kitchen Lamp. The future is here, we just haven't printed it out yet...

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Harry writes "In 1986, Apple unveiled one of the most popular Macintoshes ever, the Mac Plus. The company gave the first one (serial number #F4200NUM0001) to Star Trek's creator, Gene Roddenberry. And now this very Mac Plus will go up for auction at a Hollywood collectibles event on October 8th and 9th, complete with a letter of authenticity from Roddenberry's son. The estimated value is only $800-$1200, which seems reasonable enough, given its double historical significance." Any bets on how high the bidding will go?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There have been a number of lawsuits over the past few years from artists who are complaining about how the major record labels account for iTunes sales. The question is whether or not a song sold on iTunes is the same as a CD sale (a tiny tiny royalty) or more like licensing a song for a commercial (more like a 50% royalty). Obviously, the record labels want iTunes treated like a CD. But musicians have a reasonable argument that an iTunes sale may be a lot more like a typical license, as a big part of the reason in the discrepancy in the royalty rates is that there's no (expensive) physical packaging and distribution to handle. The Allman Brothers were one of the first to file lawsuits on this issue suing both Sony Music, and then a couple years later, Universal Music Group (I'm still not clear why they sued the two separately, years apart). Eminem also had sued UMG over this issue and lost, as a jury said iTunes was more like a CD sale.

UMG tried to get the case from the Allmans dismissed, but davebarnes alerts us to the news that the court has refused to dismiss the case, and it will proceed to a full trial. Of course, like Eminem, the Allmans may lose the trial, but it's better than having the case dismissed outright. Of course, if the Allmans win, it will create a bunch of similar lawsuits in short order, as pretty much every artist will be demanding a lot more iTunes revenue.

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There are so many clunky, unattractive music-sharing sites out there, and SoundCloud is a clear exception. I first checked it out when I found out that one of my all-time favorite DJs, Jason Hodges, was using SoundCloud to share his mixes. Hands down, my favorite feature is the smooth interface and how user-friendly it is. You can listen, download, favorite, and (my favorite part) comment on the exact part of the track or mix you're referring to. No more conversations that go like "what is the track at 5:37?" Instead, you just click and comment. A friend noticed most comments were at the high points in the music, which makes sense, but it would be fun to graph. You can see what the interface looks like in the screen grab above, with the thin blue lines denoting comments posted (mousing over reveals comment text).

Like other networking sites, you can "follow" people, and weekly SoundCloud sends you a Weather Report, telling you what new music has been uploaded by peeps you follow. When you go to your own dashboard in SoundCloud, you can hit play and listen to all the newness. The community represented on the site include musicians, producers, DJs, and vocalists, albeit mostly in the electronic music realm, and the focus is definitely sharing, networking, and providing feedback.

What I didn't know is how developer-friendly SoundCloud is. They just announced a C wrapper for the SoundCloud API to add to their existing libraries (Cocoa, Python, Ruby, ActionScript 3). Check out their developer hub and their
Developer Manifesto for more deets. They're also proud sponsors of the Music Hack Day happening in Berlin this weekend. (On a side note, love this from the Hack Day site: "This event is about doing & not about just talking. Sessions will be very limited and after that its all about building and realising real products." Amen!)

Now I'll pass the mic to this simple but clever overview vid for more info:

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CWmike writes "Today Microsoft launched a limited beta test of its Office Web Apps, the company's first public unveiling of its rival for Google's Web applications. Dubbed a 'technical preview' by Microsoft to denote that it's by invitation only, Office Web Apps will be available on the company's Windows Live site via a special 'Documents' tab. 'Tens of thousands have been invited to participate in the Technical Preview,' said a spokeswoman in a reply to questions. An analyst with Directions on Microsoft is quoted: 'This is earlier than I expected. I thought we wouldn't see this until the SharePoint conference at the end of October. Maybe the recent Google moves had some bearing on Microsoft's timing.' The reference was to Google's announcement Tuesday that it will offer online services next year, including Google Web Apps, that are specially designed for US government agencies."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Justin Huynh writes in:

The Eli Whitney Museum in Hamden, CT is hosting a maker meetup on September 23, at 7:30 PM. Museum Director Wm Brown will be giving a talk called "Eli Whitney invented MAKE" to kick-off this series of maker meetups, especially since the modern-day maker embodies many of the qualities that made Eli Whitney a successful inventor.

Like many of the exhibits and events at the Museum, it will be an open forum as well as a hands-on workshop. Bring whatever projects, tools, and parts to hack, experiment, and collaborate with other makers. Or try out projects from the Museum and fellow tinkerers. I'll be bringing some of my favorite gadgets too. Let us know you'll attend: kl@eliwhitney.org

Hope to see you there!

New Haven Maker Meetup

Wednesday, September 23, 7:30 pm

Eli Whitney Museum (directions)

915 Whitney Avenue

Hamden, CT 06517

(203) 777-1833

How Much: Free

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I've been a fan of the actor Jeremy Piven for years, but apparently he's a bit quick on the legal trigger. His lawyers have sent a cease-and-desist letter to a playhouse that has been showing a mocking play called "The Piven Monologues." Apparently, Piven had pulled out of a planned gig on Broadway in a revival of David Mamet's excellent play "Speed the Plow" (a role that Piven would be great in, actually). Piven claimed he couldn't do it because of "mercury poisoning" from eating too much sushi -- an odd excuse to be sure. Mamet supposedly was heard to comment: "My understanding is that he is leaving show business to pursue a career as a thermometer," leading some playwrights to put together a quick play more or less mocking and parodying the whole situation. Piven's lawyers are claiming that it's defamatory, but it's difficult to see how anyone would take anything in such a play seriously, as it's obviously a spoof. But, in these days of aggressive litigation and people thinking they get to control every use of their own brand or name, is it any surprise that Piven would lawyer up?

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