Vermillion County Prosecutor Nina Alexander is proud to be "enforcing the law as it was written" by prosecuting Sally Harpold, a grandmother who bought two boxes of cold medication in less than a week. Alexander admits she knows Harpold had no intention of making meth with the medicine. That's beside the point. "The public has the responsibility to know what is legal and what is not, and ignorance of the law is no excuse," she Alexander.

Vigo County Sheriff Jon Marvel got his chance to show off a rock-solid understanding of cause-and-effect, too:

“I feel for her, but if she could go to one of the area hospitals and see a baby born to a meth-addicted mother …”

Because the best way to prevent meth-addicted babies is to arrest women who buy cold medication for their grandchildren.

Coop took this great photo of Andy Warhol. Coop: "In the future, everyone will be an intergalactic bounty hunter for 15 minutes." Click the image for the Flickr post.

lurking_giant writes "Well, Microsoft has done it again with the YouTube Windows 7 launch party video that is turning the stomachs of even the mainstream press with it's clueless and campy marketing style. A Washington Post reader was quoted as saying 'If Microsoft had been put in charge of marketing sex, the human race would have ended long ago, because no one would be caught dead doing something that uncool.'" Even the Guardian's resident die-hard Apple hater calls it "the most nauseating advert in history."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Le Cochon danseur is a delightful French burlesque film from 1907. (Thanks, Mike Love!)

The Department of Homeland Security has pushed hard for the past few years to make sure it retains the right to search your laptop at the border with no real limitations. It is, indeed, (as defenders of this policy always like to point out) established law that the border is not in the country, so Constitutional 4th Amendment rights do not apply. That still doesn't make it right. I, like many others, would not have a problem with searches due to probable cause. Nor do we have any real problem with searches of physical luggage at the border. But a blank slate, seems like a bit much -- for a few reasons. First, the purpose of a border search is to see what you're bringing into the country. But, when it comes to digital data, no one's bringing it across the border to get it into the country. You could just send it over any number of internet protocols to get it into the country without using a laptop. So, the very rationale doesn't make sense. Second, when people travel, they specifically pick and choose what physical goods to put into their luggage. With a computer, the situation is the opposite. You automatically bring everything (including, potentially access to remote drives).

Still, DHS has insisted it wants to keep this right, even as some politicians have looked to protect against laptop searches at the border. Earlier this year, DHS put out slightly clearer rules, but which still allowed for no probable cause in doing a search.

One big question hanging over all of this, however, was how often such searches took place. Thomas O'Toole alerts us to a new DHS report that finally reveals the numbers -- and, it's at least marginally good news: these sorts of searches happen very rarely. That's a good thing and suggests that the policy isn't widely abused:

Of the more than 144 million travelers that arrived at U.S. ports of entry between Oct. 1, 2008 and May 5, 2009, searches of electronic media were conducted on 1,947 of them, the DHS said.

Of this number, 696 searches were performed on laptop computers, the DHS said. Even here, not all of the laptops received an "in-depth" search of the device, the report states. A search sometimes may have been as simple as turning on a device to ensure that it was what it purported to be. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents conducted "in-depth" searches on 40 laptops, but the report did not describe what an in-depth search entailed.

I'm certainly happy to see that such a policy is used so rarely, but I still question why it should be used at all.

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chill writes "Nature is reporting that 'South Korean manufacturer Samsung Electronics announced this week that it has begun mass production of a new kind of memory chip that stores information by melting and freezing tiny crystals. Known as phase-change memory (PCM), the idea was first proposed by physicists in the 1960s.' With transistor-equivalent cells only 20 nm wide, switching time is around 16 ns. The first target market is cell phones, but the companies behind the technology see applications in PCs, servers, and other devices as well."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Joshua Glenn says: "I've just discovered that the French already had BlackBerries iPhones... back in 1960. Who knew?"

What is she holding?

Like AYDS and Beaver College, the WTF (Wisconsin Tourism Federation) got tired of being the butt of jokes and changed its name to the Tourism Federation of Wisconsin. That's too fucking weird, if you ask me.

WTF? No, TFW! (Thanks, Ben!)

TechReviewAl writes "A company called 80legs has come up with an interesting new web business model: customized, on-demand web spidering. The company sells access to its spidering system, charging $2 for every million pages crawled, plus a fee of three cents per hour of processing used. The idea is to offer Web startups a way to build their own web indexes without requiring huge server farms. 'Many startups struggle to find the funding needed to build large data centers, but that's not the approach 80legs took to construct its Web crawling infrastructure. The company instead runs its software on a distributed network of personal computers, much like the ones used for projects such as SETI@home. The distributed computing network is put together by Plura Processing, which rents it to 80legs. Plura gets computer users to supply unused processing power in exchange for access to games, donations to charities, and other rewards.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Now here's a perfect example of why I love the MAKE community. In response to my earlier post about the possibility of modern mechanical gate openers, reader MichaelLubke went out and took these photos (1,2,3) of a real live working mechanical gate near his ranch. What's more, he ran down the original patent on the gate's design! This patent, US number 3,163,947, was issued to Mr. Alvin E. Gandy of Eden, TX, in the year of Our Lord nineteen-hundred and sixty-five. His invention, known as the "Gandy Slide-A-Way," is activated by the weight of one of your vehicle's tires on a short steel ramp built into the driveway right in front of the gate. I wonder how many of these were ever made?

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Did you know that Make: Online has an electronic newsletter? Well, we used to. We haven't put an issue out in awhile, but we're going to start republishing it in October.

The newsletter is a great way to get more of an inside look at what's going on at Maker Media, and to get content you won't see on the site or in the magazine. We'll be launching several new columns, including "The Maker's Dictionary," a glossary of DIY technical terms, jargon, and slang that I'll be doing for each issue (I was the "Jargon Watch" editor at Wired for 12 years). We'll also run special newsletter offers and contests from time to time. And and even include some mini-projects.

If you're already signed up for the newsletter, you should see one in your inbox soon. If you haven't signed up, you can do so here.

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We were just writing about how the heirs of Jack Kirby were alerting... well... pretty much all of Hollywood that they were going to use their termination rights to take back the copyright on a large number of famous comic book characters. We noted how this showed one of the more bizarre aspects of copyright law. However, there's another, perhaps even more ridiculous parts: which is with these sorts of characters, no one's really sure who actually owns the copyright. For example, one of the characters the Kirby heirs are looking to get control over is Spiderman. The problem? There's a fair amount of evidence (including quotes from the Kirby family) that Jack Kirby did not create Spiderman and thus never should have the copyright on Spiderman. If true, that would indicate a rather major case of copyfraud, whereby someone claims copyright over something they have no rights to. But, in this case, it also highlights the silliness behind termination rights on things that were, at best, group creations for larger entities.

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Steve writes in with these build instructions for a classic bathtub playtoy, the tugboat. At first glance it seemed like a regular old wooden play boat, but there is something cooler here- it has a working steam engine!

I hadn't heard of pop-pop boats before, but apparently they used to be common toys. The pop-pop motor is a phase-change heat engine (fancy name for a device that converts heat into kinetic energy), and the popping sound is caused when the water turns into steam and causes the metal cavity to expand. Here is a video of someone else's build:

This looks like a pretty fun experiment- anyone make one of these before? Bonus points if it can be remote controlled.

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Laura says: "I came across this post where this teacher compares the disappearance of public drinking fountains and the rise of bottled water to the rise in popularity of charter schools."

Public water fountains are not dangerous (unless cooties are real). Tap water is safe, and the spigots are designed to prevent contamination.

The rise of bottled water here in the States shows how a public institution can be demonized and replaced by a much more expensive privatized solution.

Charter schools are like bottled water--they're believed to be superior, and their standards are less stringent that their more public counterparts. (Yes, I know that charter schools are part of the public school systems, but they are not public in the sense that they equally accept all students. This difference matters.)

Charter schools are like bottled water--they're believed to be superior, and their standards are less stringent that their more public counterparts.

An anonymous reader writes "A time lens can focus a chunk of time to a point, rather like a normal lens focuses light rays. Put two time lenses together and you can create what a Cornell University team calls a "time domain telescope" which can magnify time. They sent a 2.5 nanosecond long light pulse, encoding 24 bits of information, into their time telescope. What came out on the other side was the same 24 bit pulse, but compressed into 92 picoseconds. Squashing more information into a light pulse could help to send more information via optical fibres."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dean Putney took the photos of the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) used in the Pittsburgh G20 protest. He says:

My roommate and I went to check things out downtown to see how the riot was coming along. We stopped here along with the news crews and a few spectators to watch. Police came in off of city buses in groups of about 50 or so and down the street (in the UPitt campus) they were setting off smoke grenades, tear gas and using the LRAD. The police warned protestors to leave multiple times over the loudspeaker before and during their use of force.

Shortly after we arrived that one girl threw her bicycle at an officer. My roommate and I are in the news footage of that. We stuck around for a while afterwards, watched these trucks and the SWAT team vans go by, collected a couple of the smoke grenade cartridges and went home. The cartridges are pretty cool, 40mm rounds. Each one costs about $25, and there were at least a dozen of them on the street where we were.

Previously: G20 protesters blasted by sonic cannon

In the early days of podcasting, in January 2001, we got the bootstrap started with a feed of Grateful Dead songs. Every day or so I added a song to the feed, in case anyone was interested in writing an application that grabbed audio enclosures from feeds. I needed something to test with because Radio UserLand, which we were working on at the time, had the capability.

It took a few years for podcasting to catch on, but having that example feed made a difference. You have to start somewhere.

Now in 2009 we're trying to bootstrap a network of realtime feeds, and it's going pretty well so far. Podcasts are implemented with RSS too, and while we have excellent examples of realtime photo feeds, we don't yet have a realtime feed with audio.

So a week or so ago I started exploring options, and thought I'd use the Grateful Dead again, until JY suggested using a fast-updating audio feed from the Internet Archive. I took one look and realized this was it. It took a bit of a coding to check it periodically to see if it has updated, add a cloud element and notify one of my cloud servers. Now it's done.

http://static.newsriver.org/archiveOrg/podcastRss.xml

So if you're working on podcatching software give it a try.

Since River2 is a podcatcher, it automatically works with this feed.

Lady Ada and Phil Torrone made a $250 working replica of the Dazzler, a $1 million non-lethal puke flashlight developed at the request of the US Dept. of Homeland Security. The link below includes complete instructions for making one of your own.

Bedazzler DIY non-lethal weaponry

Bassam Tariq is a Boing Boing guestblogger who is the co-author of 30 Mosques. A blog that celebrated the NYC mosques during the Islamic month of Ramadan. He lives in Harlem, NY.



I do a lot of random YouTube video searching at work and somehow found this little commercial. Turns out there's a whole bunch of characters in this "Poo-verse." Dookie-Poo has a best friend, an uncle and a nephew. There is also this grumpy dog, Skooch the Pooch, that moved from NYC to Pooville.  Here's a little bio of Dookie-Poo off the site -

Dookie-Poo is not the smartest of all the Poos in Pooville but he tries real hard and he has good intentions. Dookie never quits because he's just too dumb to do so. He tries way beyond the point of all reasoning. Dookie doesn't think much about anything. In fact he almost never thinks at all.

I am tempted to throw some turd puns, but will resist. For more fecal-toon fun check out: www.dookie-poo.com

Bassam Tariq is a Boing Boing guestblogger who is the co-author of 30 Mosques. A blog that celebrated the NYC mosques during the Islamic month of Ramadan. He lives in Harlem, NY.

 

Check out Pogo's YouTube Channel for more videos - http://www.youtube.com/user/Fagottron

notthatwillsmith writes "Maximum PC just posted an exclusive hands on with Thermaltake's unique Level 10 case. This concept design features individual compartments for different components (each with dedicated cooling) all mounted on a black steel frame. The case looks like a prop from 2001, rendered in black steel instead of white plastic. It's absolutely unlike anything I've ever seen before."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Although the promised link to a step-by-step tutorial seems broken, this video by YouTuber msibbern, which shows off his pneumatic rattling rat-in-a-trash-can prop, contains lots of good nuts-and-bolts footage and is inspirational as well as amusing.

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

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A bunch of folks have been sending in Nate Anderson's article about how ignoring an RIAA lawsuit may be "cheaper" than going to trial. It makes for a nice storyline, but it's really not entirely accurate. It's based on the fact that Judge Gertner, who was the judge in the Joel Tenenbaum trial, just handed out some default judgments against people who never bothered to respond at all to an RIAA lawsuit over file sharing. In each case, Gertner chose the statutory minimum of $750 per song, much less than Jammie Thomas got in her two trials and Joel Tenenbaum received in his trial.

But, of course, these aren't apples-to-apples comparisons (not to mention that we're dealing with a classic "small sample size" problem). Specifically, the three trials involved a combination of poorly argued defenses that made the defendants look worse, combined with defendants themselves who both admitted to lying. And, add to that the fact that they're jury trials, where juries tend to give out larger awards than a judge does, and it's really not a huge surprise. If you had defendants who actually had a real case, combined with a defense team that actually argued the specific points, things might have been different. But, it looks like, with both Thomas and Tenenbaum, the goal was to create a bigger case that can get attention at higher levels to take on certain aspects of copyright law itself.

And, of course, as an addendum on the article notes, it's still probably cheaper to settle up in the first place, but that's exactly how the RIAA intends things to be. It's the same principle on which an extortion scam works: it's cheaper to pay up than to fight it. But, that doesn't mean it's right to just shut up and pay -- especially if the accused is innocent. As much as the RIAA must love Anderson's article, because it encourages people not to fight its lawsuits, the reality is a lot more complicated.

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This could have been a deleted scene from Children of Men.

US security forces turned the piercing sound on their own citizens yesterday to widespread outrage. Pittsburgh officials told the New York Times that it was the first time "sound cannon" had been used publicly.

G20 protesters blasted by sonic cannon

In the latest example of how just because you can do something doesn't mean you should, one credit union has decided to offer a new feature, dubbed "tweetMyMoney," that allows members to interact with their accounts via Twitter. Can't wait for the next version, "tweetSomeoneElsesMoney." "tweetMyMoney, available exclusively to Vantage members! With tweetMyMoney, you can monitor your account balance, deposits, withdrawals, holds and cleared checks with simple commands. And, you can even transfer funds within your account. It's all available on Twitter, 24/7!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thanks to Amy Crehore for pointing me to this video of Lonnie Johnson performing "Another Night to Cry" in 1963. Also, Amy is giving away one of her paintings to whoever comes up with the best title for it!

Last week, the New York-based MAKE team head up to GE's research center in Niskayuna, NY to meet some of their engineers, many of whom are makers in addition to what they make at work.

We met with Owen Schelenz, who showed us GE's developments in creating a "smart" power grid capable of adjusting home energy use based on many factors, including time-of-day rate fluctuations. He also showed us his spare-time project, a self-balancing two wheeled (Segway-like) vehicle, pictured above. Owen accompanied us down the halls on his conveyance, where we met Harry Ringermacher.

Harry demoed the non-destructive evaluation setup, which uses high-speed IR cameras to detect flaws in engine parts where it would be impossible to see otherwise. Harry then showed us his homemade astrophotography rig, with which he takes incredible pictures of galaxies.

Chris Wynnyk, a computer vision scientist, demoed some people-tracking surveillance software as well as his MATLAB-powered piano tuner.

Bob King showed us the all-electric vehicle lab, as well as his personal car, an electric VW Rabbit.

Last up was Stephen Zingelewicz and Aussie Schnore, who are working on some imaging and software components for digital pathology, which would make it possible for doctors separated by wide distances to evaluate medical slides and even mark them up with notes, like on Flickr.

We had a really great time meeting all the researchers at GE, and we hope they'll come to Maker Faire! Thanks to Todd Alhart for touring us around! Check out more pictures from me, Marc, and PT. GE also keeps a research blog about current projects, complete with video from the clean room.

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An anonymous reader writes to wonder if the glory has gone out of IT. One blogger remembered his first impression upon entering a profession in IT that made it seem like the place to be with a new shiny around every corner. What experiences have others had? Has a more pervasive technical culture forced our IT gurus into obsolescence?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've highlighted numerous studies that have shown how patents tend to hinder overall innovation, but there's no doubt that giving out monopolies may encourage different kinds of activities. Petra Moser's research comparing innovation in countries with patents to those without patents has shown that countries without patents tend to be just as innovative, but that the innovation takes different forms. Thus, patents tend to divert from the natural market of innovation to areas that are more easily "protectable." Whether or not that's actually "good" for progress is an open question. A while back, Stephen Kinsella posted a thought-provoking post from Prashant Singh Pawar examining how patents distort innovation incentives, based on a longer thesis he wrote up comparing "horizontal innovation" to "vertical innovation." Pawar's basic premise is that patents encourage "horizontal innovation" -- a totally different way of doing the same thing -- vs. "vertical innovation" -- building on what's been done before:

So, I finally came up with the terms 'Horizontal innovation', and 'Vertical Innovation'. Horizontal Innovation is when a parallel technology is discovered (usually to avoid patent infringement). For example if a company develops a flying car using (say) hydrolic expansion, and they get a patent of it, another company develops (or has to develop) a flying car technology by using Thermo-plazma radiator engine. Both these technologies achieve the same end, they enable a car to fly, so this is horizontal innovation. This is what patent proponents talk about being squashed when they say innovation will be reduced when patents are removed. There will not be Google G1 phone,Blackberry and iPhone if there were no IP rights.

Vertical innovation is when a technology is built top of another technology merely by adding a new element to it. For example if you develop a Car which can travel on water, and I take that car, and add a Sail to it to make it use wind then that's called a vertical innovation. With patents, only the patent holder can think of adding a sail on the boat-car and sell it, without patents, innovations will be done all over the world by every kind of boat and car enthusiast. There will be only one smart phone in this world, but it will be having numerous variants, such as a Google gPhone (synced with google services), a Microsoft mPhone (synced with microsoft services), and so on.

Patents promote horizontal innovation, but restrict vertical innovation. Without patents we will have more vertical innovation but less horizontal innovation.

It's an interesting theory, and it would be great to see some further research done to see if it's supported by the evidence. Of course, it also fits with what we've discussed in the past about the difference between invention (coming up with something new) and innovation (successfully bringing something to market such that people want it). Studies have shown over and over again that true innovation is an ongoing process, of continuing to build on what's come before, making it better and having it better serve the market. That is the sort of thing that we regularly see held back by patents -- it's the type of "vertical innovation" that Pawar is suggesting. Is society better off with a totally different type of flying car? Or are we better served by having lots more resources put towards making the flying car better serve our needs? I'd argue the latter, but would be interested to hear from people who argue the former.

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Hey, cool! MAKE subscriber Doug took up the challenge to re-make the word clock he saw here a few weeks ago, and wrote in to share his project with us. He built the front panel using an etched PCB (no laser cutter required!), and constructed a circuit board to illuminate the proper display sections using LEDs. Instructions and board layouts are available on his Instructable.

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Barence writes "An undercover investigation has revealed how Dell's online sales staff take liberties with the truth when trying to sell customers new PCs. One member of staff told an undercover reporter that he would need a PC with a good graphics card to download digital photos. Another, who was more incompetent than devious, was asked how many photos could be stored on a 250GB hard disk. 'Its[sic] on average 2 MB then 1024 MB * 2,' came the bewildering reply. Meanwhile, a sales assistant at supermarket Tesco told the reporter that netbooks got their name because 'a Japanese man on a plane fell asleep with a laptop on his thighs and was horribly burned, so the industry has dropped the name laptop.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Phase One has released the 645DF medium format camera developed with Mamiya Digital Imaging. The camera, which will be available under both brand names, offers flash sync speeds of up to 1/1600 of a second as well as faster AF and capture rates than its predecessors. It is the only 645 series camera offering both focal plane and leaf shutters and it is compatible with most digital backs designed for the Phase One and Mamiya AFD mount, including those from Phase One, Leaf and Mamiya. The two companies have also announced a partnership with lens specialist Schneider Kreuznach. The first results are 55mm, 80mm and 110mm F/2.8 leaf shutter lenses designed for the 645DF. The new camera and lenses are expected to start shipping by the end of this year. The 645DF is priced at $5990/€4290 and the lenses start at $2490/€1790.

All weekend, I've been inundated via email, Twitter, the submission page and more, from people all pointing me to musician Dan Bull's brilliant musical "open letter" to Lily Allen in response to the whole kerfuffle last week concerning Lily Allen's decision to speak out against musicians who said they disagreed with plans to kick file sharers off the internet. I wasn't sure if it was worth posting, because I began to feel like some might view it as piling on -- and the purpose here was never to drag anyone down or abuse anyone. I thought I had been clear about that in each and every one of my posts -- and, for the most part, all of the conversations and discussions I'd seen on the topic were quite reasonable and fair. My posts never attacked Ms. Allen, but tried to raise the level of discourse, asking her to respond to certain questions -- and at the same time highlight how her position was, in fact, a bit hypocritical, seeing as she had been doing many of the same things that she said were destroying the industry.

And yet, with Ms. Allen shutting down the blog, and claiming it was because of "abuse," some people have started accusing me of "bullying" Ms. Allen. An IP lawyer in our comments insists that I am somehow bullying her in simply asking questions. One recording industry lawyer accused me of "leading" my "internet army" of "hackers" to "attack" any artist who agreed with Allen (what?!?). Then there was the major publication that claimed that Techdirt was upset about Allen copying our blog post and that we had "suddenly discovered the power of copyright." Apparently reading comprehension isn't a strong point there, seeing as we made no copyright claim at all, were happy that she copied our post, and merely used it as a teaching moment to show why everything wasn't nearly as clear cut as Ms. Allen believed. Suddenly, just because Ms. Allen cried "abuse," despite no evidence of any actual abuse, her supporters started assuming that it must be me who was doing the "abusing."

The whole thing has become rather insane, frankly. But I'm not afraid to respond to folks who raise reasonable questions. I don't shut down and hide when someone brings up points that weren't addressed. Ms. Allen kicked this whole thing off and claimed she was just trying to start a discussion. And we responded, by pointing out the inconsistencies in her position. That wasn't an attack. Plenty of people who first jump into a debate on copyright or file sharing don't fully understand the issues -- and the best way to help them get past those initial misconceptions is to ask important questions, and highlight how the issue is a lot more complex than it may appear at first blush. The fact that Ms. Allen was distributing others' copyrighted music on her own, and used that to help build her popularity -- while now claiming that the same activity by others was destroying the opportunity for new artists made little sense -- and the double standard seemed worth calling out. And, despite her deleting her blog, some actually saved many of the comments on her blog. And, again, they don't show "abuse," but thoughtful, reasoned argument along these lines -- none of which Ms. Allen has responded to as of yet. That post, by the way, also highlights numerous factual errors in Ms. Allen's earlier responses.

So, yes, I'm going to post this video, because I think it's great (and catchy) and because I think it does further the conversation, just not in the direction that Ms. Allen intended. It's from a fan of Ms. Allen's work, and is endearing, not attacking. It's entertaining. It's free... and it got me to go and buy Dan Bull's first album, even though he's offering it up for free, too. Ms. Allen wanted a conversation and she claims she wanted more new music. Well, here's both in one shot: This isn't "abuse." This isn't an "attack." This is, as all of my posts on this subject have been, an attempt to get Ms. Allen to actually think through these issues and answer some questions which it appears she has not considered. If reaching her by song is the way to do it, then that would be wonderful. However, I fear that she's decided to declare victory and walk away, rather than address any of the points raised.

While lots of people have picked up on various aspects of the song, the two points that I think are most relevant are pointing out that downloads don't equal sales, so stopping downloads (or kicking people off the internet) doesn't make people pay up. This is a point we've been raising for ages, and no one ever responds. The industry seems to think that magically people will start paying. And yet, there's no evidence of that whatsoever.

The second point is sarcastic, but is really a good one. Dan Bull jokes that using the same logic of people who think that stopping piracy (as if that's possible) will make people buy more music, perhaps we should ban CDs, because (according to this logic) "then people would have to pay to see bands for real." There's a huge disconnect here. The people who think that blocking activity online (and, remember, study after study after study has shown that "pirates" end up spending a lot more on music) will drive more of some other buying activity have no sense of economic history.

Taking away what fans want to do doesn't drive them to paying you more money. It drives them towards others who actually treat fans right. Like Dan Bull.

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If you are curious about the technical details of designing and laying out gears and gear trains, you can download a complete, free, public domain copy of the 1922 edition of the American Machinist Gear Book from Google Books right now.

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In an effort to create future Centennial Challenges, NASA is asking the general public to come up with (and submit) ambitious contest ideas. For the next six weeks, the Innovative Partnerships Program will be accepting ideas for new contests, with all submissions becoming public domain information. "According to NASA, any idea can be proposed for a prize competition that addresses challenges related to the mission of NASA in aeronautics, exploration, science, or space operations. Crosscutting topics or those that also address related national or global needs are especially valuable. The challenges must require basic and applied research, technology development or prototype demonstrations."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists in China have discovered the oldest dinosaur that had feathers. Thought to be between 1 to 11 million years older than the first known bird, the dinosaur, named Anchiornis huxley, was about 28 centimeters tall at its hip. From Science News:

Two types of feather adorn the creature, said (Xing) Xu, of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing. One kind, commonly referred to as “dino-fuzz,” resembles a frayed bundle of filaments. The other type, similar in overall structure to the feathers of modern-day birds, consists of small filaments that branch from a larger shaftlike filament.

The dino-fuzz decorates the creature’s head and neck. About two dozen of the shafted feathers adorn each forelimb, and a similar number embellish each lower leg and foot, the researchers report. Unlike most feathered dinosaurs described previously, which have the longest forelimb feathers near the tip of the limb, Anchiornis’ longest forelimb feathers are on the wrist, Xu said. Feathers on the legs and feet appear to have overlapped each other, creating aerodynamic surfaces that would have, in essence, given Anchiornis a wing on each of its four limbs

"Feather-covered dinosaur fossils found"

Ok, we admit it, we're tool junkies. Some people have it for gadgets, but who can resist a great-looking (and great-functioning) hand tool? Make: Online and Garrett Wade would like to give you some.

The Garrett Wade Push Drill is a special tool that drills holes by rotating as you push down on the handle. When you release, the handle springs back, clearing the hole. From the product description:

Remember the classic Yankee Push Drill that was once found in every shop and every jobsite tool bag? Made by Stanley for decades until they dropped it about 4 years ago, it was made of chrome-plated solid brass, and beautifully finished. Now we have had it custom-made for Garrett Wade in Taiwan.

Our own Sean Ragan describes the Extra Heavy Duty Screwdriver Set (which he reviewed in MAKE, Volume 19) as "military-grade awesome:"

These are full-tang, forged-steel, flat-blade screwdrivers that serve equally well in turning screws, prying stuff, and, you know, killing people who try to open your hatch. They're heavy and nigh indestructible, and they have an anomalously sleek, streamlined shape that feels great in your hand and is not bad looking in your boot, either.

And you can win one of these Garrett Wade tools! Just leave a comment on this post and tell us how these tools would help you complete a project you're working on, or one you've yet to start! Please be sure to include your email address in the comment form field (won't be published). All comments will be closed at noon PST on Wednesday, September 30, and the lucky winners will be announced next week here on Make: Online. Good luck!

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Trailrunner7 writes "Bruce Schenier writes on Threatpost.com: 'In computer security, a lot of effort is spent on the authentication problem. Whether it is passwords, secure tokens, secret questions, image mnemonics, or something else, engineers are continually coming up with more complicated — and hopefully more secure — ways for you to prove you are who you say you are over the Internet. This is important stuff, as anyone with an online bank account or remote corporate network knows. But a lot less thought and work have gone into the other end of the problem: how do you tell the system on the other end of the line that you are no longer there? How do you un-authenticate yourself? My home computer requires me to log out or turn my computer off when I want to un-authenticate. This works for me because I know enough to do it, but lots of people just leave their computer on and running when they walk away. As a result, many office computers are left logged in when people go to lunch, or when they go home for the night. This, obviously, is a security vulnerability.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Boing Boing guestblogger Mitch Horowitz is author of Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation and editor-in-chief of Tarcher/Penguin publishers.

When discussing the occult, a natural question arises: Just what is the occult? In short, the occult encompasses a wide range of mystical philosophies and mythical lore, particularly the belief in an "unseen world" whose forces act upon us and through us. Here is a piece of my introduction to Occult America that expands on that question....

Occultism describes a tradition--religious, literary, and intellectual--that has existed throughout Western history. The term comes from the Latin occultus, meaning "hidden" or "secret." The word occult entered modern use through the work of Renaissance scholar Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, who used it to describe magical practices and veiled spiritual philosophies in his three-volume study, De occulta philosophia, in 1533. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the first instance of the word occult twelve years later. Traditionally, occultism deals with the inner aspect of religions: the mystical doorways of realization and secret ways of knowing. Classical occultism regards itself as an initiatory spiritual tradition. Seen from that perspective, the occultist is not necessarily born with unusual abilities, like soothsaying or mind reading, but trains for them. Such parameters, however, are loose: Spiritualism is impossible to separate from occultism, whether believers consider channeling the dead a learned skill or a passive gift. Its crypto-religious nature draws it into the occult framework. Indeed, occultism, at its heart, is religious: Renaissance occultists were particularly enamored of Jewish Kabala, Christian Gnosticism, Egypto-Hellenic astrology, Egyptian-Arab alchemy, and prophetic or divinatory rituals found deep within all the historic faiths, especially within the mystery religions of the Hellenic and Egyptian civilizations...

...The sturdiest definition of classical occult philosophy that I have personally found appears not in a Western or Egyptian context but in Sino scholar Richard Wilhelm's 1950 introduction to the Chinese oracle book The I Ching or Book of Changes:

. . . every event in the visible world is the effect of an "image," that is, of an idea in the unseen world. Accordingly, everything that happens on earth is only a reproduction, as it were, of an event in a world beyond our sense perception; as regards its occurrence in time, it is later than the suprasensible event. The holy men and sages, who are in contact with those higher spheres, have access to these ideas through direct intuition and are therefore able to intervene decisively in events in the world. Thus man is linked with heaven, the suprasensible world of ideas, and with earth, the material world of visible things, to form with these a trinity of primal powers.

There was a big kerfuffle in the journalism world over the weekend, as it was revealed late Friday that the Washington Post had rushed out new "social media guidelines" leading one editor to delete his Twitter account, and another to joke that under the new guidelines, his Twitter account would only discuss "the weather and dessert recipes." This isn't the first time news organizations have generated attention for coming up with restrictive social media guidelines. And, of course, one of the more ridiculous aspects of all of this was that the Washington Post didn't reveal what those guidelines are, leading to a ton of speculation and leaving it to a competing news organization to publish the actual guidelines. A big part of the problem here was the lack of transparency from the Washington Post in the first place...

While we're on the subject, the whole thing seems based on this platonic ideal of journalism that involves the objective, unbiased reporter. The guidelines basically tell reporters and editors that they shouldn't say anything that suggests they actually have an opinion on something, and the editor who deleted his Twitterstream did so because it expressed an opinion on certain news events. But, it's time we got over this. Just because people pretend to be objective, it doesn't make them objective. Just because reporters claim to be unbiased, it doesn't make them unbiased.

Yes, it's great to strive to be as fair and impartial as possible. It's important to present as much as is reasonable as possible. But the bias is there. Pretending it isn't is ridiculous -- and, at times, damaging. It's what leads reporters to go overboard in trying to "present both sides of the story" even if one side is completely ridiculous. Reporters have too much trouble saying "wait, that's wrong." They just present what was said and move on, without ever digging into the truth. In the quest for impartiality, they've actually gotten away from providing accuracy and honesty. I'd much rather have reporters clearly state their bias and opinion, and then let others argue the points out.

And, of course, reporters and editors have always had opinions. It's why they have an editorial page, after all. But, even more important, it's bias and opinion that goes into determining what story makes the front page, or the middle page or gets spiked. It's about how the "facts" of the story are presented. There's bias everywhere. Asking reporters to bite their tongue and not actually say what they think doesn't negate the bias, and it doesn't help readers/viewers/listeners get any closer to what's real. It's just a way of avoiding responsibility, avoiding the community, and avoiding doing a good job. In the meantime, as newer publications (mostly online) do away with the ridiculous idea that a party can be fully impartial, the community of people who consume and share and spread and make and comment on the news are going there. Because that's where "the news" is best presented.

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A reader writes, "The National Organization for Women is calling to action everyone in the U.S. to push for net neutrality. They're specifically supporting the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 (H.R. 3458), and have a page up for contacting representatives in congress to push for it as well."

The Internet has allowed NOW to connect like never before with members and allies, potential supporters, students and educators, government leaders and countless others who can help advance equality for all.

The Internet offers a platform for dialogue amongst feminists who might not otherwise have a chance to strategize together. It empowers women by providing them with information about their status, threats to their rights and opportunities for advancement. It presents a tool for democratic participation by allowing women's rights advocates to easily petition their elected officials and keep tabs on their records.

Without a doubt, the women's rights movement benefits immensely from the unprecedented power of an open and accessible Internet. But, can we rely on the big companies that bring us the Internet to preserve its open nature? The simple truth is: No, we can't.

Add Your Voice to NOW's Call for Open Internet

I'm delighted to welcome Mitch Horowitz as a guestblogger on Boing Boing. Mitch is a fantastic tour guide to the fringes of reason, high weirdness, deep esoterica, secret societies, and mystery religions. Mitch's fantastic new book Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation shares a "sacred space" on my bookshelf with works by Manly Hall, Robert Anton Wilson, Charles Fort, Jacques Vallee, and Erik Davis. In fact, Mitch, who is also a book editor/publisher, has revived essential classics by several of those folks. The next two weeks should be quite a trip. Mitch writes:

Hi all,

Glad to be here with you for a couple of weeks. I’m the author of the just-published Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation (Bantam) – it tells the long-overdue story of how esoteric movements and personalities have shaped America’s past and present. I’m also the editor-in-chief of Tarcher/Penguin in New York, where I publish metaphysical books by people like David Lynch, Jacques Vallee, Daniel Pinchbeck, and Jacob Needleman.

In all of my work, I try to convey a sense of how occult and mystery religions (things that are very important in my life) are every bit a part of “normal” religious history and, in fact, are the well-spring for most of today’s self-help philosophies, from mental-healing to meditation to motivational thinking.

I write for a variety of subculture magazines (Science of Mind, Atlantis Rising, Fortean Times, New Dawn), arts and ideas journals (Esopus, Parabola), and appear on mainstream forums (The Montel Williams Show, The History Channel, Air America) to explore arcane ideas in a way that doesn’t seem so…scary, alien, or faraway. It’s not. I’ll expand in the coming days.

Thanks for being aboard.

Mitch * www.mitchhorowitz.com

PS My wife Allison and I raise two young sons in New York City. We sleep at 45-minute intervals.

selven wrote in with something a bit offtopic for Slashdot, but I figured it's worth a discussion today. He writes "Following Iran's revelation regarding its secret nuclear enrichment plant, western leaders are banding together against it, saying that it violates Articles 2 and 3 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and suggesting serious sanctions against the country if it refuses to back down on its uranium enrichment program. Iran maintains that it nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only and that it's not fair for the US to be criticizing them in this way while having thousands of nuclear warheads."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Something I'm excited about these days is rhythmically interfacing incompatible musical components like my analog modular synthesizer with a Casio SK1 Keyboard and a Barbie Karaoke machine. One tool that has helped me do this is the 8 step, 4 channel sequencer pictured above. The sequencer is based on a 555 timer and the 4017 decade counter. It's got a low part count and is easy to build. Mounting all of the switches was by far the most difficult/expensive part but beside that it's easy/cheap.

The schematic below is what I used for the sequencer (click to enlarge). I'm sure there's room for improvement, but this has worked so far.

I've rebuilt this circuit a few times for different projects. In some cases it is better to remove the 4016 IC and use relays. Or sometimes you can just use transistors as switches. Here's a schematic sent to me by SUBBS (click to enlarge). He's adapted the sequencer design to function as a multi channel, rhythmic tone generator. Looks pretty cool.

Here's a Speak&Spell with a built in 8 step, 1 channel sequencer based on the schematic above. Lots of possibilities.

More:

• Build a resistor sub box
• Touch sensor Speak&Spell AKA Transistors are awesome!
• FX pedal proto board MAX
  

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ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "Cygnus founder Michael Tiemann estimates IT customers globally could save a trillion a year with open source or free source software." Not that a guy with a title like "VP of Open Source Affairs" at Red Hat would have a reason to be biased, but it's an interesting little read about a guy who's been doing this longer than you. Well, most of you anyway.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

John Muir, Sierra Club founder and Yosemite savior featured in the new Ken Burns docoumentary, was a fantastically creative maker too! The Sierra Club has posted details about several of his inventions, including an alarm clock that knocks the leg out from under the bed, and his mechanical study desk, pictured above, that "would automatically light his lamp and fire, open the right book to study, and then change books after half an hour." "Was John Muir a Mad Scientist?" (Thanks, Orli Cotel!)

I dunno if these pixel art stained glass windows I stumbled upon in Gary in Cleveland's Flickr stream are his original work or not, but I dig 'em. Can anyone confirm authorship?

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Those who rely on copyright like to do a neat little trick at times. When it's convenient, they like to claim that what they're offering is no different than a physical good. In such situations, if you make a copy, they claim that you "stole" it, and that it's "no different" that walking into a store and taking something off the shelf without paying for it. Yet, at other times, if you point out the sorts of restrictions that would lead to -- such as no control over the product post-sale -- suddenly they change their tune. You didn't buy the product, you merely "licensed" it, and thus they could post sale restrictions on things. If you buy a chair, and then build a replica yourself, that's perfectly legal. But copyright holders claim that's not the case when it comes to products covered by copyright -- because they insist that it's "licensed" not "owned."

Luckily, the courts have long pushed back on this attempt by copyright holders to extend copyright's power beyond what happens with physical goods. That's why, for example, we have a right to first sale, allowing you to resell a book. The copyright holder cannot claim that you only "licensed" the book, rather than bought it, so you are, in fact, allowed to resell it. But the law isn't entirely clear on all aspects of this, and software "licensing" is one key area where there are some problems.

A few years back, Blizzard sued the maker of a bot, the Glider bot by MDY, claiming that the software violated its copyright. Now, even many who are against abuses of copyright, emotionally started to side with Blizzard here, due to what the bot allowed: it effectively allowed cheating, by automating many repetitive tasks, to let users "level up" more quickly. But, if you get past that element, the case has important implications for copyright law, and whether or not the software you buy is really purchased... or merely licensed.

The district court ruling was incredibly problematic. Nothing the guy actually did with the bot software appears to violate copyright law. Basically, the court just decided that it didn't like what the guy did, and thus it used copyright law to shut him down, though it used rather tortured reasoning. This sets an incredibly bad precedent and seems entirely at odds with the purpose of copyright law itself.

The case is now being appealed, and Public Knowledge has filed an amicus brief while the EFF explains what's at stake:

Ownership matters, because otherwise Blizzard and other software vendors can wipe away important consumer rights with legalese contained in license agreements. For example, in Section 117 of the Copyright Act, Congress gave owners of computer software the right to use their legitimately purchased software without having to rely on permissions in license agreements. Blizzard and other software vendors are arguing that customers are not owners, but mere licensees, in an effort to eliminate our rights under Section 117.

This "owner-versus-licensee" trick is not just an end-run on Section 117, it's inconsistent with the law in other areasâ??the courts and Congress have long rejected efforts by copyright and patent owners to impose all kinds of post-sale use restrictions on books, patented machines, and compact discs. Why should software be different? Just as with those other copyrighted works, if you bought the disc that the software comes on outright (as opposed to leasing it, for example), you should get the privileges of an owner (i.e., the right to resell and the right to make copies and adaptations as necessary to use software).

In short, Blizzard's legal arguments here are all about using copyright law to take away consumers' rights in the software they purchased.

Hopefully, the Appeals Court recognizes this. Copyright owners shouldn't be able to play a quantum game of calling something "owned" when it suits them or "licensed" at other times when it suits them.

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Nithendil writes "guyhersh from reddit.com describes the situation (warning: title NSFW): Based on what I've seen today, here's what went down. Reddit user Empirical wrote javascript code where if you copied and pasted it into the address bar, you would instantly spam that comment by replying to all the comments on the page and submitting it. Later xssfinder posted a proof of concept where if you hovered over a link, it would automatically run a Javascript. He then got the brilliant idea to combine the two together scripts together, tested it and it spread from there."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Uh-oh. Now that a terrorist has tried unsuccessfully to blow up a Saudi prince with a bomb shoved up his ass, the TSA is obliged to perform rectal exams on every flier for the rest of time. After all, once a jihadi failed to blow up a plane with his shoe, we all needed to start taking our shoes off. Then some knuckleheads believed they could blow up a plane with energy beverages and hair gel, so now we have to limit ourselves to 100ml of all liquids and gels, unless they're for babies or are prescription (because no mass-murderer would be so evil as to forge a doctor's note, which, as every junkie knows, cannot possibly be forged).

Now we found someone who was made to believe he could kill people with an asshole bomb, and so it follows that the TSA will have to ban -- or at least inspect -- our assholes. They're like opinions, you know, everybody's got one. Except, of course, most of us got to keep our assholes to ourselves. Not anymore.

Let's just be thankful that no one has yet convinced a suicidal murderer that he could blow up a plane with his mind, because once that happens, we're all in for mandatory airport trepannations. Because, you know, you can't be too safe. Every little bit helps. If an unhinged suicide bomber believes it's possible, we must take it seriously. To do less would be irresponsible.

For years, I have made the joke about Richard Reid: "Just be glad that he wasn't the underwear bomber." Now, sadly, we have an example of one.

Lewis Page, an "improvised-device disposal operator tasked in support of the UK mainland police from 2001-2004," pointed out that this isn't much of a threat for three reasons: 1) you can't stuff a lot of explosives into a body cavity, 2) detonation is, um, problematic, and 3) the human body can stifle an explosion pretty effectively (think of someone throwing himself on a grenade to save his friends).

But who ever accused the TSA of being rational?

Ass Bomber

A Personal Perspective
by Robert Bruce Thompson

Bob Thompson is our Science Curator at Make: Online and in the Maker Shed. He's the author of numerous O'Reilly and Make: Books titles, including Building the Perfect PC, Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders, Astronomy Hacks, and Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments. I asked if he would write a little bit about his take on the Make: Science Room and why he thinks it's important. Here's his response. - Gareth Branwyn

Like a kid in a candy store. That's how I felt back in April when I joined the MAKE team as Science Curator, tasked with building out the science content and the Make: Science Room microsite. Our goals were and are ambitious: over the coming weeks, months, and years, to produce and publish a huge, freely downloadable collection of hands-on, how-to home science articles and videos for DIY science enthusiasts and home schoolers, and to support those articles and videos with high-quality home science equipment, chemicals, and science kits at competitive prices, in the Maker Shed.

Here we are six months later, and thanks to a massive effort by the entire MAKE team, the plan has become a reality. The first couple of dozen chemistry and forensics articles are posted in the Make" Science Room, with dozens more in the pipeline that we'll roll out in batches every week. We'll eventually expand to cover astronomy, biology, earth science, physics, and other sciences. We've shot the first half dozen videos (although my inexperience with video production and editing means those aren't quite ready to roll). We have more than 150 lab equipment items in stock at Maker Shed--everything from beakers and test tubes to balances and thermometers to microscopes and calorimeters-and about the same number of specialty chemicals. Maker Shed also has some serious science kits in stock-everything from lab glassware and hardware kits to chemical kits, from microscope starter kits and staining kits to specialty kits for lead testing and fingerprinting and bacteriology-with many more to come!

For the past few days, I've been sidelined by an attack of vertigo, which has given me some enforced downtime to think about what all this means to me. The Science Room is the culmination of things that have been important to me since I was in junior high school more than 40 years ago. I built my first home lab at age 11, and I've been an amateur scientist ever since. For a while, I flirted with becoming a professional scientist, majoring in chemistry in college and grad school. But, as much as I love science, I eventually decided that I didn't want to devote my life to working with just one aspect of it. Instead, I've made science in one form or another my primary hobby ever since.

Ironically, when I took the Kuder Occupational Interest exam in high school, the top three occupations it recommended for me were High School Science Teacher, University Chemistry Professor, and Research Scientist. The focus on science was obvious, but I somehow missed the focus on teaching science. So, forty years later, things have come full circle, and I'm now devoting most of my attention to teaching people, particularly young people, about science. It looks like the Kuder results had me pegged all along.

When someone asks me why I believe so strongly in the importance of teaching science, and in particular why I emphasize home science, my reply is simple: science is important-critically so--and our schools are, with a few exceptions, doing a very poor job of teaching and encouraging it. It's not that I expect (or even want) everyone to become a professional scientist (although we certainly need more young scientists to replace the legions of scientists my age who are nearing retirement). It's that universal basic science literacy--a general understanding of science and the scientific method--is as important to society as universal general literacy. In an increasingly technical world, it's crucially important that we educate our children--the future voters and politicians--and ourselves to have a basic understanding of science and the ability to think critically and evaluate issues based on understanding rather than emotion.

If the schools can't or won't teach science, there's no real alternative but doing it ourselves. Let's face it, not a lot of kids are going to sit spellbound reading a science book. Some, but not enough. The way to get kids (and adults) interested in science is to encourage them to do real science -- hands-on, practical, and fun stuff. Things that let them get their hands dirty, exploring science up-close and personal. And that's what the Make: Science Room is all about.

I'm honored to have been given the opportunity to help get the Science Room up and running, and I can't wait to see how it develops and grows. We don't know exactly how things will develop, because that will in large part be determined by you, our readers. Please visit the Science Room often. Comment on the articles. Tell us what you like and don't like. Give us your ideas and suggestions. The idea of the Make: Science Room is to build a community, and we can't do that without you.

This way to the Make: Science Room >>

More:
Introducing the Make: Science Room

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An anonymous reader writes "Phoronix has brought benchmarks comparing the FreeBSD 8.0-RC and Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 6 operating systems. FreeBSD rather ends up taking a wallop to Ubuntu Linux, but there are a few areas where FreeBSD 8 ran well. They also posted benchmarks comparing this near-final FreeBSD 8.0 build to that of FreeBSD 7.2 to show performance improvements there but with a few regressions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Love this design of a robot/wheel chair wheel that can morph from a single wheel into a multi-wheel tank track, as terrain conditions dictate.

Galileo Mobility Capabilities [via Solarbotics' Twitter feed]

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Wired reports on a find described September 24 in a note at Nature and the day after at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology: a dinosaur fossil bearing true feathers on four limbs. The fossil was discovered in northeastern China, in strata believed to have been deposited between 151 million and 161 million years ago. If that estimate is correct, the newly discovered Anchiornis huxleyi is at least one million years older than the believed age of the more famous winged dinosaur Archaeopteryx.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Zipit hacker Hunter Davis runs through installing Linux on the low-cost WiFi connected IM device in his latest tutorial. Complete with Fluxbox window manager, mouse, audio and wireless, the Zipit can be transformed into an inexpensive Linux mobile device that begs further modification.

[via hackaday]

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This is incredible. Apparently the US prosecutor in the bogus Lori Drew case, which the judge finally tossed out in August is looking to appeal the decision. It's up to the US Solicitor General as to whether or not that actually happens, but just the fact that the prosecutor is still pushing this case is ridiculous. It was clearly an attempt to twist a law (unauthorized computer access) well beyond what it was meant to cover in an attempt to bring Drew up on charges because people didn't like the end result of what happened, even though she didn't break the law. The judge tossed it out because of how ridiculous it was. Also, apparently the cases that the prosecutor relied on in pushing the original case have now been rejected as well, making the argument even more tenuous. What a waste of time for a US prosecutor.

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Adafruit's first open source Homeland Security non-lethal weapon project - The "Do-it-yourself Handheld LED-Based Incapacitator: THE BEDAZZLER". After attending a conference where the $1million "sea-sick flashlight" (THE DAZZLER) was demoed by Homeland Security, Adafruit decided to create an under $250 version and here are the source code, schematics and PCB files! This is not a kit - but it is an Arduino project!

Check it out!

• Source code, Schematics, PCB files
• Design
• Downloads

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Tamron has announced the availability of the its 60mm F/2 Di macro lens in Sony mount, to join the Canon and Nikon versions which are already shipping. The lens features a built-in AF motor, and provides 1:1 magnification with an unusually fast maximum aperture for a macro lens. It's designed excusively for APS-C sensors, and will vignette when used on full-frame camera such as the Alpha 850 and 900. The lens will start shipping from October 2009.

Keeping your eyes open during a life-casting of your face is probably impossible and in any case is certainly a very bad idea. So life-cast heads always have closed eyes. YouTuber brickintheyard, affiliated with BITY Mold Supply, has provided a great video tutorial on how to sculpt those eyes back open.

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

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Jeff VanderMeer sez, "Our friend South Florida fashion photographer Steven Paul Hlavac has photographed everyone from Warren Zevon to Daisy Fuentes. Now he's got a new exhibit up in which he's repurposed some of his travel photos (from China and elsewhere) in the context of old-timey ads for various products. It's a lot of fun, and for those still addicted to the meat world, you can also find them on display in the Tavares City Hall (north of Orlando) until the end of October."

Seaplanes and Citrus: Vintage Art From An Imaginary Past Photo-illustrations by Steven Paul Hlavac: (Thanks, Jeff!)

Jérémie Zimmermann sez, "The first conciliation meeting on the Telecoms Package will take place tonight at 9:30PM. In this meeting, 27 Members of the European Parliament will decide on the future of Internet in Europe. They will choose whether to fix or maintain the dreadful anti-Net neutrality dispositions voted in second reading by the Parliament, under the influence of AT&T. Rapporteurs and representatives of the Swedish Presidency opposed this idea so far. European citizens only have a few hours to urge MEPs to preserve Europe's innovation, competition, and citizen's fundamental rights."

Act now to save Net neutrality! (Thanks, Jérémie!)

Here's a tutorial on making wonderful faerie shelves out of shelf mushrooms, those woody fungi that you see when you walk through the woods.

Mushroom Shelf Tutorial! (via Make)

Parker sez, "Although the Google Books Settlement is being modified, the questions it raises are important for students to think about. Students for Free Culture, in the interest of better informing students about the settlement, has solicited the thoughts of a variety of experts who are providing guest posts reflecting on how the settlement will likely impact students. This is the second installment in the series, from EFF's Rebecca Jeshke, and it talks about the privacy issues involved. All of last week and this week, we'll be posting other responses from people like Google's Derek Slater, and NYLS' James Grimmelman, about different facets of the settlement."

In the physical world, bookstores and libraries have fought for strong privacy protections, requiring the police to get a warrant before getting access to your reading records. These strong positions were developed precisely to respect our private, personal relationship with reading and learning, and to block any "chilling effect" violating that privacy might have on Americans' right to explore the world of ideas. That's why Google Book Search needs a robust, enforceable privacy policy that gives readers as much privacy in online books as we already have today.

A legal settlement that would pave the way for Google Book Search to go forward without these privacy protections is pending approval from a New York federal district court. But a group of more than two dozen authors and publishers, represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and others, has filed an objection with the judge. The coalition--including best-selling novelists Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem along with Anthony Romero of the ACLU and science fiction author Cory Doctorow--presents a list of privacy protections that would improve the settlement, including limiting tracking of users and requiring a court order or judge-approved warrant before disclosure of the information collected, ensuring user control of personal information stored by Google, and making the system transparent to readers.

GBS and Students: EFF's Rebecca Jeschke on Privacy Implications (Thanks, Parker!)

If you're designing a user interface for an iPhone app the appropriately named NotePod seems like it would be perfect for knocking out a quick sketch. The full-scale die-cut 100pp pad features rounded corners and the familiar minimalist iPhone interface.

[via swiss-miss]

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If you're designing a user interface for an iPhone app the appropriately named NotePod seems like it would be perfect for knocking out a quick sketch. The full-scale die-cut 100pp pad features rounded corners and the familiar minimalist iPhone interface.

[via swiss-miss]

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You may recall last December that a spat over how much Google would pay Warner Music for hosting its videos (for free, mind you) created a situation whereby Warner Music videos were taken off the site (there are conflicting stories over who actually made the call to take the videos down). The end result of this was basically bad for everyone -- and even Warner's own musicians got pretty pissed off at Warner -- especially as they saw other musicians use YouTube to grow their audience. It only took nine months, but it looks like Warner Music and YouTube have finally worked out a deal to allow the videos back online. You have to wonder how much harm this did to Warner artists, and to the label itself. I'd argue that the failure to leverage a rather useful promotional platform to connect with audiences was likely to have been much greater than any "harm" done from file sharing.

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Hasselblad has introduced two new cameras to its H System of medium format cameras. First comes the H4D-60 with a 60MP sensor. It features the 'True Focus' AF system that can measure the movement of the camera when recomposing after focusing to ensure that focus remains on the target - a system Hasselblad calls Absolute Position Lock. Along with the H4D-60, the company has also launched the H4D-50 with a 50MP sensor, replacing the H3DII-50. The H4D-60 will start shipping from November 2009 at a retail price of €28,995 and the H4D-50 will ship in the first quarter of 2010 at a retail price of €19,995.

Hasselblad has introduced two new cameras to its H System of medium format cameras. First comes the H4D-60 with a 60MP sensor. It features the 'True Focus' AF system that can measure the movement of the camera when recomposing after focusing to ensure that focus remains on the target - a system Hasselblad calls Absolute Position Lock. Along with the H4D-60, the company has also launched the H4D-50 with a 50MP sensor, replacing the H3DII-50. The H4D-60 will start shipping from November 2009 at a retail price of €28,995 and the H4D-50 will ship in the first quarter of 2010 at a retail price of €19,995.

Has going back to school got you stressed out? If so, check out how to make some DIY hallucinogenic goggles. Trippy!

This post will describe how to construct a pair of goggles which can be used to induce geometric visual hallucinations via strobe light patterns. This tutorial should be accessible to anyone familiar with Arduino hacking, and I do not go into details of the electronics design. The effects are quite remarkable, and enjoyed by many.

In the Maker Shed:


In the Maker Shed: Brain Machine Kit (pictured above is a modified kit, more info here...not meant for dogs!)

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rixth writes "From the 1st of November, it will be illegal to use cell phones while driving in New Zealand. Today, the Government clarified that you can't use your mobile phone as a navigational device, even if it is mounted on the dash board."

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Panasonic has posted a firmware update for its Lumix DMC-LX3 digital compact camera. Version 2.0 brings a host of additional functions as well as feature improvements for the 14-month-old camera. Changes include a 20% AF-speed increase at the wide-angle position, the addition of white balance bracketing and an expansion of the availablel exposure compensation. It also adds a High Dynamic scene mode, 1:1 aspect-ratio shooting and improves white balance performance.

An anonymous reader writes "Generating entangled photons in a reliable way is impossible right now, stalling the development of the optical quantum computers that would use entangled photons as quantum bits (qubits). Because entangled photons can only be produced at random — which takes time — the most powerful optical quantum computing device use only 6 qubits. UK and Israeli quantum physicists have designed a blueprint for a 'quantum machine gun' that fires out barrages of entangled photons on demand. They think within a few years this device will be built, and could lead to quantum computing using 20 to 30 qubits. Every additional qubit doubles the computing power, so these quantum computers could outperform any existing classical computer, the researchers say. The quantum machine gun is described as 'one of the most exciting theoretical proposals I've read in five years' by a leading quantum physicist." The research was published in Physical Review Letters earlier this month.

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An anonymous reader writes "Generating entangled photons in a reliable way is impossible right now, stalling the development of the optical quantum computers that would use entangled photons as quantum bits (qubits). Because entangled photons can only be produced at random — which takes time — the most powerful optical quantum computing device use only 6 qubits. UK and Israeli quantum physicists have designed a blueprint for a 'quantum machine gun' that fires out barrages of entangled photons on demand. They think within a few years this device will be built, and could lead to quantum computing using 20 to 30 qubits. Every additional qubit doubles the computing power, so these quantum computers could outperform any existing classical computer, the researchers say. The quantum machine gun is described as 'one of the most exciting theoretical proposals I've read in five years' by a leading quantum physicist." The research was published in Physical Review Letters earlier this month.

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Natalie at the CRAFT blog just posted Paul Baxendale's cool mushroom-shelf-making tutorial and I think it belongs over here, too.

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theodp writes "Fortune catches up with former ADM exec and whistleblower Mark Whitacre, who talks about watching his life on screen in the dark comedy, The Informant!. Among other things, Whitacre apologizes to Fortune for duping the magazine in a 1995 interview when his bipolar-fueled compulsive lying was in its full glory. Thanks to a Ph.D. he earned from Cornell in nutritional biochemistry, and an understanding CEO who was involved in prison ministry, Whitacre is now COO of Cypress Systems, where he's been working since spending nine years in prison for embezzlement. And yes, his wife really did stand by him through the wild ride."

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gijoel writes "Someone with too much time on their hands and access to Auto-Tune has taken clips from Carl Sagan's Cosmos series to make this fantastic song. Watch for the Stephen Hawking cameo."

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"Freedom of expression and of thought was not invented by the West. It has existed in traditional societies -- even primitive ones -- for centuries. Human progress would not have been possible without it. I'm saying this as a black African from Ghana because today around the world, we have 'educated' barbarians who want to suppress this freedom by arresting and jailing dissidents, writers, journalists and those they disagree with."
-- George Ayittey on the BBC, September 20, 2009.

Ayittey, whose famed "cheetahs vs. hippos" TED speech I've blogged before, is co-founder of an inspired new project called Radio Free Africa. (thanks, Emeka Okafor)

Aman Ali, a BoingBoing guest blogger, is the co-author of 30 Mosques, a Ramadan adventure taking him to a different mosque in New York City every day for a month. My last post generated an interesting discussion (268 comments and counting) on Muslim women covering their hair. But it seemed kind of silly to talk about the subject, without hearing viewpoints from Muslim women. My friend Mariam Sobh has graciously agreed to chime in. She is editor in chief of Hijabtrendz, the original fashion beauty and entertainment blog for Muslim women. Here's what she had to say:

It's the age old debate that quite frankly I'm sick and tired of. Muslim women and their "oppression". Oppression is such a loaded word and it conjures up all sorts of negative images, but what people don't seem to want to understand is that Muslim women are just like any other woman. We come in all shapes and sizes, and all sorts of beliefs. You can't paint us all with the same brush. I'm as American as anyone else, I watch movies, I read celebrity gossip, I shop at Victoria's Secret, I work outside the home, I'm pursuing my dreams, the only difference is that little piece of fabric I wrap around my head. Big whoop. I'm not harming anyone by wearing a piece of material on my head so what's the big deal? I myself wear the headscarf and I do so because it's something I believe is mandated in my religion. No one is forcing me and it has no political significance (I have no idea why people keep thinking it does). Believe me if I didn't think it was required I WOULD NOT be wearing it. I hate being bullied all the time by the press or some ignoramus about my scarf. It takes a toll on you emotionally and eventually you have to develop a thick skin. But words will always hurt no matter what.

I believe God asked us to cover our bodies and that includes our hair. Look at other religion where people try to practice their beliefs and it's very similar; think of the Amish, Mormons, even Hasidic Jewish women. They all cover up in some way to preserve their modesty. Now, I'm not here to judge anyone. If you want to walk around outside naked, go for it. But I'm not going to reprimand you or try to psychoanalyze you, or even tell you that what you're doing is wrong. That's for you as an individual to figure out. So why is it, that whenever it comes to people who prefer to live more conservatively everyone is up in arms? OH MY GOSH SHE'S COVERING HER CLEAVAGE! So what? Why do I have to share my goods with you? I choose who gets to see me and who doesn't. Is that what is so bothersome, that I actually have a choice? I'm seriously trying to figure this out. Some Muslim women wear the headscarf and some women don't. Some Muslim women choose to wear their headscarf in a way that conforms somewhat to today's fashion and some prefer to go old school. It all comes down to personal interpretation and understanding and that's perfectly fine. We're all adults, we're all responsible for our own actions. I'm not holier than thou. My headscarf does not make me some religious expert, it's just a small part of my life. It's a testament to myself that I want to be a better person and that I'm struggling to do good in this world by following what I personally believe God wants me to do. For those who talk about women being forced into submission, that occurs everyday all over the world regardless of religion and it's very sad indeed. If people try to use Islam as a way to manipulate women then those individuals are sick and twisted. At the end of the day I'm thankful that I have the life I do, where I can practice what I believe and not worry about anyone forcing me to do something against my will.