We hope you have a monstrously great Halloween and that you've had fun making costumes and home haunt decorations. If you did, please take pics and post them to the MAKE Flickr Pool.

Be safe, have fun, and may your treats be many and your tricks be few (unless, of course, you're doing the tricking).

Your pals at Maker Media

Illustration by Seth, done for our Halloween special issue

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Mark, MAKE's Editor-in-Chief, was on NPR's Science Friday yesterday, talking about how to "Geek Your Halloween." You can hear the broadcast here.

Photo and pumpkin carving by Patrick Murray.

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Turning the front of a building (via projections) into a pinball machine.

UrbanScreen

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blackbearnh writes "No doubt, there will be more than a few brain-munching glassy-eyed zombies showing up on the typical doorstep tonight, demanding brains, brains, brains, or at least some Milk Duds. But according to this essay over on Forbes.com, zombies are more than just the trendy monster on the block, they are to Americans what Godzilla is to Japanese: a personification of our fear of science and technology. 'It seems you can't throw a half-eaten cerebrum these days without hitting a posse of zombies brought to life by some kind of biological mishap (28 Days Later, Resident Evil, Planet Terror, Quarantine). Like Godzilla, zombies keep up with the times, always ready to mirror whatever aspect of science and technology people feel most uncertain about at the moment.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Still trying to get a grip on the relative size of say, an X chromosome and a ribosome? Then you might want to check out Cell Size and Scale, a neat visualizer of the scale of things from a coffee bean to a carbon atom made by the University of Utah. Don't blink, or you might miss the bacteriophage! [via kottke]

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judgecorp writes "ICANN is to be congratulated for succeeding in expanding the Internet beyond the Latin alphabet. However, the organization is facing a harder task in extending the Internet's global top-level domains (gTLDs) — its proposal to open up the gTLD space has been plagued by controversy and delays. INCANN faces struggles with trademark owners and competing businesses — but even so it is being criticised for acting slowly (as seen in transcripts from the recent meeting in Seoul). It now seems likely the body will have a pre-registration scheme to gauge demand and placate critics by getting something moving on new gTLDs."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amy Wallace's Wired feature, "An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All" looks at the life and times of Paul Offit, vaccine inventor and advocate, and the anti-vaccine pseudo-science he battles as he attempts to convince parents not to give in to fear and disinformation, and to follow the science that will keep their kids safe.

At this year's Autism One conference in Chicago, I flashed more than once on Carl Sagan's idea of the power of an "unsatisfied medical need." Because a massive research effort has yet to reveal the precise causes of autism, pseudo-science has stepped aggressively into the void. In the hallways of the Westin O'Hare hotel, helpful salespeople strove to catch my eye as I walked past a long line of booths pitching everything from vitamins and supplements to gluten-free cookies (some believe a gluten-free diet alleviates the symptoms of autism), hyperbaric chambers, and neuro-feedback machines.

To a one, the speakers told parents not to despair. Vitamin D would help, said one doctor and supplement salesman who projected the equation "No vaccines + more vitamin d = no autism" onto a huge screen during his presentation. (If only it were that simple.) Others talked of the powers of enzymes, enemas, infrared saunas, glutathione drips, chelation therapy (the controversial -- and risky -- administration of certain chemicals that leech metals from the body), and Lupron (a medicine that shuts down testosterone synthesis).

Offit calls this stuff, much of which is unproven, ineffectual, or downright dangerous, "a cottage industry of false hope." He didn't attend the Autism One conference, though his name was frequently invoked. A California woman with an 11-year-old autistic son told me, aghast, that she'd personally heard Offit say you could safely give a child 10,000 vaccines (in fact, the number he came up with was 100,000 -- more on that later). A mom from Arizona, who introduced me to her 10-year-old "recovered" autistic son -- a bright, blue-eyed, towheaded boy who hit his head on walls, she said, before he started getting B-12 injections -- told me that she'd read Offit had made $50 million from the RotaTeq vaccine. In her view, he was in the pocket of Big Pharma.

An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All

Lenore "Free Range Kids" Skenazy has a stirring editorial in defense of Hallowe'en and kids in today's Huffpo:

It's not that I'm cavalier about safety. I'm just a sucker -- so to speak -- for the facts. And the fact is: No child has been poisoned by a stranger's goodies on Halloween, ever, as far as we can determine. Joel Best, a sociology professor at the University of Delaware, studied November newspapers from 1958 to the present, scouring them for any accounts of kids felled by felonious candy. And...he didn't find any. He did find one account of a boy poisoned by a Pixie Stix his father gave him. Dad did it for the insurance money and, Best says, he probably figured that so many kids are poisoned on Halloween, no one would notice one more...

It's not just the fact that churches and community centers are throwing parties so that kids don't go out on their own. It's not just the fact that Bobtown, Pennsylvania has gone so far as to "cancel" Halloween altogether -- for the sake of "safety." (The authorities there were surprised to find this decision unpopular.) It's not even that those of us who'd like to hand out homemade cookies know they'll be instantly tossed in the trash.

No, the truly spooky thing is that Halloween has become a riot of warnings that are way scarier than the holiday itself. The website Halloween-Safety.com recommends that if your child is carrying a fake butcher knife, make sure the tip is "smooth and flexible enough to not cause injury if fallen upon."

As Goes Halloween, So Goes Childhood

jbeaupre writes "The Economist reports on progress by a company called Saltworks on using saline gradients to do the heavy lifting of desalination. In essence, Saltworks uses solar energy or waste heat to concentrate sea water. They then use the ionic gradient between the concentrated brine and two sea-water streams to pull ions from from a 3rd sea-water stream. It appears to work with entropy by trading the reduced entropy of the desalinated water against the increased entropy of 'mixing' the brine and the other sea-water streams. The article only discusses Na and Cl, but even just removing these ions is a step in the right direction."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Well, OK, I think it's really three pieces. But the head and body are a single piece which eliminates the neck seam and makes the effect way more realistic. Then each hand/forearm is one piece, but those seams are concealed by the tattered shirt. A commercial product from TheHorrorDome.com. [via Boing Boing]

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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Over at the Periodic Table of Videos, their chemists put pumpkins through the ringer to demonstrate properties of various chemicals, states, and processes. Nice to see Halloween getting the whole "Peeps in the microwave" treatment. [Thanks, Shawn!]

Periodic Table of Videos

More:
See our own growing collection of chemistry experiments in the Make: Science Room

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farnsworth writes "Tony Alfrey has put together a fascinating page with some history, analysis, and possible explanations for what ultimately went wrong with the recent emergency repair of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The bridge has been closed for days and is not scheduled to open for days to come, hugely inconveniencing more than 250,000 people a day. His analysis touches on possibly poor welding, a possibly flawed temporary fix, and the absence of a long-term fix or adequate follow-up by Caltrans, the agency responsible for the bridge. Slashdot is a great engineering community; what other insights do you have on the bridge situation?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Recently, William Kamkwamba spoke at the Technology and Culture Forum at MIT.

William Kamkwamba, is a senior at the African Leadership Academy, a pan-African high school in Johannesburg, South Africa. A 2007 and 2009 TEDGlobal Fellow, Kamkwamba has been profiled on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and his inventions have been displayed at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. He's often invited to tell his story at such venues as the World Economic Forum in Africa, CES, Aspen Ideas Festival, Maker Faire Africa and the African Economic Forum.

During the evening, William was introduced by Amy Smith, and spoke with his coauthor Bryan Mealor, an American journalist covering Africa. Together, they told stories of life in Malawi and William's experiences making and fighting to learn in the midst of a devastating famine.

After the break, there is more video from the evening.

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An anonymous reader writes "A document, apparently a 'confidential House ethics committee report,' was recently leaked through file-sharing software to the Washington Post. According to the article, 'The committee's review of investigations became available on file-sharing networks because of a junior staff member's use of the software while working from home.' Of course, P2P software is entirely at fault for this incident. If you begin seeing more interest in DRM from Congress, you now know why." Reader GranTuring points out that the RIAA took the opportunity to make a ridiculous statement of their own. They said, "the disclosure was evidence of a need for controls on peer-to-peer software to block the improper or illegal exchange of music."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A team with members from Microsoft, the University of Toronto, and the University of Washington have developed an interface that uses electrodes to monitor muscle signals and translate those into commands or button presses, allowing a user to bypass a physical input device and even control a game or application while their hands are full. The video demonstration shows somebody playing Guitar Hero by making strumming motions and tapping his fingers together, a jogger changing his music without having to touch the device, and a man flexing a muscle to open the trunk of his car while he carries objects in both hands. The academic paper (PDF) is available online.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

First, thanks to Jeff Pulver for a fantastic conference earlier this week and thanks for letting me keynote it. Putting it in L.A., away from the distortion field of Silicon Valley, made it a lot more interesting and less of a festival of wiener-boys. I fell in love at least five times in 24 hours, that's pretty good. First time I spoke at a tech conference since LeWeb in 2007.

Technorati rolled out a new version and completely lost track of Scripting News, so I took its icon off the home page of the site. I used to check it every couple of days to see if it found anyone talking about something I wrote here. Nowadays it comes up with nothing. So goodbye Technorati.

I added links to my newest projects in the right sidebar. Makes them easier for us to find and of course adds juice to them in the search engines.

That's all!

Happy Halloween! (And Let's go Phillies. Teach the Yankees about philosophy.)

avishere writes "Student teams designed and built robotic power-lifters to excavate simulated lunar soil (a.k.a. 'regolith') earlier this month, with $750,000 in prizes up for grabs. Excavating regolith, according to NASA, will be an important part of any construction projects or processing of natural resources on the Moon. Interestingly, regolith is especially difficult to dig because its dust particles want to stick together. The whole robotic system has to be sturdy enough to scoop moon dirt and powerful enough to move through the dust while still meeting the weight requirements. The winning excavator from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts lifted 1,103 pounds within the allotted time, and got a sweet $500,000 for their troubles."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've been following the ongoing struggles of the print media, watching as some publications have died off and others have held to outdated principles and decried the influence of the internet. A side effect of this has been many journalists put out of work and many others fearful that informed reporting is on its way out as well. Now, an editorial in the Washington Post calls for a solution journalists would likely have scoffed at only a few years ago: federal subsidies. Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols write, "What to do? Bailing out media conglomerates would be morally and politically absurd. These firms have run journalism into the ground. If they cannot make it, let them go. Wait for 'pay-wall' technologies, billionaire philanthropists or unimagined business models to generate enough news to meet the immense demands of a self-governing society? There is no evidence that such a panacea is on the horizon. This leaves one place to look for a solution: the government." They hasten to add, "Did we just call for state-run media? Quite the opposite."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

angryrice tips news that Adobe seems to be campaigning for the inclusion of Flash and PDF in the Obama administration's efforts at increasing government transparency and openness. A post from the Sunlight Labs blog is critical of Adobe's undertaking, in part since PDF is often "non-parsable by software, unfindable by search engines, and unreliable if text is extracted." They also say government's priority should be to publish datasets and the APIs to interact with them, rather than choosing how they're displayed in fancy graphs and charts.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

antdude writes "This TechRadar article explains why computers suck at math, and how simple calculations can be a matter of life and death, like in the case of a Patriot defense system failing to take down a Scud missile attack: 'The calculation of where to look for confirmation of an incoming missile requires knowledge of the system time, which is stored as the number of 0.1-second ticks since the system was started up. Unfortunately, 0.1 seconds cannot be expressed accurately as a binary number, so when it's shoehorned into a 24-bit register — as used in the Patriot system — it's out by a tiny amount. But all these tiny amounts add up. At the time of the missile attack, the system had been running for about 100 hours, or 3,600,000 ticks to be more specific. Multiplying this count by the tiny error led to a total error of 0.3433 seconds, during which time the Scud missile would cover 687m. The radar looked in the wrong place to receive a confirmation and saw no target. Accordingly no missile was launched to intercept the incoming Scud — and 28 people paid with their lives.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This looks fun...

Chiphacker is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for electronics hackers – regardless of platform or language.

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From the MAKE Flickr pool Mark of Spikenzie Labs shares this simple recipe for a pumpkin cutter using a scroll saw blade and some duct tape. Looks like a good choice for those intricate/curved designs. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Halloween | Digg this!

Pickens writes "Science Daily News reports that human missions to Mars and all other long-term space flights might be compromised by disease, first because space travel appears to weaken astronauts' immune systems; and second, because it increases the virulence and growth of microbes. 'When people think of space travel, often the vast distances are what come to mind first,' says Jean-Pol Frippiat from Nancy-University in France, 'but even after we figure out a way to cover these distances in a reasonable amount of time, we still need to figure out how astronauts are going to overcome disease and sickness.' Frippiat says studies show that immune systems of both people and animals in space flight conditions are significantly weaker than their grounded counterparts and that common pathogens such as Salmonella, E. coli and Staphylococcus reproduce more rapidly in space flight conditions, leading to increased risk of contamination, colonization and serious infection."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jeremy sez, "Shareable tells the story of sharing. We cover the people, places, and projects that are bringing a shareable world to life. And share tools and tips to help you make a shareable world real in your life. In a shareable world, things like car sharing, community gardening, and cohousing bring us together, make life more fun, and free up time and money for the important things in life. When we share, not only is a better life possible, but so is a better world. The remarkable successes of Wikipedia, Kiva, open source software, Burning Man, Freecycle, and Creative Commons point the way. They tell a hopeful story about human nature and our future, one we don't hear enough in the mainstream media."

Shareable (Thanks, Jeremy!)

Zoran sez, "The night before Halloween is known as Mischief Night because it is a time for young people to act out and do things that may get them in trouble with neighbors, with the law, and with satan. One of those pranks is downloading music illegally, usually in search of a fitting soundtrack for All Hallows' eve, one that will frighten the trick or treaters. Well this year, we can all focus on bigger and better things, thanks to a set of demonic artists who believe that it is in their interest to give away some of their sonic concoctions for free, because it will help them to cast their spell on a wider audience."

Creative Commons Halloween Mix (Thanks, Zoran!)

RobGoldsmith writes "Masten Space Systems successfully qualified for first place in level two of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge Wednesday. Flying a brand new vehicle named XA-0.1E (nicknamed Xoie), Masten demonstrated their ability to build, debug and fly a vehicle on a very short timeline. " Reader lessgravity points out a video of the craft completing its mission. Apparently, the team was given an extra shot at the challenge on Friday after having trouble during their scheduled attempts on Wednesday and Thursday, which didn't please John Carmack, founder of rival team Armadillo Aerospace.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Behold: A GG Allin designer toy! Specifically, this fine collectible is an "Extra Filthy Bloody Edition" Allin figurine "loaded into a full color "splatter" box." I remember watching a dub of Hated, the documentary about the transgressive punk performer, on a pre-release review VHS at Mark F's pad in 1994 and being thoroughly disgusted, which, I guess, was the whole point. (Here's the NSFW trailer.) The GG Allin figure, limited to an edition of 500, is 7-inches tall and sells for $16.95 from Aggronautix. Here's what my pal Gil Kaufman wrote about it at MTV.com:

Aggronautix, the same demented people who have created wobbly-necked figurines of such similarly obscure punk rock icons as Tesco Vee of the Meatmen, Milo of the Descendents and the barely-legal Dwarves, have truly gone all out for the second edition of the Allin figure, which commemorates the scat-loving punk icon in all his messy glory.

From the bloody hematoma on his forehead to the true Manchu beard-mustache combo, bloody cuts on his body and guaranteed-to-offend tattoos, this seven-inch tall likeness of the late punker best known for using the stage as a toilet, performing naked and attacking his fans is for the hardcore only.

"GG Allin Bobblehead... Now With More Blood and Filth"

An anonymous reader writes "Brazilian elections went electronic many years ago, with very fast results but a few complaints from losers, of course. Next month, 10 teams that accepted the challenge will have access to hardware and software (Google translation; original in Portuguese) for the amount of time they requested (from one hour to four days). Some will try to break the vote's secrecy and some will try to throw in malicious code to change the entered votes without leaving traces."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A year and a half ago, we wrote about Kevin Kelly's theory that to be a success as a content creator, you just need 1,000 "true fans." These were the ultra-committed fans. The fans who would follow you to the end of the world and purchase whatever you came out with. And -- more importantly -- they'll help bring more fans into the fold. The point isn't that these are your only fans, but the most committed. At the time, I wasn't sure if the 1,000 number was really accurate, but certainly agreed with the idea of more closely connecting with your biggest fans. My guess was that 1,000 wasn't really enough. But, perhaps I was off in the wrong direction? Ariel Hyatt has been blogging about the concept of 1,000 True Fans and has an interview with musician Matthew Ebel, an up-and-coming musician who makes a living from his music, and breaks down the details -- including pointing out that he makes 26.3% of his net income from just 40 hard-core fans.

Music Sales:

• CD Sales - 4.1%
• Digital Music Sales - 13.9%
• Subscription Site - 36.9%
• Live Shows - 18.1%
• Cover Gig Fees/Cover - 9.8%
• Original Gig Fees/Cover - 6.2%
• Tips (Including UStream) - 2.1%
• Works For Hire & Voiceovers - 8.2%
• Affiliate Sales (typically for my own albums/tracks) - 1.1%
• Licensing - 13.2%
• Independent Film - 6.6%
• Internet - 6.6%
• Web Design - 4.6% (I include this because I'm doing a website for a friend... it's something I choose to do, but it is part of my income this year.)

Now, first thing I'll point out is that I'm still not sure the numbers fully add up. Matthew doesn't give a total amount earned, but in a comment says:

Suffice it to say that I'm renting a house in Wellesley, MA with a couple of room mates... I'm not starving, I can still eat sushi from time to time, and my car (neither a Pinto nor a Bentley) is paid off.

So, he's making a living wage, but not raking it in, which is to be expected (and is certainly a hell of a lot better than many musicians). Now, of course, the other number that stands out above is the "subscription site" with the single largest percentage of his revenue. That would be his MatthewEbel.net site, where he offers a $5/month subscription offering. It actually looks quite a lot like the music business model I suggested back in 2003, so it's nice to see someone making it work directly. Basically, it's people paying for access to Matthew (he even admits that in the description, saying it's like a permanent "backstage pass"). While subscribers will get regular access to new music as soon as he creates it, the selling point is special invitations and access to the artist.

And, of course, Ebel seems to certainly recognize the CwF (connect with fans) part that has to go along with this RtB (reason to buy). In the interview, he discusses the importance of really connecting with those fans. First, he notes that one of the nice side effects of his "subscription" offering is that he promises fans two new songs and one live concert recording every month, and that keeps him top of mind:

Little did I realize that new releases every two weeks would be better than any good album reviews or press coverage. Giving my fans something new to talk about every two weeks meant exactly that: they talk about me every two weeks. They're not buying an album, raving about it, and losing interest after a few months, they're constantly spreading my name to their Twitter followers, coworkers, pets, etc. Regular delivery of quality material is damn near my one-step panacea for the whole industry.

And, of course, he uses social media to connect as much as possible:

Good music is barely enough to get fans to hand out 99¢ anymore; they have to be emotionally invested in the artist if that artist wants their loyalty. Don't get me wrong, there can still be a "fourth wall" during a live concert or video, but real, meaningful connection with the fans is what keeps me in their heads after the show's over (heck, even your "character" can interact with fans in-character). I chat with my fans via Twitter, Facebook, matthewebel.com and matthewebel.net, and as many other channels as possible. The more I interact with them between performances, the more I stay fresh in their minds and the more inspiration I draw from them.

Yet another musicians showing how CwF+RtB works. Now, I'm sure some will complain that this isn't a "real" success because he's not selling out stadiums or something (of course, those are the same people who would say that those selling out stadiums don't count because they can afford to do crazy experiments). But given how many musicians we're hearing about these days making exactly these types of things work to the point where they can make a living doing it, you have to begin to realize that something's working.

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Our pals at ThinkGeek are having a contest to see who can design the coolest/geekiest pumpkin-carving template. You can view/download the entries at their contest page.

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 people have been sending in John T. Unger's story, claiming that someone who copied his artwork is now suing him in federal court over copyrights. The general sentiment from the submitters, it seems, is to support Unger's position. I avoided writing about this for a while, because the story is actually a lot more complex, and since I think Unger is going too far, I thought it might upset some folks. Plus, the story is pretty complex. Thankfully, the good folks over at Consumerist actually really did an excellent job laying out a pretty balanced look at the issues that doesn't automatically side with Unger.

Here's the summary of the situation:

• Unger makes "firebowls" -- decorative metal bowls that you light a fire in (I had no idea such things existed).
• He copyrighted the design of his firebowls.
• He then discovered that Rick Wittrig was making firebowls that look remarkably similar, but are a bit cheaper.
• Unger got angry and sent a cease-and-desist
• Wittrig filed a lawsuit to claim that Unger's registered copyrights are not legitimate, as there shouldn't be any copyright on utilitarian objects.
• Unger writes up his side of the story (small artist being ripped off!) and asks people to fund his legal defense using popular crowdfunding site Kickstarter

As Consumerist notes, it's easy to quickly side with Unger without understanding the full story, saying that he's an artist who got "ripped off," but that's not at all clear. Yes, it does seem pretty likely that Wittrig copied Unger's designs (they match quite closely and at no point does Wittrig deny copying the designs). But it is a pretty big question as to whether or not Unger's work really is covered by copyright (or should be). Now this whole story is the type of thing that people often bring up when I write about why copyright isn't needed. This -- they say -- is a perfect example where copyright is necessary. Unger is mad because this other guy is "ripping him off" and passing off Unger's designs as his own. Except, again, that's not clear at all. Copyright was designed as an incentive to create -- not a system to block all competition. In the fashion world, as we've noted repeatedly, knockoffs are quite common, and have helped the industry thrive. It actually helps make the brand name originators of the design worth more, because people want the "real" original kind.

So, without copyright, what can Unger do? Well, he's actually already doing it. He put up a site that points out that Wittrig copies him, get lots of attention for it, and a lot more people now know about these kinds of decorative firebowls. My guess is that Unger is suddenly selling a lot more than he was before -- and that'll be true whether or not Wittrig gets the copyrights tossed out. And, in the meantime, having Wittrig around as competition should be good for Unger, pushing him to continue innovating and coming up with new designs.

Separately, I have to admit to some fascination over the use of Kickstarter's crowdfunding platform to fund a "legal defense" rather than just as a way to sell products. Even if I don't think Unger should have much of a legal argument, I think it's a cool use of the platform, which also drives more interest and attention to his own bowls.

So, in the end, I think Wittrig should be free to make these firebowls and to sell them in the marketplace and compete with Unger. At the same time, though, I think Unger should be free to draw lots of attention to his own firebowls combined with the sympathy-inducing story of how he originated the designs that Wittrig copied. In the end, then, they'd both be better off, as it ends up getting both of them a lot more attention for the bowls, and those who feel sympathy for Unger, or who just want to support the "original" artist, will pay up for his versions of the bowls, whereas those who would rather save some money will pay Wittrig. In the end, both of them end up being better off, and no copyright battle needs to happen. Unfortunately, in an age where so many content creators have been taught to use copyright as a crutch, that's not what we get.

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Wow, lots of photos and info about the Bay Bridge in CA... seems like the "band-aid" to fix a crack is the source of the closing...

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GMGruman writes "Every few months, it seems, there is a new 'iPhone killer.' Android 2.0, in the guise of the Motorola Droid, is the latest such 'killer.' But what will it really take to beat or match the iPhone (single page), and does Android or any other mobile OS have the right stuff? There's a lot more to the answer than is usually discussed. This article takes a look at the strengths that may allow Droid and Android 2.0 to provide strong competition to devices like the iPhone and the Blackberry, as well as the obstacles it continues to face that could inhibit adoption."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A couple years ago, some entertainment industry lobbyists hit on a new idea for trying to get Congress to legislate against file sharing software: figure out ways to blame it for stupid employees. More specifically, figure out a way to blame it for stupid employees... in the government. So, those lobbyists have worked hard to highlight every single time some sort of sensitive government information was leaked via file sharing programs, and then even got Congress to investigate file sharing programs, rather than government security policies or how the government deals with stupid employees who put sensitive information on home computers that also have file sharing software installed improperly (set to share everything). The latest is that they were even able to get a ridiculously poorly thought-out law proposed that would cause problems for nearly every software you use online. Brilliant.

So, of course, as the news broke that there was a leak of a Congressional ethics investigation, because a staffer put the document on his or her home machine that had file sharing software on it, the usual crowd of folks wasted no time at all in highlighting the use of P2P software and presenting file sharing as if it (rather than dumb employees and bad government security) was a huge national security threat and (of course) to urge Congresss to pass laws against file sharing programs. The one thing in common? All of those calls come from people who get paychecks from the entertainment industry.

Funny, I don't see them calling for laws that would lock down and secure laptops, even though government employees lose thousands of laptops every year -- many with sensitive information. I don't see them calling for laws against email software, though I would bet that a lot more sensitive information is leaked by people simply emailing it to the wrong party. They don't call for laws against the telephone, even though people leak info over the phone. What? No laws against dining in restaurants where you might here some info from folks at the next table? This has nothing to do with file sharing software. It has everything to do with poor security setup and dumb government employees. The claims that this happens so often are misleading. The federal government employs nearly 3 million people. We hear about these sorts of "leaks" once every year or so. Out of 3 million people, if anything, I'd be amazed there are so few leaks.

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Can't decide on a typeface for your next project? Why not choose them all, with Michael Flückiger and Nicolas Kunz's Laika, the dynamic font generator. It's a relatively straightforward concept, but could make for some cool visualizers. What if the text on your website 'breathed' with you, or melted when left in the sun? It could either be really cool, or more annoying than regular old blinking text. Personally, I'm picturing a weather display, where the word weather itself morphs in relation to outside conditions. [via thestrangeattractor]

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This is very cool - Dann Green of 4ms Pedals has posted schematics, code, and parts list for the Autonomous Bassline project. The ATtiny84 based module is also available in kit form with an optional heavy-duty enclosure. And if this thing wasn't awesome enough as is - an infrared clock signal can be used to drive the unit.

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You may recall last year that the state of Oregon tried to claim copyright in preventing others from republishing Oregon laws. Yes, that seems incredibly counterproductive, and eventually the state backed down. However, it looks like Oregon's Attorney General is now also claiming copyright on the Attorney General's Public Record and Public Meeting Manual. Yes. A government official claiming copyright over a document on the public record. Wonderful. Carl Malamud is trying to get the Attorney General to issue an opinion that such things will not be covered by copyright. But, again, can anyone provide any good reason why any government document should be covered by copyright?

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It looks like the Senate has pushed back on the restrictions that the White House wanted on a journalism shield law. Not only does the new Senate version greatly limit the circumstances under which the White House could get around the law, it also goes back to covering amateur/freelance/citizen/participatory journalists as well. The White House had wanted the right to basically claim which stories wouldn't count for shield law protection (meaning journalists would need to give up their sources). But the "compromise" bill from the Senate will only allow this in cases where the government can show (not just say) that the information is needed to prevent terrorism or substantial harm to national security. That seems a lot more reasonable. Of course, this is only the Senate version and the bill very well might change before it gets approved, but at least it's good to see that it doesn't just create a special class of "professional journalists."

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alphadogg writes "The Conficker worm has passed a dubious milestone. It has now infected more than 7 million computers, security experts estimate. On Thursday, researchers at the volunteer-run Shadowserver Foundation logged computers from more than 7 million unique IP addresses, all infected by the known variants of Conficker. They have been able to keep track of Conficker infections by cracking the algorithm the worm uses to look for instructions on the Internet and placing their own 'sinkhole' servers on the Internet domains it is programmed to visit. Conficker has several ways of receiving instructions, so the bad guys have still been able to control PCs, but the sinkhole servers give researchers a good idea how many machines are infected."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over the past few years, there have been numerous lawsuits by telcos against various municipalities that have decided to launch municipal fiber broadband projects. Most of these lawsuits have failed -- but the main argument from the telcos is that it's unfair to have to compete against the government, and it would take away incentives for the telcos to actually invest in infrastructure to provide for those towns. Of course, that doesn't make much sense. That would mean that any competition would decrease incentives to invest. One of the nastier legal battles took place in Monticello, Minnesota, where the local telco TDS fought hard (and lost) its battle to stop muni-fiber from showing up. But, now, suddenly TDS is announcing its own fiber broadband, giving people 50 Mbps service for $50/month. What's the likelihood that TDS would have done this if it didn't have competition from muni-fiber? The reason municipalities look to muni-fiber is because there isn't enough competition and the telcos aren't investing in infrastructure (or really serving customer needs). So the end result here is that by introducing more competition, consumers and citizens are better served. So what's the problem with it again?

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Dale posted a tweet about the Chris Ware cover of the latest New Yorker magazine. I think the cover is a brilliant commentary on our mobile-connected, interrupt-driven, Twitter and FB-obsessed lives, and maybe on some of the "phoned-in" parenting that goes on.

It instantly reminded me of an incident at Maker Faire Bay Are three years ago. I was running a Mousey the Junkbot building workshop. People would buy parts bundles, sit at picnic tables, and I would guide them through building the bots from a workbench with a mic and overhead mirror, home expo cooking demo-style. A guy and his son, maybe 8 or 9, came up to look at the mousebots and parts bundles. I could already tell dad was bored, distracted, and slightly rude and dismissive (e.g. he baulked at the idea that the bundles cost money, like we were trying to rip him off). The kid said he wanted to try building one. Dad shelled out the bucks, grabbed the kit, and picked a spot at a table. As soon as dad sat down, he pulled out his phone and started playing a game on it. Now keep in mind, the Mousey build is rather involved, and includes using a Dremel and a cut-off wheel to hack a lot of plastic, requires a soldering iron, etc. It really requires some adult supervision. My teen son was helping out by circulating amongst the tables, making sure people had on their goggles, and showing them how to use the tools. He noticed this kid was basically unsupervised and went over to show him the ropes. Dad didn't flinch. He literally had his back turned to his son. The poor kid made a valiant effort to do what he could on the build. When he was ready to leave, he tapped his father on the back. Dad said: "Let's take a picture for mommy," took a quick pic of the kid posing with his roughed-out robot, and they made off into the crowd. As they were leaving, I saw dad pulling out his phone again, and his head go down. I've never in my life wanted more to give another parent a self-righteous lecture (maybe with some physical punctuation marks) about engagement, the precious value of attention, and basic parenting.

While I know the Ware image isn't necessarily that deep of an indictment (we all check our phones when there's a break in the action), it still reminded of this incident. I love how the reflected glow of the phone screens echoes the ghost/mask-like faces of the children at the door.

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An interesting ruling in the Arizona Supreme Court found that the metadata on a public record should be public as well -- so people could, conceivably, look at who created certain documents and when they were created. While that might not seem like a big deal, as the article link above describes, plenty of interesting data often can be found in the metadata -- such as what lobbyist wrote up what documents for other organizations to send. While this only applies in Arizona right now, you have to imagine that lobbyists are quickly learning how to better scrub metadata off their astroturfing letters.

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CWmike writes "Users should wait for Microsoft to work out the bugs in Windows 7 before jumping on the new OS, computer support company Rescuecom said on Friday. 'From the calls we're getting, as well as our own experience in the past with all Microsoft's operating systems, we're recommending that people stick with their time-tested OS and wait for the dust to settle,' said Josh Kaplan, president of Rescuecom. Citing a litany of reasons, ranging from the risk of losing data during an upgrade to tough economic times, Kaplan urged Windows users to put off upgrading to Windows 7 or buying a new PC with the operating system pre-installed. 'There are some compelling reasons for both businesses and home users to move to Windows 7,' Kaplan said, 'so we're saying "just wait for a bit."' Upgrading an existing machine — whether it's running the eight-year-old Windows XP or the much newer Vista — is particularly risky, he added, especially if users haven't taken time to make a full backup before they migrate their machines. Some users have found that out first hand. Among the top subjects on Microsoft's support forum is one that has put some PCs into an endless reboot loop when their owners tried to upgrade from Vista to Windows 7. Microsoft has not yet come up with a solution that works for all the users who have reported the problem, sparking frustration."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This began as a response to a comment left by Marshall Kirkpatrick to an earlier post of mine.

My belief is that it's content that drives the apps.

You need something or someone to go first. With RSS it was Wired, Red Herring, Motley Fool and Salon then the early blogs then the NY Times and it blasted off.

With podcasting it was IT Conversations, the Gillmor Gang, Morning Coffee Notes, Daily Sourcecode, the community, then NPR and it blasted off.

This confluence has not (yet) happened for directory structures. It's not immediately obvious who the big drivers are going to be, but if they're out there, the Twitter lists feature is getting them to think about this stuff. I don't doubt that OPML will be part of the bootstrap and that people will quickly want to make lists that include resources that are not (just) Twitter users or lists of Twitter users.

In other words, this is the most promising moment for OPML directories that's come so far.

Just days after we wrote about a study that showed more government funding of the press leads to less reporting on government corruption, along comes the Washington Post with an editorial saying it's time to have the federal government fund more journalism. I wonder how Watergate would have turned out if the Washington Post was relying on Nixon for cash... The editorial piece claims that no one is "filling the gap" left by fewer newspaper reporters, but presents no evidence whatsoever to support that. The market is changing, absolutely, but we're seeing all sorts of new, unique and innovative ways of covering the news -- often allowing much greater coverage than in the past. Getting the government involved may sound good to the Washington Post, but it hardly seems like the right formula for an independent press.

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Here are some of my recent posts about money for Credit.com.

Charts to Help You Succeed in Online Dating: "If you're investing your time and money in an online dating service and want to increase your chances of getting a reply from someone you're interested in, don't tell them they're "hot." Instead, tell them you dig zombie movies."

Strategies for Happiness: "The shift from being a rat racer to pursuing happiness is not about working less or with less fervor but about working as hard or harder at the right activities -- those that are a source of both present and future benefit."

New Boom on Metal Detectors: "A 55-year-old metal detector enthusiast discovered a cache of Anglo-Saxon treasures earlier this month, estimated to be worth $10 million, in a farmer's field in Birmingham, England."

Big Spenders Living in Denial: "Mark is a 41-year-old executive who makes a six-figure salary but fell into debt because he doesn't believe in self-sacrifice: 'I have a sort of moralistic self-righteousness that I deserve good things,' he says. 'And because I'm surrounded by luxury all day, I know what's good quality and what isn't.'"

Higher pay equals worse performance: "Money is a motivator as well as a stress-inducer. With so much at stake, the volunteers had a harder time concentrating on the assignment."

Consumerism Commentary Podcast: "Flexo and his colleagues are interested in the same kinds of money-related topics that I am: the psychology of money, personal finance tips, investment strategies, life hacks (like haggling tactics), and various fun observations (like how the frequent redesign of US coins is a bad thing). In a blogosphere overcrowded with personal finance blogs, they are one of the best."

Going Minimal: "Leo Babauta at Get Rich Slowly and Trent Hamm at The Simple Dollar are both fans of a minimalist approach to personal finances. Monetary minimalism involves taking stock of the ways you spend your money and your time, and then streamline them so you have 1) more money, 2) more time, and 3) a more rewarding life."

How money affects the "moral molecule" in your brain: An interview with Neuroeconomist Paul J. Zak: "When you receive money denoting trust your brain releases a chemical called oxytocin. Oxytocin motivates you to reciprocate. It makes us feel empathy for others. It connects us to others."

Learning to resist anchoring cues: "When it comes to buying diamonds, which most people won't do more than once or twice in their lives and have no idea what diamonds are really worth, people will grab any anchor given to them. And De Beers is only too happy to provide one: 'two months' salary.'"

Nifty Chart and Web App to Help You Find a Better Cell Phone Plan: "BillShrink's Cell Phone Advisor is a useful Web app that helps you search for a cheaper cell phone plan. You enter your current monthly bill, the name of your carrier, and other information, and the Cell Phone Advisor presents other plans that could save you money."

cptdondo writes "I've got an old laptop that I've been trying to resurrect. It has a 486MHz CPU, 28 MB of RAM, a 720 MB HD, a 1.44MB floppy drive, and 640x480 VESA video. It does not have a CD drive, USB port, or a network port. It has PCMCIA, and I have a network card for that. My goal is to get a minimal GUI that lets me run a basic browser like Dillo and open a couple of xterms. I've spent the last few days trying to find a Linux distro that will work on that machine. I've done a lot of work on OpenWRT, so naturally I though that would work, but X appears to be broken in the recent builds — I can't get the keyboard to work. (OK, not surprising; OpenWRT is made to run on WiFi Access Point hardware which doesn't have a keyboard...) All of the 'mini' distros come as a live CD; useless on a machine without a CD-ROM. Ditto for the USB images. I'm also finding that the definition of a 'mini' distro has gotten to the point of 'It fits on a 3GB partition and needs 128 MB RAM to run.' Has Linux really become that bloated? Do we really need 2.2 GB of cruft to bring up a simple X session? Is there a distro that provides direct ext2 images instead of live CDs?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There are vises, and there are vises. And there are those of us for whom vises are also vices. For we few obsessives cognoscenti, the price of this beautifully-designed chain-drive shoulder vise package may not be unreasonable. For the mechanically inclined, a remake would be totally do-able, and Lie-Nielsen is to be credited for not keeping any secrets about how it all goes together. The installation instructions (.pdf) contain all you'd need to know to cobble together one of your own.

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In the past, we've had a bunch of stories about TV shows being released on DVDs having to change their music to deal with the fact that it wasn't licensed for DVD release originally (often because when the TV shows were on the air, there was no such thing as a DVR -- or even a VCR -- so it couldn't even have been predicted). Then, of course, there have been a series of famous lawsuits over whether or not publications can "republish" their old magazines in electronic format, because freelancers who wrote the original articles only signed licenses for the single publication.

However, it looks like lawyers drafting such legal arrangements are beginning to recognize this as an issue and are trying to prepare for such eventual new media opportunities. Eric Goldman alerts us to a WSJ article, highlighting how phrases like "in all media, throughout the universe" are becoming increasingly common in licensing contract language. While some decry this as being imprecise and overly broad, I tend to fall on the other side of the fence. Not having those types of clauses in agreements in decades past have resulted in a lot of long and drawn out lawsuits (and old content that simply cannot be repurposed for modern media). Better to have the language seem ridiculously inclusive than lose culture to history because no one predicted the next popular format.

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negRo_slim writes "Who knew the N-Gage was still kicking? Well apparently it still is — however, it looks like 2010 will be the end. From the announcement: 'While the N-Gage.com site together with the N-Gage Arena and other community features will remain in operation throughout 2010, the Ovi Store will be the new central place for all the mobile games that Nokia and other publishers offer from this point forward. We will no longer publish new games for the N-Gage platform.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When I posted about the lives of lovable native lampreys a couple weeks ago, commenter Allegra pointed me to some great videos of vegetarian lamprey in Vancouver's Morrison Creek. For the first couple seconds of watching, I honestly mistook the lamprey for water plants. And then they started building nests and spawning. Which plants don't tend to do.

This video shows a group of male and female lamprey building a nest by moving small stones with their sucker mouths. There's more videos of lamprey working together to build nests if you follow the link. Cool stuff! The group that put this together, the Morrison Creek Streamkeepers, also have a photo page that explains how to tell the difference between a girl lamprey and a boy lamprey--if I haven't burned you out on animal sex this week already.

Boing Boing guestblogger Connie Choe is a health and culture writer by day and a professional kimchimonger by night.

Whenever I'm hanging out on a chairlift I like to shout that I'm going to go die a cold, snowy death. Mostly so that if I were to actually perish on the ride down I could say, "I told you so." But also because I am genuinely (and in my case, irrationally) afraid that something terrible like this will happen. The guy in the video is an experienced backcountry skier named Chris Cardello. In his words:

When the slide propagated, I tried to remain as composed as possible and make sure my AvaLung was in. As I was getting buried and the slide slowed, I threw one hand up and with my other hand I grasped the AvaLung, which had been ripped out of my mouth during the turbulent ride. While I was buried, I tried to be as calm as possible; I knew my hand was exposed so my crew would be digging me out shortly. I was able to breathe through the AvaLung, but it was difficult due to the snow jammed down my throat.

(via freeskier.com)

Restrictive homeowners' association preventing you from building your entire house out of LEGO? To help convince them of the importance of the brick, why not start by building a LEGO kitchen, like this one from designers Simon Pillard and Philippe Rosett. While not made entirely of lego (there is a fiberboard counter underneath the brick), it should be sure to earn you the respect of your neighbors. [via inhabitat]

More:

• LEGO Kitchen crafts
• Toilet paper folder & dispenser prototype

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Somebody is going to lose the World Series. It's true. I have heard this is how these things work. But, when the inevitable happens, where do all their commemorative hats, T-shirts, shoelaces, giant foam hands, etc. go? After all, nobody knows which team will win. To meet the instant, post-game demand, manufacturers have all that championship memorabilia--for both teams--made up and sitting in a warehouse before the final game is even a twinkle in an announcer's eye.

If you guessed that it ends up in a dump, you'd be wrong. Mental_floss investigated and found the World Vision, an international Christian charity, gets the losing gear from baseball, football and basketball.

The merchandise doesn't go to waste, people living in poverty receive new, clean clothes, and the clothing makers recoup some of their losses--they get tax credits for the charitable donations. Why don't the clothes go to needy families in the United States? Overseas donation is part of the agreement between World Vision and the leagues. The farther away the clothing is, the less likely it is to offend a losing player (or heartbroken Buffalo Bills fan).

In fact, fear of fan alienation used to keep the MLB from donating. Up until two years ago, they required all inaccurate championship clothing be destroyed.

In general, we're big fans of the safe harbors found in the DMCA and the CDA, as they do what common sense should do instead: make sure that a third party is not held liable for actions of its users. Unfortunately, common sense isn't always so common, and some people have trouble understanding this concept. In fact, it appears that a new bill may go in the other direction when it comes to investor information. A proposed bill that is supposedly designed to allow the SEC to better protect investors from bad info would potentially hold service providers liable for information posted by users if the service provider has "actual knowledge that the material contains a misrepresentation [or] in the absence of actual knowledge, is aware of facts or circumstances from which it is apparent that the material contains a misrepresentation [and] upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, fails to act expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material."

That would go against the basic Section 230 CDA safe harbors, so I'm not quite sure how you reconcile the two. In general, you can understand why it seems to make sense that service provider needs to remove such info, but it opens up all sorts of questions. Say someone in our comments posts some sort of misrepresentation. Are we now going to need to police that? If someone else tells us it's a misrepresentation, will we now need to delete the comment? Are we expected to investigate whether or not some random comment on the site is a misrepresentation? Policing such things on forums all over the place would place an incredible burden on any website that allows user generated content. Why not keep the Section 230 safe harbors and focus on holding the actual parties (those who posted it) responsible, rather than the tools they use?

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An anonymous reader sends along this excerpt from Nature News: "Kepler, NASA's mission to search for planets around other stars, will not be able to spot an Earth-sized planet until 2011, according to the mission's team. The delays are caused by noisy amplifiers in the telescope's electronics. ... The problem is caused by amplifiers that boost the signals from the charge-coupled devices that form the heart of the 0.95-metre telescope's 95-million-pixel photometer, which detects the light emitted from the distant stars. Three of the amplifiers are creating noise that compromises Kepler's view. The noise affects only a small portion of the data, Borucki says, but the team has to fix the software — it would be 'too cumbersome' to remove the bad data manually — so that it accounts for the noise automatically. He says that the fix should be in place by 2011." Mindful of Halloween's approach, NASA has put up a piece looking at some of the already-known exoplanets that wouldn't be very friendly to human life.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Your nostrils will absolutely not be taking any crap from each other. Scientists have long known about binocular rivalry--a sort-of competition between your eyes. If you control a person's vision so one eye sees one image, and the other eye sees a completely different image, the images won't merge. Instead, the person will experience a tug of war between one scene and the other, with neither eye coming out the winner. Turns out, our noses may be doing something similar. In a small, but interesting, study, researchers presented evidence for what they're calling "binaral rivalry"--competition between the nostrils.

Wen Zhou and Denise Chen presented twelve participants with the smell of rose to one of their nostrils and the smell of a marker pen to their other nostril. After each break in the smells, the participants indicated on a visual scale whether they had detected the scent of rose or of marker pen. Just as with binocular rivalry, the participants' perceptual experience fluctuated back and forth randomly between the two scents.

The researchers believe this nostril rivalry is related in some way to the process of adaptation, both in the receptor cells in the nose and in the part of the brain that processes smells. For example, when repeatedly presented with a balanced mix of both smells, the participants' sensory experience fluctuated between rose and marker pen, presumably because of adaptation in the brain: as central neurons tired of one odour, their response to the other became more dominant and back again. The researchers also showed that adaptation occurs in the nose: swapping the bottles of odour around from one nostril to the other reinstated participants' experience of a given smell after it had previously faded through continuous sniffing.

Via British Psychological Society Research Digest.

Image courtesy Flickr user bazusa, via CC.

(Dr. Sketchy figure model D.D.)

Bob Self says:

Molly Crabapple's DIY alternative figure drawing empire, known as Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School, boasts branches in over 80 cities internationally, but there's still a whole lot of world out there.

With that in mind, the crew from Dr. Sketchy's Los Angeles is packing the van and hitting the asphalt to bring Dr. Sketchy's Roadshow to a town near you. Beginning with an inaugural haul around California between November 2nd and 14th, the roadshow will make stops in Anaheim, Costa Mesa, Long Beach, Sherman Oaks, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Fresno, Monterey, San Jose, Sacramento, Alhambra, and two more cities TBD.

Artist and art voyeurs need only bring a $10 donation and their favorite drawing supplies. Dr. Sketchy's and the Roadshow's art-centric host venues will provide everything else (top notch models, refreshments, casual networking opportunities, and an all around good time).

Dr. Sketchy's Roadshow

Philip K D writes "Award-winning SF author and BoingBoing co-editor Cory Doctorow has an editorial in today's Times of London. Doctorow elegantly eviscerates the basic injustice posed by the imminent Mandelson '3 Strikes' law in Britain. He makes the explicit observation: 'The internet is an integral part of our children's education; it's critical to our employment; it's how we stay in touch with distant relatives. It's how we engage with government. It's the single wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly. It isn't just a conduit for getting a few naughty free movies, it is the circulatory system of the information age.' It is worth noting that Doctorow was influential in the creation of the Creative Commons. He has enjoyed considerable commercial success for his writings, owing in no small part on his insistence that his work be made available for unrestricted electronic distribution and copying." In related news, the UK's second-largest ISP, TalkTalk, is now threatening legal action if Mandelson's plan goes through.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Boing Boing guestblogger Connie Choe is a health and culture writer by day and a professional kimchimonger by night.

If you're not already planning to convert that old fridge into a kegerator, perhaps you should consider making your own cheese "cave." Why? Because cheese deserves your adoration, and you could use another hobby. I am planning to steal my husband's mini-fridge for this purpose (this is probably news to him) because it would be so appropriate for the rock star of dairy products to hang out in a unit that looks like an amp. If anyone can figure out how to effectively lower fridge temperature without purchasing a separate thermostat, I would be happy to send you some amateurish homemade cheese.

So many things to say about where Twitter's lists point, the thing is, I've said them all already, many times over many years. There's a whole architecture already designed and deployed for lists and lists of lists. And they form directories that are much more open than the original Yahoo directory or DMOZ. I know everyone thinks DMOZ is the most open directory possible, but it's not.

The list structure of the Internet should be a open as the web. That is to say no one gives you permission to create a web page on any topic you like. So if you want to create a list of resources, that might include Twitter users, but might also include many other things, go ahead. Be the best you can be. You don't need anyone to let you do it.

If you're good, I might include your directory within mine, thereby delegating that topic to you. If something better comes along, I might unhook yours and replace it with theirs. Or I might get fancy and join yours with theirs, forming the sum of two lists.

If you want to see this working, here's a directory rendering of the archive of Scripting News. Look at the white-on-orange XML icons in the upper right corner. They, as always, link to the XML version of the rendering. In this case instead of being RSS, they are OPML. Every page has a way to suggest a link.

How do you edit these structures? In the OPML Editor of course. Here's a screenshot.

The OPML Editor allows you to build these attributed hierarchies but it also includes a full web server and CMS. And a lot more. And because it was built to run on the computers of the mid-90s, it's pretty fast on today's machines. The download is the size of an MP3. Takes a minute to install.

I may try one more time to push these ideas out there. It may finally be the time. If anyone wants to get something entrepreneurial going, I'm up for it. I'm not just doing this stuff out of the goodness of my heart.

Techies, read the OPML 2.0 spec to see how the pieces fit together. My software is all replaceable. The formats are open and lightweight. And there's some great connections to search engines possible. I pitched Google on this in 2002.

Every so often, I get wrong number phone calls (one of my numbers is apparently listed in a LensCrafters book of other stores, so I get calls from LensCrafter stores asking if I've got things in stock). It's not that difficult to say "you have a wrong number" and everyone goes on their merry way. Apparently, not for some. In Georgia, someone accidentally dialed a wrong number, and it resulted in someone getting shot. Apparently, following the wrong number, angry phone calls and texts were exchanged between the two guys, before they agreed to meet in a drug store parking lot, where one of them got shot (and the other got arrested). The story doesn't indicate who dialed the wrong number first, but, seriously, would it have been that hard to have just said, "hey, wrong number" and left it at that?

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Ian Lesnet submitted this cool hack-'o-lantern to our Make: Halloween Contest 2009. There's an Instructable here, a Flickr set here, and YouTube video here. It's a color-changing pumpkin full-court media press! The build uses a ShiftBrite RGB LED module, IR receiver, universal remote control, and a PIC18F2550 as the brains of it all.

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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Pop surrealist Andrew Brandou has a mind-bending new show of paintings opening Halloween evening at the Corey Helford Gallery in Culver City, California. The show, titled "In The Garden of the Mystic," runs until November 18. Above, "Vulpes Vulpes" on left and "Midnight Blooms" on right. From the gallery:

Influenced by 1960’s posters, music and psychedelia, Brandou’s new work takes a walk on the wild side and a more organic narrative ensues. The artist’s iconic flower motifs, skulls, bunnies and boxes transform into a kaleidoscope of stunning psychonautic imagery. Ornate gold leaf accents decorate mind-expanding dreamscapes where the ego merges into the id, fear is released and beauty resides. The exhibition will also include a rare series of limited-edition silkscreens on wood block based on vintage rock posters.

Sneak preview after the jump...

"Mirror"







"Climbing Out"

"Looking for Him"

"Midnight Self"


Andrew Brandou preview

Ponca City, We love you writes "The Wichita Eagle reports that Congress has approved funds to relocate the population of the southeast Kansas town of Treece, which is plagued with lead, zinc and other chemical contamination left by a century of mining. Estimates say it will cost about $3 million to $3.5 million to buy out the town, which is surrounded by huge piles of mining waste called 'chat' and dotted with uncapped shafts and cave-ins filled with brackish, polluted water. 'It's been a long, dusty, chat-covered road, but for the citizens of Treece, finally, help will be on the way,' said Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas who has been pushing for a buyout of Treece for two years. The population of Treece has dwindled to about 100 people, almost all of whom want to move but say they can't because the pollution and an ongoing EPA cleanup project makes it impossible to sell a house. The EPA has already bought out the neighboring town of Picher, Oklahoma, stripping Treece of quick access to jobs, shopping, recreation and services, including fire protection and cable TV. Both cities were once prosperous mining communities but the ore ran out and the mines were abandoned by the early 1970s. Of 16 children tested for lead levels in Treece, two had levels between 5 and 10 micrograms per deciliter of blood and one had a level of more than 10, the threshold for lead poisoning."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Judy Castro and Michael Shiloh run a series of classes called "Teach Me to Make" on a variety of subject such as electronics and arduino, mechanical sculpture, and electromechanics. Classes are run out of The Crucible and The Shipyard. Michael writes:

More recently (2-3 months) I've been teaching classes at my workshop which is now back in The Shipyard. I hold two classes every Tuesday: In the afternoon is a Project Lab, where students work on their own projects with my guidance, assistance, and tools. In the evening is the Arduino and Electronics class, where lately we have been focusing on controlling stepper motors. Both of these classes are stand-alone, in that students attend whenever they are able, and each meeting is guided by the knowledge and interest of those present.

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Woman's Day has a gallery of cheese sculptures that can't be missed, from this almost-perverse "Winners Drink Milk" piece, to a phallic Eiffel Tower, to a leprechaun-like Abe Lincoln made from a 1,000-pound block of mild Cheddar cheese.

8 Cutting-Edge Cheese Sculptures

We've posted before about the Mad Gasser of Mattoon: In 1944, the small town of Mattoon, Illinois was terrorized by a creepy black-clad prowler who sprayed anesthetic gas in his victims' faces. Or maybe it was all a case of mass hysteria based mostly on myth. The new episode of the excellent Memory Palace podcast features the delightfully weird tale of the Mad Gasser. The Memory Palace: "A Gas Gas Gas"

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,

Boing Boing readers may remember a year ago when the great State of Oregon asserted copyright over the Oregon Revised Statutes, sending take-down notices prohibiting reuse by Justia and Public.Resource.Org. In a shining example of democracy, the legislature held hearings, heard us out, and unanimously waived copyright on the laws. The results of opening up the law were pretty spectacularly demonstrated when a 2nd-year law student, Robb Shecter, created the beautiful OregonLaws.Org (compare to the official site for a night and day look).

Well, those copyright assertions are back, this time by the Attorney General, who asserted ownership over the (for real!) Attorney General's Public Record and Public Meeting Manual. I spent last week in Oregon meeting with law school faculty and giving lectures at 3 universities on the topic of who owns the law.

The results have been compiled into a formal pleading which we are submitting to the Attorney General for his consideration. He seems like a good guy, and we've asked him to issue an official Attorney General Opinion on when the state may assert copyright, covering not only his Public Meeting manual, but also the Secretary of State's Administrative Rules, the Fire Marshall's Fire Code, and the Building Codes. We have quite a few of those documents already on line, so there is an actual issue on the table and we're hoping he'll do the research and make a ruling.

The Oregon Question (Thanks, Carl!)

It looks like "print-on-demand/create your own t-shirt/mug/mouse pad store" company Zazzle has been sued for infringement by Summit Entertainment, who owns the licensing rights to the oh-so-popular Twilight movies. Apparently, all those excited tweens have been making their own Twilight merchandise. Now, basic common sense would tell you that Zazzle is the tool provider, and not the actual infringer here. But, Summit is claiming trademark violations, and (tragically and inexplicably) the official safe harbors cover things like copyright and defamation, but not trademark (hurray for legal loopholes). The only ones doing the actual infringement are the users, not Zazzle itself, but Zazzle has to hope that a court actually realizes this, and sometimes the courts get very, very confused on these sorts of things.

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Just over two years ago, fans of the Wheel of Time fantasy book series mourned the death of writer James Oliver Rigney Jr. — a.k.a. Robert Jordan. After much deliberation by Jordan's wife (who also edits the series), author Brandon Sanderson was chosen to finish the series. Sanderson familiarized himself with Jordan's notes and said that they would require three more books, which he hopes to release with about a year between them. On October 27th, the first new Wheel of Time book since Jordan's death was released, titled The Gathering Storm. Early reviews for the book seem quite positive, so here's a place to discuss it. Be warned: comments may contain spoilers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thank goodness someone built a robot that can play Rock Band on the iPhone. I was getting worried sick about it. Joe Bowers writes:

Rock Band has been released on the iPhone, and even though its a lot of fun, I would rather have something play it for me. Preferably a robot! The light sensor sends data to an Arduino, which is waiting for a spike in the data. The Arduino runs the sensor data through some averaging filters, and sets a threshold for on and off. The iPhone touch screen isn't like most PDAs. It uses a capacitive touch screen. I had some conductive foam laying around, its usually used for shipping sensitive electronics. If I used something non conductive, like a plastic pen, the foam would do nothing to the screen. My solution to this was to put thin copper wires into the foam (I also used these wires to attach the foam to the servos)... Add all of the above together into a modified Pelican case, with a lot of hot glue (non glittery) and you have a robot that will gladly beat all your difficult songs, sit back and sip some fine tea.

I love the ghostly sound of Blondie playing in the video.

iPhone Rock Band robot

Scott Jarvie made this Clutch Chair using more than 10,000 drinking straws. This one is apparently a non-functional art piece, however it seems like one should be able to make a usable chair with the same materials.

Anyone know how to form a curved surface using only straight segments of straw? My best guess is that you could use half-length straws as a wedge to form the curves. [via neatorama]

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"NASA to Start Radiating Monkeys," noted Chris Baker (of Wired), "The kind of headline that should be followed by 'NASA to Fire PR Firm.'"

The experiments will bombard squirrel monkeys (like the lil guy above) with radioactivity to explore the possible effects of radiation in space on human astronauts. Warning: eventually, revenge will come. Oh, and then there's this possibility.

[Photo: "Here's Looking at You!" by ifijay, via Flickr, CC license here. ]

An anonymous reader writes "Facebook is on a never-before-seen legal rampage against high profile internet spammers. Today Facebook was awarded yet another nine-figure settlement, this time for over $700 million. Facebook also has a criminal contempt case on Wallace, which means a high likelihood of prison, a big win for the internet and a milestone in cyber law. 'The record demonstrates that Wallace willfully violated the statutes in question with blatant disregard for the rights of Facebook and the thousands of Facebook users whose accounts were compromised by his conduct,' Jeremy Fogel wrote in his judgment order, which permanently prohibits Wallace from accessing the Facebook Web site or creating a Facebook account, among other restrictions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Enjoy ???????? "??????? ????" ????-3?????, the Russian boy accordion genius. It's all in the head shake. Once you get that down, the rest is easy.

With Peter Mandelson announcing this week (as everyone expected) that he's going to introduce a proposal to kick file sharers off the internet under a "three strikes" plan, it's been amusing watching defenders of this idea try and fail to answer the question "how will this make people buy more stuff." Over and over again people explain to us why it'll decrease file sharing (something I actually doubt for a variety of reasons that I'll explore later), but no one has explained how it will make more people buy stuff.

But, perhaps an even bigger question is whether or not it will ever actually get implemented in the UK. TalkTalk, the ISP that has been fighting the proposal for a while (and even gave a nice demonstration to show why IP addresses are not accurate in figuring out who's responsible for online activity) is now saying that it will take legal action to block such a proposal from being put in place, saying that it's a violation of human rights to kick people offline based on accusations, rather than due process.

On top of that, the idea is already incredibly unpopular with the majority of people in the UK... and (most importantly) there's an election coming up soon in the UK. Backing a massively disliked proposal to kick people off the internet based on accusations using weak evidence... probably isn't a savvy political move at this moment. Given all of that, I'm wondering if the plan ever really moves forward in the UK, or if it just makes a lot of noise so that Mandelson and his colleagues can tell the entertainment industry how they tried, to make sure the political donations keep coming in.

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9 levels of hell for the living
polka haunt us
goths in hot weather
zombie boogie
zombie wedding cake topper
ghoul a-go-go
zzzzombies
dead man's party
movie villain pumpkins
masks
mummy sausage wraps
halloween jell-o
gomora
bloody brain shooter
a hierarchy of monsters

previously on web zen:
halloween zen 2008

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.

Kevin Poulsen at Threat Level has a great item up about the growing menace of "money mules." The term refers to bank customers who've been conned into unwittingly laundering cash that hackers have stolen from business bank accounts. The con and the funny phrase have been around for a while, but the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation issued a new warning to American financial institutions about the increasing spread on Thursday. Snip:

Using specialized Trojan horse malware, cybercrooks have been intercepting web-banking credentials from the computers of small and midsize businesses, and then initiating wire transfers to mules around the country. The mules are consumers who’ve been lured into fake work-at-home scams, in which their employment involves receiving money transfers and then forwarding the funds to Eastern Europe, either directly or through other mules.

The scheme has exploded in the last year, with the FBI estimating losses at $40 million so far, according to a recent story from WashingtonPost.com reporter Brian Krebs, who’s been closely following the attacks.

FDIC Warns Banks to Watch for 'Money Mules' Duped by Hackers [ Threat Level via @glennf ]

[ Image: Bank Safe Online UK ]

Follow up - Bruce sent this in "Periodic taxi"!

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jasonbuechler writes in with news of the first state to declare that metadata is part of public records and must be released when the records are. "Hidden data embedded in electronic public records must be disclosed under Arizona's public records law, the state Supreme Court said Thursday... The Supreme Court's unanimous decision, which overturned lower court rulings, is believed to be the first by a state supreme court on whether a public records law applies to so-called metadata. 'This is at the cutting edge — it's the law trying to catch up with technology,' [one lawyer said]. The Arizona ruling came in a case involving a demoted Phoenix police officer's request for data embedded in notes written by a supervisor. The officer got a printed copy but said he wanted the metadata to see whether the supervisor backdated the notes to before the demotion."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A maker sent this in, nice table!

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Samuel Seide brings us this animatronic talking skull Instructable. It's motion-activated and uses a Waveshield kit for sound. [Thanks, Sam!]

More from Sam Seide:

• Interactive Punch-Out arcade dummy
• Tiny arcade machine is tiny

In the Maker Shed:

Arduino WaveShield Kit

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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As promised, here's the details on the short Canada/US tour for my novel Makers in November:

November 12, 7PM
Toronto, ON, Canada
The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation, and Fantasy
239 College Street, 3rd Floor, +1 416 393-7748
Books by Bakka Phoenix
(you can pre-order signed copies from them if you can't make it).

November 16, 7PM
Cambridge, Mass
Harvard Bookstore
1256 Massachusetts Avenue

November 17, 7PM
New York City, NY
Borders Columbus Circle
10 Columbus Circle (@59th St and Central Park West)

November 20, 11AM and 1PM
Philadelphia, PA
Free Library of Philadelphia
1901 Vine Street

November 20-22
Philcon, Cherry Hill, NJ

If you're with the press and you'd like to arrange an interview, please contact Justin Golenbock (USA) (Justin.Golenbock@tor.com/646.307.5413) or Katherine Wilson (Canada) (Katherine.Wilson@hbfenn.com/905.951.6600 x271).

You have to wonder what the Brooklyn Law School is teaching its students about due process, since it recently sent an email to all students saying that after receiving complaints from copyright holders about file sharing movies and TV shows, it was going to associate the IP addresses with names and hand them over to the copyright holders. Of course, this is based solely on an IP address, which is not particularly accurate or reliable as a unique identifier of an individual, so what Brooklyn Law School is basically telling its students is that it doesn't care if they falsely accuse them of file sharing, and the students should work it out with someone else. Not exactly the sort of lesson that you would think a law school wants to teach its students.

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On his blog over at RedMonk, analyst James Governor looks at the walled garden we seem to be moving into, and possible cracks in the wall. "As we rush to purchase Apple products and services on Cupertino’s monochrome treadmill of shiny shiny, I can’t help thinking the open web community is losing something vital — a commitment to net neutrality and platform openness. If a single company can decide what plays on the network and what does not, in arbitrary fashion, how can that be net neutrality? ... Is the AppStore a neutral network? Should it be? Is Comcast, the company net neutrality proponents love to hate, really the only company we should be wary of? Pipe level neutrality is surely only one layer of a stack. The wider market always chooses proprietary wrappers — every technology wave is co-opted by a master packager. Success in the IT industry has always been about packaging — doing the best job of packaging technologies as they emerge. Twas ever thus." Governor ends his essay with an optimistic look at Android, which he says "potentially fragments The Permission Based Web, and associated data ownership-based business models."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As a special preview for our upcoming Alex Rider Dream Gadget Contest, we're giving away two copies of Skeleton Key by Anthony Horowitz, the third book in the Alex Rider series. Just leave a comment in this post and tell us why you or your kid(s) needs one of these books. Please make sure you include your email address in the comment form field (it won't be published). All eligible comments will be closed by Noon PST on Sunday, November 1st. The winners will be announced next week on the site. Good luck!

More:

• Alex Rider's Geiger Counter Game Console
• Alex Rider's High Tensile Yo-Yo
  

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There's been an accident. The young scientist--or, perhaps, his lab assistant or friends--stands stunned. He knows he's been washed in a massive dose of radiation. He knows his life will never be the same.

In the real-world, the victims of criticality accidents spend time in the hospital. Some die. In fiction, they wake up with powers beyond the imagination of normal humans.

Researching the history of criticality accidents made me wonder how accidental exposure to massive levels of radiation became the de rigueur method of achieving superhero-dom. And, while I suppose comic book writers would have a well-formed opinion or two on this, I decided to ask a group of people whose point of view I'd never seen--actual nuclear scientists.

To get the scientists' perspective on superhero origins, I turned to three men:

Niel Wald is professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh's department of Environmental and Occupational Health, where he studies the effects of radiation on the human body. Ron Pevey is an associate professor at the University of Tennessee who researches criticality safety, and nuclear reactor analysis and design. Geoff Meggitt is a retired health physicist, and former editor of the Journal of Radiological Protection, who worked for the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority and its later commercial offshoots for 25 years.

None of them found the nuclear influence on comics particularly surprising. Even Wald, who said he's never read any comics and completely missed the whole phenomenon of radioactive spiders, gamma rays and the like, wasn't terribly startled to find out such things existed.

I worked on a number of weapons tests in Nevada. Before dawn you'd be in the dark and suddenly the mountain ranges 50 miles away would be lit up like noonday, he said.

With that kind of awe-(and fear)-inspiring backdrop, it's no wonder writers dipped into the nuclear well. But even if we'd never tested an actual A-bomb, we might still have ended up with nuclear-powered superheroes. Ron Pevey remembers comic book stories involving irradiated heroes that date to the 1930s. The public fascination with the transformative power of radiation goes back further than 1945.

Pevey thinks its a case of pop culture mixing two scientific facts.

In the first part of the 20th century, the evolutionary scientists were expressing the idea that maybe cosmic radiation, which we've lived with on earth for our whole history, might have caused some changes to our DNA. Radiation can do that. At the same time, people were learning about evolution, which depends on random changes. I think that caught their imagination. That connection between radiation and evolution. I remember one of the earliest stories I read where they put this guy into a chamber and irradiated him, and he evolved before their eyes. Really he would have just died, but the idea remains.

In fact, the idea could go back further still, Geoff Meggitt says, back to the patent medicines that dominated the turn of the 20th century---the heyday of which coincided with the discovery of radium. With tragic consequences.

It was seen to have near magical properties: radium glowing perpetually in the dark, x-rays seeing into people. Radium drinks were thought to give vitality. Also radiation did achieve some remarkable cures of medical conditions from the very early days - and still does. So magical and transforming!

He points out the case of Eben Byers, the socialite son of a wealthy American industrialist, who died in 1932 after drinking more than 1000 bottles of a "medicine" made up of radium dissolved in water.

But the final piece of the puzzle--and probably an important one, at least for anybody who appreciates Alan Moore's "Watchmen"--is the eerie blue glow reported by some witnesses of criticality accidents. You saw a recreation of it back on Wednesday, if you followed the link to watch the fictionalized movie version of Louis Slotin's 1946 accident.

Niel Wald suspects this flash of unnatural color helped add to the mysterious nature of radiation, and created an almost ready-written Zap/Pow moment when you can see that everything has changed.

But what is the blue glow? Where's it come from? On that point, even scientists disagree. Wald and Meggitt think it has to do with the way charged particles released by a nuclear chain reaction interact with oxygen and water molecules in the air. But there's another theory.
Ron Pevey thinks the blue glow is caused by something called Cerenkov radiation. Basically, it's what happens when atomic particles travel faster through something--like water--than light can travel through that same material.

It sounds strange because we're used to saying that nothing travels faster than the speed of light. But the truth is that that's only true in a vacuum. Light doesn't travel that fast in water. Electrons, neutrons and little alpha particles can actually travel faster through that medium than light can, and that's what causes the blue glow. It's a weird thing. Astronauts have experienced it, too. And there's some speculation that, when this is seen outside of a watery environment, that it's actually occurring in the water in your eyeball.

Image of Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen movie publicity stills.

A number of news sites and blogs erroneously (or hoaxily?) reported the death of Chuck Biscuits (Wikipedia), who has performed over the years for bands including Black Flag, Circle Jerks, DOA, and Danzig. The reports were all wrong. He will live to bang on de drum again. Apparently the whole thing was a prank on a particular journalist. Or not. All I know is the photo in this post was taken by Glen E. Friedman, who broke the news about the fact that everyone who broke the other news was wrong. Oh, and: this blog post is an elaborate excuse to post the Danzig "home video" above, in which Mr. Biscuits confesses his love for sugary breakfast cereals. His addiction to the likes of Quisp and Boo Berry ("the caviar of breakfast cereals") is the stuff of punk legend. (thanks, Sean)

xchg passes along a WiseAndroid piece on the drop in value of Garmin and TomTom shares following Google's announcement yesterday of Google Maps Navigation. "Shares of GPS device makers Garmin and TomTom plummeted... through a combination of their quarterly results and the launch of Google Maps Navigation. Following both low guidance for Garmin's next quarter as well as poor results from TomTom, shares for the two fell 16.4 percent and 20.8 percent respectively and remained low through the entire trading day after news of Google's free, turn-by-turn mapping service became public." Today Lauren Weinstein posted a number of reasons why standalone GPS won't go away any time soon.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

News reports earlier this month created a global stir around an odd "made in China" product marketed to the Middle East - cheap artificial hymens. They're intended for use by brides who feel compelled to fake virginity, in countries where not being a virgin at marriage is a very big, very bad thing. Conservative Egyptian politicians wanted to ban the product. One curious (male) blogger in Egypt decided to order one.

Mohammad Al Rahhal picked up the contraband gyno-goods at his local post office in Egypt:

it had been opened by various puzzled customs and postal employees who, at a loss, defined the product in writing as "containing an unknown red liquid" - and awaited my description.

Al Rahhal told inspectors it was "cinematographic make-up," and took his hymen home.

Marwa Rakha over at Global Voices has more from Al Rahhal's product review (he explains how it works, sort-of NSFW if only for use of anatomically specific language). Also, a report at the UK Guardian.

Spoiler: Al Rahhal's verdict? This thing, and the thinking behind it, are totally stupid. "Morality is worst interpreted by anatomy," he says. Bravo, dude.

Sanford "Spamford" Wallace, of course, was the original "spam king" back in the 1990s. Despite his claim to have reformed at one point, he apparently has been spamming various social networks and advertising spyware. Back in 2004, the FTC investigated him and fined him $4 million. Last year, MySpace won a $234 million judgment against him. Wallace responded by disappearing. At one point, even his lawyer couldn't find him. Earlier this year, when Facebook sued him for spamming their users as well, it seemed unlikely that he would bother to respond. Surprising pretty much everyone, he showed up in court, though claimed he was totally bankrupt. Either way, Facebook has just been awarded a $711 million judgment against him. Facebook, of course, will never see a dime of that money. But, the real question is what else can be done to stop Wallace. He's been spamming for well over a decade at this point, and despite multiple multi-million dollar judgments against him, he hasn't stopped. What else can be done?

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Kirby sez, "The December 2009 copy of Garden Railways magazine features an article about the Castle Peak & Thunder Railroad, a Disneyland Park themed, 1370 sq. foot, 1:24 scale model backyard railroad. The CPTRR, like its inspiration, is located in Anaheim, CA. It was built by Dave Sheegog, an architect who was a former Cast Member on the Canoes at Disneyland. He built replicas of all 5 Disneyland Steam locomotives and purchased a Casey Jr. locomotive. He scratch built all scenery to match Disneyland including replicas of the Main Street Train Station, Indiana Jones Adventure, and Sleeping Beauty Castle. Parts of Storybook Land, Big Thunder Mountain, Primeval World and the old Skull Rock are also included."

Castle Peak and Thunder Railroad (Thanks, Kirby!)

Dave sez, "As part of Sesame's 40th anniversary, we have a 5-week poll in which Sesame Street fans can vote for their all-time favorite segment over the past 40 years. Each week for four weeks, fans will vote for their favorite video from a selection of pre-selected 40 videos. In the fifth and final week of voting, fans will choose from the 40 highest overall ranked videos from the previous 4 weeks. At the end of the 5th week, through out the 6th week, and onwards, we will feature the winning video and 39 ranked runner ups."

Vote - Best Sesame Ever (Thanks, Dave!)

Several readers including alphadogg tipped the news that ICANN has approved non-Latin ccTLDs at its meeting in Seoul. "Starting in mid-November, countries and territories will be able to apply to show domain names in their native language, a major technical tweak to the Internet designed to increase language accessibility. On Friday, the Internet's addressing authority approved a Fast-Track Process for applying for an IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) and will begin accepting applications on Nov. 16. The move comes after years of technical testing and policy development... Currently, domain names can only be displayed using the Latin alphabet letters A-Z, the digits 0-9 and the hyphen, but in future countries will be able to display country-code Top Level Domains (cc TLDs) in their native language. ... 'The usability of IDNs may be limited, as not all application software is capable of working with IDNs,' ICANN said in a 59-page proposal (PDF) dated Sept. 30 that describes the [application] process." Reader dhermann adds, "Great, now even less chance I can identify NSFW links before they are blocked by my work's big brother app and my boss is notified... again."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Looking to take a break from tinkering on your latest project this weekend? Here are some fine maker events to check out, from The Maker Events Calendar. Wish your event was on the list? Add it to the calendar!

Coming up this week:

High Fashion Low Voltage (part 1) Arduino Lilypad @ Science Museum of Minnesota
Saint Paul, MN
Saturday, Oct 31, 2009, 9pm - 12pm

Workshop: Circuit Bending @ Balitmore Node
Baltimore, MD
Saturday, Oct 31, 2009, 1pm - 4pm

Journey to the End of the Night
San Francisco, CA
Saturday, Oct 31, 2009, 7pm +

Dorkbot SoCal 38
Los Angeles, CA
Saturday, Oct 31, 2009, 1pm +

Manchester Science Festival 2009
Manchester, United Kingdom
Saturday, Oct 24, 2009 - Sunday, Nov 1, 2009

Dorkbot NYC
New York, NY
Wednesday, Nov 4, 2009, 7pm +

Start planning for:

Mobile Art && Code
Pittsburgh, PA
Friday, Nov 6 to Sunday, Nov 8, 2009, all weekend

World Championship Punkin Chunkin
Sussex County, DE
Friday, Nov 6 to Sunday, Nov 8, 2009, all weekend

Grand Opening - "Light Up The Night" @ Alpha One Labs
Brooklyn, NY
Friday, Nov 6, 2009, 8pm - 12am

PCB Design Using Eagle @ NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Saturday, Nov 7, 2009, 2pm - 5pm

Intro to Soft Circuits @ Hack Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA
Saturday, Nov 14, 2009, 1pm - 4pm

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Dutch designer Jelte Van Abbema recently won the €10,000 Rado Prize for promising young designers. His awarded body of work includes Symbiosis, a project involving printing with bacterial cultures on paper and billboards. The letterforms change shape, saturation, and hue as the micro-organisms grow and die. The seriousness with which it's all taken seems a bit overblown to me, but it's still a neat idea. I also like the minimalist text-only styling of Van Abbema's personal webpage.

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Hugh Pickens sends in a Wall Street Journal report that Chinese banks will provide $1.5B to a consortium of Chinese and American companies to build a 600-megawatt wind farm in West Texas, using turbines made in China. The wind farm will be built on 36,000 acres, and will use 240 2.5-megawatt turbines, providing enough power to meet the electrical needs of around 150,000 American homes. The project will be the first instance of a Chinese manufacturer exporting wind turbines to the United States. China aims to be the front-runner in wind- and solar-power generation "The Obama administration is hoping a shift to renewable energy will inject new life into the US manufacturing base and provide high-paying jobs, making up for losses in other sectors. But while the US has poured money into renewable energy through tax credits and other subsidies, China has positioned itself to reap many of the benefits by ramping up its export machine."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MAKE columnist and Boing Boing super-blogger, Cory Doctorow, has just released his latest novel, called Makers(!) I just got my copy and tucked into it. So far, so awesome. Cory's books always crackle with such amazing ideas, technological and cultural hacks, that seem just over the horizon, or already in some sketchy warehouse or nerd's basement, just on the other side of town. Makers is no exception.

Cory says, of his latest effort:

Today is the launch of my new novel, Makers, a book about people who hack hardware, business-models, and living arrangements to discover ways of staying alive and happy even when the economy is falling down the toilet. Weirdly, I wrote it years before the current econopocalypse, as a parable about the amazing blossoming of creativity and energy that I saw in Silicon Valley after the dotcom crash, after all the money dried up.

As with all my previous novels, the whole book is available as a free, Creative Commons download, under a NonCommercial-ShareAlike license that allows you to remix it to your heart's content and share the book and your mixes noncommercially. And as with my last two books, I've created a unique donations program that connects generous people with schools, universities, libraries, shelters, prisons and other cash-strapped institutions.

Publisher's Weekly writes:

In this tour de force, Doctorow (Little Brother) uses the contradictions of two overused SF themes--the decline and fall of America and the boundless optimism of open source/hacker culture--to draw one of the most brilliant reimaginings of the near future since cyberpunk wore out its mirror shades. Perry Gibbons and Lester Banks, typical brilliant geeks in a garage, are trash-hackers who find inspiration in the growing pile of technical junk. Attracting the attention of suits and smart reporter Suzanne Church, the duo soon get involved with cheap and easy 3D printing, a cure for obesity and crowd-sourced theme parks. The result is bitingly realistic and miraculously avoids cliché or predictability. While dates and details occasionally contradict one another, Doctorow's combination of business strategy, brilliant product ideas and laugh-out-loud moments of insight will keep readers powering through this quick-moving tale.

Congrats, Cory!

Here's the book's website.

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The Anatomy Suit Zombie Costume is a $200 one-piece head and body suit with detachable arms. Pretty freaky. They should do a fleece-lined version for skiing.

ANATOMY SUIT COSTUME (via Street Anatomy)