Wrestling entertainment mogul Vince McMahon apparently thinks he controls the use of the word "smackdown" to describe non-wrestling competitions as well, as his lawyers have sent a cease and desist to the Wine School of Philadelphia for daring to have a Sommelier Smackdown competition. I wonder how many wines the average "moron in a hurry" would have to drink before thinking that the Sommelier Smackdown was somehow associated with World Wrestling Entertainment. Hopefully, the lawyers from the Wine School of Philadelphia will show McMahon how a Trademark Smackdown works.

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plover writes "Kim Zetter of Wired documents an extensive hack of Wal-Mart that took place in 2005-2006. She goes into great detail about the investigation and what the investigators found, including that the hackers made copies of their point-of-sale source code, and that they ran l0phtCrack on a Wal-Mart server. 'Wal-Mart uncovered the breach in November 2006, after a fortuitous server crash led administrators to a password-cracking tool that had been surreptitiously installed on one of its servers. Wal-Mart's initial probe traced the intrusion to a compromised VPN account, and from there to a computer in Minsk, Belarus.' Wal-mart has long since fixed the flaws that allowed the compromise, and confirmed that no customer data was lost in the hack — which is why they did not need to report the breach publicly earlier." This intrusion happened around the same time that Albert Gonzalez's gang was breaking into Marshall's and its parent company, TJX. The MO was quite similar: researching and closely targeting the point-of-sale systems in use. But the article notes that "There's no evidence Wired.com has seen linking Gonzalez to the Wal-Mart breach."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The next couple of batches of uploads at my Dad's memorial site.

1971-72 and 1972-74.

Wow! iRobot's soft, shape-shifting robot blob can roll around and change shape, and it will be able to squeeze through tiny cracks in a wall when the project is finished.... via jwz.

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Smivs writes with word on a spider, Bagheera kiplingi, that dines almost exclusively on plants. "The recently described species of jumping spider, discovered by researchers from Villanova and Brandeis Universities, dines on the protein rich tips of acacias, the thorny shrubs found in much of Central America. ... The species of acacia... favored by the Bagheera kiplingi has protein-rich leaf tips and nutritious sap to reward its [symbiotic ant] protectors. ... The Bagheera kiplingi has essentially evolved to steal from the mouths of the ants. These agile, inquisitive jumping spiders can leap up to 50 times their own body lengths... Competition for prey in the spider world is fierce. The Bagheera kiplingi's ancestors took the reflexes evolved for hunting and adapted into a creature that uses them for ant evasion."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pretty much everyone who reads Techdirt seems to be sending over the story of how Turbine has changed the business model for Dungeons and Dragons Online, going away from charging people $50 for the game and then $15/month to play, to a model where you can play for free and there are additional benefits to actually paying. And, so far, it seems like a massive success. Many more people are playing than before... and many of those who would never have paid (or played!) at all are realizing that there are good reasons to pay for some things within the game. While these sorts of situations can be a fine balancing act (if the company gets too focused on trying to convince people to pay, it could make the free stuff annoying), it appears that Turbine has done a good job finding a sweet spot -- making sure that if you just want to play the game for free, you can absolutely do that and it's perfectly enjoyable all the way through. Putting money into it just gives players certain additional benefits that they feel is worth it. Suddenly, paying the company money becomes a reasonable per transaction situation, rather than an ongoing chore. While it's still early, it should be worth watching to see how well this particular business model experiment goes -- but the early indications suggest that it's yet another example of how "free" can work as a part of a business model.

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I keep trying to persuade anyone who will listen that CNC foam cutters are dramatically underrated machines. People look at them and say, "That's cool and all, but I don't want styrofoam parts." To which I reply, "If you have a styrofoam part, you can turn it into cast aluminum with an unbelievably simple garage process." What's more, styrofoam is ubiquitous, cheap, and so easy to cut that the Cartesian robot can be extremely lightweight and inexpensive, as for instance, this one submitted by reader Raul Aguaviva, which is hacked together from a coat hanger and junked scanner parts. Combine one of these with a Gingery-style charcoal foundry and you could conceivably produce a homebrew rapid prototyping system, capable of "printing" aluminum parts, for less than $50.

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Family friends in Cincinnati made this delightful outdoor planter. It's a very simple idea -- just run a metal rod through the drainage holes on the bottom of the pots -- but I think it creates a really nice cartoon funhouse effect.

BuzzSkyline writes "Physicists have found that there is an ultimate limit to the speed of calculations, regardless of any improvements in technology. According to the researchers who found the computation limit, the bound 'poses an absolute law of nature, just like the speed of light.' While many experts expect technological limits to kick in eventually, engineers always seems to find ways around such roadblocks. If the physicists are right, though, no technology could ever beat the ultimate limit they've calculated — which is about 10^16 times faster than today's fastest machines. At the current Moore's Law pace, computational speeds will hit the wall in 75 to 80 years. A paper describing the analysis, which relies on thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and information theory, appeared in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters (abstract here)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ars Technica has an awesome piece detailing 100 years worth of "Big Content's" reaction to emerging media technologies (in its own words). Here's John Philip Sousa, writing in Appleton's Magazine, on "The Menace of Mechanical Music" (aka the gramophone):

"From the days when the mathematical and mechanical were paramount in music, the struggle has been bitter and incessant for the sway of the emotional and the soulful," he wrote. "And now in this the twentieth century come these talking and playing machines and offer again to reduce the expression of music to a mathematical system of megaphones, wheels, cogs, disks, cylinders, and all manner of revolving things which are as like real art as the marble statue of Eve is like her beautiful living breathing daughters."

Also beware the copy machine, the VCR, cassette recorders, MP3, the DVR... for that way lies the ruin of the marketplace. Or not.

100 years of Big Content fearing technology--in its own words [via Tim O'Reilly's Twitter feed]

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Skype and other VoIP tools have become quite useful for reaching people around the world. I know that, recently, when my wife happened to be in India on a trip, being able to call her via Skype was incredibly useful. It's a good thing she's back now, as reader Shailendra alerts us to the news that Indian intelligence officials are once again asking the government to consider banning Skype. The reason I say "once again" is that I remember similar proposals from a few years back that went nowhere. The official concern, of course, is that "bad people" may use Skype to communicate in a way that can't easily be tapped or traced. But that's going to happen no matter what. If Skype is banned, people will still figure out a way to use it, or they'll migrate to some other tool. Banning Skype or other VoIP providers isn't fixing a problem, it's pretending a problem doesn't really exist.

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The Creepy CRAFT Bundle from the Maker Shed teaches you all about making creepy adorable hand-sewn mini monsters. Before you know it, these little creatures will overrun your entire house.

Start out your monster-making experience by reading the DIY hand-sewn, free-range, monster tutorial found in CRAFT, Volume 06. Next, crack open the DIY Mini Monster kit and make your first adorable little monster. When you're all done, use the included Maker's Notebook to sketch out some new designs.

Halloween Special: Use promo code "SAMHAIN" at checkout and receive FREE 3 day FedEx on our Creepy CRAFT Bundle (contiguous US only).

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I can't claim to be hip to the latest in wedding technology, however I like the idea behind these ultra-personalized fingerprint wedding bands by Etsy seller fabuluster. Besides being a cute way to stay connected to your significant other and yada yada, they are also a great way to identify a would be romantic impostor. Just measure up their fingerprint to the record you keep on you, and you will never be fooled by an amorous doppelgänger again! Well, unless they have figured out how to clone fingerprints, but in that case we are probably doomed anyway. [Thanks Matt!]

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daria42 writes "British sci-fi author Charles Stross has confessed that he has long hated the Star Trek franchise for its relegation of technology as irrelevant to plot and character development — and the same goes for similar shows such as Babylon Five. The problem, according to Stross, is that as Battlestar Galactica creator Ron Moore has described in a recent speech, the writers of Star Trek would simply 'insert' technology or science into the script whenever needed, without any real regard to its significance; 'then they'd have consultants fill in the appropriate words (aka technobabble) later.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Starbucks got plenty of attention a few years back for trying to start its own music label. We had hoped that maybe the company would try to do something unique and different with it, but, instead, it basically just tried to set up a conventional music label that was going to rely on selling CDs via Starbucks. Doing things the conventional way at a time when an industry is in upheaval makes little sense, and it didn't take long for Starbucks to dump the label. However, one of the last CDs it put out was by well known singer Carly Simon -- and Simon is now suing Starbucks for $5 to $10 million, using famed power lawyer David Boies.

While it does seem pretty clear that Starbucks didn't do all that much to promote the album after deciding to get out of the music label business, it's hard to feel particularly sympathetic to Simon. The same thing could have happened with any record label -- and given how many are struggling these days, it certainly could have happened. Furthermore, nothing in the article above suggests that Simon did anything to help promote the album herself or work on any aspect of the business model. It sounds like she just sat back and expected Starbucks to do everything and just start sending her checks. On top of that, the deal still included a huge advance (while she says not all of it was paid, the official advance was $575,000 -- hardly a small sum). And, again, her complaints of losing some money in the stock market, and owing money on one house in fancy Martha's Vineyard while being unable to sell her apartment in Greenwich Village (not exactly the low rent district) doesn't make her the most sympathetic of characters.

On top of all this she still sold 124,000 copies of the album.

Considering that only about 100 albums last year were able to sell more than 250,000 CDs, it seems like Simon should be thankful she was able to sell as many as she did -- especially given the fact that she seems to think Starbucks had the total responsibility for selling the album. This whole lawsuit seems to be a very old school recording industry artist mindset -- where the artist isn't expected to get involved at all, but just expects to sit back and get handed millions of dollars. Sorry, the market doesn't work that way any more, even if Starbucks is involved.

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Tomorrow, Wednesday the 14th, at noon Pacific time, we will be giving away another prize bundle consisting of one Microchip Technology PIC10F Cap Touch Demo Board and one MCP1650 Multiple White LED Demo Board.

This time, the winner will be selected from among our Twitter followers. Follow us in the next 24 hours and you're automatically entered! If you're already following, send us an @reply containing the phrase "Microchip Technology giveaway delta" and your name will be in the hat, too.

The winner will be announced Wednesday afternoon through our Twitter feed.

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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Scary video of a kiteboarder hanging on for his life as a kite lifts him high into the air.

An anonymous reader notes the announcement by Sean Moss-Pultz (Openmoko, Inc.) of a new geek device: The $99 WikiReader. All of Wikipedia in your pocket with no Internet connection required. Works in bright sunlight. 3-button interface. You can update the information in the WikiReader either by mail (they ship a microSD card) or by downloading a 4+ GB file.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The British Museum is hosting two exhibitions of Mexican artwork and culture - "Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler" and "Revolution on paper: Mexican prints 1910-1960" - and displaying Day of the Dead papier mâché figures and an altar, created by Mexican artist Adriana Amaya and children. Tied to these major exhibits and Dia de los Muertos, Redstone Press has issued a neat box set of oversized postcards, titled Calaveras: Mexican Prints for the Day of the Dead.

The set contains 22 postcards by Mexican printmakers Manuel Manilla (1830-1895) and J. G. Posada (1852-1913). The Redstone Press site posted a sample of these great prints, as did the Daily Telegraph. (Thanks, Mike Love!)

The theme for my next Make: Online Toolbox column is "Maker Sartorial," looking at clothing and accessories as tools for makers. In other words, what shirts, pants, shoes, belt pouches/holsters, pocket-contents, etc. do you carry, either when you're at work, engaged in your hobbies, or otherwise doing makery type stuff, whether for work or pleasure. For some of us, the deeper geeks in the house, this might be what we wear and carry all the time.

I've already sent out an email to my local maker community, via the HacDC and Dorkbot DC e-lists, and to the internal Maker Media list. But I thought it'd be fun to ask you all the question, have you email me your answers (and links to pictures!). I'll assemble it all into a column to run next week. I'll choose my favorite submission and send them a Maker's Notebook.

So, send me an email and tell me what you wear and carry that you'd consider part of your "tool set"? Send me links to pictures of your gear or links to products you use.

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This Moleskine book opens up into a desktop calendar. The list price is $19.95 but Amazon is selling it for $3.74. As Michael Leddy noted, they should have marked it down to $3.65.

The Days That Count Desk Top Calendar (Via Orange Crate Art)

Eric Goldman alerts us to yet another lawsuit concerning Google's book scanning project -- even as it's deep in negotiations to come up with a new settlement with authors and publishers. Somehow... I doubt this new lawsuit is one that will cause too much turmoil within Google, however, as it appears to be a self-published author (representing himself in the lawsuit as well) who uploaded his own book to Google and then was confused about how the controls worked... so he decided to sue for copyright infringement. The full lawsuit is here: It includes such gems as the following line of reasoning:

Listing my entire book on the internet minimized my chances of finding other chances of finding publishers and buyers because they listed the entire book on the internet.

But, as you read through the supporting documents, including the helpful emails from Google staff, it becomes clear that the guy misunderstood how Google Books works. After uploading his own book, there's an option to choose how much of the book is made available. He chose 100%, incorrectly believing that 100% meant none of the book would be published. Instead, he just keeps demanding that only the specific pages he wants Google to publish should be published. Google doesn't appear to have that functionality... so the guy is suing for copyright infringement. Somehow, I don't expect this case will get very far.

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Reader Maximum Prophet sends a piece from the NY Times by the usually reliable Dennis Overbye reporting on a "crazy" theory being worked up by a pair of "otherwise distinguished physicists": that the Large Hadron Collider's difficulties may be due to the universe's reluctance to produce a Higgs boson. Maximum Prophet adds, "This happened to the Superconducting Super Collider in the science fiction story Einstein's Bridge. Now Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, are theorizing that it's happening in real life." "I'm talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

These days, homebrew CNC machines seem to be loosing popularity to 3d printers. These are all well and good, however there are situations where you really need a part made of solid metal or wood, and for those there is no substitute to a good ol' CNC machine. So, it's nice to see that Jonny D is making progress on his homebrew CNC router. After getting a sweet deal on a suitable mechanical frame and stepper motors, he has managed to get his version up and running, and has successfully used it to engrave wood and drill PCBs. He's still working on improving the system, however this early success should be a great motivator to get everything finished up. Excellent work!

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How cool is it that a 12-year-old cartoonist would dedicate her fun new book of cartoons to old-school masters like Sergio Aragones and John Stanley? (I imagine her father, underground cartoonist and publisher Denis Kitchen, gave her access to tons of excellent comics, which inspired her to become a cartoonist herself.)

Alexa Kitchen's good taste in cartoonists shines in Grown-Ups are Dumb! (No Offense), an anthology of light-hearted comic strips that will appeal to kids in elementary and junior high school. The great thing about her work is that it really is the product of a kid. Her sense of humor and perspective on school, friends, siblings, and families is very much like my own two daughters'. I know they'll enjoy her book (she has one previous book: Drawing Comics is Easy! (Except When It's Hard))

Grown-Ups are Dumb! (No Offense)

It's a brisk Saturday afternoon in San Francisco, and I'm standing outside of Sports Basement with a metronome in my hand. Several hundred feet away, a guy in a funny hat is running around the empty parking lot at a consistent 85 steps per minute. His upper body angles forward as his legs cycle backwards to the beat... beep beep beep. It looks kind of ridiculous, but the guy is actually demonstrating an innovative exercise regime that combines the concepts of Tai Chi and mindfulness meditation with athletic techniques used by Kenyan Olympic sprinters. It's called Chi Running, and it's directly related to recent debates around natural vs power running and the case against heavy-duty sneakers. Most conventional athletic coaches and sports apparel companies advocate power running &mdash running for max speed, personal records, high performance, lots of muscle (think European sprinters with giant legs surging forward and arms pumping furiously). Chi Running takes advantage of a force that comes naturally to all of us — gravity. The funny runner guy is Chris Griffin; he's my instructor. I'm training for my first half-marathon right now, so I figured now would be a good a time as ever to learn good form and try to stay pain-free. Earlier, lying on the floor of the Triathlon department on a gaudy red carpet, me and a dozen others — including an injury-prone high school track star and a 60-year old grandma — learned the basic tenets of this unique running philosophy. By using what Griffin calls "the lean," we create momentum through gravitational pull, using the arms as levers and the legs as wheels revolve naturally behind us. "If you ever watch the Kenyans running in the Olympics," he says, "they're practicing Chi Running. It's the most natural way to run." There are some simple rules to follow — core tight, butt relaxed, calves relaxed, head straight, feet straight (a lot of people run with their feet pointed slightly outward, which causes stress on the knees and toes), weight balanced in the middle of the feet, cadence consistent no matter what the speed. And it works. One of Chi Running founder Danny Dreyer's first group of clients in 1999 was a group of rocket scientists at NASA's Ames campus in Silicon Valley. "One physicist came up to me after class and said, 'I don't believe in Tai Chi woo woo stuff, but what you're teaching is straight down the line good physics,'" Dreyer recalls. "Nobody had applied physics to running before, but this made sense to them." In 1972, American marathoner Frank Shorter won a gold at the Olympics and started advocating the idea that anybody could run for exercise. This led to the dawn of the running sneaker industry — by the end of that decade, the first Nike Air product had hit the market, New Balance had earned a reputation as the best running shoe ever, and UK company Reebok entered the US market with the most expensive running shoe to date. The problem is that most running shoes are designed with a half-inch heel lift. "George Sheehan, a cardiologist who wrote for Runner's World in the 70s, proposed quite correctly that by increasing the height of the shoe, you could increase stride length," Ian Adamson, a world champion adventure racer who now directs product development at running shoe company Newton, tells me. "But this can cause a couple of unfortunate results. Changing the biomechanical ratio between the fibula, tibia, and femur causes you to strike the ground too soon. Also, the 1/2 inch lift means you're effectively always running down a 15-degree slope. So you end up constantly over-striding; your joints lock out and it causes immense shock on the body." These performance-enhancing shoes have played a tangible role in the number of injuries caused by running. This has also inadvertently led to the rise of the running injury treatment industry — think braces and surgery and PT. The sneaker industry, though, has been showing signs of change. Newton currently sells about a dozen running shoe models exclusively designed for a mid- and forefoot strike. New Balance's 800s are made specifically for Chi Running, with shock absorption cushioning at the midfoot. Nike's Frees, though still with the half inch heel lift, are designed to mimic the sensation of barefoot running. And if you really want to get close to running with no shoes on there's Vibram Five Fingers. "There are a lot of options out there," Griffin, the instructor, tells our class. "But remember, technique has to precede gear." It's been about a month since I took the Chi Running workshop, and I'm happy to report that the 100+ miles that I've run since then have been injury-free. The hardest thing for me to incorporate was the mindfulness aspect. Most of us have gotten accustomed to listening to music or podcasts while running, so when Griffin suggested we ditch the iPod and treat running as a practice like yoga or meditation, I was hesitant. The whole reason I'd been able to start running distances in the first place was thanks to Nike Plus, so I just wasn't sure how I'd feel to run without knowing how fast and how long. One day, though, I forgot my iPod at home and was forced to run without metrics or music — it ended up being one of my most refreshing runs ever. I just listened to the wind and focused on my breathing. It reminded me of a passage I read in novelist and runner Haruki Murakami's memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running:

I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void... The thoughts that occur to me while I'm running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky as always.

I still like to run with my iPod when I remember it, but I think that's okay. Like with any practice, it's important to be comfortable where you are while acknowledging that you're on the road to improvement. That's how I feel about my running now.

The OLPC Afghanistan team rigged up this pedal-powered generator for the OLPC. Using the generator from their Freeplay hand crank, the system is set up so that students can actually generate enough electricity to power the computer while they are using it.

It's a pretty simple setup, but seems to make sense in this context. Anyone want to set up a 'green' coffeeshop filled up with these things? [via neatorama]

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The OLPC Afghanistan team rigged up this pedal-powered generator for the OLPC. Using the generator from their Freeplay hand crank, the system is set up so that students can actually generate enough electricity to power the computer while they are using it.

It's a pretty simple setup, but seems to make sense in this context. Anyone want to set up a 'green' coffeeshop filled up with these things? [via neatorama]

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xander_zone_xxx writes with news that Ray Beckerman, known around here as NewYorkCountryLawyer, was not a "vexatious" litigant, as the RIAA claimed. In the same ruling the judge dismissed Beckerman's counter-claims against the RIAA. (We discussed the claims and counters a year back.) "An attorney defending against a music-piracy lawsuit didn't cross ethical bounds by filing motions broadly attacking the recording industry and posting them on his blog, a magistrate judge has ruled, rejecting demands from the RIAA for monetary sanctions. Attorney Ray Beckerman was 'less than forthcoming at times' in defending a client against an RIAA lawsuit, but the music industry's concerns were 'largely overstated,' New York Magistrate Judge Robert M. Levy wrote Friday."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

JJ passed along a short article from a week or so ago, claiming that the "outlook" for the music industry is "still grim" according to some industry insiders at a conference. Except... that's not really true. Once again, it seems like there's confusion between the recording industry and the music industry. Yes, it may be true that the outlook for selling plastic discs or downloads may not look so hot, but that's hardly everything that encompasses the music industry -- and claiming otherwise is not at all accurate. The recording industry has pushed this myth for years, and it's too bad the press continues to parrot the same line. Yet, when studies actually look beyond just selling the music directly, they find that the outlook isn't grim at all. Claiming that the outlook for the music industry is grim is like claiming that the outlook for the transportation industry is grim in 1910 because the market for horse carriages is declining.

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These impossibly creepy artifacts are just the tip of the iceberg of awesometasticness that is Steve Erenberg's Radio Guy. Be warned, Steve's site is chockablock with incredible medical, scientific, and industrial antiques he's collected, mostly from the 19th and early 20th centuries, and is a major click-trap.

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physburn writes "Somewhere in a triangle between Roswell (UFO) NM, Albuquerque (Left Turn) NM, and Amarillo (Do you know the way?) TX, a 22.5 square mile triangle of High Temperature Superconductor pipeline is to be built. Each leg of the triangle can carry 5GW of electricity. The purpose to load-balance and sell electricity between America's three power grids. Previously the Eastern Grid, Western Grid and Texan Grid have been separate, preventing cheap electricity being sold from one end of America to the other. The Tres Amiga Superstation, as it is to be called, will finally connect the three grids. The superstation is also designed to link renewable solar and wind power in the grids, and is to use HTS wire from American Superconductor. Some 23 years after its invention, today HTS comes of age. "

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've covered in the past how companies like Digiprotect convince the entertainment and software industries to sign over copyright licenses to allow them to purposely load file sharing networks with their content -- and then send anyone who downloads the content a threat letter demanding payment. The idea here is not to actually take anyone to court or to stop file sharing. Not at all. The idea is to profit from these threat letters. And, as it turns out... it's quite a profitable scheme. TorrentFreak has some numbers from a music industry presentation discussing how these extortion-like enterprises can pay quite handsomely. Basically, this one group, DRS, sends out emails demanding €450 ($650) per offense, with the company getting to keep 80% of any proceeds. Furthermore, DRS claims that approximately 25% just pay right up, which means for every infringement letter DRS sends out, it can expect to bring in $162.50, with 20% going to the artist. That's $32.50 that an artist can expect per infringement, on average. That sure as hell beats a few pennies per download. No wonder such programs are becoming so popular. Of course, that doesn't make them any more ethical. Purposely putting files online and then sending out threat letters isn't exactly the moral high ground here.

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Icemaann writes "Pingdom and Network World are reporting that the SE tld dropped off the internet yesterday due to a bug in the script that generates the SE zone file. The SE tld has close to one million domains that all went down due to missing the trailing dot in the SE zone file. Some caching nameservers may still be returning invalid DNS responses for 24 hours."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CRAFT and MAKE friend Diana Eng a new wearable tech project going on; it looks awesome! The project description:

From October to December 2009, I will be making magical clothes for Fairytale Fashion. These might be clothes that have blooming flowers, living clothes that breathe, change color, transform. And guess what, YOU will be leading the design! Each Monday, FairytaleFashion.org will have a new video that introduces a technology like inflatables, deployable structures, muscle wire and microcontrollers. At the end of each video is a design question. Answer the weekly design questions on our website. I will use your answers to create the Fairytale Fashion. Finally, the finished garments will be presented in a fashion show in early 2010. Fairytale Fashion is produced with the support of Eyebeam.

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AHuxley writes "The FBI is getting fast new systems to look at local North Carolina license photos via the DMV. As the FBI is not authorized to collect and store the photos, they use the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles. The system takes seconds to look at chin widths and nose sizes. The expanded technology used on millions of motorist could be rolled out across the USA. The FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System is also getting an upgrade to DNA records, 3-D facial imaging, palm prints and voice scans."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

First, the news -- InBerkeley.com is coming to an end.

Other projects are consuming more of my time. And in the last couple of months, family stuff has taken me away from Berkeley, and I'm not at all sure where my attention will be drawn in the future. So a big part of my decision to move on is personal.

But I've also learned why what we're calling "hyperlocal" sites are difficult, and why I failed to get the site to grow the way I hoped it would.

I thought we could apply the same approach that worked in bootstrapping weblogs, RSS and podcasting to make local sites work. One or two people start writing about their personal experiences. A small audience develops. Debates, discussions follow. More perspectives. At every step you invite people to participate. You always ask for the people who used to be called the audience to become full participants. That's how the idea scales. As I said, it worked quite well for blogging and related technologies.

Instead, what happened at InBerkeley.com is that the people thought we were running a news organization, and they did stories the way reporters do them. That can't possibly work, imho -- for the same reason the news industry is in crisis.

An example. Suppose you're writing a story about a parade on Shattuck Ave at noontime and you don't happen to be there, you just heard about it from a friend, and feel you have enough information to write a story. Now you want a picture for the story -- in fact, you think that without a picture you can't run the story. The reporter will hold it, but the blogger will run it anyway, and at the end ask if anyone reading it has a picture. It's that little difference that makes the hyperlocal idea scale, and its what my colleagues at InBerkeley were unwilling to do.

Instead, we got in trouble, twice, for taking copyrighted material from other sites. The first time it happened, I apologized, and nothing terrible happened. The second time, I decided we had to shut the site down, because we were doing it totally wrong. I want to stress, this is my opinion, but as one of the founders, it's my reputation that's out there. I didn't think what we were doing was noble, or even very good. Not something I was prepared to stand behind.

Further, I was sure that at some point I would be giving a talk and there would be a reporter in the crowd who would ask me how news can reboot if it's dependent on scarfing copyrighted work from pros. Now if I get asked the question I can say I think it's possible, but we failed to prove it at InBerkeley.com. And I'll be telling the truth.

The other people at the site, including my former partner Lance Knobel, are going to start a new site, and I wish them the best. It's possible at some point I may even contribute, if they want my contribution.

Here's by way of a can-we-still-be-friends for those annoyed by yesterday's steampunk toilet post. The Museum of the History of Science at Oxford's Old Ashmolean building is hosting an exhibit of contemporary steampunk art curated by Art Donovan. It runs from today until February 21, 2010. If you're interested in steampunk and you're anywhere near the UK during that time it's probably worth checking out.

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When this new-fangled invention called "the telephone" first became popular, there were some offices that refused to allow them on office workers' desks, for fear that they would be a waste of time and a distraction that took away from work. I sort of feel the same way when I hear about companies banning Facebook or Twitter, these days. As we've said before, it's obvious that there are people who abuse such tools, and you deal with that by recognizing that they're not being productive and either telling them to shape up or firing them. Blocking a very useful communications tool just because some people might abuse it doesn't seem particularly smart. And yet... it's happening more and more. Yet another study shows how common it is for IT staff to block access to such sites.

However, an article at The Globe & Mail points out how silly this is. The people who are really obsessed with using such sites will simply find ways around such blocks, whether its via some sort of proxy site -- or just by accessing the sites via a smartphone, outside the control of the corporate IT staff. On top of that -- especially with younger staff -- it sets up a workplace where management says, right upfront: we don't trust you. Why not hire more trustworthy staff and deal individually with those who abuse the system, rather than putting forth an outright ban that throws out the potential good uses along with the misuses?

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On September 22, I wrote a piece that showed a correlation between the number of followers a tech news site gets, and its position on Twitter's Suggested Users List. One of the two sites used in the example, TechCrunch, had been removed from the SUL in July after running a story based on leaked information about Twitter.

This is a followup to the Sept 22 piece.

TechCrunch is once again on the SUL, and once again their follower count is going up. Here's a screen shot of their new 3-month graph on TwitterCounter:



Compare this to the snapshot taken a month ago:



Not much doubt that the SUL is what's driving new followers to TechCrunch.

jtogel writes "Many games use 'rubberbanding' to adapt to your skill level, making the game harder if you're a better player and easier if you're not. Just think of Mario Kart and the obvious ways it punishes you for driving too well by giving the people who are hopelessly behind you super-weapons to smack you with. It's also very common to just increase the skill of the NPCs as you get better — see Oblivion. In my research group, we are working on slightly more sophisticated ways to adapt the game to you, including generating new level elements (PDF) based on your playing style (PDF). Now, the question becomes: is this a good thing at all? Some people would claim that adapting the game to you just rewards mediocrity (i.e. you don't get rewarded for playing well). Others would say that it restricts the freedom of expression for the game designer. But still, game players have very different skill levels and skill sets when they come to a game, and we would like to cater to them all. And if you don't see playing skill as one-dimensional, maybe it's possible to do meaningful adaptation. What sort of game adaptation would you like to see?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Back in July, Dark Horse Comics relaunched the classic horror title Creepy, one of those titles that caused straight America to recoil in terror. Creepy's short stories veered between morality plays in which some awful person did some terrible deed and received his comeuppance to unabashed, straight-ahead horror in which terrible people did terrible things -- often to other terrible people -- and got away with it. I rather think it was this latter that got the censors' bowels in an uproar.

The relaunched Creepy, a 48-page black and white monthly, is true to the original spirit, and each story is introduced by Uncle Creepy, a Crypt-Keeper-like ghoul with a penchant for grisly puns.

I love the art in this book -- each story is done by a different artist, but all hanker back to the golden age of horror comics, funny and ghastly lines that can be straight-ahead cartoons or stippled impressionism as the story dictates.

Creepy Comics 1

Creepyuniverse.com

And in case your tastes run to the original Creepy: Dark Horse's handsome archival collections of classic Creepy

If you should have the opportunity to visit Paris' Musée des arts et métiers, you'd be wise to clear your schedule for the day. Even after reading Brian Jepson's recent post covering this maker's museum, I was unprepared for the sheer size, depth and general awesomeness of the collection. From early astrolabes and handmade scientific apparatus through to Cray's supercomputer, the museum offers a rare view of historical technology and invention.

Being a big fan of cymatics, waveforms, and sound in general, I was quite psyched to see one of Rudolph Koenig's acoustic tone analyzer's firsthand. An ancestor of today's oscilloscope, the device uses a series of brass resonators, with small flames to determine the nearest frequency of a given sound. The attached rotating mirror allows the user to more easily see which tuned resonator's flame is flickering the most, thus indicating the dominant pitch. If that explanation doesn't quite cut it for you, be sure to see the videos on CWRU's Fourier analyzer page

Oh - and for more pics from my visit, peruse the relevant photoset.

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Forget cheesy yard tombstones, evil cackling pop-up witches, or ghosts that fly down from on top of the porch. Todd Harrison has put dual 110-decibel automobile horns inside his jack-'o-lantern, which features a cute red button nose and buck-toothed smile to throw people off from how diabolical it truly is. And here's the really wicked part: The horn is on a delay. Pushing the button causes the eyes to light up immediately, so the little tykes think, "Hey, neat, a pumpkin with light-up eyes," and then go on about their tyke-y business, at least for a few seconds before the dual 110-decibel automobile horns go off and leave them traumatized for life. Genius! There's video on Todd's site. [via Hack a Day]

Update: Turns out this whole idea originated right here at Make: Online with one of Marc's 2008 How-to Tuesday columns. So the evil genius has been in our midst all this time and I didn't even know it. Sorry, Marc, and thanks for tossing me a clue!

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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jfruhlinger writes "Over the weekend there's been a bit of controversy over the fact that Apple has effectively shut indie artists out of the iTunes LP market by charging $10,000 in design fees. But the real question is why Apple is in charge of designing the new iTunes LP at all, since the format is based on open Web design technologies. There's at least one iTunes LP already available outside the iTunes store. Why won't Apple sell it?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I don't do CAD or 3D printing, but this software at least looks promising from my armchair. It's an open source CAD/CAE app based on OpenCasCade, QT, and Python. It offers features like macro recording, the ability to run as a server and dynamically load application extensions, and it runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac. One of the many cool features it offers is 100% scriptable objects in Python:

Besides the standard object types such as annotations, meshes and parts objects, FreeCAD also offers the amazing possibility to build 100% python-scripted objects, called Python Features. Those objects will behave exactly as any other FreeCAD object, can be saved in a document and opened on any other installation of FreeCAD, since the python code that defines the object is also saved in the document.

The project is still in alpha. The only official builds are in Windows and 32-bit Debian Linux, but you can download (from their SourceForge site) unofficial builds for AMD-based 64-bit Debian/Ubuntu, openSUSE. and Intel Mac OS X.

FreeCAD

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Over in the UK, the Guardian has apparently been barred from reporting on a certain action in Parliament. But how do you even report on being barred from reporting on a particular subject without reporting on it. Watch the linguistic gymnastics The Guardian goes through:

The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.

Today's published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented -- for the first time in memory -- from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.

Yet another case of chilling effects in the form of lawyers suing over coverage they don't like. Of course, we're not barred from reporting on anything, and checking through some Parliament webpages turns up the following list of questions, including the following:

Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

This certainly implies that The Guardian has been barred due to this original story of how British oil trader Trafigura was offering to pay "historic damages" to 31,000 people injured in the dumping of toxic waste in Africa.

Of course, my guess is that Trafigura and Carter-Ruck are about to learn about The Streisand Effect, and UK politicians are about to get another lesson on why its libel laws need to be fixed. In the meantime, in the absence of all of this, how many people would have heard about this whole Trafigura affair? How many more people are about to become aware of it?

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An anonymous reader points out this CNBC story which says that "New Jersey—known more for its turnpike, shopping malls and industrial sprawl—has become a solar energy powerhouse, outshining sunnier states like Hawaii and Nevada. And it's largely because of incentives that make it cheaper for residents and businesses to buy and install solar power systems."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Austin area synthheads are in for quite a sweet treat - the Handmade Music Austin event series kicks off this Sunday (Oct. 18th) with a kit-building workshop and subsequent group synth jam -

4ms Pedals, Bleep Labs, Eric Archer, and Church of the Friendly Ghost have brought Handmande Music to Austin! Starting October 18th, we will offer monthly workshops at Salvage Vanguard Theatre where you can learn how to solder, build a synth kit, show off your own musical DIY project of any type, and jam with the new Andromeda Space Rocker synthesizer kits.

Free beginner classes! This free class is for anyone, even if they've never picked up a soldering iron or know the difference between a capacitor and a resistor. We'll show how to solder, discuss the basics of electronics and build an analog drum. Soldering equipment will be provided but if you have your own tools, bring them along.

In the upper division class, we'll walk you through one of our new modular, networkable synthesizer kits and discuss synth design. Each event will feature a different kit, starting with one of Eric's drum machines. Classes are $45 and include a kit and all necessary materials.

Each device can communicate with each other via an ir network. This means that when you place them next to each other they automatically sync and play at the same tempo. There will be 100% analog drum machines from Eric, a digital bassline generator with analog filters from Dann of 4ms, and an Arduino based synth with an analog VCO from Dr. Bleep. These kits will be available online after the first event.

Sounds like good times to me! Get the 411 on sign up and class times over @ HandmadeMusic.NoisePages

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Nate Anderson pens a fine historical retrospective for Ars Technica: a look at 100 years of Big Content's fearmongering, in their own words. There was John Philip Sousa in 1906 warning that recording technology would destroy the US pastime of gathering around the piano to sing music ("What of the national throat? Will it not weaken? What of the national chest? Will it not shrink?"). There was the photocopier after World War II. There was the VCR in the 1970s, which a movie lobbyist predicted would result in tidal waves, avalanches, and bleeding and hemorrhaging by the music business. He compared the VCR to the Boston Strangler — in this scenario the US public was a woman home alone. Then home taping of music, digital audio tape, MP3 players, and Napster, each of which was predicted to lay waste to entire industries; and so on up to date with DVRs, HD radio, and HDTV. Anderson concludes with a quote from copyright expert William Patry in his book Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars: "I cannot think of a single significant innovation in either the creation or distribution of works of authorship that owes its origins to the copyright industries."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Almost every time I go out to the beach I notice something somebody has made out of driftwood. This can range in size from the delicate ornamentation of sandcastles to massive driftwood forts. It's as if we're programmed to take advantage of this abundant natural resource the instant we come in contact with it. The compulsion to fabricate something with your bare hands out of a couple of weathered sticks and whatever's laying around can be overpowering. Once I carved a functioning flute for no apparent reason.

Heeding the call of stonewashed lumber, experimental musical instrument maker Bart Hopkin and his percussionist friend Joyce Kouffman head out to the beach in this video to show us how to build a driftwood xylophone. [Thanks, Sara!]

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Sure, you could skip straight to "Conclusions" and get your soundbite. But if you make a habit of avoiding "Methods and Materials" you will miss out on some classic moments of science humor---both intentional and otherwise.

Do you know how hard it is to find Flickr shots of people reading journal articles? We'll settle for cute, instead. From KOMUnews via CC

In my summer reading, I came across two excellent examples...

1) Chicken Soup for the Scientist's Soul (And Lunch)
The Paper: "Chicken Soup Inhibits Neutrophil Chemotaxis In Vitro", in the October 2000 issue of the journal Chest. Authors: Barbara O. Rennard, BA, Ronald F. Ertl, BS, Gail L. Gossman, BS, Richard A. Robbins, MD, FCCP, and Stephen I. Rennard, MD, FCCP.

The Discovery: My friend Jeff, Ph.D., who works for a friendly Environmental Sciences department somewhere in the South, sent me a link to this paper, which attempts to establish a medical explanation for why your Grammy was always feeding you chicken soup at the slightest hint of a sniffle. The authors theorize that chicken soup may have some mild anti-inflammatory effects, which could account for its popularity as folk medicine. In fact, according to the paper, the idea of treating respiratory illness with chicken soup dates at least back to the 12th century C.E., when it was recommended by the Egyptian Jewish physician and philosopher Maimonides.

Which is kind of nifty.

And the team does find some evidence supporting their theory, at least in the lab, where they exposed white blood cells called neutrophils to varying concentrations of chicken soup. Neutrophils play an important role in inflammation and higher concentrations of soup seemed to block them from doing this. You can read the whole paper online.

The funny part? They included the actual chicken soup recipe used in the study under "Methods and Materials". Actual quote from the paper:

Traditional chicken soup was prepared according to a family recipe, which will be referred to as "Grandma's soup" (C. Fleischer; personal communication; 1970).

I haven't tried it yet, but I'm planning on making a batch sometime this fall. The paper says the recipe is "very highly regarded locally" (a claim they back up with a citation).

2) Weekend at Bernie's
The Paper: "Sexual conflict over the duration of copulation in Drosophila montana: why is longer better?", in the June 12, 2009 issue of BMC Evolutionary Biology. Authors: Dominique Mazzi, Jenni Kesäniemi, Anneli Hoikkala and Kirsten Klappert.

The Discovery: I wrote about this research for the National Geographic News Web site. The basic gist: Male D. montana flies get more of an evolutionary benefit from longer sex. Females, meanwhile, do better with a shorter session. The research proved that the female flies had adapted in ways that allowed them to counter males' ability to hold them still. Turns out, the ladies had more control over the length of sex than anyone previously thought.

In my initial interviews, author Kirsten Klappert explained that the team had "incapacitated" the female flies to see how long sex lasted when lady flies had no control. Naturally, my editor and I were curious as to just how this worked.

Apparently, it works best if you kill the female flies.

Rather than engaging in insect bondage, the Methods section clarified that the team had gassed female flies to death, propped them up so they appeared alive and interested in sex, and tricked the male flies into necrophilia.

And you thought being detail-oriented was boring.

With the US federal gov't continually watering down and limiting any attempt at a federal shield law to help protect journalists from being pressured into revealing their sources, it looks like the site Wikileaks wants to help. It's trying to set up a system, whereby a source can leak information directly to a journalist for a period of time, before Wikileaks goes public with the info. But, either way, Wikileaks promises to protect the source, keeping the journalist separate from the source. While I have no idea if this particular program will actually work, it does show the futility of politicians trying to water down such a shield law. It seems like every time politicians try to do these sorts of things, the internet comes to the rescue with its own solutions.

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With the US federal gov't continually watering down and limiting any attempt at a federal shield law to help protect journalists from being pressured into revealing their sources, it looks like the site Wikileaks wants to help. It's trying to set up a system, whereby a source can leak information directly to a journalist for a period of time, before Wikileaks goes public with the info. But, either way, Wikileaks promises to protect the source, keeping the journalist separate from the source. While I have no idea if this particular program will actually work, it does show the futility of politicians trying to water down such a shield law. It seems like every time politicians try to do these sorts of things, the internet comes to the rescue with its own solutions.

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I recently had the pleasure of playing a family game of ladderball (aka bolo toss, ladder golf) using some basic homebrew hardware, and can say firsthand - it's fun! For those unfamiliar with the backyard sport: players throw golfball/nylon-rope bolos in attempt to hang them on a simple PVC ladder structure. It's a surprisingly enjoyable "Ooh! So close!" type game in the vein of horsehoes/etc, and looks to be a straightforward build. Check out the related instructable for steps on making your own.

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Here's your unicorn chaser for Sunday's exploded corpse made of construction paper. Reader Mike Wakefield made this robot costume for his son, Arlen. It has batteries and blinky lights! Beep boop beep!

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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Epson has introduced the PictureMate Charm compact photo printer. With a print speed of 37 seconds for postcard size images, it sports a 2.5 inch LCD and memory card slots for a selection of media. It includes a built-in carry handle and an optional battery pack to enable portability. The printer features Auto Photo Correction and multiple print layout options. It will start shipping this month at a retail price of $149.99.

TheProphet92 sends along a speculative piece about the future of EA's popular RTS franchise, writing: "EA's real-time strategy games don't have the luxury of extensive funding the way some other franchises do. EA has been milking their game engines for all they're worth and then some. They have been using various versions of the 'Sage' engine for the past half-dozen or so RTS games, and they need money to make a new one. Perhaps an MMO is the way to go for EA, using none other than their famous Command & Conquer franchise."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that researchers and workers in fields as diverse as biotechnology, astronomy, and computer science will soon find themselves overwhelmed with information — so the next generation of computer scientists will have to learn think in terms of Internet scale of petabytes of data. For the most part, university students have used rather modest computing systems to support their studies, but these machines fail to churn through enough data to really challenge and train young minds to ponder the mega-scale problems of tomorrow. 'If they imprint on these small systems, that becomes their frame of reference and what they're always thinking about,' said Jim Spohrer, a director at IBM's Almaden Research Center. This year, the National Science Foundation funded 14 universities that want to teach their students how to grapple with big data questions. Students are beginning to work with data sets like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, the largest public data set in the world. The telescope takes detailed images of large chunks of the sky and produces about 30 terabytes of data each night. 'Science these days has basically turned into a data-management problem,' says Jimmy Lin, an associate professor at the University of Maryland."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The SD Card Shield v2.1 for Arduino allows you to add mass storage and data logging to your next Arduino project. The design of the board allows you to select either 3.3V or IO port for power. This allows you to use the shield with different types of libraries.

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Canon has posted a firmware update for its EOS Rebel XS (1000D) DSLR. Version 1.0.6 rectifies the issue pertaining to an "Err 99"- shooting not possible message. It also resolves other issues related to its LCD display, viewfinder information and freezing of the shutter release. The firmware is available for immediate download from Canon's website.

I have to admit I don't usually like scary movies, and I didn't like the Blair Witch Project at all. But I can't help but be impressed that the Blair Witch movie cost just $60,000 and pulled in a cool $140 million back in 1999. That kind of return makes me wonder why more movies aren't filmed on really small budgets. So it's somewhat surprising to see that it took about a decade for another Blair Witch-like film to get promoted by a major studio... and that a perfect candidate was almost missed. The movie Paranormal Activity was apparently filmed for just $11,000 over 7 days, and it was bought by DreamWorks/Paramount -- which originally planned to shelve the low-budget flick and re-make it with bigger stars and a much higher budget.

Goodman also admitted that DreamWorks, formerly a leg of Paramount co-headed by Steven Spielberg, had swooped in and pocketed 'Paranormal Activity' with every intention of leaving it on the shelf and remaking it with a big budget and marquee stars. Then they wised up. 

They wised up indeed, and they also started promoting this movie in an interesting way, too -- by getting potential fans to demand it be shown in their neighborhoods and nationwide. Paramount promised to distribute the movie nationwide if a million requests for the movie were logged via Eventful. And it looks like they've already reached that goal.

As I said, I didn't like Blair Witch very much, and I'm not exactly looking forward to this movie, either. But from a pure business angle, it seems a bit shocking that movie studios wouldn't be trying to find/create more low-budget films that would appeal to moviegoers. Promoting the distribution of films in a way that actually target fans is a smart move, too. So with this example, there are about a million customers (or at least thousands, if you don't believe the Eventful numbers) willing to pay to see this movie that was made for (much) less than a $1 per fan -- and the movie studio's first gut-instinct was to try to re-make the film and drive their own costs up? It's a strange industry where insiders are always asking "how can we make a $200 million movie?" rather than how can they make good, but profitable movies, no matter what the cost. The industry seems so focused on what movies cost, that it so rarely seems to consider spending money more intelligently. Creating quality works for less, and targeting your best customers is a plan that's foreign to Hollywood, but perhaps it's about time they start exploring that plotline.

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An anonymous reader tips news that Blizzard will be requiring all World of Warcraft players to use Battle.net accounts to log into the game starting on November 11th. After that time, players who don't switch will be unable to play the game. Some time after the transition is complete, players will be able to "participate in cross-realm chat in World of Warcraft, create real-life friends lists, and communicate across different games." More details on the new Battle.net and what it will do are available in our Blizzcon wrap-up and interviews from August. Naturally, the idea that the new Battle.net is getting closer to deployment has sparked speculation that the StarCraft II beta might come along soon.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

jamie found a video on Warren Ellis's blog introducing a new way to visualize RFID fields. The film is by Timo Arnall and Jack Schulze. The subject is introduced in words on the BERG site (a design consultancy); the tech behind it is explored at Touch, a project that experiments with near-field communications. "This image is a photographic mapping of the readable volume of a radio field from an RFID reader. The black component in the image is an RFID reader... The camera has been fixed in its position and the reader photographed. Using a tag connected to an LED we paint in the edges of the readable volume with a long exposure and animate them to show the form."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's The New Yorker's art director Francoise Mouly explaining how she worked with three different illustrators (including Daniel Clowes, who has become the go-to guy for New Yorker covers as of late) to create a clever triple cover for the latest issue.

These unauthorized Transformers skull-and-crossbones shirts are better than any of the licensed shirts I've seen from the franchise. Get 'em before they get sued!

Piratron

(via Geekologie)

Flick user and master retrogame cupcake maker Ana Fuji has a gorgeous set of delicious-looking Super Mario sweets online, made from chocolate and fondant.

trufinhas: super mario!

(via Geekologie)

From Derek Powazek, a scorching indictment of the Search Engine Optimization industry, who offer a mix of obvious advice and sleazy tricks that break the web. Derek's SEO advice? "Make something great. Tell people about it. Do it again."

Look under the hood of any SEO plan and you'll find advice like this: make sure to use keywords in the headline, use proper formatting, provide summaries of the content, include links to relevant information. All of this is a good idea, and none of it is a secret. It's so obvious, anyone who pays for it is a fool.

Occasionally a darkside SEO master may find some loophole in the Google algorithm to exploit, which might actually lead to an increase in traffic. But that ill-gotten traffic gain won't last long. Google changes the way it ranks its index monthly (if not more), so even if some SEO technique worked, and usually they don't, it'll last for a couple weeks, tops.

And when they do reindex, if they determine that you've been acting in bad faith (like hiding links or keywords or other deceptive practices) they'll drop you like a hot rock. So a temporary gain may result in a lifetime ban.

In the end, you're sacrificing your brand integrity in a Faustian bargain for an increase in traffic that won't last the month. And how valuable was that increase, anyway? If you're tricking people into visiting your site, those visits are going to be bad experiences.

Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists

Kodak asked me to write them a short essay on home media servers for a campaign they're running with Boing Boing. I decided to look at what excites me about media players (what we could build if every senior entertainment exec dropped dead tomorrow) and what seems to be easy and solved (hooking up a monster hard-drive to a PC with some A/V outputs).

It's been years since I've been excited about home media servers. Partly that's because 80 percent of the problem is *so* easy to solve: a commodity PC, a couple terabytes of storage, and a free, easy OS like Ubuntu Linux with a full set of free drive encryption tools solves almost all my needs. With that box, you've got household backup (using *any* backup software you want, since the server just shares its drives to the LAN), you've got somewhere to rip and store all your music and videos (use any music player you want on whatever PC is handy, again, mounting those huge drives over the LAN), and somewhere to put your photos and ripped ISOs for your game CDs and so on and so on. Attach a DVD drive and a copy of Handbrake and you've got an easy DVD-ripping station (if your script-fu is strong, you can even set things up so that every disk you rip is automagically transcoded to thumbnail-sized versions for your portable player -- the free ffmpeg is good for this).

Add DynDNS and some firewall rules, get an ISP that doesn't suckily throttle your inbound connections, and you can access the whole thing from the road. The problem of making a giant, secure archive of files available to four or five people is solved. You may need to find a clever 15-year-old to work out the details, but it's the 21st century, there's a massive glut of 15-year-old geeks. A "media" server is just a server attached to a box like the Neuros which feeds your TV an on-screen menu of stored files.

What's Easy, What's Hard

Jérémie Zimmermann sez, "The Conciliation committee delegation of the European Parliament on the 'Telecoms Package' will meet on October 13th, 11AM. In this informal meeting, they will be presented an outrageous analysis by the legal team of the Parliament aimed at making them accept an extremely dangerous 'compromise' text replacing amendment 138, essential safeguard for citizen's freedoms adopted twice by 88% of the votes. EU citizens must help to convince members of the delegation to start the negotiations with the original amendment 138, adapt its wording if necessary, but reject this 'compromise'. We must refuse an Orwellian vision for freedoms in EU, where the right to a due process could be restricted for 'prevention or detection of criminal offenses'!"

La Quadrature du Net has instructions for contacting your MEP by phone and a sample script to follow with her or him.

If this seems like a familiar request, that's because the people who want to establish universal surveillance over the European net are betting that you'll tire out before they will, and if they keep on trying to sneak it in, you'll eventually run out of steam and stop calling your MEP to demand due process and privacy.

Call your MEP.

URGENT action save am138 against horrible compromise

In a violation of British free speech rights dating back to the 1688 Bill of Rights, The Guardian newspaper has been forbidden by court order from reporting on a question in Parliament. We don't know who raised the question, what it was about, or where you can find it.

Today's published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented - for the first time in memory - from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations...

The right to report parliament was the subject of many struggles in the 18th century, with the MP and journalist John Wilkes fighting every authority - up to the king - over the right to keep the public informed. After Wilkes's battle, wrote the historian Robert Hargreaves, "it gradually became accepted that the public had a constitutional right to know what their elected representatives were up to".

Guardian gagged from reporting parliament

(Thanks to Andy and everyone else who suggested this!)

Doron sez, "Folk musician Steven Arntson wanted to write a song that riffed on a Woody Guthrie's 'I Ain't Got No Home'. Guthrie's song was based on the Carter Family's 'This World Is Not My Home' which was in turn based on an old spirtual... Unfortunately Arnston is finding out that current copyright law does not allow for the creative give and take that was once a vital and basic part of music composition."

Sixty-eight years later, in 2008, I heard "Can't Feel and Home" and "I Ain't Got No Home," and felt the latter lyric connected well with some lyrics I was writing for what would become The Emerald Arms suite. I decided to arrange "I Ain't Got No Home" as the second movement. After creating the recording and sheet music of the entire work, I set out to discover whose permission I should ask before giving the suite away online as free recordings and a score.

Because the melody dates back to 1909, it's in the public domain (the current cutoff for which is 1923). Guthrie's lyric, on the other hand, is not. Two companies own different rights to it. The Richmond Organization (TRO) owns the rights to reproducing the song's sheet music and the Harry Fox Agency (HFA) owns the rights to reproducing sound recordings of the piece.

I approached TRO first, sending them the score I'd written for concertina and voice, which contains many annotations specific to my purpose as well as modifications to the tune's melody and chords. A few weeks later I received a letter from TRO. "We are enclosing our music copy of I AIN'T GOT NO HOME," they wrote, "and request that you use the "words and music" from the enclosed copy in your book." The following page contained a photocopy of the melody line of Woody's lyric from what looked like a children's book, accompanied by a cartoon of a guy's butt protruding from the front door of a house.

The Absent Second: An Explanation

(Image: Woody Guthrie, half-length portrait, seated, facing front, playing a guitar that has a sticker attached reading: This Machine Kills Fascists, Wikimedia Commons/Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

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For many years, we've been among those (helped along by the usually excellent GAO) pointing out that the FCC's "broadband competition" stats were totally bogus. They relied on a rather bizarre way of counting competition. First, if a single household in an entire zipcode got broadband (er, actually not really broadband, but we'll get to that), then everyone in that zip code was counted. On top of that, the definition of broadband was ridiculously low. This has been known for years, and the FCC kept putting out the same bogus stats every years -- sometimes even admitting that it knew the stats were bogus, but it didn't have anything better. More recently, to its credit, the FCC is trying to get better about both how it defines broadband and how it counts things -- but that's just opened up opportunities for the telcos to simply tell the government what sort of coverage they offer, without having to reveal any actual data.

But, still, with the bogus FCC data out there, many folks are trying to claim that there's robust competition in broadband in the US. Thankfully, Julian Sanchez is pointing out that friends shouldn't let friends use FCC broadband data to discuss competition, and highlights the ridiculousness of the claim that 88% of zip codes have "four or more" broadband providers. It's even worse than Julian notes. While he points out that in many cases, some of the providers in question are mobile broadband providers offering up pokey EVDO connections, he neglects to mention that most of these connections cost a ton and come with ridiculously low usage caps -- such that they're not really broadband offerings at all. In fact, most 3G broadband data offerings have explicit limits in their contracts saying they cannot be used as primary broadband connections. But, it doesn't stop the same lobbyists who happen to be paid by the same telcos who make these policies from claiming that there's robust broadband competition.

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Breadpig Publishing were kind enough to send me a review copy of xkcd: volume 0, the first-ever collection of strips from Randall Munroe's fantastic, unrepentantly geeky webcomic XKCD: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

I've been a fan of XKCD since I happened upon his Help! I'm Trapped in a Universe Factory strip, and Randall was kind enough to write a fictionalized version of me into later toons. We got to meet last summer at a science fiction convention in Springfield, Mass, and hit it off like a house on fire.

So I was delighted to find myself holding an actual book -- cover price $18, portion of profits goes to building schools in Laos through the Room to Read charity -- and turning the pages. Randall once told me that he'd rejected earlier book offers because his older strips were only available at a very low resolution, and it seems like many of these were included on the basis that they're funny and interesting enough to overlook the lower-quality reproductions. The tool-tips -- hidden punchlines that show up if you hover your mouse over the XKCD strips -- are included as small-caps print tucked among the frames, and this is nearly as good as the screen experience.

The book is full of eastereggs; the pages appear to be numbered in ternary. There is a cryptographic puzzle hidden in the margins, along with many small, Sergio-Argones-like doodles and gags. More than anything, xkcd: volume 0 feels like it is a part of the XKCD continuum, a mix of blog, webcomic, doodle and tweet, handsomely presented and long overdue.

xkcd: volume 0

EconolineCrush writes "3DMark Vantage developer Futuremark has clear guidelines for what sort of driver optimizations are permitted with its graphics benchmark. Intel's current Windows 7 drivers appear to be in direct violation, offloading the graphics workload onto the CPU to artificially inflate scores for the company's integrated graphics chipsets. The Tech Report lays out the evidence, along with Intel's response, and illustrates that 3DMark scores don't necessarily track with game performance, anyway."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA - NASA publishes 100 experiments performed in space (on the ISS)...

Advances in the fight against food poisoning, new methods for delivering medicine to cancer cells, and better materials for future spacecraft are among the results published in a NASA report detailing scientific research accomplishments made aboard the International Space Station during its first eight years. The report includes more than 100 science experiments ranging from bone studies to materials research.

You can get the PDF here...

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My pal Mike Liebhold writes:

Phillip Roebuck plays a gritty hard edge Appalachian claw-hammer and Scruggs style banjo with punk rock intensity. The bridge between old and new musical styles is completely seamless. Roebuck's sound is completely fresh and original, with a deep Appalachian resonance.

According to my IFTF colleague, Anthony Townsend, a friend of Phil's, he has had a couple of shots at fame but was ultimately disappointed. I hope this time around, the world notices this amazing talent. You can hear a great selection of Phil's stuff on his own site and can see a number of electrifying clips of him playing on YouTube.

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

The nice folks over at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) have gone through and screened over five thousand samples of frozen baby poop dating back to 1974 in an effort to find out how fast norovirus (the bug responsible for stomach flu) is evolving.

The stool samples have been maintained in a unique collection by NIAID's Albert Z. Kapikian, M.D., the doctor responsible for identifying norovirus back in 1972. What the researchers discovered about this group of rapidly evolving and mutating bugs could help them to eventually develop antiviral drugs or even a vaccine against this "very unpleasant" and "sometimes deadly" disease.

Dr. K must be pretty excited that his baby poo collection is finally going to good use, but can you imagine all the muttering and dirty looks he must have endured from his lab assistants for all those years? Kudos to you, Dr. Kapikian, for your foresight and thick skin. Emetophobes, school teachers and cruise ship passengers around the world will join together in songs of your praise when they no longer have to fear the wrath of stomach flu.

Frozen Assets: Decades-old Frozen Infant Stool Samples Provide Clues To Norovirus Evolution.

Last week, we noted that Eolas had received a new patent, a continuation on its browser plug-in patent, and appears to be claiming that it applies to most forms of web embeds, and has sued a ton of big name companies. While most were big name websites (Google, Yahoo, eBay, etc) there were a few that were odd, including retailer J.C. Penney and IT services provider Perot Systems (in the process of being bought by Dell). Well, the ever resourceful Joe Mullin points out that, of course, these firms just so happen to be located in Texas, which helps Eolas come up with a reason why its lawsuit should be in Texas. Even more interesting? Eolas -- despite coming out of UC Berkeley, and basically being one guy who's now based in Chicago -- conveniently reincorporated in East Texas. Wonder why? Especially, with judges now transferring at least a few of the many East Texas patent trials to more convenient locations, East Texas lawyers are coming up with all sorts of neat tricks to convince judges to keep the lawsuits right there.

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Ransom Riggs, over at the mental_floss blog, has a great pictorial tour of Bodie, California--America's quintessential ghost town. I remember reading about Bodie in my Childcraft Encyclopedias back in the day, and I'm excited to finally see the whole thing up close...

A mining boomtown, it was the third most populous city in the state of California in 1880. By the 1940s sickness, wars, bad weather and exhausted mines had led to the town's desertion, and its isolated, inhospitable location made certain that it stayed that way; no one eyed this high desert waste, 8,000 feet above sea level between Yosemite and the lonely Nevada border, and imagined a shopping mall in its place.

Only five percent of Bodie's structures are still standing, but considering how large Bodie was, that's still a lot for a ghost town -- more than two hundred. And unlike Tombstone, Calico or any number of other "preserved" ghost towns in the West, it's not a tourist trap where you can buy cotton candy from gunfight-staging actors playing oldey-timey cowboys; the town is kept in a state of "arrested decay,"

Gloriously haunting photos (pardon the pun) and some nifty history await. Check it out.

Image courtesy Flickr user mulmatsherm, via CC

Hugh Pickens writes:"The Daily Climate reports that President Obama and Congress are pushing to identify thousands of contaminated landfills and abandoned mines — 'brownfields' that could be repurposed to house wind farms, solar arrays, and geothermal power plants. Using already disturbed lands would help avoid conflicts between renewable energy developers and environmental groups concerned about impacts to wildlife habitat. 'In the next decade there's going to be a lot of renewable energy built, and all that has to go somewhere,' said Jessica Goad, an energy and climate change policy fellow for The Wilderness Society. 'We don't want to see these industrial facilities placed on land that's pristine. We love the idea of brownfields for renewable energy development because it relieves the (development) pressure on undisturbed places. The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have identified nearly 4,100 contaminated sites deemed economically suitable for wind and solar power development, as well as biomass. Included are 5 million acres suitable for photovoltaic or concentrated solar power development, and 500,000 acres for wind power. These sites, if fully developed, have the potential to produce 950,000 megawatts — more than the country's total power needs in 2007, according to EPA data."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While we're on the topic of low-tech visualizers, here is another neat one. This Lightfader floor has a (presumably slow moving) fluid in it, that gets displaced when you step on it, and then slowly returns to it's original state. This produces a footprint path that slowly fades away, without any electronics. It is a few years old, however I just became aware of it.

It kind of reminds me of what happens to your footprints when you walk down a beach, and then the waves wash them away. I'm guessing it is made of a thin layer of very viscus, tinted liquid. Think that would work, or does it have to be something more complicated? Perhaps some sort of liquid crystal-based polarizer, to improve the contrast? [via transmaterial]

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Twitter pal Enth says, "Here is a photograph of several extremely serious men programming an animatronic bear."

And so it is.

Original link from Hey Okay

Why are we building laser tripwires? My friend, we'll call him Agent Todbot, and I are creating a competitive art heist event for the upcoming Machine Project benefit. This means lots of fog, laser tripwires, and flashing lights. Competitors will try to get through, steal a piece of art, and return without crossing any beams.

To build this, we're pulling apart a bunch of laser pointers, mounting them at carefully measured intervals (in Mister Jalopy's museum behind Coco's Variety), and pointing them at photosensors. Tod attached these to small acrylic discs to allow some slack in the system. We'll provide more build details as we go.

Machine Project Benefit 2009

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Remember last year when the RIAA sought to have lawyer Ray Beckermann declared a vexatious litigant and asked for sanctions? Well, a magistrate judge has now said that the RIAA's complaints were "largely overstated" (shocking, I know) and that Beckermann should not face any sanctions:

"Although defendant's counsel took an unusually aggressive stance and, at times, veered into hyperbole and gratuitous attacks on the recording industry as a whole, I do not find clear evidence of bad faith on counsel's part."

Beckermann had filed a similar complaint in response, claiming that the RIAA was vexatious, but the judge ruled against that one as well (again, I'd say reasonably). All in all, this looks like sour grapes on the part of the RIAA who wasn't used to any lawyers actually challenging its lawyers on its overly aggressive legal campaign. As the article notes, the federal judge overseeing the case could still rule otherwise, but on the whole, it seems like this little distracting tangent may be over.

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This Thursday, Oct 15, Metrix Create: Space will open its doors in Seattle (at 623A Broadway East). It's hackerspace meets an indie coffee house. They'll have tools and equipment for building projects, 3D fabbing machines, classes on various types of high-tech makery, coffee and snacks. They even have a fending machine that'll dispense Sun Chips, M&Ms, Clif Bars, and Arduinos, breadboards, jumper wires, etc. How cool.

More:
All of our hackerspace coverage on Make: Online

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A bunch of folks have been sending in various versions of the stories popping up all weekend about the disastrous PSP Go launch, with a product that seems designed to piss off as many consumers as possible. And, of course, one of the big problems? DRM. Apparently a promotion in Europe gave people free downloads of games -- but if you have both a PS3 and a PSP and were used to downloading games to the PS3 to put on the PSP, you're out of luck with the PSP Go. The games are locked to the platform where they were downloaded.

Sony, Sony, Sony. This is the same company that has been locking things down for years, and always regrets it. Way back in 2005, the company admitted that it needed to stop locking down content, and learn to open up more. The company got a lot of press for that statement... and kept locking stuff down. Earlier this year, Sony got a ton of press for basically saying the same thing about being more open. So what does it do? It goes and releases another device using locked down content. At some point you have to wonder who's in charge at Sony.

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