Point and click adventures -- one of classic gaming's most revered and, until recently, most forgotten genres -- have seen a renaissance of late. That's something I'll be exploring more fully in a future column, but, for now, it's a point best proven by what will surely be one of the highest profile indie games released this month: Amanita Design's adventure Machinarium, due for release this Friday for PC and Mac. Best known for their early web adventure Samorost -- a game that swapped out pixel crafting for a photo-surreal landscape built on rusted cans and gnarled, mossy roots ('samorost', not coincidentally, being the word for 'gnarled' or 'twisted' in Amanita head Jakub Dvorský's native Czech) -- the studio quickly established themselves as the indie forerunners of the then-niche form with Samorost 2, and promotional games for Dallas-area glee-rockers Polyphonic Spree, Nike, and the BBC. Machinarium looks to be the studio's most ambitious work, here fully hand-drawn as opposed to their former photo-shoppery, and digging deeper into the genre's past with inventory-based puzzling and exploration rather than rote hot-spot-hunting points and clicks. Presented here, then, ahead of its imminent release, a rare hi-res look into the sketchbooks of Dvorský and fellow artist Adolf Lachman showing the conceptual origins and creation of its rusted iron steamworks world, alongside a selection of images of the completed product. Machinarium can be pre-ordered directly from Amanita (which comes with a downloadable bonus soundtrack thank-you gift), or for via Direct2Drive (for PCs) and GamersGate (for the Mac), where you'll also find a demo version for each platform.

crazipper writes "Back when Intel launched its Core i5/i7 'Lynnfield' CPUs, Tom's Hardware ran some tests in Windows 7 versus Vista to gauge the benefits of the core parking and ideal core optimizations, said to cut power consumption in the new OS. It turned out that Win7 shifted the Nehalem-based CPUs in and out of Turbo Boost mode faster, resulting in higher power draw under load, while idle power was a slight bit lower. The mobile version of the architecture was claimed (at the time) to show a greater improvement in moving to Win7. Today there's a follow-up with the flagship Clarksfield processor that shows the same aggressive P-state promotion policies giving Win7 a significant performance advantage with Core i7 Mobile. However, power consumption is higher as well."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

My friend Christina sent me this lovely link to choice excerpts from a 1962 high school-age textbook meant to prepare the young for marriage. It is impressive, if nothing else, for its ability to vacillate between making perfect logical sense, and making the young seem like improbably dim, emotional nutcases.

My favorite part is this quiz to test your ability to identify potentially problematic engagements. Hint: All of them are problematic.

My key questions here: "What the heck happened to Jim in the 'interior of Brazil'? Did he meet Colonel Kurtz?" and "Dear lord, why has someone not sent Eunice to a grief counselor?"

MAKE subscriber Tyler writes in to share this über-complicated hidden drawer, by carpenter Brian Grabski. To get the hidden compartment to open, one first has to open each of the other drawers, which then release a pin that is pressed to open the hidden drawer. Nice work! I think it would be the perfect place to stash some trick puzzles.

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In Art Forum, our pal Andrew Hultkrans wrote about a Process Church event held in New York. Several former members of the strange and defunct religion were in attendance, as were our friends, Feral House book publishers Adam Parfrey and Jodi Wille, who have a book about the history of the Process Church, called Love, Sex, Fear, Death: The Inside Story of The Process Church of the Final Judgment.

Andrew's article includes a nice brief history of the creepy organization:

Formed in 1963 in London by two disenchanted Scientologists--Mary Ann MacLean, a former call girl from Glasgow, and Robert DeGrimston, a well-educated Englishman of more noble birth--the group made unauthorized use of Hubbard's "E-meter" to identify and exorcise compulsions and complexes. By 1966, the tightly knit group began to believe they were in touch with "Higher Beings" and decamped to an abandoned salt mine in Xtul, Mexico, where the last-minute diversion of a powerful hurricane confirmed to the couple's followers that they were indeed connected to divine forces.

Returning to England, the Processeans (named after their "processing" of one another during their encounter-group days) quickly attracted the attention of the hipoisie of Swinging London, Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull most famously. (It's likely that the Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request and "Sympathy for the Devil" were inspired by Jagger's flirtation with the Process.) As with any successful cult or totalitarian state, aesthetics were key to their appeal. The Process Church regularly published a truly bizarre, groundbreaking magazine--full of lurid, hand-cut four-color collage graphics and baffling yet seductive apocalypse-theology writings by DeGrimston--with blunt issue titles like "Sex," "Fear," "Love," and "Death."

A Processean "Sabbath Assembly Ritual and Salon"

As the major record labels and their lawyers and lobbyists run around the globe demonizing anyone for any sort of copyright infringement, we keep hearing stories of how they falsely claim rights over music for which they do not hold them. We recently covered the story of Edwyn Collins and his inability to offer free downloads of a popular hit song -- because Warner Music Group put in a copyright claim on the song. Reader Marius points us to a similar situation, over in Sweden. Despite theaters in Sweden being covered by a license agreement on musical performances by STIM, the Swedish performing rights collection society, apparently some music publishers claim that theaters still owe more money.

In one case, Universal Music (I assume its publishing arm...) threatened a theater because a popular play (that had toured without incident all over Europe) included a part where a Simon & Garfunkel record was playing in the background. The theater owner actually wrote a letter to Paul Simon to find out what his complaint was -- and received a response saying that Universal does not represent Paul Simon's music in theater contracts. Now, it's possible that there was some misunderstanding (language, cultural or legal), but this sort of thing seems to be happening more and more. When the theater owner informed Universal of this, Universal apparently retracted its demands for payment -- but the theatre company putting on the performance had already decided not to risk doing the play.

It's difficult to see how anyone comes out ahead in such a scenario. The Swedish public doesn't get to see the play or hear the music. Paul Simon doesn't get to attract new fans. Universal Music doesn't get anything other than a lot of ill will from the theater community. Why even bother at all?

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Etienne Steward writes "Turns out that while a few fortunes can be made with Apple, Steve Demeter made most of his money by buying Palm (of all companies) at $1.76 and selling at $12. Apparently, there aren't as many iPhone App millionaires as we would like to be believe. From the article: 'In almost a dozen interviews conducted by NEWSWEEK, Apple consultants and programmers jettison the idea that the App Store is a world of easy opportunity, or a fast track to quitting the rat race. Instead they describe an anxiety-wracked marketplace full of bewildering rules, long odds, and little sense of control over one's success or failure. "It's kind of a crapshoot," says Demeter, who spent the last two weekends partying in Las Vegas and New York. "I think we've reached a point where people are thinking I shouldn't quit my day job for this."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What's that you say? It's a little early in the month to be burning the gallery-of-dorky-jack-'o-lanterns card? Not to worry. I've got four more where this one came from.

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kkleiner writes "For all the glory it gets, the fingerprint has evolved very little in the last 60 years. They’re still two dimensional. The US department of Homeland Security and the National Institute of Justice are hoping to change that. They’ve given grants to dozens of companies to perfect touchless 3D fingerprinting. Two universities (University of Kentucky and Carnegie Mellon) and their two respective start up companies (Flashscan 3D and TBS Holdings) have succeeded. Fingerprints have reached the third dimension and they are faster, more accurate, and touchless."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gareth says: "Paul Overton, of the most-splendid DudeCraft, sent us this mosaic toolbox project. He was asked by someone doing a book on "geek crafts" to submit something, and this is what he came up with, an homage to Gort and The Day the Earth Stood Still, accomplished via bits of paper cut from junk mail and magazines. Awesome idea. Stunning results."

The Day The Earth Stood Still toolbox

If you're sitting around waiting for the Shepard Fairey lawsuit to move forward, here's another brewing situation to follow. As you probably know, the Wall Street Journal is famous for its "stipple" illustrations of various newsmakers -- in fact, some people consider it to be quite an accomplishment in life to be memorialized in a WSJ stipple image. Appropriation artist Jose Maria Cano obviously recognizes this and has created a series of paintings called the Wall Street 100 -- made up of large painted versions of the WSJ's stipple images. There's no effort, whatsoever, to disguise this. In fact, the painting even include snippets of text around the images: The fact that the collection of images is called the Wall Street 100 might be another tipoff. And yet... the WSJ stipple artist who created the original Obama stipple that was used for the image above is pretty upset about all of this, and says that the Wall Street Journal legal team "is on top of this case." If this actually turns into a lawsuit, there's probably a much stronger copyright claim here than in the Shepard Fairey case, but again, I'm left wondering what good this would do. The complaint from the original artist, Noli Novak, isn't about money (she doesn't even own the rights to the images), but about Cano getting credit for her artwork -- even though it's pretty clear that Cano's work was simply making paintings out of the WSJ images. Cano seems to be doing standard appropriation art, taking something from elsewhere and turning it into "artwork." While you can understand why Novak might be offended, it's difficult to see what sort of "loss" there is here that's worth being concerned about. Why not just be happy that someone decided the little stipple drawings were worthy of being ripped from the newsprint and turned into serious art?

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

Thumbnail images can be deceiving. Whilst perusing squirrel photographs on Flickr last night, I came across a thumbnail of this image. "Aww, teeny baby squirrels," I thought to myself, foolishly clicking to get a better look. Wrong. So, so wrong.

After picking myself up off the floor, I confess that I found myself admiring how fit these little suckers are/were. Besides the feet and head (which are no longer an issue), they look like they were pure muscle. These must have been dashing-through-the-wilderness type squirrels. Or perhaps, hit-the-gym-7-days-a-week type squirrels. Not like the mangy little booger (fueled by Cheetos and Mountain Dew, no doubt) that tore a hole in my backpack years ago while trying to pilfer a candy bar.

Even with 8000+ cuddly faced squirrel photos coo over, this is the one picture that I can't stop staring at. It is called "Squirrel for Dinner." Enjoy.

This nifty Chinese dragon was made entirely from plastic cups, spoons, knives, and forks bought at the dollar store. It took the builder some 90 hours to complete. Yikes. [Thanks, Eric Cherry!]

Chinese Dragon

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Philips Electronics, a Netherlands based company, has come up with a device designed to protect day traders from emotionally based trading decisions. The Rationalizer measures your galvanic skin response and lets you know when you are under stress. An online trader can then take a "time-out, wind down and re-consider their actions," according to the company. This may have come too late for us, but at least future generations won't have to live through the horror of angry day trading.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

coondoggie writes "The US Department of Energy said today it will spend $32 million on a project that will deploy a large cloud computing test bed with thousands of Intel Nehalem CPU cores and explore commercial offerings from Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Ultimately the project, known as Magellan, will look at cloud computing as a cost-effective and energy-efficient way for scientists to accelerate discoveries in a variety of disciplines, including analysis of scientific data sets in biology, climate change and physics, the DOE stated. Magellan will explore whether cloud computing can help meet the overwhelming demand for scientific computing, the DOE stated. Although computation is an increasingly important tool for scientific discovery, and DOE operates some of the world's most powerful supercomputers, not all research applications require such massive computing power. The number of scientists who would benefit from mid-range computing far exceeds the amount of available resources, the DEO stated."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Doobie sez, "After many years of boingboing.net introducing me to the most bizarre, space-age, and intriguing information I could ever hope to find, I have decided to reciprocate the favour and make a song in ode to you."

Boingboing
With you its like flippin a coin
Atari fidelity, ancient archaeology
That's what you teach to me

Boing boing
Brain food for girls and boys
Steampunk technology, Klingon Philosophy,
Nutrition-a-plenty

Nice face fur, Doobie!

BoingBoing Song (Thanks, Doobie!)

No one ever said criminals were particularly intelligent. With all the stories we've seen of various people revealing things they shouldn't on social networking systems, you knew that stories like this one were going to become more common. Apparently a fugitive on the run for bank fraud not only updated his Facebook status with his whereabouts (a resort in Cancun, Mexico), but also "friended" a former Justice Department official, who helped hand over the fugitive's info to officials who tracked down and arrested the guy.

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One lingering kitchen storage dilemma I've always had is how to store my spices. I used to have one of those big rotating systems, but it took up too much counter space so I got rid of it. This zero gravity magnetic spice rack from Yanko Designs promises to change things — it comes with 12 custom spice canisters and a magnetic base that half of them will stick to, making use of vacant wall space. Magnetic spice rack ($44)

Barence writes "Acer today revealed the world’s first 3D laptop, the Acer Aspire 5738PG, which will launch alongside Windows 7 on October 22. It uses a combination of software and specially coated glass on the 15.4in screen, along with a standard set of polarised glasses. Initial impressions were a bit iffy, and whether anyone actually needs a 3D laptop is another question entirely, but we'll find out this month."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tired of traditional, controllable musical instruments? Wish you could have a giant collection of crickets? Then you will certainly enjoy this autonomous sound installation by artist Jesse Stiles. Each jar acts by itself, firing an LED and a pager motor in one of three patterns. The result is a soothing cacophony of sound and light, that changes as each battery fades.

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National Geographic has a gorgeous visual map of space missions to our nearest interplanetary neighbors. Is it just me, or would this make an awesome embroidery sampler? Or maybe a pillow?

Many thanks to the Bad Astronomy blog, for this beauty.

The German town of Straubing is hosting an art exhibit by Ottmar Hörl consisting of 1,250 black plastic and shiny gold garden gnomes doing the Hitler salute. Hörl means for this to be a satirical protest of residual fascist sentiment in Germany, but the exhibit was given a green light only after a court in Nuremberg determined that it did not break the post-World War II law that prohibits Nazi symbols and Hitler salutes in Germany. Hörl's Nazi gnomes are actually for sale on his web site. They're 45 euros each, or 120 euros signed. German artist poses 1,250 Nazi garden gnomes

A 29-year-old British woman may face charges for driving into a puddle and splashing kids waiting for a bus. She says the kids asked her to splash them.

Callard has claimed the children asked to be splashed and would not have done it otherwise.

She told the Daily Mail: "The fun factor is mostly gone from life these days but they were playing in puddles, like kids always have done.

"If the kids weren't saying 'Splash me, splash me', I certainly wouldn't have done it. I'm not a serial splasher."

Motorist could face prosecution for puddle drenching

Slate's Dave Johns reports on the resurgence of the long-discredited pseudo-science of physiognomy ("infering personality traits from the face and body").

The new research suggests we are more skilled at "reading faces" than we knew. People are surprisingly adept at assessing sexual orientation from headshots. Five-year-olds can predict election outcomes based on photos of the candidates. We can even guess whether a face belongs to a Democrat or a Republican at a rate better than chance, according to a forthcoming study out of Princeton.

Now some of the "new physiognomists" are resurrecting an old claim: that you can gauge a man's penchant for aggression by the cut of his jib. Last fall University of California-Santa Barbara psychologist Aaron Sell reported that college students could accurately estimate the upper body strength of unfamiliar men after viewing their faces alone. (The men's necks were obscured.) The students did equally well with fellow undergraduates and men from South American indigenous groups--all of whom had had their strength measured using gym equipment. Interestingly, the toughest-looking undergrads also reported getting in the most fights. Another study by Sell suggests that such formidable men are more prone to use violence--or advocate military action--to resolve conflicts.

Many animals employ similar systems. Male orangutans grow fatty cheek pads that reflect group status. Lions with long, dark manes tend to rule the pride. From an evolutionary perspective, these advertisements may be a convenient way of saying, "Hey bro--btw, I can kick your ass" without having to go through the risk of combat.

Facial Profiling: Can you tell if a man is dangerous by the shape of his mug? (Phrenology poster from Bibliodyssey. "Signs of Character," Drawn and Published by R. Degranza Pease M.D. 1843)

The purpose of the hidden camera program Panic Face King is to induce an extremely panicked expression on the face of an unwitting victim by placing them in (what appears to be) a dire situation. This video clip shows one way to create a panic face king. The producers of this program ought to be fined and locked up, if you asked me.

Paul Alan Levy alerts us to yet another shameful case of someone abusing trademark law to try to silence critics. In this case, it involves the software company Jenzabar, which makes software for colleges and universities, and apparently likes to play up the fact that its founder and CEO, Ling Chai, was one of the "leaders" of the Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989, before fleeing to America. Apparently Chai likes to play up that connection for PR purposes, and has been able to get the press to cover Jenzabar with headlines like "From Tiananmen Leader to Netrepreneur" and "From Starting a Revolution to Starting a Company."

However, when the makers of a documentary film about the uprising at Tiananmen Square included some comments and links to articles that were critical of Chai, she went legal. It started with a lawsuit claiming defamation against the film makers, which got quickly tossed out. So, instead, Chai and Jenzabar appear to be trying to use trademark law to bankrupt the filmmakers. They've filed a trademark lawsuit, claiming that the filmmakers' web page, that talks about Chia and Jenzabar, violates its trademarks, noting that the page turns up in search results on Jenzabar and the term is in the metatags.

Pretty much everyone involved recognizes that this is a ridiculous abuse of trademark law to stifle free speech. There is no violation of trademark here. Posting links to stories about Chai and Jenzabar that are critical of her is not a trademark violation in any manner. Using the term in metatags is totally meaningless. It's a shame that someone who apparently once stood as a voice for freedom is now trying to stifle free speech in others via trademark law abuse.

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An anonymous reader writes "As President Obama meets with advisors on an Afghanistan strategy today (who are now leaning more toward Joe Biden's more-drones policy), and even as Al Qaeda claims it's not all that scared of drones, the new issue of Esquire takes the first real in-depth look at the American military's UAV build-up. Defense geek Brian Mockenhaupt spends some time on the ground in Afghanistan, as well as back at the Pentagon, where the pilots ('more like snipers than fighter pilots') are playing a kind of role-playing game, getting to know terrorists' daily ins and outs. Looks like these Reaper drones are the real wave of the future, eh?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

So, you may think, somebody took an old pocketwatch and fit it with a PCB and some LEDs. Ho-hum, perhaps? Seen it? Done it? Got the T-shirt? My response: there's concept, and there's execution. The concept here may be of the non-earth-shattering variety, but the execution is exquisite. Must. Watch. Video. To appreciate just how cool this thing really is. It ticks, for one thing, and when the minute and hour "hands" advance they sweep around the face in a visual gesture reminiscent of John Taylor's Corpus Clock. And besides flawless aesthetics and stellar workmanship, the watch has a great story, too. Its maker, Paul Pounds, explains:

My grandfather was a horologist. When he passed away in 2005 I inherited from him a collection of broken pocketwatches. As my skills are in microelectronics, rather than micromechanics, I felt it would be a fitting tribute to him to produce an electronic movement in place of one of the broken ones he'd never had the time to fix.

I never knew my grandfather very well, on account of our living some distance away from him all of my life. He struck me as a quiet, unassuming sort of man, but this fit very well with his astonishing skill as a horologist. In his heyday, he was among the best watchmakers in Australia. His steady and patient hand able to finely adjust the most diminutive gears and escapements of a clockwork mechanism. He was particularly recognised for his ability to perform delicate work in the smallest of mechanical movements, the lady's wristwatch.

During the Second World War, his expertise was considered too valuable to allow him to go and fight, and instead he was sent to fabricate precision mechanical systems at the Toowoomba Foundry. He was told that if he tried to enlist he would be arrested and sent back!

Such was his skill that when the Australian Horologist journal issued a challenge to drill a pin from end to end, he achieved it by boring a hole by hand, using tiny drills he made from sewing needles. Not one to let it rest there, he topped this feat by filing and turning down another pin on a minature lathe, and threading it through the hole. Then he raised the bar again with a three-penny piece drilled and threaded through the edge of the coin. He produced a small number of these pins and coins to amaze his clients.

Although he never got to see it, I'd like to think he would have enjoyed seeing one of his old broken watches turned into something new and useful. This project is dedicated to his memory.

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jeffb (2.718) writes "As the LA Times reports, 206 patients receiving CT scans at Cedar Sinai hospital received up to eight times the X-ray exposure doctors intended. (The FDA alert gives details about the doses involved.) A misunderstanding over an 'embedded default setting' appears to have led to the error, which occurred when the hospital 'began using a new protocol for a specialized type of scan used to diagnose strokes. Doctors believed it would provide them more useful data to analyze disruptions in the flow of blood to brain tissue.' Human-computer interaction classes from the late 1980s onward have pounded home the lesson of the Therac-25, the usability issues of which led to multiple deaths. Will we ever learn enough to make these errors truly uncommittable?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nick created interactive flash versions of two of his homebrew synths. Though I was at first expecting all the synth's interface functionality recreated in software, the wide array of strange samples is still fun to experiment with. Sweet panel design too ... but the interior's aesthetic is even better -

Don't miss Nick's other awesome examples of synth-DIY, did I mention they're awesome? (they are)

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This is a very personal time for me, lots of observations, things I'm learning about myself, things you can only see when a big tree falls and light shines on spaces that were previously hidden.

Here's a reason why it's good to have friends (as if one needs a reason) and why you should share your childhood pictures with them as soon as you can. I waited way too long for this.

When they see pictures of you as a baby and toddler and then as a small child they see something you never see in those pictures --> You!

Doc Searls' comment, as usual, hits the nail square on the head. "That's Dave! Great to see the kid, the son and the big brother, and how they match with the man and the friend."

Francine Hardway sees it too.

What a revelation. I never liked looking at those pictures, and now I know why. I didn't believe it ever happened. I have no memory of it, but friends can see what you can't -- that you were there. Now all of a sudden things your parents say start making sense. They were there too. Of course they have the advantage of remembering.

Some of Dad's pictures are so good they deserve to be called out specially.



That's my grandmother, Lucy Kiesler, on the left, and my mother, Eve Winer, on the right. My brother Peter Winer is sitting with his back to us, and the guy in the loud 70s style coat is me, at age 21. The picture was taken in New Orleans, not sure exactly where (possibly Commander's Palace) just before or after my college graduation. Click on the picture to see the full image. And the full set of pictures, uploaded yesterday, is on my Dad's memorial site.

Another observation. My Dad did a great job of organizing all the pictures. All I had to do was write some scripts to merge the captions, and link the thumbs with the originals. I'm storing all the stuff in Amazon S3 because I think it's the most reliable storage we have right now. Should I die or become incapacitated they will just keep billing my credit card, and hopefully my successors will just let the charges go through. Amazon really ought to allow people (as opposed to companies) purchase perpetual hosting. What a contribution to our culture they would be making if they did so.

We mentioned back in July how Pandora was urging its users to support the Performance Rights Act, which is effectively a government bailout for the RIAA by taxing already struggling radio stations for the right to help promote the RIAA's music. It's a travesty. The only reason Pandora supports it is because Pandora was pressured into its own ridiculous webcasting rates and wants to help bring down radio too. While I like Pandora as a service, I think it's shameful that it's now using the political process to burden competitors with a government created tax, that goes straight to the RIAA.

Apparently, Pandora has once again ramped up this effort to have the government tax its competitors. A whole bunch of you have been forwarding these ridiculous emails from Pandora that urge people to contact their elected officials in support of the RIAA Bailout bill. Most of those submitting those emails to us have said that you'll be doing the exact opposite, and are offended that Pandora is pushing you to support such a thing.

Yes, Pandora, it sucks that you got stuck with ridiculous webcasting rates that will make it difficult to remain profitable, but that's no excuse for trying to get the government to dump an unfair tax on your competitors.

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Access Copyright, the Canadian organisation that collects library royalties for writers, filed a jaw-droppingly dumb set of comments in the Canadian Copyright consultation. Access Copyright came out as opposing the right to record TV shows at home, and the right to "format shift" your media (e.g., load a CD on your MP3 player, or put an old ebook on a new reader or phone). They also say that almost all commercial use, no matter how trivial, should require a license and not fall under fair dealing. They come out against the interlibrary loan system, because it is digital.

Man, if these yahoos set out to destroy the public's faith in copyright, they could not do a better job than they're doing now. Yeesh.

The so-called format and time shifting exceptions, also known as personal use exceptions, were apparently included in Bill C-61 to address a practice that has become common among the public. Access Copyright submits that good public policy should not be dictated by legalizing common public practices.

It is worth mentioning here that Article 5(2)(b) of the EU Directive 2001/29/EC allows member states to introduce exceptions and limitations to the reproduction right for private use (which includes format and time shifting) "on the condition that rightsholders receive fair compensation". The requirement for fair compensation is to ensure that the private use exception complies with the three-step test.

Access Copyright believes that copyright owners should be given the opportunity to address these "common practices" through market-based solutions. We caution against the assumption that uses made by individuals for their personal use are inconsequential on the existing or potential market for a work. Format shifting for example is relatively new to printed works. Copyright owners should be given time to develop and test new services and business models for the delivery of content in the digital environment. The introduction of a format shifting exception for books could undermine the development of emerging business models. At the very least, the government should ensure that any restriction of the copyright owner's reproduction right be accompanied by fair compensation.

Access Copyright: Reduce Fair Dealing, No Taping TV Shows or Format Shifting

Instructables user pribich writes:

I have used a Kill A Watt electric meter for a while and I decided to build an analog one. This project went from being simple, with a single panel ammeter and an outlet, to full scale with three meters, a lamp socket, binding posts, and switches for all the outputs. Rather than simply mount the plastic meters I decided to remove the movements and reassemble them in a wooden case and make my own numbers for the meters with a piece of tea-stained paper and an old typewritter.

Check out more details about his analog electricity usage meter.

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This amazing video for the Japanese band Sour's single "Hibi no Neiro" was cut entirely from Webcam footage shot by (and of) their fans. (Thanks, Mathias Crawford!)

ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "Once Sebastian Nyström laid out the logic of moving to open source, there was very little resistance within Nokia to doing so. I think that's significant; it means that, just as the GNU GPL has been tested in various courts and found valid, so has the logic behind open source — the openness that allows software to spread further, and improve quicker, for the mutual benefit of all. That idea is also increasingly accepted by hard-headed business people: it's become self-evident that it's a better way."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Did you know that some of the best hardwood can be found underwater? When people built hydrodams and created lakes in valleys to get quick, cheap power, they flooded the trees and essentially forgot about them. A small underwater logging industry has ensued, but no company has taken it as far as Triton Logging of Vancouver, BC.

Instead of sending human divers underwater, Triton built a giant yellow submarine called the Sawfish — a 5,500-pound unmanned logging device capable of finding, chopping, and floating trees weighing up to 200 pounds to the surface from deep underwater. When pictures of the Sawfish circulated the blogosphere in 2006, three years after its initial deployment, the sub was harvesting softwood on the west coast of Canada. It has since increased its fleet to four, doubled each machine's lifting power, and expanded its mission to underwater hardwood forests in tropical reservoirs in Southeast Asia, South America, and Africa. Join me and Jim Hahurst, Triton's VP of Marketing, for a photo tour of how the new Sawfish works.

Guided by sonar, video cameras, and GPS, the Sawfish dives down under the surface and finds forests to harvest.

Once it finds the tree, the Sawfish grabs onto the bark with its grapples, which are like giant arms. It inserts a rolled up airbag that bolts onto the tree. Compressed air inflates the airbag. The saw on the Sawfish then cuts the trunk just below the airbag and stays there as the usable part of the tree shoots up to the surface. Then it moves on to the next one. The new Sawfish is capable of cutting and floating up 50 trees per dive.

When the airbags surface, a boat corals the floating trees and pulls them over to a barge area, where they are then transferred to a tugboat that takes them to shore for processing.

These photos were taken at a recent Triton mission in Kenyir Lake in Malaysia. "We got an invitation from the government to do this," Hahurst tells me. "Kenyir Lake had divers for underwater logging in the past, but they were keen to try out safer, more environmentally sound tech." The government gets a royalty and stumpage, but Triton gets full ownership of the logs.

There are about 300 million trees underwater, all of them lying still in a deep freeze, inert because the lack of air prevents them from sequestering carbon. "By putting these trees on the market, we potentially displace land-based logging," Hayhurst says. "There are 45,000 major dam reservations in the world, and we've identified the top 20 opportunities. This is kind of like mining, really — we know where the diamonds are."

In a thread about netbooks on his blog, Om asks what he's missing in his analysis of the relationship between the computer industry and users re netbooks. I spent some time thinking of an analogy, and came up with one about the industry we all love to hate -- the airline industry.

So here's the story...

Once upon a time there was an MIT professor who said: "I have an idea, let's design an airline that can get you to a great resort for $100! Then every schoolkid can afford to have a great vacation in Mexico, Italy or Thailand!!"

No matter how hard he tried the professor couldn't come up with a solution. The moguls of the airline industry sighed in relief. Their margins were safe.

Not so fast! A Taiwanese airline named Susa discovered a way to do it for $600, which was still a lot cheaper than the airlines could get you to Italy or Spain for. Huge numbers of people signed up and the airline bustled with new business. People came home from their holidays and told everyone that they had a great trip. And with the new economies of scale Susa was able to get the price down to $350. Not the $100 that the MIT professor promised, but still cheap enough that lots more people could have a vacation, and while some people still went on the more expensive and luxurious airlines, more and more people were flying Susa.

In fact this happened in the airline industry, and it forced a lot of the big airlines to either merge or go out of business. Maybe analysts in the airline industry say that any day the users will tire of the cheap flights, but they'd be just as wrong as the analysts in tech who predict the demise of netbooks.

Jason sez, "A beautiful entry at the Letters Of Note website detailing a card sent to the Woomera Rocket Range in Australia, 1957, by a little boy named Dean Cox. Dean provided the rocket scientists a helping hand with future space craft design offering his concept of a Rolls Royce Jet Engined-powered two man vehicle- but beyond that, the scientists would have to "put in other details". Turns out 52 years later he's been tracked down (see article comments) and he's still waiting for a reply."

TO A TOP SCIENTIST (Thanks, Jason!)

MIT's Technology Review ponders a 17th century CE painting that depicts a telescope not invented at the time the painting was made...

It's hard to find an invention more emblematic of the birth of modern science than the telescope. And yet surprisingly little is known about its early development. The inventor of the telescope remains unknown to this day.

Now, one of Brueghel's works appears to show a Keplerian-style telescope in a painting dating from 15 years before this design was thought to have been built.

Barence writes "Acer has unveiled an Aspire netbook that dual boots Google Android and Windows 7. 'User demand is not there for [other forms of] Linux [but] we never give up. We adjust,' said Jim Wong, Acer senior corporate vice president. 'We introduce Android with the Windows OS, and why Android? Because it has the best connectivity built into the OS.' Acer has also talked up Google's forthcoming Chrome OS. 'Chrome can be a viable alternative to Microsoft's OSes for web applications on different mobile devices,' he explained."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earlier this year, we wrote about a long line of politicians fearing the impact of new innovations -- from video games to the waltz -- and how they would harm the morals of children. These were classic "moral panic" quotes from politicians. As a bunch of you have sent in, Ars Technica put together a similarly nice list of moral panic quotes concerning pretty much every major new technology innovation from the past 100 years. From the days of the grammophone and the player piano (which was the main reason behind much of the 1909 Copyright Act), the big copyright holding industries have pushed out fear mongering quotes about how some new technology would absolutely destroy the ability to make money from content, unless Congress acted quickly to put in place some new restriction, tax or extra right for those copyright holders. In every single case the fears and complaints from the industry weren't just wrong, but were stunningly backwards. Every technology opened up new markets and new opportunities.

And yet, where are we today? We're still listening to the RIAA, MPAA, BSA, NMPA, ASCAP and others spewing the same nonsense about the internet. And almost no elected official or reporter calls them on this. They may claim that "this time it's different," but shouldn't the burden be on them to actually prove it for once?

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Some people in the tech industry believe netbooks are a mistake that will be corrected any day now. Problem is they've been saying that for hundreds of days while the netbook market keeps growing, as the market for more expensive portables stagnates. The trend won't reverse because netbooks represent a far more fundamental shift than they recognize. Far more significant than I've realized until just the other day.

12/17/08: What is a Netbook?

At one level, a netbook is just a new product, something between a notebook and an iPhone. It fits easily into a briefcase or knapsack, has a keyboard and screen that while not exactly spacious, are functional.

The iPhone is a compromise, a good one because of its supreme portability (it fits in a pocket). But netbooks are a good compromise too.

An aside, I know some people use iPhones for their networking. Scoble is my prime example. I can't get him to use my software these days because it runs in a desktop style web browser. Of course what he's doing is a reasonable choice. But it's never worked for me because communicating on an iPhone is too slow. Not just the typing, not just the cramped keyboard, but the actual networking. I had an interesting experience the other day on my mother's new FIOS home network, all of a sudden I could use the iPhone the way Scoble does. For some reason it doesn't work very well on my network at home, and the net connection from AT&T is infinitely too slow to be usable. So it could be that my iPhone experience is much worse than most people's.

As a product a netbook is less expensive, more portable, and has longer battery life than a notebook.

It has a bigger keyboard, bigger screen and is a better reading and writing tool than an iPhone.

It's in the middle -- and there is a middle -- a product between an iPhone and notebooks

But the netbook is not just a new product. It exposes something pretty ugly about the computer industry. They've been controlling prices. There must have been price collusion before netbooks came out. It's clearly possible to build notebooks for much less than they manufacturers are charging.

That's a matter for the Federal Trade Commission to look into, but even that is not what's going on with netbooks. The truly significant thing is this -- the users took over.

Let me say that again: The users took over.

I always say this is the lesson of the tech industry, but the people in the tech industry never believe it, but this is the loop. In the late 70s and early 80s the minicomputer and mainframe guys said the same kinds of things about Apple IIs and IBM PCs that Michael Dell is saying about netbooks. It happens over and over again, I've recited the loops so many times that every reader of this column can recite them from memory. All that has to be said is that it happened again.

Once out, the genie never goes back in the bottle.

This should serve as a lesson to the architects at Twitter and Facebook. The day will come when your users figure out that they can do what you do without the costs you impose. Better to prepare for that day, factor it into your economics, than be surprised by it as Michael Dell appears to have been. He's complaining about netbooks probably because his expense structure can't sustain the business. He's a leading vendor of netbooks, yet is selling against them. This means only one thing, and it's kind of obvious -- he's losing money on each sale. He can't afford to be in the business. Which means he can't afford to be in business at all.

Windows 7 may be nice, I don't know and I don't care. I like my XP-based netbook just fine with its 10 inch screen, 160GB hard drive and 8-hour battery life. My computer cost $350. I'm not a likely customer for an upsell. Those are the new economics, like it or not.

Vigile writes "When you sell over 100 million handheld gaming systems, everyone wants to be involved in your success; just ask Nintendo. As a company with many different obstacles in its path, NVIDIA could definitely use the boost in revenues that would come from partnering with a company like Nintendo on a handheld system, and it looks like the Tegra processor will make that happen. The NVIDIA Tegra processor is an SoC that runs a set of ARM cores, a GeForce-based graphics core and an HD video processor capable of 1080p output that would definitely give the current Nintendo DS/DSi systems a performance boost in line with the Sony PSP. The 'Nintendo TS,' as it has been dubbed, will apparently be ready for a late winter 2010 release and should put a spark in the mobile gaming market and give Nintendo's developers the power to bring higher quality games to the platform."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The publication of today's Panasonic Lumix GF1 review sees the first use of our new, improved fixed studio shot, one of the cornerstones of a review format that, though always developing, has remained essentially unchanged for over a decade. The new studio setup (only the third major change since 2000) has been designed to tell us considerably more about a camera in a single shot - to find out more check out the explanation after the link.

Just Posted: Our in-depth review of the GF1 - the third model in Panasonic's Micro Four Thirds 'G' system. The GF1 squeezes much the same functionality as the G1/GH1 into a body that's roughly the same size as the Olympus E-P1. So how does it compare to the Digital Pen, and can it compete with similarly-priced digital SLRs? Check out the review after the link to find out...

Tiny metal spheres are needed for tiny ball valves and tiny ball bearings, which are needed for all kinds of miniaturized machines. Hollow spheres are lighter, and thus have less inertia, and thus can be made to move faster in these very small applications, where response time is often critical. But how do you make a hollow metal sphere 2mm across? Turns out you can do it with one of the lost foam processes I'm always going on about. Tiny styrofoam beads are first coated with fine metal powder and a binder, then heat-treated to evaporate both binder and bead, leaving only a fragile hollow metal powder shell, which is then sintered into a continuous shell at higher temperature. Read more over at Science Daily.

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Naznarreb writes "R. Clayton Miller has an extremely impressive GUI concept he's calling 10/GUI (video; written description here). Essentially, it combines the high-bandwidth input possibilities of multi-touch interfaces with the ease and immediacy of a mouse. The video is quite interesting, and, for me at least, pretty jaw dropping. This is a dramatic re-imagining of the current mouse/screen schema, one that I think has significant potential."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Q & A with MakerBeam @ Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories...

MakerBeam is an open-source metal building system. There's a technology called T-slot (example here) that is widely used for industrial automation, robotics and machine enclosures.

MakerBeam has defined a standard called Mini-T which is a miniature version of T-slot. It's small enough to work as a model building system, and precise and strong enough to build real machines and robots with it.

They used Kickstarter to fund the project so far ($10k).

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Open source hardware | Digg this!

Another handy tip from Ladyada, HOW TO - Cut insulation off multi-core wire...

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

J.C. Hutchins' sci-fi thriller novel 7th Son: Descent will be released in North American bookstores on Oct. 27.

When dozens of publishing houses rejected 7th Son in 2005, J.C. reckoned the book would never be published. But convinced the story he'd told was worth sharing, he took to the "podwaves" in 2006 and released 7th Son: Descent as a free serialized podcast novel.

The story -- a modern-day tale about human cloning, memory recording, government conspiracies and a villain bent on global chaos -- captured the imagination of tens of thousands of listeners. Thanks to the quality of the story and the evangelism of these fans, an editor at St. Martin's Press took notice of 7th Son: Descent. The company offered to publish it. Hutchins is one of a few "podnovelists" who have landed such a deal with a major publisher.

To celebrate the Oct. 27 release of the book, J.C. is releasing the "print edition" of 7th Son: Descent in several serialized formats: PDF, blog text, and audio. We think J.C.'s personal story -- and the 7th Son novel -- is worthy of support, and are helping distribute the text version of the novel at Boing Boing for the next ten weeks.

What's the book about? Here's the jacket copy: As America reels from the bizarre presidential assassination committed by a child, seven men are abducted from their normal lives and delivered to a secret government facility. Each man has his own career, his own specialty. All are identical in appearance. The seven strangers were grown -- unwitting human clones -- as part of a project called 7th Son.

Intrigued? Check out the first serialized installment of 7th Son at the link below. You can support the book by purchasing a copy at Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Borders, or printing this PDF order form and presenting it at your favorite bookstore. You can learn more about the book at J.C.'s site.

Prologue

The president of the United States is dead. He was murdered in the morning sunlight by a four-year-old boy.

It was a simple stumping rally in Kentucky, no more than a pit stop on Tobacco Road. The Bluegrass State would vote Republican in next year's election, just as it had in the past two. At least that's what President Hank "Gator" Griffin said on this crisp October morning at Bowling Green College.

His speech was a barn-raiser, a helluva thing, roiling with Bible Belt-friendly sound bites. Keep the country strong. Reelect morality. Reelect character and faith. Next November, reelect Griffin and Hale.

God bless America. Waving now, working the crowd. Pump-pump handshake. Wink. Thank you. Kiss the lady. Hold the baby. Listen to the cheers.

Listen, as they turn to screams.

It happened so quickly: a smile and nod from the four-year-old's parents, a kiss on little Jesse Fowler's cheek for the photographers, a glint of silver in the boy's hand, the president's carotid artery open at the jaw, the scarlet wound arcing across his throat like a comet. The child's face spattered in red mist, the president's mouth forming a question, the boy's tiny teeth glittering white in the camera flashbulbs, a cry from a Secret Service agent.

The president did not stagger, did not sway; he crumpled at the knees, face white as bone. His forehead split open as it struck the sidewalk. There were many screams, many arms around him. A Secret Service agent grabbed the murderous boy as he dashed between a photographer's legs. The agent lifted Jesse Fowler high, by the ankle. The boy was furious, screaming obscenities no four-year-old should know. He swung his switchblade at the agent, knocking off the man's sunglasses. He swung again. And again.

More hands around the president. More screams from the crowd. Fowler's parents rushing the agent in shock, trying to protect their son. Secret Service agents covering Griffin's body with their own, his blood seeping into their suits. A scream rising from the child as he swung upside down by his ankle.

A chopper soon descended onto the campus's common field, its downdraft ripping the griffin/hale signs from shocked spectators' hands. The president and an army of Secret Service and medical agents arrived at the Bowling Green hospital three minutes later. But Hank "Gator" Griffin was already dead by then.

During the chaos at the college, little Jesse Fowler had been disarmed and tossed into the backseat of a police cruiser. His parents were also apprehended.

Just before the vehicle carrying the world's youngest political assassin peeled away from the scene, a photojournalist snapped a picture of the child. It would have been worthy of the Pulitzer Prize, had it been published. In the photo, Jesse Fowler's tiny bloodstained hands were pressed against the car's rear window. He gazed at a spattered griffin/hale sign, which was reflected in the cruiser's window in one of those remarkable moments of photojournalism.

The child's bloodshot eyes were wide. He was laughing.

By noon that day, Vice President Vincent Hale had been sworn in as the leader of the world's last superpower. Secretary of State Charles Caine was appointed VP.

The child's parents, Jennifer and Jackson Fowler, were arraigned on charges of conspiring to murder the president of the United States. The small Bowling Green restaurant they owned would never open again.

Their son was placed under maximum security in an undisclosed government facility for evaluation and interrogation. A week later, a nurse and an armed guard discovered Jesse Fowler's body. The four-year-old was lying in bed, his mouth and eyes open, dead. There were no signs of self-asphyxiation. There was no overdose, no theatrical cyanide capsule, no reasonable cause of death. Just the dried remains of a nosebleed, and eyes so bloodshot the whites had gone completely red.

Jesse Fowler had said only one thing during that week of confinement and examination. A balding, bearded doctor had asked the boy if he knew what he'd done to the president.

Jesse Fowler had looked at the doctor and giggled.

"Go fuck your mother," he'd said.

 

One

Saturday sex with Sarah was the best, John Smith decided. The very best. It was long, sweaty, dirty; nipple nibbles, fingernails raking the back and chest, obscene whispers, incomplete sentences. Headboard practically banging into the neighboring apartment's living room. Open windows to let the November Miami breeze cool them—and to let the rest of the world shift uncomfortably with envy. That sort of sex.

John marveled at this as he pulled himself off her body, panting, staring up at the ceiling with an expression that was half self-satisfaction, half awe. Sarah grabbed a sheet from the floor, laughed long and loud, and rolled sideways to face him. The sheet stuck to her sweaty breasts and hips. She brushed a red curl from her face.

"Unbelievable," she said.

John gazed at the ceiling and shook his head. "I know."

"It's getting better."

He shook his head again and blinked. "I know."

Sarah smiled. "You should write a song about it."

"Uh, how about 'Christ Almighty, Do Me All Nighty.' "

"You could've done better than that," she snorted, and climbed out of bed. John watched Sarah's hips as she gracefully stepped through his cramped bedroom, traversing the thirtysomething's version of hopscotch: a pile of books on the floor, last night's clothes, several ratty folders filled with sheet music, an empty box of Trojans, his Gibson guitar. She was nimble and beautiful, and John wondered, not for the first time, what she saw in him.

She opened the bedroom door. John's fat, fuzzy cat scrambled past her legs and leaped onto the bed. He stomped onto John's chest and meowed, malcontent.

"Buzz off, Cat," John said.

"You need to buy him food," Sarah said, stepping into the living room on her way to the bathroom. "You said it yourself last night. And, Jesus . . . you should really clean up this place."

"Right," he called. "Wanna help?"

Sarah laughed. "Your house. Your mess. You clean it up."

"Mañana."

John reached over and plucked a lighter and crumpled pack of cigarettes from the far end of the bedside table. He shook the pack, and two bent—but, thank God, not broken—Camel Lights rattled out and into his palm. He lit one, inhaled, and gazed at the ceiling.

Cat meowed again, sounding more surly this time. John absently scratched the critter's head, regarding him with a mixture of disdain and fondness. As Sarah showered, John watched the palm trees sway outside the window, stroked Cat, and finished his smoke.

He'd already put on a T-shirt and pulled his hair into a ponytail when Sarah came back into the room.

"Where ya going, stud?"

"Nowhere. Just to the Castle," he replied, slipping on a pair of jeans. "Gotta get the cat his food, and get me some more smokes."

Sarah looked at the unlit Camel by the ashtray. "I'm out, too."

"Have that one," John said, and kissed her. "Try to live through the nasty nonmenthol flavor. I'll take the bike. Won't be long."

Outside, as he pedaled his ten-speed into the apartment complex parking lot, Sarah called down to him from the balcony. She told him to hurry. She made a joke about how red-haired maidens reward bicycle-riding knights with breakfast and "muchly" hot sex . . . particularly if they come bearing cancer sticks.

John laughed, imagining her in bed, his head between her thighs, and said he'd pedal as fast as he could.

Alleys—honest-to-goodness damp, dark, well-worn shortcut alleys—were one of the things John missed most while living in Miami. Cycling always reminded him of his childhood in the Midwest, and of bike races with neighborhood kids, up and down the alleys. Miami was a driver's city, a twentieth-century city, a pink place that had no love for kick-the-can or cobblestones. This was the land of the planned community, where "historic home" meant that the paint on a house's shutters had just dried.

As he pedaled to the Castle convenience store—Zero Hassle at the Castle!—John pined for alleys and shortcuts, redbrick roads that led to scrappy basketball rims and tree houses. But there was no sense begrudging it. Miami was different. Neither better nor worse, just different. And since Miami had been around a lot longer than John had, he thought it best to adapt.

Besides, Miami had palm trees. And November weather like this.

He was making a quick turn onto Flamingo, a scenic residential road that would add a few minutes to his ride—but what the hey, it was Saturday—when he spotted the white van barreling toward him.

I don't think it sees me, he thought. If it did, it wouldn't be going so fa—

John yanked the bike to the left, gripped both brakes, and nearly flew over the handlebars. The van's tires screeched. John's bike swerved between two parked cars, a Lexus and a very old, very cherry Beetle, and isn't it the damnedest things you notice at moments like this? The bike's front wheel struck the curb. John spilled onto the sidewalk, felt the flesh tear on his palm and chin.

He heard the van's front doors open, the rear slide-door whoosh along its rail, and the click-click of expensive dress shoes. John tried to slip out from under the ten-speed, but his foot was stuck on the chain. He looked up. Three men sporting sharp suits and crew cuts surrounded him.

"You know, a little help here would—"

"Grab him," the biggest suit said, and the other two pounced. Their gloved hands locked on to John's upper arms like talons, yanking him from under the bike in one fluid motion, as if he were in some street-fighter ballet.

One of the men twisted John's left arm behind his back—say uncle, isn't it the damnedest things you notice?—and John howled. The other suit held John's right arm out straight, like a wing. John couldn't move. He couldn't speak. They were going to break his arm; John could feel the muscles pulling apart.

The third man, the big suit, stepped before him. The stranger had gray eyes, a flat nose, a cleft in his chin, cheekbones carved from marble. No emotion was on that face. The men stood there on the sidewalk for what felt like an excruciating eternity.

Finally, the man raised his eyebrows. "You want it to stop?"

John nodded his head furiously.

The big man inhaled and exhaled slowly. "Good. Now. You're going to take a little ride with us."

The pain in John's left arm eased a little, and he used the moment to heave his body from side to side. His outstretched arm tore away from its captor and swung outward. He screamed for help. The talon on the throbbing wrist behind his back slipped slightly. He was going to do it, going to do it, going to run, going to break—

No air. No air.

The leader, the one with the Superman chin, punched John in the stomach a second time. Then a third. John fell to the sidewalk, clutching his midsection, cradling it like a squirming baby. Through the haze, he saw one of the men toss the ten-speed into the back of the van. He spotted the other with a syringe, felt the bee sting of the needle, then things became pleasant, sweet, dark, darker.

He heard one last thing before he lost consciousness, the leader's voice.

"Should've come quietly, Johnny-boy."

* * *

When Michael was a child, his mother and father took him for a drive through Indiana's corn country, the place where that state's true heart would always beat. American flags, high school basketball, Old-Time Religion. Those things were in the soil of the state—no, deeper than that even, a layer of bedrock geologists could never fathom. The drive into the heartland took two hours from where they lived in Indianapolis.

Michael had been only nine at the time, but he had noticed the transformation of the horizon during that drive: the mortar and steel of city giving way to the bland homes of the suburbs. Then, with the abruptness of a beachhead, the land of station wagons and culs-de-sac relinquished control to the flat expanse of Indiana's heart. The corn. It was a sea, Michael thought back then. Bright green combines occasionally slipped through its waves like barges. And like the sea, the corn could barely be contained; it ebbed just feet from the road.

There, at a family picnic by the roadside, Michael's mother had told him that places were like people; they had personalities. More important, she said, they had emotions. Souls. Sometimes you could feel the soul of a place. Michael had munched on a peanut butter sandwich and asked her what she meant.

"Close your eyes," she said. "Listen. Just breathe and listen. Listen with your ears. What do you hear?"

Quiet, he'd said. Grasshoppers. Corn leaves slapping against each other. A bird. The wind.

"Now what do you feel?" she asked.

Nice. Peaceful. Love, maybe.

"Maybe that's what this place is like," his mother said. "Maybe this place is peaceful, loving. Gentle. Maybe that is this place's soul. It's important to listen to a place sometimes, to hear what it thinks. Understand?"

Michael said he did, a little. Maybe. His mother laughed and kissed him on the cheek and said that maybe he would understand when he was older. He'd finished his sandwich, took a sip of cherry Hi-C from his thermos, and went to play Frisbee with his father.

Michael had never forgotten that conversation. And while he understood its mysteries now about as much as he had then, he always made time to close his eyes and listen to a new place. It had come in handy years later when he went to Parris Island, and then to Kosovo and Afghanistan and other countries with alien names and landscapes. Those places held power over their inhabitants. That faraway day's lesson had dovetailed with what he learned in boot, and later in Force Recon training. Know the land, and you'll know the people.

Michael knew Gitmo. He'd been here for only a week, and he knew it. Gitmo was angry. Gitmo was confused. Under the Kevlar and pride and posturing, Gitmo was crying for blood. Its inhabitants were restless. It wanted to put a hurt on whoever was behind the death of the president two weeks ago.

Michael ran to appease the lion inside. He ran to clear his head of the irrational, the emotions, the confusion and endless discussions that were unfolding at Guantánamo and, presumably, in America. He'd learned about the president's assassination a week after the rest of the civilized world. He had been on assignment, assisting CIA types in a nation where the scorpions were the size of ashtrays and the politics as volatile as nitroglycerin. Now he was back in the fold, catching up, getting informed.

Michael was into his sixth mile when a Humvee approached from behind. It pulled ahead by a few hundred yards and stopped. A full bird stepped out and waited for Michael to catch up.

Michael stopped, stood erect, and saluted. His breathing was even, but the sweat poured from his arms and face. His thirty-year-old body was a study in sculpture, loyalty, and endurance. Scars were on his arms and back. A USMC tattoo on his right biceps. Women remarked at his physique and his blue eyes, not that it mattered much to him. Men remarked at his ability to do seventy pull-ups in two minutes.

The colonel returned the salute and stepped forward.

"It's Saturday, son," the older man said. "Even God Himself rested one day of the week."

Michael half-smiled. "I expect to go to heaven, sir, and I'd like to represent our Corps in a mano a mano boxing match against the Lord God when I get there. This is prep."

"Blasphemous." The colonel laughed, then clapped Michael on the shoulder. They stepped over to the Humvee. The driver passed the colonel a clipboard. The old man scanned the sheet of paper.

"Says here you're to report to the airstrip in three hours. Heading to Virginia."

"Sir? I just returned from an op," Michael said. "I'm supposed to head back home to Denver. Two weeks' leave."

"I don't know anything about that." The colonel nodded at the clipboard. "This came to my office. Classified. I'm supposed to round you up personally and get you on that plane. Now I don't take a shine to running errands, Smith, particularly when they're so hush-hush I can't have one of my staff get their nails dirty for me. You're not going to give me any trouble on this, are you?"

Michael stiffened. "Of course not, sir."

"Then be there at eleven hundred, as ordered."

"Yes, sir."

As the Humvee sped away, Michael stood in the sun, still sweating. He gritted his teeth. He breathed and listened.

Gitmo was angry. Gitmo was confused. For the first time this week, Michael was glad for that. He was glad he wasn't the only one. He began to run again, this time back toward the base.

The lion inside him had many questions.

* * *

the president is alive!! this is another attempt to create pandemonium!! an elaborate hoax is being staged against the american people. as you know my source inside insists this is nothing more than an excuse to get griffin out of the public eye. blackjack and Special(k) say there is no threat to america but the president had to be removed so he can conduct talks with the true entities behind this conspiracy.

the world had to believe assassination was true so no one could suspect the real reason why griffin is gone. the grays are finally reestablishing communications and wish to discuss total social and technological integration with us!! after two years of silence they are retransmitting their signals! there is proof, the photograph below was sent from blackjack and confirmed by another source as authentic. it is an image taken from hubble of the phobosian base where the grays have been stationed for the past decade. the time is at hand! the next great age of humanity has begun!!!! kilroy2.0 was here kilroy2.0 is everywhere

>ATTACH graybase.jpg
>LOAD TRACKSCRAMBLER
>EXECUTE
>UPLOAD

Kilroy2.0 leaned back from the computer screen in satisfaction. This new message had just been posted to his Web site TheTruthExcavated.com. It was one of six sites he updated daily.

He rocked back and forth in the wooden chair, his round, bearded face ebbing in and out of the light flickering from the five computer monitors. The rest of the apartment was soaked in shadow; the afternoon sunshine warming the rest of Washington, D.C., was blocked by the sheets of aluminum foil taped to the window frames.

Sunlight was not welcome here. This was a timeless place. A temple. Kilroy2.0 was beyond time, beyond day, beyond daylight. There were no Fridays or Saturdays or Mondays. Only Nondays.

Once, long ago during his life as a civilian, Kilroy2.0 had been known by another name, a man's name, a Pedestrian's name, forgettable. It was the name of an unenlightened tourist of the world, one familiar to worker bees who did not hear the whispers in the walls. But that name, that life, that was Before. Before he had seen the Truth that was seeping through the Media's Lies. Before he had his pulpits.

Before he was here. Before he was everywhere.

Kilroy2.0 smiled in the silence, rocking, cataloging and prioritizing the next series of Web-site updates in his mind. Beneath the desk, the small fans inside his five computers whirred softly. The wooden chair creaked as he rocked. The walls did not speak, for which he was grateful. Silence was like a sand castle to him: fragile, fleeting, golden.

The pounding at the front door shattered it all.

Kilroy2.0 started, glanced across the living room. The chain locks rattled at the impact. His eyes flashed back to Monitor Three, at the miniature video screen in the corner.

The feed from the wireless webcam he'd installed in the outside hall was dead.

The pounding, again.

Kilroy2.0 stood straight up, the chair hitting the floor like a pistol shot. Hands shaking, he dashed to the windows. This was it. They'd finally found him and they'd make him vanish, take away the Word and transform him into a Pedestrian just like Before and

—can't let that happen, have to get out of here—

He ripped at the aluminum foil on the windows, gasping and squinting through the furious sunlight.

A man was out there, waiting for him on the fire escape.

Kilroy2.0 shrieked. The pounding behind him stopped . . . then the door exploded inward, nearly flying off its hinges. Kilroy2.0 whirled toward the door. The window behind him shattered. Arms reached out to him from inside, now from outside.

The voltage from the Taser stun gun surged through Kilroy2.0's body before he knew he was hit. He crashed face-first onto the hardwood floor, taking all of his 320 pounds with him. His dirty spectacles skittered across the hardwood.

One man was barking orders. Take everything with a motherboard. Monitors, too. Look for laptops, BlackBerries, cell phones. Clean it out. Cuff him up.

Kilroy2.0 heard it all, terrified, exhilarated. They dragged his limp body out of his home and down the apartment building's stairs. As they stepped out of the building and into the sunlight, a rogue thought flashed through Kilroy's mind.

He couldn't smile at the irony, but he wanted to.

kilroy2.0 was here

* * *

Hospitals may vary in shape, size, and design from the outside. They are all identical inside.

Hallway mazes, clanging doors, floors and walls colored in muted browns and blues. Hospitals are collages of impassive colors that do not offend, that make no promises.

Father Thomas walked through the halls of St. Mary's, passing door after door, trying not to focus on the smell of sterilizer and Salisbury steak that seemed to sweat from its walls. When a place deals in illness and death, those things are in the air, the walls, the beds, of that place. In his six years as a priest, Thomas had strode through many hospitals like this one. They all smelled the same to him.

He wondered, fleetingly, if doctors smelled a sameness in churches.

The call to the rectory this morning had come as neither shock nor revelation to Thomas. It was Mark McGee. Mark's father, Gavin, had requested his last rites. Thomas knew the man, liked him, admired his humor and courage—particularly during the past three years. Gavin McGee was an optimistic man. But cancer eats everything, especially optimism.

For three years, Thomas had watched his parishioner being devoured by his own mutating flesh. The cancer in Gavin McGee's lungs took great pleasure in tearing out of remission, feasting upon the good cells of a good man. Thomas believed almost everything he'd been taught in seminary about suffering, about God's mysterious role in death and diseases. Yet he silently believed that God had no role in creating a few things on this earth. Cancer was one of them. It was as if Lucifer had left a splinter of himself in the world when he had fallen long ago, a thing whose purpose was to uncreate, to unwind man's Providence and dine on its goodness. Cancer was not a bad thing that happened to good people. It was an arrow fired from something old and unholy.

Father Thomas found Room 511 and knocked. Mark McGee answered, shook Thomas's hand, and motioned him inside. The priest hugged Ellen, Gavin's daughter, and said hello to her husband. He nodded quietly at their thank-yous, told them it was his duty and his honor; Gavin McGee was his friend, a pillar, a proud parent, a little slice of legend at St. Barnabas. They all smiled at that, and Thomas was glad for it.

Even through the fog of painkillers, Gavin McGee recognized Thomas almost instantly and smiled. The patient's thick silver-red hair was nearly gone now. His once-wide shoulders sagged downward, toward Tinkertoy arms. Gavin McGee winked at Thomas, saying it all: I'm throwing the fight, but I'm fine with it.

"Hello, Gavin," Thomas said.

"I know the secret now, Father," McGee said. "Realized the place I'm heading is a helluva lot better than where I'm at."

Thomas smiled. "That's about as true as it gets."

McGee nodded toward his grown children. Nearly forty years ago, Gavin McGee had been the topic of dinnertime conversation here in sleepy-eyed Stanton, Oklahoma. He had taken his ex-wife to court to claim full custody of Ellen and Mark. As a mother, Shellie just wasn't up to snuff, he'd told the judge. Boozing, carrying on with barflies, she was no role model he wanted his children to follow. The judge ruled in his favor, marking Gavin McGee as the first man in Stanton ever to win such a case.

"Not a bad life, eh, Father?" McGee said.

"No, Gavin. Not a bad life. The best life."

Thomas administered the last rites. Gavin McGee renounced his sins, asked for forgiveness, said he believed in Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and the one Holy and Apostolic Church. McGee held his children's hands through the sacrament, accepted the body and blood of Christ, and smiled when it was over.

In his years performing this role in dozens of rooms just like this one, Thomas often saw such dignity so close to the end. He wondered if his own parents had felt this kind of peace. Their deaths had been sudden, but surely in the divine infinite expanse of a second, they would have felt the same calm and courage as Gavin McGee. Surely we all will, he thought.

In St. Mary's parking lot, on the way back to his Cavalier, Father Thomas Smith was stopped by an armed man who politely asked him to join him for a ride. The green-eyed man, who sported a crew cut—clearly military—said he didn't want any trouble; he simply wanted the priest to get in the car. As a Crown Vic with tinted windows pulled up beside them, Thomas insisted he had no money, and that he was a shodan—a first-degree karate black belt—and could protect himself if it came to that.

Two other men stepped out of the car. They were also armed.

The leader said he didn't think it would come to that.

* * *

A bead of sweat slipped down Jay's forehead, hung on his eyebrow, then finally plunged onto his cheek. He wanted to wipe off the sweat, but couldn't. He was handcuffed and terrified.

Two strangers were in his East Village apartment, walking through his living room, scanning the myriad spines on the bookshelves, daintily picking up and examining the trinkets from faraway lands. Their white latex gloves provided a disconcerting contrast against the many dark-hued, primitive items.

A third man stood before him, above him. This man pulled a white handkerchief from his suit's breast pocket. He reached down and gently wiped the sweat from Jay's face.

Jay did not speak. He had been told not to speak unless spoken to. He abided by this rule in silent terror, watching these three puzzle over his life. One of them gazed at a photograph of Mikhail Gorbachev with interest. The man glanced at a photo of Jay standing beside Kofi Annan and harrumphed.

A half hour ago, Jay had been enjoying a sweet tea and an intense game of Tetris—his two Saturday vices, if one could call them that—when Patricia called to tell him she was running late. The subway had inexplicably stopped service for a few minutes, she'd said. This gave Jay a few more minutes of Tetris's spinning bricks before he had to run to the market on Eighth to snag the chicken breasts. Eventually, he left. He'd been gone for no more than twenty-five minutes. In that time, these three men had broken into his home and waited.

They'd descended on him like midnight predators. A chop to his shoulder. A quick shove across the room, where he fell onto the sofa. A display of gun barrels to convince him they meant business. Impassive glares from dangerous faces.

Jay Smith had quickly learned in New York that when a man with a gun asks you for your wallet, you give it to him. If he tells you to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in Swahili, you do that, too. Say nothing threatening, do nothing threatening. Find another way to burn the adrenaline, just give him the wallet and go for a long walk afterward. Process it in the to-be, not the now.

Jay glanced over the couch now, searching for the cordless phone. A wordless 911 call, a traced line, a dispatched cruiser . . . but the receiver wasn't there. They had removed it.

One of the searching men plucked a picture frame from a bookshelf and handed it to the man standing before Jay. It was a black-and-white photograph of Patricia: black hair cropped short, eyebrows arched in surprise and joy. The leader held up the photo and looked down at Jay.

"Your wife. She's about the cutest thing I've ever seen. I bet you'd do anything for her, wouldn't you?"

Jay licked the sweat from his lips and shuddered. "Yes."

"I bet the last thing she'd want to see when she came home is her husband with a bullet where his brain used to be, hmmm?"

"Yes."

"And I bet the last thing you'd want is your little Peppermint coming home and meeting us. Meeting us, Jay. That could be very troublesome—downright dangerous—for such a pretty lady. Isn't that right? Why, we might have to do something to those photo-taking peepers of hers, should she see us."

"How did you know—"

The man raised his 9 mm and pointed it at Jay's head. "Answer the question."

Jay shuddered again. "Right."

"I'm sorry for the theatrics, but this way is best," the man said. "It's also the most effective."

His brown eyes bored into Jay's. "So. Are you going to continue being a good boy?"

Jay nodded. One of the men lifted him off the couch and shoved him toward the front door.

* * *

Mike Smith gazed at his reflection in the men's room mirror. He smiled. He brushed his hair again. He turned his head from side to side, looking for stubble. He flared his nostrils, searching for wily nose hairs. He checked his fingernails. They probably wouldn't be on camera, but appearances are everything and people talk. He straightened his tie. He gargled a handful of water. Looked for stubble again. He'd be going to makeup in five minutes, so it probably didn't matter. But still.

This is my night, he thought. The beginning of the explosion. Ten minutes on CNN. Ten minutes on Larry King. Larry fucking King. The book'll shoot up the lists like a Titan rocket. The networks will call. Ten minutes with King. Then twenty with Oprah. ABC will pull Barbara Wahwah out of retirement for an exclusive. And then, nirvana itself, the speaking engagements. Oh, the speaking engagements, the huddled masses, all gathered to hear the World According to Me.

He was going to give Rochelle the biggest, wettest, sloppiest kiss for pulling this off. Shit. He was going to give Larry King the biggest, wettest, sloppiest kiss when this was all over with, just as Marlon Brando had. This was it. The beginning of the explosion.

There was a knock at the door. That cute production assistant with the ponytail and a pen behind her ear peeked into the men's room and smiled. It was probably supposed to look like a comforting smile for Mike's benefit, but the corners of her mouth telegraphed years of experience: I know you're nervous, that's why I gave you some time in the head. But navel gazing's over, bub.

"Mike? It's me again, Terry. We're gonna have to get you over to makeup in the next two minutes."

"Right on." Confident. Cool.

Terry was unimpressed. "Dr. Smith, I'm going to remind you that you're the first up tonight. And since this is Larry King Live, you'll want to be on time."

Mike nodded and gulped. He suddenly had to pee.

"Right, right. Just give me another minute, okay?"

Terry's eyes tensed for a second. "One minute."

Mike dashed over to a urinal, frantically unzipped his fly, and barely managed to aim at the basin before the piss came. He was washing his hands when the door opened again.

It was another PA, apparently. Young man, jeans, T-shirt. A security pass dangled from a band around his neck like a flimsy convention name tag. He smiled nervously—now that is a bona fide, dyed-in-the-wool, can't-hide-shit-from-a-psychologist genuine smile, Mike thought—and walked over to the sink. The kid was holding a copy of Hunting the Hunters.

"Dr. Mike?"

"I'm ready," Mike said, glancing in the mirror.

"That's great. But I was hoping that before you went, you could sign my copy of your book. I loved it, especially the chapters about the Three Ring Circus killer. I have a pen."

Mike brightened. "Of course. I'm glad you liked it."

The kid placed the book on the counter. As Mike's hand reached for the hardback, he asked, "And to whom am I signing this fine piece of—"

He opened it and blinked. The pages had been cut, hollowed out. A pistol was resting inside.

In one heartbeat, the kid grabbed the gun, pressed it to the base of Mike's ear, and said, "To your biggest fan."

* * *

Saturday night was movie night at the Smith home, though Jack often thought the rigmarole of getting Kristina and Carrie bundled up, out the door, and into the Passat was a production Hollywood could make a movie of, or option at least. Getting the twins to agree on a movie at the video store was another epic; perhaps a television miniseries. Witness the spectacle of clashing cinematic tastes! Carrie wants to see The Lion King for the trillionth time! Kristina demands Pippi Longstocking, an untried classic! Who will win? Who will decide?

Daddy, that's who.

Tonight, the four-year-olds had been relatively peaceful in Blockbuster's family section, particularly after Daddy slyly recommended D.A.R.Y.L., a "megacool" movie he'd seen when he was a boy.

Blessedly, they took the bait. They made a pit stop in the mystery section for "Mommy and Daddy's movie" and made it home with little fuss. Jack chalked it up to James Brown's "I Got You (I Feel Good)." The twins gleefully sang along. All six times.

Lisa had already called the pizza place by the time they came home. Jack got the plates ready; Lisa and the girls grabbed the juice boxes and the napkins. Lisa was asking them which flavor they wanted—"Grape!" the kids cried in unison—as Jack turned on the TV and popped in the girls' movie.

The doorbell rang. Jack grabbed a twenty from his wallet and opened the door for the pizza guy. The men exchanged the typical heys and how's it goin's. This pizza guy . . . like all pizza guys these days, it seemed . . . peered over his shoulder, curiously eyeing the living room. Minimum-wage voyeurs, Jack thought. But then again, there had to be some perk for such a thankless job.

"How much do I owe you?" Jack asked.

The stranger dropped his box, covered Jack's mouth with one hand, and yanked him outside with the other. It was quick and silent.

The girls did not watch D.A.R.Y.L. with Daddy that night.

 

Two

John lifted his T-shirt and gazed at the reflection of his stomach in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. His midsection hurt like hell, but there were no bruises; no proof of the assault. Even his hand and chin had been had been cleaned and bandaged. His left arm still throbbed from when those suits had pulled it behind his back and nearly broken it, that game of Say Uncle on steroids.

He lowered his shirt and looked at his reflection. Shoulder-length, sandy blond hair. High cheekbones. Five feet eleven inches. Lanky. Aside from the small Band-Aids on his chin and palm, John looked the same as he did when he had kissed Sarah good-bye this morning.

John didn't know what time it was or where he was; he'd never worn a watch, and this so-called waiting room had no clocks. Just a conference table, ten posh office chairs, several plastic cups, a single drinking straw, some cans of soda—and one large, cracked mirror. The mirror, that was his work.

About an hour and a half ago, John had abruptly been pulled from unconsciousness. He was strapped to a gurney, looking up at fluorescent lights, white ceiling tiles, and bespectacled faces. Through the haze, those faces had looked like moons. They gently commanded John to stay calm. He did, for a few seconds. Then he remembered the bicycle ride, the van . . . the man with the marble cheekbones . . . and began screaming for answers. He screamed about constitutional rights, probable cause, and arrest warrants. He pleaded and proclaimed his innocence again and again. The restraints didn't budge. Neither did these strangers.

As the moonmen pushed his gurney down a hallway, John asked questions. He pressed his body against the restraints. He craned his neck and spotted men in military fatigues with M16s trailing beside the folks with the white coats. The ceiling tiles streaked by above him. The gurney made a right, a left, a right. He wanted to know what he'd done. He wanted to know where he was. There had been a terrible mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake. After a while, the true terror took hold and he'd stopped screaming.

When the gurney finally stopped, one of the moonmen—a middle-aged doctor, presumably—bent down to whisper in John's ear. John could feel the man's beard, his mouth was so close.

"John, I want you listen to me," the man said, his voice calm. He had an under bite, which made him sound vaguely like Sean Connery. It was annoying. "My name is James DeFalco. I'm an assistant here. I'm not the man who can answer your questions; I'm not authorized to give you any information yet. But your questions will be answered soon. Soon, John. Do you understand?"

John stared at the ceiling and blinked. He said he understood.

"Good," DeFalco said. "Now, we're going to lower this gurney, remove your restraints, and help you up. We're going to walk you through this door. We're then going to close the door. There you'll wait for the answers to your questions."

Fuck this, John thought.

"Do you understand what I'm telling you, John?"

"Yes."

"Are you going to cooperate, John?"

"Yes."

The white coats lowered the gurney. Then the soldiers loosened the restraints across his chest, wrists, and legs. John didn't move until two of the grunts had slung their rifles behind their backs and grabbed his armpits to help him up.

John swiftly swung his elbow upward and connected with the nose of one of the soldiers. Blood peppered John's shirt. The soldier fell backward across the gurney. The other grunt grabbed John and slammed him, front-first, into the wall. As the white coats screamed not to hurt him, for God's sake don't hurt him, the door was yanked open and John was thrown into the waiting room. As he scrambled to get up, the dead bolt clicked home.

John had pounded on the metal door, paced the room, and finally thrown one of the office chairs into that mirror wall, praying it would shatter to reveal a roomful of clipboard-toting eggheads—and a way out. It did not shatter. The chair cracked the glass and nearly hit John as it bounced back from the impact. It was a seven-foot-tall exclamation point for his screams.

That had been an hour ago. He'd sung to himself, to keep the terror away and the questions from eating up his brain. He sang the trusty standbys: Dylan, Baez, McLachlan. He even sang some of his own songs—"Do This for Me," "Rockefeller Center," "Winter Love," "Unscrew You."

Now John was staring at himself in a splintered mirror, wondering why men in suits had beaten and sedated him, why moonmen with rifles had thrown him into a conference room, why in God's name this had happened to him.

John heard the dead bolt unlock. He turned to see a fat man with tangled hair, pop-bottle glasses, and a wild man's beard enter the room. No, not fat. Obese. Well over three hundred pounds, a boulder with legs. The newcomer immediately waddled over to one of the chairs and plopped into it. The door closed and locked. The stranger stared and smiled at the table.

John walked over and stood across from the newcomer. The man did not look up. He rocked in his chair.

"Are you the man I'm supposed to talk to?" John asked.

Silence. Rocking.

"Listen. I've got questions," John said.

The man scratched his head. He didn't look up.

John looked closely at the man. The dude was probably his age. He slouched over a great belly. He smelled. He had dandruff. A Pollock painting of food stains covered his grimy yellow T-shirt. John watched the man reach over, grab a can of Dr Pepper from the table's center, and pour the soda into a plastic cup. He snatched the drinking straw, plunked it into the liquid.

John sat down across from him. "Hey. You the guy I'm supposed to talk to, or not?"

"No." The man's voice had a disconcerting tremble; high-pitched, almost feminine.

"Did they bring you here, too?"

"Yeah." Giggle.

"Do you know why we're here?"

The stranger looked up, grinning. Behind his pop-bottle spectacles, the man's blue eyes widened until they looked as if they'd pop out of his skull.

"I know everything," he whispered.

John jumped back in his chair and nearly screamed.

He knew those eyes.

* * *

Ten minutes later, the priest and the marine came in; the door locked behind them. John looked wordlessly at the pair as they entered—watched in part fascination, part horror, as they gazed each at the other, at the soda-sipping lunatic, at John.

It was an exercise in contrasts. The marine was wearing BDUs. Flattop. Broad-shouldered. Chisel-chinned. The priest was slightly pudgy; his cheeks were full and shiny, his stomach pressed against his belt. His hair was combed in a style of humility or fashion cluelessness; John didn't know which.

John did know, however, that—despite the physical differences—these men were brothers. Identical twins. They were the same height. Their blue eyes worked over each other with the same expression of suspicion. Their faces were pursed in the same look of silent fear and amazement.

John also knew that despite the physical differences, the lunatic across from him was also a dead ringer for these two.

And all three of them looked like John.

The lunatic slurped the last of the Dr Pepper in his cup and smacked out a soda-commercial ahhhh.

The priest reached into his breast pocket with a shaking hand and pulled out a rosary. He sat down at the end of the table, in the chair closest to the cracked mirror. He ran his fingers through his hair and gawked at John in disbelief. John was certain he was returning the expression.

The feeling was unreal, like the unsettling sensation of watching yourself on video, only magnified. Do I really look like that? Only worse. Only this time, the video You is sitting six feet away from the real You, wearing a priest's collar, breathing the same air, probably feeling the same slippery, sick sensation in his gut.

The marine still stood near the door. His eyes flicked over the lunatic, then sized up John and the priest. Cracking his knuckles, the marine strode back to a corner of the room and leaned against the wall, watching them, saying nothing.

The priest dropped his rosary on the table. He looked at John, his hands still shaking. "Are we brothers?" His voice had a slightly nasal quality. Had his nose been broken years ago?

"I don't know." John felt sick. "I thought I was an only child."

The priest nodded. "So did I."

"Quadruplets," the fat lunatic said.

The door opened again. This time, two more men. One of them was yelling out into the hall as the door was closing, something about who he was and whom they'd have to answer to if they didn't explain everything right fucking now. He pounded on the door as it locked.

The other newcomer was almost as thin as John. He was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans; his hairline was beginning to thin. He looked very much like the priest sitting at the table—same hair, same tightly wound shoulders, probably a dozen pounds lighter than Father Whoever. The man's eyes jumped nervously from the screaming man to the rest of the room. They widened when they spotted John's face. The wide-eyed man opened his mouth to say something. John just shook his head: Don't know what to tell you, man.

The man who'd been pounding on the door whirled around. This one looked like a politician. Blow-dried hair, Brooks Brothers suit, starched collar, and shiny, expensive tie. Brooks Brothers looked at his fellow captives. His face went white.

"Shit the bed," he said.

And then the wide-eyed man beside him—the one who looked like the priest at the table—fainted. The politician looked down at the body, then up at John. He shrieked, whirled around, and began pounding on the door again.

Let me out let me out let me out.

The lunatic began to laugh.

John's eyes went to the priest again. Father Whoever was clutching his head in his hands. John looked past the priest, into the splintered mirror wall. This is just like that, he thought. Only the reflection screams because you're the video You not the real You and you're the cracked mirror, seven years of bad luck and welcome to Wonderland, you should've come quietly, Johnny-Boy, I really need a cigarette, and this can't be happening. . . .

By the time the seventh "twin" came through the door, the group had calmed down, clammed up. No one had spoken since the unhinging twenty minutes ago. Call it sensory overload. Call it shock. Call it brains filled with too many questions to make nice-nice pleasantries like What's your name and What do you do and Jeez you look familiar did I know you in high school.

John gazed up at the newly arrived bearded, bespectacled, bewildered man, but didn't look closely. It didn't matter. The newcomer looked like the priest. He looked like the lunatic, the politician, the fainting man, the marine.

He looks like me. Just like me.

With the next round of negotiations on the ACTA treaty -- which may require the US and other countries to make significant changes to copyright law that favor the entertainment industry -- set to get underway, the White House still refuses to release details to the public, but did show the text to 42 Washington "insiders" under NDA. The good news is that the list includes a fair number of folks who recognize the problems with copyright law and the ACTA proposal -- including people like Gigi Sohn, William Patry, Sherwin Siy, David Sohn and Michael Petricone. Many of those people will push for the public's best interests. But, still, it's a bit troubling that the whole conversation remains secret for "national security" reasons. If we're talking about changing copyright laws that effect everyone, why not let everyone know? Sherwin Siy, from Public Knowledge, told KEI (in the link above) about his experience viewing the document, which sounded greatly limited, and notes that while the document has been adjusted, "the most troubling aspects" have not been "resolved."

In the meantime, it's worth asking why this is necessary again. First of all, in a world where trade agreements are supposed to be about breaking down trade barriers, ACTA seems designed to be putting up protectionist policies. Protectionism doesn't work and only creates more harm. But, much more importantly, much of the push for ACTA is based on lobbyists' claims of the "harm" done by counterfeiting. Except both the GAO and the OECD have put out independent reports showing that counterfeiting isn't that big a problem, and that whatever problems there are seem to be significantly exaggerated by lobbyists. Yes, those same lobbyists who were given much earlier access to the document and, records suggest, had a hand in shaping the document itself. So why do we need ACTA again? And why are we allowing those who the government has already found to have exaggerated the problem drive the negotiations?

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Stony Stevenson writes "A light has been shone on one of the great mysteries of the internet. What is the point of the two forward slashes that sit directly in front of the 'www' in every internet website address? The answer, according to Tim Berners-Lee, who had an important role in the creation of the web, is that there isn't one. Berners-Lee revisited that design decision during a recent talk with Paul Mohr of the NY Times when Mohr asked if he would do any differently, given the chance. 'Look at all the paper and trees, he said, that could have been saved if people had not had to write or type out those slashes on paper over the years — not to mention the human labor and time spent typing those two keystrokes countless millions of times in browser address boxes.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Liubo documents the setup/customization involved with routing Arduino sensor data to the Max for Live software. Joining the audio capabilities of Ableton Live with the malleable data processing of Max/MSP, this should make controlling multimedia with hardware a relatively simple task (and likely a much faster than before). From Ableton's site -

Basically, Max for Live is a tool kit for making new devices. Think of a diverse and comprehensive set of building blocks that you can use to build pretty much anything you can think of. These building blocks include basic objects such as "+", audio elements such as filters and oscillators, user interface objects, and a set of objects that regulate access to Live and hardware devices. Max for Live also provides a canvas where you can place and connect these objects with virtual wires. Flowing through these wires are audio, MIDI or video signals, or any other kind of data. Max is essentially a visual programming environment where you build courses or tracks for these signals to run through.

Looks like a good time to begin work on that interpretive dance/ambient soundscape performance!

In the Maker Shed:

Arduino Mega

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(Download MP4 video or Watch on YouTube).

Institute for the Future teamed up with Sun Microsystems and Boing Boing Video to co-host the Digital Open, an online tech expo for teens 17 and under around the world. Today, we're publishing the first of 8 videos profiling each of the winning teen teams -- and we begin with "Centralized Student Website," by Raymond Zhong and Aatash Parikh, two cool kids from Fremont who dig Drupal.

More from today's press release announcing the Digital Open winners:

The Digital Open (DigitalOpen.org) ran from April 15 until August 15, 2009. Youth from around the world submitted text, photos, and videos documenting projects all created from a list of free and open software licenses. The projects focused on the transformative power of open technology. Resources from figures like respected open source advocate Richard Stallman to organizations like Creative Commons were made available to contestants to help them learn more about free and open technology movements.

Marina Gorbis, Executive Director of the IFTF has been deeply moved by the passion she has seen in the project's participants. "The drive and sense of possibility that these young people brought to this competition has been overwhelming," she says. "The spirit of these contestants not only inspires me, but gives me hope for the future."

Filippa Hamilton, the model who Ralph Lauren's ad people crudely photoshopped, is looking for work. Ralph Lauren fired her, she said in an appearance on NBC's Today show this morning, due to her inability to fit into his clothes.

She's 5'10" and 120 lbs.

Update: NY Daily News has a statement from the company:

Polo Ralph Lauren said in a statement Tuesday night that Filippa is a "beautiful and healthy" woman but their relationship ended "as a result of her inability to meet the obligations under her contract with us.

In the same piece, reported by Carrie Melago, her lawyer says that he fears Ralph Lauren's treatment of Hamilton "will be extremely damaging to her."

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is a proposed copyright treaty that contains provisions that criminalize non-commercial file-sharing; require net-wide wiretapping for copyright infringement and border-searches of hard-drives and other devices; and disconnection from the Internet for people accused of violating copyright. The actual text of these provisions is a secret, though, as the treaty is being negotiated away from the UN, behind closed doors; the Obama administration denied a Freedom of Information Act request for it on the grounds that it is a matter of "national security."

The NGO Knowledge Ecology International pressed the US Trade Rep on this, and received a reply stating that 42 DC insiders -- including some reps from activist groups -- have been shown the treaty, after signing a vow promising to treat it as classified. KEI has researched the 42 people and their bios and corporate affiliations. Sherwin Siy of Public Knowledge describes his experiences with the secret treaty:

Our first exposure to any text was on fairly short notice. We were allowed to view a draft of one proposed section as we sat in a room at USTR with some of its negotiators and counsel. We were not allowed to take any copies of the text with us when we left the meeting about an hour later.We were urged to keep any notes we took secure, and not to discuss the substance of what we saw unless USTR confirmed that the other party had also seen the text. The meeting proceeded with USTR discussing each point of the text in turn as we viewed it for the first time and compared the text to existing statutes, trade agreements, and treaties.

We were invited to set up additional meetings or call USTR to confirm our recollections if we wanted to verify what we remembered from the meeting, as we were not allowed to photograph, scan, or (presumably) transcribe the documents. We were told that some edits might be made in the near future to account for various concerns.

A meeting a few weeks later convened a range of people who had been cleared to see the text, and functioned as a roundtable, at this meeting, a slightly altered version was shown, which in some areas was slightly better, in some slightly worse, but without some of the most troubling aspects resolved.

White House shares the ACTA Internet text with 42 Washington insiders, under non disclosure agreements

mvip tips the latest in a long line of premature announcements of the demise of email. "The Wall Street Journal article Why Email No Longer Rules is making the rounds online. Fast Company provided a fast response, highlighting the technical shortcomings of trying to replace email with Facebook and Twitter (where do the attachments go?). Email Service Guide points out that Facebook and Twitter are ineffective for one-off communications. With Google Wave on the horizon, we'll probably have to go through the whole charade yet again."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The onslaught of DIY iPhone stands continues. This time around we find ourselves in a cafe with a warm beverage and the need to watch BMX stunt videos. Luckily we remembered to bring along our nice utility scissors and the Barista was kind enough to include a cup sleeve with the drink. The overall execution and reuse of recyclables on this project should gain high marks for those keeping score at home.

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Well here we go again. There have been numerous attempts at music subscription services, and none have really done all that well. While some people do love their Rhapsody or Napster accounts -- neither has been a runaway success, and both struggle to get much attention these days. Yet, so many entrepreneurs believe it's a holy grail. So, here we go again. With plenty of people waiting for Spotify to enter the US market, the NY Times reports on two other new entrants; one from Mog -- who seems to have blasted press releases to everyone, with the general reaction being a big yawn and one from the founders of Kazaa and Skype, called Rdio. Neither sounds particularly compelling.

The problem with all of these subscription services is that they inherently need to have limits. You have to keep paying, you can't really share music with others, you may be able to take some of your music on the go, but it's usually a convoluted process. And that's a problem. Because people understand how mp3s work -- and that's without restrictions. Trying to get people to pay for a music experience with restrictions, that offers less than what they know can be done, is a recipe for failure. It's time to stop thinking of trying to "sell music" and start realizing how you can use music to sell something better.

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Gamasutra is running an article about the state of game development on Android. The author explains some of the strengths and weaknesses of the platform, and makes comparisons to development on the iPhone. Quoting: "While iPhone apps are written in Objective C, the Android SDK uses relatively more programmer-friendly Java. The iPhone store charges developers $99 a year to distribute their apps, while Android has a one-time $25 fee for developers. And the review process for iPhone apps grows increasingly lengthy — sometimes weeks or more — and it's somewhat arcane. Android apps go live as soon as the developer hits the publish button. Google handles the review process post-hoc, and is much more lax in terms of content. ... For now, if a developer decides to implement a game exclusively for a particular smartphone platform, and the choice is between the iPhone and Android, the tradeoff is between trying to get noticed in an incredibly crowded and competitive market where the potential payoff is huge for those at the top, or entering a market with low barriers, little competition, currently low returns, but the possibility of potential growth."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[begin_noisegeek_rant_here] There's no doubt that the Dubreq's classic Stylophone keyboard holds a special place in the ranks retro-cool musical instrumentats. Similar stylus interfaces have been employed for various synth-DIY endeavors, with ease of implementation being an obvious plus.(who needs switches? just touch GND to a PCB pad!) Unfortunately, the original infamously lo-fi plastic synth wasn't much fun after the novelty wore off and it never sounded as cool as it looked :/

Well it seems someone over at Dubreq realized it's more fun to tap beats, instead of notes. The new Stylophone Beatbox is just as much a toy as its predecessor, but seems a lot more fun to play. The digital sounds may be a bit cheesy, and would probably benefit from some exploratory bending/hacking. The divided contact surface does seem rather neat-o - looks like a great remake for controlling homebrew percussion circuits/microcontrollers/etc. Not bad for ~25 bucks - I'll be hacking one up later this week and will report back my findings.

In the Maker Shed:

SX-150 Analog Synthesizer Kit

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Instructables user jtigermask13 has posted a tutorial on making these working children's iPod costumes.

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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Have you been waiting for the new RepRap "Mendel" design files? If you have, your wait is over. All the files are ready to download, including the mechanics, electronics, firmware, and software. There is also a great wiki with tons of build information.

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Several readers wrote to us about the situation in the UK that saw the Guardian newspaper forbidden by a judge from reporting a question in UK parliament. The press's freedom to do so has been fought for since at least 1688 and fully acknowledged since the 19th century. At issue was a matter of public record — but the country's libel laws meant that the newspaper could not inform the public of what parliament was up to. The question concerned the oil trading company Trafigura, the toxic waste scandal they are involved in, and their generous use of libel lawyers to silence those who would report on the whole thing. After tweeters and bloggers shouted about Trafigura all over the Internet, the company's lawyers agreed to drop the gag request.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last month, we were a bit worried that an admittedly clueless Congress might lump venture capitalists in with other private equity firms in putting forth new regulations. Venture capital is quite different from basic private equity, and the proposed regulations would be quite burdensome for VCs without having any benefit. These "systemic" risk rules don't make sense for VCs who aren't investing in public investment vehicles for short times, but instead do long term strategic investments in private startups. VCs have been pushing Congress on this, and it looks like they finally got through to someone, as it appears that Barney Frank is looking to exempt VCs from any such regulation. This makes a lot of sense as venture capital and traditional private equity are very different animals, and putting them both under the same regulatory rules makes little sense. Putting VCs under systemic risk regulations makes even less sense, considering how unlikely it is that VCs investing in startups are involved in any sort of systemic risk issues.

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Sneaky Green Uses for Everyday Things by Make Magazine contributor Cy Tymony combines the sneaky fun of his 'Sneaky Uses' series with the growing interest in green living. The result is an easy-to-practice manual for conserving energy.

Features

• The book includes 40 projects using green techniques with step-by-step instructions, as well as illustrations and directions for an Earth-friendly existence.
• Projects are enjoyable for kids and also engaging for adults.
• Made from 100 percent usable information that really does conserve energy and improve the way we live.
• Contains sneaky things we can do to go green and includes a helpful energy reduction section that is full of tips and resources, making energy conservation easy.

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The Entertainment Software Rating Board has been around for 15 years now, overcoming an ineffective start and a host of controversial events to become a fairly well-respected ratings agency. However, as this article at The Escapist points out, the world of video games is changing, and the ESRB does not seem to be adapting along with it. "The most pressing problem is the ESRB's reluctance to address online interactions. Seeing as we're moving more and more toward online and internet-enabled games, this inevitably limits the ESRB's authority as a ratings board. Although the ESRB rates the submitted developer content within online games, these ratings are always qualified by an important disclaimer: 'Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB.' To date, this has meant that the rating given to the designed game content doesn't cover chat and other forms of player-to-player communication. That's unfortunate, because the ESRB's intimate relationship with the game industry could provide it with a unique vantage point from which to evaluate aspects of online games that are beyond the purview of other would-be raters, including the quality of the game's moderation system, programmed restrictions on chat and known player demographics."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan has published an open response to Derek Powazek's Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists defending the practice of search engine optimization, arguing that there's plenty of esoteric, useful, non-sleazy information that web-site-owners need to know to get their stuff recognized correctly by Google.

I think there's something to this, but I don't find most of Danny's examples very compelling. In Derek's original article, he mentions most of the sort of thing Danny cites here (distinctive page titles, for example). The Google Base bit is indeed esoteric and the kind of thing a pro can help you with, but I'd be more convinced if his article had more of this sort of thing and fewer straw-men.

But to really be real, let's remember that she's selling real estate in one of the most competitive areas of the country, Newport Beach, California. Her friends aren't all going to buy homes she's listing. Her "community" congregates on Google and does things like type in "newport beach homes for sale."

To succeed in attracting that audience, she should have a great site and great content -- agreed. But does she have individual listings? Then she probably needs to kick them out into Google Base, in order to fully be listed in Google. Does your mythical web developer deal with Google Base much? And where's her web site now? Is she running it off Blogger? Using her own domain? These have impacts on how both the search engines may see her as well as how she's perceived.

Does she have a blog in addition to a main site? That has an impact. Has she considered some unusual, creative ways to create content around real estate in her area, perhaps some catchy link bait, which may pull in the links she needs to rank better (which, by the way, is a recommended Google practice).

Does she have a local office? If so, has she claimed her listing in Google Local? If so, has she updated her title to reflect that perhaps she has "newport beach homes for sale?"

An Open Letter To Derek Powazek On The Value Of SEO (Thanks, Danny!)

Hugh from the EFF sez, "Government Attic is a searchable repository of govenment docs released through Freedom of Information Act requests. Neat!"

governmentattic.org provides electronic copies of hundreds of interesting Federal Government documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Fascinating historical documents, reports on items in the news, oddities and fun stuff and government bloopers, they're all here. Think of browsing this site as rummaging through the Government's Attic -- hence our name. Our motto: Videre licet.

Rummaging in the Government's attic (Thanks, Hugh!)

Writing in the ribbonfarm.com blog, Venkatesh Rao uses The Office to explain and illustrate a theory of management he calls the Gervais Principle (after the TV series's creator). Taking off from Hugh MacLeod's cartoon laying out a corporate hierarchy in layers of Sociopaths, the Clueless, and Losers, Rao riffs on and updates the Peter Principle, in these terms: "Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into [clueless] middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves." Don't know about you, but this analysis suddenly makes sense of much that mystified me in my sojourn in corporate America.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After a court ordered the White House to hand over info on who lobbied for getting telco immunity over warrantless wiretaps, the administration has been trying hard to stall. It first asked for a 60 day delay, in order to think about filing an appeal. That was denied. Then it asked for a 30 day delay for the same reason... and, surprise, surprise, that's now been denied as well. The White House has until Friday to cough up the info. Anyone have thoughts on what the White House will do to try to delay this time?

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Today's XKCD webcomic examines the limits of protection offered by the talismanic anti-static wrist strap that RAM companies send you with your purchase.

Static

The US airlines that created the largest, most redonkulous and abusive fees this year lost the most money last quarter. Airlines with low or no fees lost the least.

Accountants have rigged the system. They create a stream to track the ancillary revenue from fees and they look like heroes when they can report they earned the airline millions of dollars of "new" revenue. But ask them if they can track the revenue we lose because passengers booked away or chose not to fly and they look at you like you have nine heads...

To celebrate the victory of fees over profit, several airlines used their first-quarter reporting to add still more ancillary revenue initiatives:

+ Delta Air Lines, which lost $693 million in the first quarter and suffered a 15 percent decline in revenue, will now charge you $50 if you check a second bag on an international flight.

+ Alaska Airlines will charge a first-bag fee of $15 on domestic flights.

+ US Airways is raising its checked-bag fees by $5 each if you don't prepay on the Web.

THE FOREST, THE TREES AND THE BAG FEES (via Kottke)

Quick, what's pink and thrives on hydrocarbons?

It's not every day that nature serves up a creature roughly the shade of Barbie-doll packaging. Rarer still for an animal to live, quite happily, in a habitat saturated by methane gas and seeping crude oil. But the ice worms discovered in the Gulf of Mexico in 1997 manage to cover both characteristics handsomely. Naturally, I kind of adore them.

Flat and luridly pink, with a stunning array of creepy looking appendages, these worms live at the bottom of the ocean, on the surface of sea-floor gas hydrates--solid, ice-like lumps that form when molecules of methane are encased in a tasty candy shell of water molecules, kept at low temperatures and under high pressure. (Note: Shell not actually tasty.)

There are eight ice worms in the above image, according to marine scientist Samantha Joye. Can you find them all? It's like "Where's Waldo?", but with invertebrates. For the record, the methane hydrate is the orange stuff--so colored because of oil saturating it.

Amazingly, Samantha Joye, a marine scientist at the University of Georgia--and part of the team that first discovered the methane ice worms in 1997--managed to make them even more fascinating. Which is saying a lot for bubblegum-colored worms living in an environment that would kill most animals. What makes them so cool? (Besides the ice. Ba-DUM-Ching.)

First, ice worms are social butterflies. I've just mixed some metaphors there, I think, but you get the idea. In the picture above, you can see that they live close to each other, hollowing out little divots on the surface of the hydrate as "burrows". But they also take advantage of the proximity to interact with their neighbors, Joye says. The worms move around the hydrate. They interact with each other. And they fight. A lot. "They just go at it," Joye says. "We spent hours videotaping them."

Also, they're probably farmers. The ice worms are unique in their particular habitat in that they don't have symbiotic bacteria that help them process hydrocarbons into food. Instead, Joye and her colleagues think the worms probably live off the thick mat of microbes that grows on the gas hydrate. The worms likely tend their "herd" by simply moving around, circulating the sea water and bringing oxygen to the microbes.

Finally, the worms can be surprisingly tough to spot. In fact, Joye and her colleagues had been studying gas hydrates for years before they realized the worms were there at all. That breakthrough came when Ian MacDonald, a Florida State University oceanographer, designed a better underwater digital camera that could take extreme close-ups of the hydrate surface. "It turned out, we'd been seeing them all along. They'd been in our photographs, but we hadn't recognized them as life and had just missed the forest for the trees," Joye says.

And, because it's simply impossible to get enough ice worm photos...

This little guy is poking his head out to say, "Hello!"

And this is what they look like up close and personal:

All images here were taken by Ian MacDonald and come to me via Samantha Joye.

Romenesko recently pointed us to the news that the Atlanta Journal Constitution has decided to do away with political endorsements, and instead, focus on trying to provide more information on what candidates positions really are on various issues. This makes a lot of sense. I'd always wondered how much impact (if any) newspaper endorsements had these days. It may have been significant in the past, perhaps, but these days, with so many ways of getting information about candidates, it's difficult to see how an 11th hour endorsement from a newspaper people probably don't trust anyway is going to make a difference. And, of course, I could never understand how newspapers hold themselves up as bastions of objective reporting... and then turn around and endorse candidates. While I tend to think that the whole concept of journalist objectivity is overblown, these newspaper endorsements weren't helping either way. Hopefully other newspapers will follow suit.

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alphadogg writes "In an effort to promote the 'general health of the Web,' Google will send Webmasters snippets of malicious code in the hopes of getting infected Web sites cleaned up faster. The new information will appear as part of Google's Webmaster Tools, a suite of tools that provide data about a Web site, such as site visits. 'We understand the frustration of Webmasters whose sites have been compromised without their knowledge and who discover that their site has been flagged,' wrote Lucas Ballard on Google's online security blog. To Webmasters who are registered with Google, the company will send them an email notifying them of suspicious content along with a list of the affected pages. They'll also be able to see part of the malicious code." Another of the new Webmaster Tools is Fetch as Googlebot, which shows you a page as Google's crawler sees it. This should allow Webmasters to see malicious code that bad guys have hidden on their sites via "cloaking," among other benefits.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A cloud chamber is a simple device that allows you to observe the decay of radioactive materials. Here's how to make your own...

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Nikon has also introduced an image-stabilised micro lens for DX format cameras, the AF-S DX Micro Nikkor 85mm F3.5G VR. Featuring a whole host of goodies, including an AF-S motor for fast silent autofocus, Nikon's second-generation vibration reduction (VR II) system, and a circular diaphragm for attractive background blur, this lens gives 1:1 magnification at minimum focus distance of 28cm. The 85mm focal length (equivalent to 128mm on full frame) also gives a flattering perspective for portraits. The optical design uses 14 elements in 10 groups with one ED element, and the internal focus design means the front element does not rotate on focusing, enabling the use of lens-mounted macro lights.

Nikon has unveiled the D3S professional DSLR. The new model is an upgrade to the popular D3 and comes with 720p HD video recording and a sensitivity range up to ISO 102,400 for improved low light performance. Images are captured on a new 36 x 23.9 mm CMOS sensor and buffer size has been increased for 48 RAW frames in one burst. Futher improvements include a faster contrast detect AF in Live View and in-camera RAW-processing. Body shape, quality and operation are virtually identical to the D3.

The new Nikon D3S is the manufacturer's first full-frame DSLR to offer a movie mode, and with a whopping ISO 102,400 maximum sensitivity, is capable of capturing images in near darkness. Nikon was kind enough to leave us a pre-production model at the office so we could have a closer look at the new features and differences to its predecessor - the D3.

EFF Warns Texas Instruments to Stop Harassing Calculator Hobbyists...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warned Texas Instruments (TI) today not to pursue its baseless legal threats against calculator hobbyists who blogged about potential modifications to the company's programmable graphing calculators. TI's calculators perform a "signature check" that allows only approved operating systems to be loaded onto the hardware. But researchers were able to reverse-engineer signing keys, allowing tinkers to install custom operating systems and unlock new functionality in the calculators' hardware. In response to this discovery, TI unleashed a torrent of demand letters claiming that the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) required the hobbyists to take down commentary about and links to the keys. EFF represents three men who received such letters.

MAKE was also told to remove our post (here) - we did not... TI is a great company, I think once the folks who run show see what's going on they'll drop all of this...

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In the US, we've seen plenty of lawsuits from politicians upset about anonymous comments on websites -- and most court rulings seem to recognize that commenters do have a right to anonymous free speech -- up to a certain point. The bar is usually where the speech becomes defamatory -- but even then the bar should be quite high, given the nature of online chatter and the (lack of) seriousness with which most people take it. Unfortunately, not all judges are so enlightened. JJ points us to the news that a court has sided with a town trustee in Buffalo Grove, Illinois (a Chicago suburb) ordering the Daily Herald and then Comcast to turn over info on the identity of an anonymous commenter. The details aren't entirely clear -- as the comments have since been deleted. But apparently the story involves that trustee, Lisa Stone, and her son, who got involved in the comment discussion. According to a separate report, The Daily Herald turned over the commenter's email address upon the court order, only to find out that the email address had been "deactivated". So, from there, Stone went back to court, demanding that Comcast hand over info on the commenter, which has now happened. Again, depending on the nature of the actual comments perhaps this isn't so crazy, but with the details given so far, this seems to be setting a dangerous precedent whereby politicians get to unveil anonymous critics, taking away their right to speak anonymously. That could create a serious chilling effect on free speech.

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christian.einfeldt writes "Washington Post Security Fix columnist Brian Krebs recommends that banking customers consider using a Linux LiveCD, rather than Microsoft Windows, to access their on-line banking. He tells a story of two businesses that lost $100K and $447K, respectively, when thieves — armed with malware on the company controller's PC — were able to intercept one of the controller's log-in codes, and then delay the controller from logging in. Krebs notes that he is not alone in recommending the use of non-Windows machines for banking; The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an industry group supported by some of the world's largest banks, recently issued guidelines urging businesses to carry out all online banking activities from 'a stand-alone, hardened, and completely locked down computer system from where regular e-mail and Web browsing [are] not possible.' Krebs concludes his article with a link to an earlier column in which he steps readers through the process of booting a Linux LiveCD to do their on-line banking." Police in Australia offer similar advice, according to an item sent in by reader The Mad Hatterz: "Detective Inspector Bruce van der Graaf from the Computer Crime Investigation Unit told the hearing that he uses two rules to protect himself from cybercriminals when banking online. The first rule, he said, was to never click on hyperlinks to the banking site and the second was to avoid Microsoft Windows."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's an excellent use for a giant LED billboard: a crazy augmented reality installation. The appropriately titled Hands From Above was made by artist Chris O'Shea. Want to create your own? You might run into trouble finding such a nice billboard to use, however the programming environments he used- openFrameworks and openCV - are both freely available. His source code doesn't seem to be available though, unfortunately. [via interactive architecture]

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I have to admit that I've now read Larry Lessig's article in The New Republic, Against Transparency, three times, and I still can't figure out what he's trying to say. He seems to be arguing against the concept of transparency because (1) it doesn't solve everything and (2) some bad stuff can happen from transparency as well. Finally, his argument seems to rest on the idea that if transparency doesn't solve everything, then people are going to push back against it. I don't find this argument particularly compelling. The thing is, it feels like a strawman. I haven't seen anyone who suggests transparency by itself is the end goal. Pretty much everyone seems to recognize that transparency is the first step in a process. Once you have the transparency, that enables others to build on that transparency -- whether it's analysis or tools for analysis. Lessig's piece seems to suppose that the point of transparency is that everyone will dig into the raw data -- which is an obviously silly notion. But if that data is exposed, then more people can actually provide those valuable tools and insights on top of it. And I don't see how that's a bad thing.

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Paul Overton, of the most-splendid DudeCraft, sent us this mosaic toolbox project. He was asked by someone doing a book on "geek crafts" to submit something, and this is what he came up with, an homage to Gort and The Day the Earth Stood Still, accomplished via bits of paper cut from junk mail and magazines. Awesome idea. Stunning results.

Gort - Klaatu Barada Nikto

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Ponca City, We love you writes "The EFF has warned Texas Instruments not to pursue legal threats against calculator hobbyists who perform modifications to the company's programmable graphing calculators. TI's calculators perform a 'signature check' that allows only approved operating systems to be loaded, but researchers have reverse-engineered signing keys, allowing tinkerers to install custom operating systems and unlock new functionality in the calculators' hardware. In response, TI has unleashed a torrent of demand letters claiming that the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act require the hobbyists to take down commentary about and links to the keys. 'This is not about copyright infringement. This is about running your own software on your own device — a calculator you legally bought,' says EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. 'Yet TI still issued empty legal threats in an attempt to shut down discussion of this legitimate tinkering. Hobbyists are taking their own tools and making them better, in the best tradition of American innovation.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.