beadwindow writes "NASA's IBEX (Interstellar Boundary Explorer) spacecraft has made the first all-sky maps of the heliosphere and the results have taken researchers by surprise. The maps are bisected by a bright, winding ribbon of unknown origin: 'This is a shocking new result,' says IBEX principal investigator Dave McComas of the Southwest Research Institute. 'We had no idea this ribbon existed — or what has created it. Our previous ideas about the outer heliosphere are going to have to be revised.' Another NASA scientist notes, '"This ribbon winds between the two Voyager spacecraft and was not observed by either of them.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Atlantic is running a major article questioning the received wisdom about flu vaccines and antivirals, for both seasonal flu and H1-N1. "When Lisa Jackson, a physician and senior investigator with the Group Health Research Center, in Seattle, began wondering aloud to colleagues if maybe something was amiss with the estimate of 50 percent mortality reduction for people who get flu vaccine, the response she got sounded more like doctrine than science. 'People told me, "No good can come of [asking] this,"' she says... Nonetheless, in 2004, Jackson and three colleagues set out to determine whether the mortality difference between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated might be caused by a phenomenon known as the 'healthy user effect.' Jackson's findings showed that outside of flu season, the baseline risk of death among people who did not get vaccinated was approximately 60 percent higher than among those who did, lending support to the hypothesis that on average, healthy people chose to get the vaccine, while the 'frail elderly' didn't or couldn't. In fact, the healthy-user effect explained the entire benefit that other researchers were attributing to flu vaccine, suggesting that the vaccine itself might not reduce mortality at all." Read below for more excerpts from the article.

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From ReadWriteWeb:

An international team of computer scientists has created software that lets anyone perform on-the-fly analysis of live streaming video on the iPhone. Used alongside existing methods of displaying data on top of the camera's view, this new functionality signals a fundamental change in the kinds of Augmented Reality (AR) that iPhone developers can create. Existing AR apps, like Yelp, Layar, Wikitude and others display data on top of a camera's view but don't actually analyze what the camera sees. This new development changes that.

The video is pretty amazing. I can't wait to see where this tech goes from here...

Devs Hack iPhone API for True Augmented Reality

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holy_calamity writes "Remember Microsoft's camera to be slung around the necks of people with Alzheimer's to help them recall where they'd been? A version of this device will now be mass-produced by a UK firm, Vicon, which obtained a license from Microsoft to manufacture the camera. It is worn around the neck and takes an image every thirty seconds, or in response to its light sensor, accelerometer, or body-heat sensor indicating that something of interest may be happening. Until now only a few hundred had been made for research, which showed they can genuinely help people with memory problems. The new version will be marketed to Alzheimer's researchers this winter, and to consumers for 'lifelogging' beginning in 2010."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

UPDATE: Apparently, I missed that Xeni and BoingBoing Video had done this already back in April. You can check out that video, and get more information on the experiment, as performed by Popular Science columnist Theo Gray.

Saturday Morning Science Experiment continues on the vague food theme from last week, this time with a video demonstrating the energy (i.e. calories) stored in gas station-quality snack sausages. Naturally, eye protection is needed.

Tip of the hat to Ian Simmons, of the UK's Life Science Center, for suggesting this video! If you've got suggestions for upcoming Saturday Morning Science Experiment videos, send them my way!

Thumbnail photo courtesy Flickr user stallio, via CC. My apologies to readers outside the US, who may or may not get the reference.

theodp writes "Among those charged in the largest hedge-fund insider trading case in US history was IBM Sr. VP Robert W. Moffat, the heir apparent to IBM CEO Sam Palmisano and the guy behind Big Blue's 'workforce rebalancing' and the sale of IBM's PC unit to Lenovo. IBM's not talking about the incident, but it's interesting that Moffat's bio is MIA at IBM.com ('Biography you tried to access does not exist.'), and his Smarter Planet video can no longer be found ('This video has been removed by the user.') at IBM's YouTube Channel. Do you need approval from the Feds before tidying up after someone who's under investigation? BTW, if stories and comments appearing in the Times Herald-Record and Poughkeepsie Journal are any indication, Moffat may want to avoid a local jury trial. 'I have talked to a few IBMers today, and there seems to be a lot of cheering in the halls of IBM over his arrest,' said Lee Conrad of Alliance@IBM."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This might be one of those fundamental Internet laws, or it may just turn out to be a way to express another one.

The Internet is a bunch of pipes and tunnels with processors located at the junctions and at the ends of the pipes. Some of the processors are little, things like iPhones, routers, blogs or webcams and some are huge like Google's cloud.

All is good until something comes along that tries to get the whole Internet to flow through it. Compelling things that get more compelling the more stuff you flow through them. Instead of being shaped like pipes or tunnels, these things are shaped like funnels (as illustrated to the right).

Platforms that are owned by companies start out as funnels. They may trick you for a while into believing that they made of pipes and tunnels, after all it would be suicide for the platform owner to turn the lovely ecosystem into a funnel, but companies can't help themselves. They compete internally to control resources and to the people inside the company, the platform looks like just another resource to fight over. Eventually it gets funnelized, if it wasn't from the start.

This is why my current motto about Twitter is "How I learned to stop worrying and love the Fail Whale." I can love the Fail Whale, even though as a user I hate it, because it says to me that I will soon control my own destiny in this space. That cute little whale says the idea of Twitter as a funnel (it started out as one, always has been one) is not working. As the network grows, it becomes less viable.

The funnel is also why I don't like a lot of the things Google does. Things like SideWiki that are only useful when everyone uses them. It shows funnel-oriented thinking over there. No, long-term they can't make the funnel work. But as Microsoft showed us in the 90s, they can certainly slow the rest of us down while we wait for the shakeout. Better if they never tried, imho. Better for them, for us, and esp for the Internet.

Does grabbing onto a grimy faucet to turn on the water to rinse your hands strike you as an odd contradiction in sanitation? Then a touch-sensitive faucet might just be the solution for you! Rather then turning a handle to start a flow of clean, refreshing water, you simply swipe your arm or back of your hand across the spigot.

This seems like kind of a neat idea, however I'm not sure if it is better than the distance sensor ones that grace most public bathrooms nowadays. It would be really neat if you could adjust the water temperature by swiping your hand across it, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Anyone have a better solution for this? [via core77]

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tugfoigel writes with this excerpt from the Boston Globe: "For more than a century, carbon monoxide has been known as a deadly toxin. In an 1839 story, Edgar Allan Poe wrote of 'miraculous lustre of the eye' and 'nervous agitation' in what some believe are descriptions of carbon monoxide poisoning, and today, cigarette cartons warn of its health dangers. But a growing body of research, much of it by local scientists, is revealing a paradox: the gas often called a silent killer could also be a medical treatment. It seems like a radical contradiction, but animal studies show that in small, extremely controlled doses the gas has benefits in everything from infections to organ transplantation."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An article at Gamasutra explores the decisions by Microsoft and Sony to launch significant hardware additions — their respective, upcoming motion-control schemes — in the middle of a console cycle, rather than waiting until the next generations of their systems are ready. It's indicative of a change to the established pattern of console wars; nowadays, it's more about adding features and gadgets to improve existing products than developing entirely new ones. Quoting: "... for Sony and Microsoft, motion controllers are their next-gen consoles. And it's a damn sight easier than launching Xbox 720 or PS4. They can debut these peripherals without needing to engineer completely new boxes for consumers, potentially bundle them over time, and they have a much better chance at getting exclusive games, thanks to the specificity of the hardware (something that's happened a lot for the Wii). Thus, both hardware manufacturers and publishers like EA see these controllers sparking new interest in Xbox 360 and PS3, which will delay the next dreaded console transition for another few years."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We added a lot of new products, and a few new bundles, to the Maker Shed this week, and more are on the way. Let us know if there are any particular kits you would like to see us build, or if you have any questions about other products in the Maker Shed. Thanks!

It's been a while since we had all of our Gakken kits in stock. They sell out fast, and it takes some time to get them shipped from Japan. In this last shipment we added a few new kits. Check out the Poulsen's wire recorder kit, 4-Bit Microcomputer, and the Gennai Hiraga's Spark Generator. In the following weeks we will be posting videos how-to's of all these new kits.

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CWmike writes "Stanford University researchers have used nanotechnology and magnetics to create a biosensor that they said should be able to detect cancer in its early stages. The sensor, which sits on a microchip, is 1,000 times more sensitive than cancer detectors used clinically today, say scientists at Stanford. The researchers announced this week that the sensors have been effective in finding early-stage tumors in mice, giving them hope that it can be equally successful in detecting elusive cancers in humans. 'In the early stage [of a cancer], the protein biomarker level in blood is very, very low, so you need ultra-sensitive technology to detect it,' said Shan Wang, professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford. 'If you can detect it early, you can have early intervention and you have a much better chance to cure that person.' Wang also noted that the biosensor could be used to determine whether chemotherapy or other cancer treatments are working after only a few days."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

uuddlrlrab writes "A group of 72 Democratic lawmakers is the latest to question the US Federal Communications Commission's move to create new net neutrality regulations. Democrats, including US President Barack Obama, have generally supported new rules that would prohibit broadband providers from selectively blocking or slowing Web content, but the group of 72 members of the House of Representatives sent a letter Thursday to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, saying they're concerned that new regulations would slow down investment in broadband networks. A coalition of minority groups made their objections known as well, saying, 'We are concerned that some of the proposed regulations on the Internet could, as applied, inhibit the goal of universal access and leave disenfranchised communities further behind.' This follows news from earlier in the week that similar letters were sent by a group of 44 tech companies and a group of 18 Republican senators." It's worth noting that the FCC is receiving letters in support of the net neutrality regulations as well. One such is from a group of internet pioneers, which includes Vint Cerf and Stephen Crocker.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Woody Cornett III built this impressive robot demon prop. Check out the complexity of the control wiring at 2:41. It starts to move around 3:28. More pics on this thread at HauntForum.com.

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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Andorin writes "Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of well-known computer security company Kaspersky Labs, is calling for an end to the anonymity of the Internet, and for the creation of mandatory 'Internet passports' for anyone who wishes to browse the Web. Says Kaspersky, 'Everyone should and must have an identification, or internet passport ... the internet was designed not for public use, but for American scientists and the US military. Then it was introduced to the public, and it was wrong ... to introduce it in the same way.' He calls anonymity 'the Internet's biggest security vulnerability' and thinks any country that doesn't follow this regime should be 'cut off.' The EFF objects, and it's likely that they won't be the only ones."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Los Angeles Times reports that California regulators are poised to pass the nation's first ban on energy-hungry big-screen televisions just as they did with refrigerators, air conditioners and dozens of other products since the 1970s. 'We would not propose TV efficiency standards if we thought there was any evidence in the record that they will hurt the economy,' said Commissioner Julia Levin, who has been in charge of the two-year rule-making procedure. 'This will actually save consumers money and help the California economy grow and create new clean, sustainable jobs.' California's estimated 35 million TVs and related electronic devices account for about 10% of all household electricity consumption, but manufacturers quickly are coming up with new technologies that are making even 50-inch-screen models much more economical to operate. Sets with screens of up to 58 inches would have until the start of 2011 to comply with a minimum efficiency standard, with more stringent rules being introduced two years later. If all TVs met state standards, California could avoid the $600-million cost of building a natural-gas-fired power plant, says Ken Rider, a commission staff engineer. Switching to more-efficient TVs could have an estimated net benefit to the state of $8.1 billion, the commission staff reported."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Who is your favorite one? I like Dirac...

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Martyn Zachary writes "The Slowdown has posted a new critique, 'Avataritis,' that attempts to portray the utilization of character customization as a pandemic, emotional response on behalf of publishers and developers to finding the easiest, most efficient solution to the very unique dilemma presented by the enlarging, widening player base of video games. 'No mechanisms are in place stopping developers from writing and designing heterogeneous yet fully structured, narrative-based computer games with carefully constructed and immutable, unchangeable characters.' The article discusses the emergence and role of gender criticism and research in relation to the recent proliferation of the customizable avatar. The story also dissects the very act of character creation, subsequently aiming to clarify several semantic distortions related to the terminology utilized in character creation, and in turn breaking apart the concepts of relatability and understandability, wholly differentiating the two. The overarching analysis is finally related to examples from the gaming marketplace, where many continue to corroborate apparent falsehoods and misunderstandings in relation to the utilization of the avatar. Ultimately, the writer hopes to dissuade readers, developers and players from believing that written narratives are going away as customization and emergent content are entering video games with full force."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Our team recently competed in the 2009 US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon. The Solar Decathlon is a 2-year competition that challenges university students from 20 US and international teams to design, build, and operate the most attractive and energy-efficient solar-powered house. Objective scores are based on comfort control, appliance performance, net-metering, and home entertainment. Subjective contest scores are determined by juries that weigh the engineering design, architectural design, as well as marketing and communication strategies. Team Germany took 1st place due to a large net production of electricity, while Team California claimed top honors in the Architecture contest. Minnesota won the engineering design section. However, looking beyond the contest winners, the main purpose of the event is to raise awareness about solar technology and sustainable design. As part of this campaign, products used in all 20 homes are listed on the DOE website. The most exciting aspect is that the construction and engineering documents and communication materials from all teams are open-sourced for anyone to use or modify!"

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When Nintendo returns to its roots next month by releasing a new, 2-D, side-scrolling Super Mario Bros. game for the Wii, it's trying to do more than simply hop on the retro bandwagon many publishers have ridden in recent months. Speaking at a roundtable discussion in New York this week, Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto talked about how they're trying to satisfy fans of the series who want challenging gameplay in addition to attracting new or casual players just looking for an entertaining platformer. Quoting: "... you can play the story mode single-player all the way through from beginning to end, and at any point along the way, you can add players from the world map and have up to four players cooperate to complete the levels. And beyond that, there are two dedicated multiplayer modes, one of which is free-for-all, which lets you select the stages from story mode ... so you can easily find the stage you like. And then there’s also a coin battle mode which is a competitive multiplayer mode, in which you’re actually competing for points and you’re getting ranked based on how many points you’ve collected. The free-for-all mode has kind of a similar feel to something like Mario Kart where you just happen to have four people over and you want to sit down and play a quick match in your favorite level."

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Adrienne from the Henrico County, Virginia Public Library sez, "Every year we participate in National Banned Book Week, a week that celebrates the written word and the free exchange of ideas, as outlined in the First Amendment to our Constitution. We invite you to volunteer as a reader of a banned or challenged book. This is our way of celebrating that our community has the right to read freely. The Banned Book Reading Room will be open for three weeks (September 26--October 17, 2009), longer than the National Banned Book Week, because last year's Room was so popular! Ever since the written word has existed there have been those who would prevent others from reading material considered "objectionable" -- everything from the Harry Potter series to the American Heritage Dictionary. Join us as a volunteer reader! Call 364-1400 x5 for more information."

The Banned Book Reading Room at Twin Hickory Library! (Thanks, Adrienne!)

From Topatco, this delightful, XKCD-esque "Grapathy" shirt, illustrating inflection point for comedy graphs.

Grapathy Shirt (via Torrez)

In the New Yorker's "Shouts and Murmurs," Ellis Weiner writes up a pitch-perfect parody of a certain kind of manic social-media-expert publishing marketdroid (thankfully, not any of the absolutely wonderful marketing people at my publishers are like this!):

To start: Do you blog? If not, get in touch with Kris and Christopher from our online department, although at this point I think only Christopher is left. I'll be out of the office from tomorrow until Monday, but when I get back I'll ask him if he spoke to you. We use CopyBuoy via Hoster Broaster, because it streams really easily into a Plaxo/LinkedIn yak-fest meld. When you register, click "Endless," and under "Contacts" just list everyone you've ever met. It would be great if you could post at least six hundred words every day until further notice.

If you already have a blog, make sure you spray-feed your URL in niblets open-face to the skein. We like Reddit bites (they're better than Delicious), because they max out the wiki snarls of RSS feeds, which means less jamming at the Google scaffold. Then just Digg your uploads in a viral spiral to your social networks via an FB/MS interlink torrent. You may have gotten the blast e-mail from Jason Zepp, your acquiring editor, saying that people who do this sort of thing will go to Hell, but just ignore it.

Subject: Our Marketing Plan (via Making Light)

Brandon Hardesty is filled with wide-eyed comical amazement at the killer soap bubbles he's able to blow after filling his mouth with -- yeccch -- baby shampoo. He does it so we don't have to.

I've Discovered Something Amazing! (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

An anonymous reader writes "New Canadian anti-spam and anti-spyware legislation is scheduled for a key vote on Monday. Michael Geist reports that the copyright lobby has been pushing to remove parts of the bill that would take away exceptions which currently allow spyware to be installed without authorization. 'The copyright lobby is deeply concerned that this change will block attempts to track possible infringement through electronic means.' There have also been proposals to extend the exemptions granted to telecom providers to include the installation of programs without the user's express consent, which Geist says will 'leave the door open to private, surreptitious surveillance.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Phil Clandillon has a cool new video project featuring Google Earth mashups with panoramic images of specific locations relating to the background of the music on the Editors' new album.

After the break is more background info.

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Watch how NASA and gang saved Hubble...

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I've explained in the past why I think it doesn't make much sense to include a moral argument in discussing things like copyright law. If you can structure things such that everyone is better off, then morality shouldn't even come into play at all. My focus, then, is on setting up systems that do tend to benefit everyone, so there isn't a moral question at all. If even the content creators are better off under certain systems, then where is the moral question? The problem, of course, is that it's often not the actual content creators whose livelihoods are at stake. Instead, it's various middlemen who have worked themselves into a certain position. But arguing that they need to prop up their own obsolete business model isn't very interesting, so they tend to play the morality card, claiming that a system where content is given away for free has some sort of negative moral component. That's hogwash.

William Patry recently did a series of posts over at The Volokh Conspiracy, and addressed this issue as well, concerning copyrights and morality, where he noted:

Morality is used in the Copyright Wars as a way to cover up the inability to justify expansion of rights on economic grounds.

Indeed. Since copyright is intended as an economic right (as detailed and cited in Patry's post), the arguments over copyright need to focus on the economic issues. And a properly calibrated system is one where there's the greatest overall economic good and everyone has the greatest opportunity to benefit. At that point, where's the morality question at all? The answer is that there isn't one. Claiming morality in an economics discussion on copyright is a crutch used by those who can't support their position. There is no moral issue at all.

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Alex at Tinkerlog writes:

For my latest projects I used a lot of single cell LiPo batteries. They are really nice. High power density, low self-discharge, no memory effect and they can deliver quite an amount of current. But LiPo battery handling is a bit more complicated than other rechargeable batteries. You have to take care of under voltage and over charging as that may destroy the battery.

I used the Sparkfun LiPoly charger, based on MAX1555, for some time and it works really well. The only thing I missed was a way to control the current. After some research I decided to try another chip, the Microchip MCP73833.

LiPoly charging with MCP73833

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Jack Valenti ran the MPAA for an astounding 38 years, and was an amazingly effective lobbyist. Listening to pretty much anyone talk about the job he did -- whether they were on his side or opposed him -- you hear nothing but admiration for his skills as a lobbyist. Of course, he was wrong about almost everything, pointed the movie industry in the wrong direction multiple times, and did a lot more harm than good. He claimed that the VCR would kill the movie industry. He insisted that fair use does not exist. He practically ruined a bunch of movie awards shows by forbidding studios from sending out DVD screeners to the awards judges, since he was afraid they'd put them online. And, of course, he insisted that file sharing was terrorism designed to kill the industry (just like the VCR, obviously).

Still... he was a media and Congressional darling and could talk a great game. Amazingly, when confronted with his "Boston Strangler" comment years later, he actually had the gall to insist he was right about his comments on the VCR -- even as the industry was making more than 50% of its revenue on video sales and rentals.

Given all that, you had to imagine that his successor, Dan Glickman would have tough shoes to fill. And, indeed, to date about all that Glickman has done is repeat the same ridiculous claims as Valenti, but without the colorful and charming language. We've been hearing rumors for a while that the movie studios have been quite upset about Glickman, and may even look to push him out before his deal is up next year. Greg Sandoval, over at News.com is apparently hearing the same thing, and notes that the studios recently pushed the MPAA to totally revamp its antipiracy operations, upset about the way things had been handled.

Now, if you were hoping this meant that it was going to take a more reasonable stance to online file sharing and new distribution methods... you'd be wrong. Apparently, the complaint is that the MPAA hasn't done enough, because file sharing has only become more of an issue. It would appear that the studio folks don't seem to realize that this is inevitable. The answer isn't to demonize it, but to look for ways to take advantage of it. But, that's not what they've done. They've put new folks in charge and decided to stop calling it the "antipiracy" operation. Instead, it's the "content protection" effort. Both are absolutely the wrong way to look at things. If they're looking to protect the unprotectable, they are going to fail. Instead, they should be setting up a group that looks at how to use these new technologies to their advantage, rather than setting up a division that pretends it can stop the constant tide of progress.

We've been hearing from more and more movie makers who are recognizing how treating their fans right, while giving them a reason to buy is a much more effective means of reaching an audience than starting off on the assumption that everyone is a criminal. The movie business has always been based on selling ancillary products. Marshall Loew recognized this years ago, when he said: "We sell tickets to theatres, not movies." Yet, for years, the industry has done everything it can to treat its biggest fans like criminals. FBI warnings about punishment before movies. Searching people as they enter a theater and demanding they leave their cameraphones outside. Making the theater going experience less enjoyable. The reason the industry has faced problems isn't "piracy" but because the studios themselves never learned to treat customers right. Setting up a "content protection" division is like setting up a "performance limiting" group at a car company, or a "picture scrambling" group at a TV company. It's about purposely limiting what the technology allows and what consumers want. It makes no sense at all.

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TheClockworkSoul writes "Researchers at the University of Oxford have devised a way to write memories onto the brains of flies, revealing which brain cells are involved in making bad memories. The researchers said that in flies, just 12 brain cells were responsible for what is known as 'associative learning.' They modified these neurons by adding receptors for ATP, so that the cells activate in the presence of the chemical, but since ATP isn't usually found floating around a fly's brain, the flies generally behave just like any other fly. Most interestingly, however, is that the scientists then injected ATP into the flies' brains, in a form that was locked inside a light-sensitive chemical cage. When they shined a laser on the fly brains, the ATP was released, and the 'associative learning' cells were activated. The laser flash was paired with an odor, effectively giving the fly a memory of a bad experience with the odor that it never actually had, such that it then avoided the odor in later experiments. The researchers describe their findings in the journal Cell."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's a video of the impressive micro aerial vehicle (like a UAV, but smaller) by the MIT MAV Team. To me, the coolest part is their use of a 2D laser range finder device to map out the environment around them. The range finder device itself can only measure distance in a line from left to right. Instead of using a servo to change where it points, they move their whole vehicle up and down. This data is then used to build a full 3D model of the room, which is used to navigate through their environment. This allows the vehicle to work indoors, where traditional GPS tracking wouldn't work. [via technabob]

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Reader OG points us to this NY Times article about how libraries are increasingly offering ebooks for download. This, of course, seems like a good idea, and fits in with the purpose of a library, but where the article gets either laughable or head-bangingly annoying is where it starts discussing how publishers have serious problems with this whole concept. Some publishers are refusing to allow libraries to lend out their ebooks...which makes me wonder why the publishers have any say in the matter. Thanks to the right of first sale, a library should be able to lend out an ebook if it's legally purchased it without having to get the publisher's permission.

Furthermore, the rest of the discussion is just silly. There are arguments about how many ebooks can be "checked out" at once or how the DRM works (which blocks the most popular ebook readers from being supported). There's also an issue of publishers charging libraries much higher prices for ebooks, and scoffing at a librarian who suggests that libraries should be allowed to offer as many copies as needed of an ebook to lend at the same time, and just pay the publishers a nominal fee.

It's hard to describe how insane this whole discussion sounds. Here you have a fantastic tool to support a library's main purpose in the world, and we're arguing over what sorts of artificial restrictions to set up to limit that tool from actually being useful? It's as if we discovered a way to make all the food the world ever needed, and we sit around talking about how to make sure that most people don't get fed. It would make me laugh if it weren't so disturbing that people seem to think this is a good thing.

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Earlier this year, there was an analyst report that got a lot of attention, claiming that YouTube's bandwidth bills were huge, and there was no way the site was likely to ever become profitable. Google critics gleefully danced on Google's grave, mocking the company for the purchase. However, the estimates by the analyst seemed off, and we began to wonder if the ancillary benefits of YouTube actually made the site a much better investment. In fact, Google later hinted at exactly that point. One of the major problems with the original estimates of YouTube's bandwidth costs were that they simply extrapolated out the cost of bandwidth, and never took into account Google's unique position -- such as the fact that, during the "down" years a while back, Google scooped up a ton of dark fiber for pennies on the dollar.

Now, a new analyst report points out that, given how much traffic runs through Google, combined with all that dark fiber it owns, there's a good chance that Google has set up peering relationships with other backbone providers, such that YouTube's actual bandwidth bill may be closer to zero. I'm not sure I believe that either, but at the very least, it points out that there's a lot more to consider here than simply extrapolating out the number of videos times the basic cost of bandwidth.

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Monte Schulz's This Side of Jordan is the first volume of a jazz-age trilogy that was twelve years in the writing, produced in tribute to Schulz's father, the cartoonist Charles M Schulz. It is beautifully written and thoroughly researched, a veritable time-machine that whirled me through time to the dirty back roads of the American midwest in the year before the Depression.

This Side of Jordan is the story of Alvin Pendergast, a selfish, ignorant, bitter consumptive farm-boy who lights out across America with Chester Burke, a vicious gangster and serial killer. On their first job, they pick up Rascal, a mad dwarf who's been imprisoned by his aunt who hopes to steal his inheritance. The three set out on a series of violent, picaresque adventures as Chester drags them from one act of bloody, senseless criminality to the next.

Did I mention how good the writing is? The writing is excellent. The characters -- the unlikable, passive Alvin; the unlikable, psychotic Chester; the unlikable, compulsive liar Rascal -- are extremely well drawn. The setting is so vivid I felt like I could fall into the book and lose myself there, landing on some dusty road in a tourist camp where the hicks waited to be fleeced or killed by Chester.

In case you missed it, though, I should reiterate that I didn't like any of these characters. The most active character was a sociopath. The secondmost active character was a hopeless, compulsive liar. The point of view character never does a thing off his own bat, and is, instead, led through the action by the people around him.

But I kept reading. I couldn't stop. This book is a masterpiece of setting and storytelling, even if most of the dramatic tension came from waiting for someone who wasn't an utter fool or villain to do something, anything, to change the situation.

This Side of Jordan

There's obviously been a big push by companies these days to embrace "viral media" that gets passed around. There's lots of talk about the value of "passed links" or "earned links" within marketing and ad agencies. The idea is that if a friend passes along links to content, that content gets taken a lot more seriously than if it's pushed out there by a brand. But, still, some of these agencies don't quite realize what's at stake. Tim O'Reilly points us to an interesting discussion on this topic by Mike Walsh, where he notes that marketers seem to forget whose brand is at stake when it comes to passing around links. They are, of course, focused on the company who is their client (or employer), but ignore that it's actually the person doing the passing:

Stunning art direction is useless if no one actually watches your ad. In a world of audience networks, people will only forward your content to their friends and followers if it makes them look smarter or cooler by doing so. Their brand, not yours is at stake. You would be surprised how few marketers take that into account and are left wondering when their viral campaigns are socially vaccinated before they get off the ground.

This works in other ways as well. We often write about the fact that advertising is content and content is advertising, such that smart advertising these days is good content. So, we're always interested in awesome examples of this in practice. Yet, we recently received a submission for a video, sent via a marketing agency's IP address, pointing to a cool YouTube video. The video itself was, in fact, cool and has been getting sent around a lot lately. But, the video was actually an ad. At the very end, a brand pops up. I don't mind this at all, because it fits with the recognition that content is advertising. If the marketing agency had sent it in making that point, I might have been interested in posting it. Instead, the marketing agency pretended to be some random guy (hint: we can check your IP address!) who had "just found this totally cool video." It was so transparently fake that it turned me off from the whole campaign (and that particular marketing firm). Passing on links is a reputation play -- and while it can do good for some people, if you're just out there faking it, it can do a lot of harm as well.

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Rubinstien writes "O'Reilly Radar is reporting on an effort to produce Law.gov, 'America's Operating System, Open Source.' The group Public.Resource.Org seeks to 'create a solid business plan, technical specs, and enabling legislation for the federal government to create Law.gov. [They] envision Law.gov as a distributed, open source, authenticated registry and repository of all primary legal materials in the United States.' According to its new website, 'Law.gov would be similar to Data.gov, providing bulk data and feeds to commercial, non-commercial, and governmental organizations wishing to build web sites, operate legal information services, or otherwise use the raw materials of our democracy.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've covered Brennon Williams here before, the precocious 15 year old who runs several science and tech blogs and lectures other teens on the joys of science and following your dreams. He's now a winner of the Digital Open, the online tech expo put together by Boing Boing, Institute for the Future, and Sun, to inspire kids 17 and under to explore science, technology, and making things. Inspired by MAKE/Maker Faire, Brennon has built a simple obstacle-avoiding robot and created a kit of it to sell online. Here, he describes the motivation behind it:

The BW Science Labs Store is an idea I've had for a while now, but it has taken a lot of work to get it up and running. There is currently 1 kit available, the Vivus the Robot kit. I've seen a lot of those really low-quality $20 robots where you clap your hands and they twitch, and I've seen $400 robots with a great deal of functionality. I wanted to make something in between, and that's exactly what Vivus is. During prototyping I wanted to make a "real robot", one that was autonomous and could truly act on its own, while trying to keep the cost down as well.

Digital Open Winner: teen creates a robot shop

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If Brennon is our future...
Night sky in a shoe box

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A lovely new video for Modest Mouse, by Bent Image Lab's Nando Costa. The video incorporates stop motion, visual effects, and motion graphics techniques, and tells the tale of an artist who enters his personal sanctuary and is "presented with a hand-crafted drawing tool that assists him in materializing his mental impressions."

Through drawing circular patterns, the machine discharges an endless web of yarn that guides him through his visual representations of his memories. The story progresses to reveal that he is divided between two worlds, one of dull reality and the second of warped memories. In the process of finding a way out of his consciousness, he is trapped between the two competing spaces, which eventually inflict lethal damage, acting as metaphors to self-destruction.

Super neat. More about the making of the video here. Stills from production here and here. "The Whale Song" appears on Modest Mouse's new EP No One's First, And You're Next." (Amazon)