Last week, we wrote about how difficult it is to predict the media landscape future because you don't know what sorts of disruptions will suddenly show up, noting how things like Twitter and YouTube didn't even exist five years ago. Of course, on the flip side, you also have to recognize that things that are big today may not exist in a few years as well. As noted earlier, GeoCities is officially going offline today, despite still getting a ton of traffic (don't ask me from whom). It's just another reminder that what's big today may not exist in just a few years.

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itwbennett writes "'Microsoft has always seemed rather enthusiastic when it comes to throwing around the word 'exclusive,' and here is another case in point,' says blogger Peter Smith. Netflix and Sony have announced that Netflix streaming is coming to the Sony PlayStation 3 as early as next month. Back in August, when Microsoft was rolling out its new dashboard update, one of the features it was talking up was Netflix streaming, says Smith, and it said, 'This exclusive partnership offers you the ability to instantly stream movies and TV episodes from Netflix to the television via Xbox 360. Xbox 360 will be the only game console to offer this movie-watching experience...' Apparently, in Microsoft parlance, 'exclusive partnership' means 'we launched it first' and not 'we inked a deal with Netflix preventing this feature from appearing on the competition's hardware.' All this is good news for PS3 owners who can now sign up to be notified of Netflix availability for their system."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

You wouldn't normally associate NPR with sending bogus DMCA takedowns, but via the EFF we learn that NPR has sent a DMCA takedown to YouTube over a commercial that uses a clip from NPR. The commercial is from a group that opposes same-sex marriage, so there's likely a political angle here. NPR claims that it issued the takedown to "protect NPR's valuable reputation as a trusted and unbiased source of news," but that's not how copyright works. This is quite similar to when CBS tried to stop the McCain campaign from using a snippet of a broadcast in an ad. In both cases it seems that the use is a clear situation of fair use, with the content not being used for commercial reasons (yes, we'd like to believe that politics still isn't commercial) and only a snippet was being used.

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protosage writes to tell us that Microsoft Interoperability is working towards opening up Outlook's .pst format under their Open Specification Promise. This should "allow anyone to implement the .pst file format on any platform and in any tool, without concerns about patents, and without the need to contact Microsoft in any way." "In order to facilitate interoperability and enable customers and vendors to access the data in .pst files on a variety of platforms, we will be releasing documentation for the .pst file format. This will allow developers to read, create, and interoperate with the data in .pst files in server and client scenarios using the programming language and platform of their choice. The technical documentation will detail how the data is stored, along with guidance for accessing that data from other software applications. It also will highlight the structure of the .pst file, provide details like how to navigate the folder hierarchy, and explain how to access the individual data objects and properties."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I chose to travel with my newish 13 inch MacBook Pro instead of my newish Asus Eee PC. It's just a one-day trip to LA and I figured I wouldn't be needing the 8-hour battery, but there is a fundamental difference between the two computers. With the MacBook I'm always looking for a power outlet. With the Asus, you know you're going to make it all the way without a charge, so you can relax about power. Apple may think they have the battery issue licked, but they don't. And the fact that you can't carry a spare battery for this computer is a real step backward.

The computer also likes to randomly reboot. It's happened four or five times so far. Just happened a few minutes ago. Luckily I didn't lose any work.

Also the computer just disappears for a minute at random times. Computers have been doing this for 25 years. When will someone make an operating system that's always there for the user, no matter what crazy thing the OS has to do to keep itself running. All the michegas about Macs working better, that's a half-truth and half-lie.

Speaking of lies, the lies caused by the Suggested User List are approaching epicness. CNN ran a piece today that profiles five unknown superstars of Twitter, all with over a million followers. They only mentioned the SUL once, in passing, when they were describing Veronica Belmont. So the myth created by the SUL, that there are superstars and the rest of us, keeps growing. And then you have to wonder how much of a tool the SUL is for Twitter, to keep people in line.

Pierre Omidyar is on the list now, and he wonders how many of his 99K followers have any idea who he is. He has Fuck You Money so there's no way he's controlled. But Anil Dash is now on the list too and has 99K followers, and he's a working man, and I'm sure he can be influenced. I unfollowed Anil when he made a joke about how it feels like being on the Yankees. Exactly. That's what I dislike intensely about the Yankees. Their sense of entitlement. Maybe not so much by the players, but by the fans. Twitter is like blogging, it's best when it's just people. The people with millions of unearned followers must be uncomfortable, wondering when the millions are going to catch on.

Is 20 people enough to get started with? That's what a new user gets by default. I seriously doubt it. My Berkeley page is just starting to get interesting, and it follows a list of 167 people. And they weren't chosen at random. They all have one thing in common, they're neighbors of mine.

The other day I said I was starting a linkblog. It's now visible at protoblogger.com. I really like the way it feels. I'm using the LifeLiner tool so it's hooked into rssCloud and it publishes through wordpress.com and I can route a link to Twitter with a single click.

The idea of restarting our blogs came up on today's Rebooting The News, with our guest this week, Jeff Jarvis. This is how I think we will restart them. By making websites that carry the kind of content we're flowing through Twitter.

I was wrong the other day about what the BuddyPress theme is for. I'm still confused about the layers of WordPress. I'll figure it out.

Very thorough build notes from Viacheslav Slavinsky, who built a plotter from scratch, then souped it up by adding a 300 mW laser in place of the pen. I was interested to note that while 300 mW isn't a lot of laser power, apparently it can cut through slightly more than a centimeter of "high density foam." I'd be curious how it fares against EPS and/or XPS. [via Hack a Day]

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PBH writes "Physicists and engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed a nanoscale crystal that traps both light and sound. The interaction of light quanta (photons) and sound quanta (phomons) are so strong that they produce significant mechanical vibrations. 'Indeed, Painter points out, the interactions between sound and light in this device—dubbed an optomechanical crystal—can result in mechanical vibrations with frequencies as high as tens of gigahertz, or 10 billion cycles per second. Being able to achieve such frequencies, he explains, gives these devices the ability to send large amounts of information, and opens up a wide array of potential applications—everything from lightwave communication systems to biosensors capable of detecting (or weighing) a single macromolecule. It could also, Painter says, be used as a research tool by scientists studying nanomechanics. "These structures would give a mass sensitivity that would rival conventional nanoelectromechanical systems because light in these structures is more sensitive to motion than a conventional electrical system is."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last month, in discussing "derivative works" on the IP Colloquium podcast, the General Counsel of Warner Bros. studios, Jeremy Williams, talked up how Warner Bros. was really careful in not just going after fans for doing fun things with the Harry Potter character, but were careful to focus just on for-profit ventures. Either they're not that careful, or someone else didn't get the message, as Warner Bros. has apparently sent out the legal nastygrams to a woman in the UK who was planning on having a fun Harry Potter-themed dinner. The dinner was a non-profit event, and it sounds like it was done mainly to make the woman's daughter (a big Harry Potter fan) happy. The article notes that the woman has had other themed nights, with other brands being happy about it and supporting the effort. But, apparently, Hollywood doesn't roll that way.

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Engadget is one of many reporting that Brother and NEC both seem to have retina display technology in the works for release next year. Brother, at least, seems to have a fully functional prototype, while so far NEC is mostly talk. "Naturally, there are a few considerable limitations compared to more traditional displays, but the company's as yet unnamed goggles do promise to beam an 800 x 600 image directly into your retina that'll appear as a 10-centimeter wide image floating about one meter in front of them -- which is certainly no small feat, even if it may not be the most practical one. Slightly less specific, but also working on a retina display of its own is NEC, which apparently hopes to incorporate a microphone into their display and use it as a real-time translation device that would quite literally display subtitles as you talk to someone."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Engadget is one of many reporting that Brother and NEC both seem to have retina display technology in the works for release next year. Brother, at least, seems to have a fully functional prototype, while so far NEC is mostly talk. "Naturally, there are a few considerable limitations compared to more traditional displays, but the company's as yet unnamed goggles do promise to beam an 800 x 600 image directly into your retina that'll appear as a 10-centimeter wide image floating about one meter in front of them -- which is certainly no small feat, even if it may not be the most practical one. Slightly less specific, but also working on a retina display of its own is NEC, which apparently hopes to incorporate a microphone into their display and use it as a real-time translation device that would quite literally display subtitles as you talk to someone."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Got an old radio from the '20s, and want to bring it back to life? Well, the quickest way is probably be to remove all those dusty components and use the cabinet to hide a new stereo. That's not what radio hacker Greg Charvat had in mind for his, though. Instead, he restored the original radio circuitry, and even hooked it up to his iPod.

Along the way, he ran into all sorts of neat discoveries, and many potential pitfalls. It turns out that electronics have changed quite a bit in the past 80 years, and even the most basic components such as resistors and capacitors can be unrecognizable. Another issue is that the cloth and rubber used for insulation on the wiring will have dried out, making it necessary to handle everything extremely carefully. One nice thing about equipment of this vintage, however, is that it was usually designed to be repaired, so chances are good that a schematic is available.

To give you an idea of the issues one should expect to encounter when attempting this, here is the overview he gives in a presentation about the project:

• Do not power up your radio!
• yes, it does not work
• more harm than good
• Find service manual
• Replace all electrolytic and paper capacitors
• Replace anything that looks damaged (burned or exploded)
• Try radio (wear safety glasses)
• Signal trace through circuit, replacing resistors where needed
• Radio will work

As usual for high-voltage projects, and especially for high-voltage projects involving unknown vintage equipment, don't attempt this unless you have the proper training, because the electronics inside are most certainly deadly. Don't give up though, just make sure you learn enough to know what you are doing!

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Banjoleles are the coolest kind of ukulele, as evidenced in this magnificent video by Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer.

"Other rappers can't stand me, but give me respect. They do give respect really. I mean they do act? tough, but generally speaking, they're awfully nice chaps."

(Thanks, Casey!)

Not this again. It happens with every new internet fad. Some company trying to sell something (filters, consulting, training, etc.) comes out with some study claiming that the new popular internet thingy is "costing x billions of dollars" because workers are using it for some amount of time per day. All of them work on the same basic principle. Figure out how much time people spend using the service, and multiply it by how much people make per hour, and then voila. Of course, this assumes (incorrectly) that every minute not working is "lost productivity." Of course, if that were true then coffee breaks, lunch breaks, sleep and many other things would also be "lost productivity." But, we all know that's ridiculous and that the truth is those things make people more productive by giving them a break here and there to recharge.

So, please, please, please don't believe the latest ridiculous study coming out of the UK claiming that Twittering employees are costing UK businesses £1.83 billion. It's the same ridiculousness, calculating that the average worker spends about 40 minutes on Twitter, but making no effort to figure out if that actually negatively impacts productivity -- just assuming that it means 40 minutes of "lost productivity." How many times do we need to repeat that time does not equal productivity before these companies stop coming out with such bogus studies?

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A recent study is suggesting that moral behavior may be encouraged with nothing more than clean smells. The Brigham Young University professor found a "dramatic improvement in ethical behavior with just a few spritzes of citrus-scented Windex." "The researchers see implications for workplaces, retail stores and other organizations that have relied on traditional surveillance and security measures to enforce rules. [] Perhaps the findings could be applied at home, too, Liljenquist said with a smile. 'Could be that getting our kids to clean up their rooms might help them clean up their acts, too.' The study titled "The Smell of Virtue" was unusually simple and conclusive. Participants engaged in several tasks, the only difference being that some worked in unscented rooms, while others worked in rooms freshly spritzed with Windex."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The neatest part about this, er, "Pie of Sauron" pumpkin build by AnubisTTP is the vintage Soviet 'dekatron' counting tube that burns at its pupil. It's also got LED backlighting inside. And I couldn't resist posting this little dekatron animated .gif from the Wikipedia article:

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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MediCom has issued a Hello Kitty "Anatomy" series of toys, designed by Dr. Romanelli. I like the antiqued version at right. Anatomically Correct Hello Kitty... Not What You're Thinking" (via Tokyo Mango)

Do you like to block the world out completely when you're working at your desk? Copenhagen-based design team GamFratesi has created a prototype for a sleek, dinosaur egg-like work environment that they call Rewrite. It reminds me of those cubicles they had at my grad school library, except they're a lot nicer-looking. via Dezeen

StonyCreekBare writes "What do people have to say about the current state of Home Automation software? Preferably Linux based, but mainly the field in general, and principally the DIY flavors as opposed to the upscale turnkey systems. I am familiar with Misterhouse, HomeSeer and Automated Living's HAL2000, all of which have serious flaws and weaknesses, but which sometimes succeed well in specific areas. But in all cases, the state of the art seems to have moved little in the last decade. Is any interesting work being done in this space? Or should I just grab one of the three and try to mold it to fit my vision of what it should be? Misterhouse at least is open source so I can add new features, but it has not had an update in a long long time and seems to be missing some modern stuff. The other two are expensive and closed source, and from all I can see, quite flawed, not the least by their dependence on intimate ties to Microsoft. Yet they seem to offer a lot more than Misterhouse despite their weaknesses. Is the Home Automation field as bleak as it appears? Or have I missed the forest for the trees?" What home automation projects have people tackled? Any examples of wild success or failure?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sometimes you just shake your head at ideas that come out of some executives that are just so incredibly dumb, it makes you wonder how anyone ever took them seriously. There have been some hints about this latest one, though. Just last week, in discussing the latest IP Colloquium podcast, we noted (with surprise) that Paramount's top lawyer thought the solution to business model problems in the entertainment industry was "more windows." Windows, of course, are the different time periods in which movies are released solely for different formats/media. So, it starts with the theater (the first window), followed by video, pay per view, cable and network TV -- each representing another window, and another chance to squeeze more money out of the same content.

Yet, with the industry facing some challenges, rather than actually looking at what users want, its top brains seem to think that the answer is more windows. It's hard to explain how incredibly short-sighted this is, because it's so monumentally backwards that it makes you wonder what they're thinking. At best, my guess is that the execs are extrapolating out in the simplest form that with the launch of each "window" they make more money, so the way to make even more money must be to offer more windows. Of course, this assumes two rather basic things that are totally wrong. One, is that these windows won't piss off users and two, that those users have no alternatives.

But, apparently not realizing that, these execs have hit upon a few different attempts to add more windows. First, they've been pushing for the permission to break your TV or DVR with selectable output control barring your ability to tape movies. This way, they can create a new "window" of movies on TV that you can't record, that they can offer before the movies even get out on video. Of course, this will (a) piss people off and (b) drive them to more piracy. Brilliant.

The other attempt, is to get video rental places to stop renting movies when the DVDs first come out. The LA Times had an entire article explaining this plan, whereby the studios would force all rental services, including Netflix and Blockbuster to not rent certain films -- but only offer them for sale. The idea (short-sighted as it is), is that this would somehow force people to buy more DVDs, which gives the studios a higher margin than rentals. We actually heard about this earlier this year with the contract terms that the studios tried to put on Redbox, but it's apparently trying to do the same with Netflix and Blockbuster as well.

This idea is so bad that even the LA Times, who tends to support its hometown industry more often than go against it, put out a separate opinion piece with the original article, calling this new idea "crazy" and "absurd."

In the meantime, what do customers actually want? Well, there's pretty good evidence they prefer choice not being limited by windows. They've been clamoring for so-called "day-and-date" release, whereby all these windows are compressed. If you don't want to see a movie in the theater, why not be able to get the DVD? It's as if the studios don't realize that part of what they're selling is the social experience of "going out" to the theater. Even better, if the DVD comes out at the same time as the theater version of the film, less marketing money needs to be spent to sell more DVDs, and you can do nice tie-ins, like having the ability to buy the DVD as you walk out of the theater. Giving people more value and more choice is what the market is asking for.

Instead, Hollywood execs are trying to take away choice and limit value. Incredible.

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Well, I'm convinced. This quiet and electricity-free table saw, the Jointmaker Pro R2 by Bridge City Tool Works has a small bead of drool forming on my lip, not even halfway through the demo video. [via Core77]

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This is a kea. Isn't he cute? Happy, little green parrot...tra la la.

This little parrot will mess your s**t up. If you are a sheep. Image courtesy Flickr user PhillipC, via CC.

Happy, little green parrot who calmly burrows through the still-living flesh of sheep and dines upon their kidney fat while they lay bleating in terror. No, really. You can see a video here. Watch Clip 4, starting about two minutes in.

And now, the context....

Kea are incredibly intelligent mountain parrots, native to New Zealand. Most of the time, they eat the sort of things you'd expect parrots to eat: Berries, nectar, insects. But that food is in short supply during the winter months, and kea--while they do migrate from mountain tops down into the warmer valleys--don't fly away to summer climes. Plus, the encroachment of ranches, farms and cities drove off a lot of their traditional food sources over the last few centuries. So, in winter, the birds are sometimes forced to get creative about their meals. And that's where the sheep come in.

Unsurprisingly, ranchers are not pleased. There've been legends of sheep-killing parrots since the early days of European colonization in New Zealand. Kea were killed off in droves and even had a bounty on their heads for a while. Ironically, though, a lot of people claimed the legends were just that, right up until kea were caught on film, dining on sheep in 1993---seven years after conservationists won a hard-fought battle to protect the birds against the threat of hunting and extermination. Today, they're still a protected species, but their numbers are also still on the decline---thanks to habitat loss, falling prey to other animals, and sometimes deadly human attempts to keep the inquisitive (and frequently destructive birds) away from cars and bicycles.

The keas' story is a complicated tale of what happens when humans tamper with nature...and nature tampers back. Great stuff. Thanks to Nathan Torkington for the video link!

boombaard writes "News is spreading quickly here that scientists writing in a popular science periodical (Dutch) have debunked the 2012 date (google translation linked) featuring so prominently in doomsday predictions/speculation across the web. On 2012-12-21, the sun will appear where you would normally be able to see the 'galactic equator' of the Milky Way; an occurrence deemed special because it happens 'only' once every 25.800 years, on the winter solstice. However, even if you ignore the fact that there is no actual galactic equator, just an observed one, and that the visual effect is pretty much the same for an entire decade surrounding that date, there are major problems with the way the Maya Calendar is being read by doomsday prophets." I wonder what Amazon's return policy on a box full of 3 doomsday wolves shirts is?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Barence writes to tell us that Canonical plans on limiting the number of "free Ubuntu CDs" that people can mooch from the company. The growing popularity of Ubuntu has seen a dramatic increase in the number of CDs being shipped via the free "ShipIt" scheme. The only people able to take advantage of this program now will be the usual community teams, contributors, and first-time Ubuntu users. "'While these CDs are often referred to as 'free CDs,' they are of course not free of cost to Canonical. We want to continue this programme, but Ubuntu’s growth means that some changes are necessary. Therefore we are adjusting how we handle CD requests to try to find the right balance between availability of CDs and the continued viability of the ShipIt program,' [Canonical's chief operating officer Jane Silber] adds. Extra CD copies of Ubuntu will still be available for purchase through the Canonical store, although they need to be bought in bulk. Five copies of the open-source operating system will cost £5 exc VAT and shipping."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Superpunch has several photos and videos of champion arm wrestler Matthias Schlitte. If you look closely, his right arm appears to be larger than his left arm.

Paul Alan Levy writes "Last month, you wrote about the travesty perpetrated by Rocky Mountain Bank when it sued Google to shut down the gmail account of a Google customer to whom the bank had mistakenly emailed a pile of customer records. Equally disturbing was the way that Google -- which is usually pretty good about standing up to subpoenas for customer identity -- just rolled over and obeyed the court's order even though a second's review of the company's ex parte arguments to the court showed both that the bank never explained what the Gmail customer did wrong, never explained how Google could be sued in the face of 47 USC 230, and never showed that there was diversity jurisdiction.

So we have gone back to court, representing MediaPost Communications, arguing that Google's report to the Court, showing its compliance, is a judicial record that should have been, and now must be, filed publicly. We agree of course that any actual customer identification in the compliance report should be redacted."

This is a tricky issue. After all, Google, as a private company, has the right to shut down an email account on its own. But, seeing as this was all a part of a legal case, with a number of questionable elements, it does seem like the information that led to the account being shut down should be a part of the public record.

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Eclecticmethod turns YouTube baby videos into fun music.

What do you do if you don't have a vacuum former, and need to make a part for your robot body? Well, Vadim Ryazanov over at lets make robots has a simple solution: make them with papier-mâché! By using paper and a 1:1 mixture of wood glue and water, he was able to make a hemispherical shell for an upcoming project. Great idea!

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Police are still trying to find the driver of a BMW station wagon who drove on top of two other cars in a North Toronto gym parking lot, then left the scene.

Emerson says:"In a French court, a German doctor is found guilty in absentia of manslaughter, for the death of a 14 year old girl. Germany refuses to extradite. Twenty seven years later the girl's father drops off the gagged, tied, and beaten doctor on the steps of the French courthouse."

The girl's father, André Bamberski, had long campaigned for [Cardiologist Dieter] Krombach's extradition, claiming the physician injected his daughter with a toxic substance in an attempt to rape her. Krombach was later convicted of sexually assaulting another female patient and barred from practicing medicine. Bamberski has been released on bail while authorities investigate the kidnapping, while Krombach remains in French custody and is likely to face a new trial.

Father kidnaps daughter's killer | More

Nathan Bobinchak says:

This is a $300 "professional" video grip for the iPhone 3Gs. However, I can't imagine any "professional" choosing to shoot video with their iPhone, much less have a KIT to do it.

"Zacuto has the first serious solution for shooting video with the iPhone 3Gs."

The advantage, as far as I thought, with cellular video, was that you could whip the phone out of your pocket and capture whatever is going on, without the hassle of carrying equipment around with you. This, of course, completely negates that.

And for heaven's sake, it costs $100 more than the 8GB model! I'd love to interview anyone who actually buys this item.

Inexplicably expensive iPhone accessory (video stabilizer)

destinyland writes "Researchers simulated evolution with multiple generations of food-seeking robots in a new study of artificial swarm intelligence. 'Under some conditions, sophisticated communication evolved,' says one researcher. And in a more recent study, the swarms of bots didn't just evolve cooperative strategies — they also evolved the ability to deceive. ('Forget zombies,' joked one commenter. 'This is the real threat.') 'The study of artificial swarm intelligence provides insight into the nature of intelligence in general, and offers an interesting perspective on the nature of Darwinian selection, competition, and cooperation.' And there's also some cool video of the bots in action."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New Jersey model train maker David Smith built this 1-35,200 scale train set. It's 1/8" x 1/4". It's part of a bigger delightfully recursive creation. From The Telegraph:

"I am creating a fictitious village called James River Branch and this model train is going to be placed inside the model shop I am building as part of the re-creation.

"It is going to be a model train village inside a model, so it is very postmodern"

Powered by a standard two-inch-long rotating motor head and carved out of mouldable plastic, the model train cost Mr Smith just over £6 to make.

"World's smallest working model train set unveiled"

UPDATE: More details over at the homepage for The White River and Northern Model Railroad (Thanks, Jewels Vern!) And also video of the train over at Neatorama!

Researchers have identified the pathway in the brain that causes cognitive impairment when we haven't gotten enough sleep. In a new study, Penn State biologists and neuroscientists found that when mice were deprived of sleep, a particular enzyme built up in the brain's hippocampus. The hippocampus is the region of the brain linked to learning and the formation of memories. Giving the mice a drug to reduce the enzyme counteracted some of the negative effects of sleeplessness. Principal investigator Ted Abel and his colleagues published their results in the scientific journal Nature. From the University of Pennsylvania:

“Millions of people regularly obtain insufficient sleep,” Abel said. “Our work has identified a treatment in mice that can reverse the cognitive impact of sleep deprivation. Further, our work identifies specific molecular changes in neurons caused by sleep deprivation, and future work on this target protein promises to reveal novel therapeutic approaches to treat the cognitive deficits that accompany sleep disturbances seen in sleep apnea, Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.”

"Fighting Sleep, Penn Researchers Reverse the Cognitive Impairment Caused By Sleep Deprivation"

Instructables user mrfixits just posted this su-wheet luminiferous aetheric Tesla-punk tranceive-o-mogrifier doo-dad build. He explains it rather better than I:

The Spooky Tesla Spirit Radio is a crystal radio circuit in a jam-jar. It makes fun spooky sounds by responding to input from several types of electromagnetic sources. This non-powered radio plugs right into the computer sound-in jack, and makes use of audio software for real time sound effects.

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WNYC's excellent radio program On The Media this week decided to spend an hour discussing the music industry. It's quite well done, in that it highlights how this is actually a great time in the music industry for musicians and fans -- with the only party really in trouble being the old record labels. The program talks to numerous knowledgeable people, including James Boyle, Amanda Palmer, Greg Kot and others. The one section, however, that I thought was a bit weak, was the section on live shows. That section only focused large stadium/amphitheater shows -- the kind that only a very small number of bands deal with. It doesn't even mention the much more common forms of touring and live shows. Furthermore, that section only seemed to talk to one individual -- a smaller concert promoter who used the part to basically bash Live Nation. Now there are things you can complain about with Live Nation (though, I'd argue that they've got a much better understanding of where the market is heading than most people give them credit for based on conversations I've had with Live Nation folks), but that segment was incredibly one-sided.

The other thing that I found incredibly telling was that the person who sounded most out of date and most in denial was not the RIAA representatives (who actually sounded at least somewhat circumspect on how the music industry was changing), but Rob Levine from Billboard Magazine, who still insists that it makes no sense to pay attention to "those who steal music." He brushes aside the band Ok Go for just doing "ok" as if you don't count unless you go platinum in record sales. He dismisses things done "as a hobby" as simply not mattering. He is, of course, defending Billboard's obsolete "charts" which are still based mostly on CD sales and radio play, but just comes across as someone who doesn't even realize what he's measuring (at 43:15 on the podcast):

"Right, okay, the one thing that does skew our ratings is that older people buy more music. They steal less music.... So like, you know, a Bruce Springsteen or a Madonna might overperform on the album sales chart relative to some more subjective measure of their popularity. But as far as like who's stealing what... I mean, what use is that?"

And that, right there, is why Billboard has become so obsolete. It's lead by people who think that file sharing is "stealing" and that it's meaningless in figuring out where the money is in music. It ignores the studies that have shown that people who download also end up buying more music. It ignores the studies that show people who download are more likely to attend a show or buy merchandise (things that Billboard doesn't appear to think matter at all in the industry). It's as if Billboard wanted to judge the popularity of the transportation industry by judging how many buggy whips are sold. Yes, as automobiles became more popular, buggy whip sales declined. Sucks to be you if you're focused just on measuring buggy ship sales, but the problem is that you're measuring the wrong thing.

Instead, the guy who sounds like he's really looking to the future is Duncan Freeman, of the site Band Metrics, who shows that the really important thing is not figuring out how many CDs are being sold, but how much fans are devoted to an artist (disclosure: I've met Duncan a few times at events, and talk to him occasionally about the music industry -- he's also given me an account on Band Metrics to check it out, even though it's not yet fully public -- though, I actually haven't used it yet). The program shows how a band can actually figure out where their biggest fans are, where they're getting the most buzz, and actually helps bands better connect with fans in multiple ways -- not just on the old model of selling them more CDs.

Oh yeah, one other point. Some Hollywood lawyers were getting on my case earlier this year, every time I claimed that the RIAA announced last year that it was no longer suing end users, even though it did keep suing. Those lawyers insisted that the RIAA said no such thing (even though that's what all of the press reported). In this podcast, the RIAA's Jonathan Lamy repeats: "Last December, we officially announced that we would end the litigation program against end users." Except it hasn't.

Overall, the program is a really great hour's worth of discussion on the types of things we regularly talk about here, and well worth a listen if you're interested in these things.

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Last week, Canada's esteemed Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics hosted its big vision conference Quantum to Cosmos. One panel revolved around the question, "What keeps you awake at night?" New Scientist synthesized the seven big questions that emerged from the discussion. Here are two biggies:

How does complexity happen? From the unpredictable behaviour of financial markets to the rise of life from inert matter, Leo Kadananoff, physicist and applied mathematician at the University of Chicago, finds the most engaging questions deal with the rise of complex systems. Kadanoff worries that particle physicists and cosmologists are missing an important trick if they only focus on the very small and the very large. "We still don't know how ordinary window glass works and keeps it shape," says Kadanoff. "The investigation of familiar things is just as important in the search for understanding." Life itself, he says, will only be truly understood by decoding how simple constituents with simple interactions can lead to complex phenomena.

What is reality really? The material world may, at some level, lie beyond comprehension, but Anton Zeilinger, professor of physics at the University of Vienna, is profoundly hopeful that physicists have merely scratched the surface of something much bigger. Zeilinger specialises in quantum experiments that demonstrate the apparent influence of observers in the shaping of reality. "Maybe the real breakthrough will come when we start to realise the connections between reality, knowledge and our actions," he says. The concept is mind-bending, but it is well established in practice. Zeilinger and others have shown that particles that are widely separated can somehow have quantum states that are linked, so that observing one affects the outcome of the other. No one has yet fathomed how the universe seems to know when it is being watched.

Seven questions that keep physicists up at night

There are times I envy those who have to get dressed and go work with other people. Like, for instance, when I watch this awesome karaoke video. I haven't worked in a real office since 2006, so I'm left to conclude that you all totally have this much fun every day. Right?

P.S., the best part of this video is the woman who refuses to join in. Clearly, a fun-hater who hates fun. At the same time, I feel really sorry for her and would love to hear how she described this event to friends and family at the end of the day.

Over on the Facebook blog, head of security Max Kelly has just explained what to do to memorialize the profile of someone who has passed away:

We understand how difficult it can be for people to be reminded of those who are no longer with them, which is why it's important when someone passes away that their friends or family contact Facebook to request that a profile be memorialized. ...When an account is memorialized, we also set privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search. We try to protect the deceased's privacy by removing sensitive information such as contact information and status updates. Memorializing an account also prevents anyone from logging into it in the future, while still enabling friends and family to leave posts on the profile Wall in remembrance. If you have a friend or a family member whose profile should be memorialized, please contact us, so their memory can properly live on among their friends on Facebook.

Memories of friends departed endure on Facebook via CNet

Paolo DF writes "Geocities is closing today. Its advent in 1995 was a sign of the rising 'Internet for everyone' era, when connection speed were 1,000x or 2,00x slower than is common today. You may love it or hate it, but millions of people had their first contact with a Web presence right here. I know that Geocities is something that most Slashdotters will see as a n00b thing — the Internet was fine before Geocities — but nevertheless I think that some credit is due. Heck, there's even a modified xkcd homepage to mark the occasion." Reader commodore64_love notes a few more tributes around the Web. Last spring we discussed Yahoo's announcment that Geocities would be going away.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A team of artists in Toronto created this giant rendition of The Last Supper using over 4,000 Rubik's Cubes. Cube Works via Popped Cullture

We've posted many times about the use of music in Psy Ops for torture and as a form of "acoustic bombardment" (annoyance) in siege situations like Waco and when Noriega holed up in Panama. Now, famous artists like Pearl Jam, REM, Rosanne Cash, and the Roots filed a Freedom of Information Act demanding that the US government list the names of the tunes that were used as soundtracks in interrogation situations. An article in the Washington Post mentions the theme to "Sesame Street," the Meow Mix TV commercial jingle, and The Boss's "Born in the USA" as examples. From the Washington Post:

"The fact that music I helped create was used in crimes against humanity sickens me," (former Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom) Morello said in a statement. "We need to end torture and close Guantanamo now...."

A White House spokesman said music is no longer used as an instrument of torture, part of a shift in policy on interrogations that Obama made on his second full day in office.

"Sound at a certain level creates sensory overload and breaks down subjectivity and can [bring about] a regression to infantile behavior," said Suzanne G. Cusick, a music professor at New York University who has studied, lectured about and written extensively on the use of music as torture in the current wars. "Its effectiveness depends on the constancy of the sound, not the qualities of the music." Played at a certain volume, she said, "it simply prevents people from thinking."

"Torture songs spur a protest most vocal"

Color management specialist Datacolor has released its Spyder3Print SR printer calibrator as a standalone product. The spectrocolorimeter-based calibrator, previously available as part of the company's Spyder3Studio SR monitor and print calibration system, is available for a suggested price of US $339. It promises fast and accurate color measurement and the simple creation of ICC printer profiles.

There have been a number of news stories of late about increasingly popular iPhones purportedly overloading the AT&T Wireless network. On his blog, Brough Turner asks if all the blame may be misdirected. Could the data-congestion woes of AT&T Wireless be caused in part by the network's own configuration errors? -- "Specifically, congestion collapse induced by misconfigured buffers in their mobile core network." Snip:

In early September, David Reed sent this interesting message to the IRTF's "end-to-end" email list. List members include some world experts on Internet protocols. During the next couple of days, there were over 40 messages in related threads. While some of these experts were over-thinking the problem, if you are patient enough to read through the many messages, what emerges is clear. At least in the case David measured (from a hotel room in Chicago, while he had 5 bars of signal strength, using an AT&T Mercury 3G data modem in his laptop), the terrible throughput and extreme delays he experienced appear to result from overly large buffers in the routers &/or switches in AT&T's core network. Note: if you don't want to read all the list messages the short summary is: >8 second pings times! What's more the effect was bymodal: either ping times under 200 ms, or over 5 seconds.

Has AT&T Wireless congestion been self-inflicted? [via Rusty]

A simple experiment shows that it's easy to find the IP addresses used by the UltraSurf anti-censorship program, and block traffic to all of those IP addresses, effectively stopping UltraSurf from working. But this is not a fault of UltraSurf; rather, it demonstrates that an anti-censorship software program can be successful even if it's relatively trivial to block it. Read on for Bennett's analysis.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I recently got a new bike and needed to wrap my bullhorn handlebars with bar tape. Thanks to this tutorial on the Park Tool website about handlebar tape installation, I was able to do it myself with no problem.

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Boing Boing reader Ken Ward caught Friday's Rachel Maddow Show segment, in which I joined Ms. Maddow for a discussion around John McCain's "Internet Freedom Act."

McCain, who once described himself as technologically "illiterate" and is the single largest senate recipient of telecom lobby money, is now campaigning against the net neutrality fundamentals recently reaffirmed by FCC actions.

Our reader suggests another reason McCain is dead-wrong: "At the risk of sounding like a dinosaur, I have to point out that McCain's positions is, in fact, a danger to National Security." Ken's email to Boing Boing, after the jump. Your thoughts welcomed in the comments.

Ken writes:

Interesting exchange between you and Rachel Maddow regarding McCain's position on Net Neutrality. At the risk of sounding like a dinosaur, I have to point out that McCain's positions is, in fact, a danger to National Security. Let's remember that the Internet grew out of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which itself grew out of ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (an Eisenhower baby), both of which were government-funded efforts to ensure that government and military computer networks could survive and maintain in contact in the event of a nuclear or environmental disaster.

The National Security function of what is today known as the Internet has already been largely degraded by the privatization of the Internet backbone, and McCain's bill only further puts at risk National Security by allowing private enterprise to determine the "importance" of Internet packets. As I see it, the best and only way to understand McCain's bill is as a betrayal of National Security interests.

Best regards,

Ken

NB: you probably already have read "Where the Wizards Stay Up Late" by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, but if not, it is well worth a read.

--

Ken Ward MLIS
mailto:kcward@alumni.reed.edu
PhD Candidate
Department of History
UT @ Austin

Boing Boing readers: your thoughts on this argument? Tell us in the comments.

Amazon's infamous "one-click" patent is quite often rolled out as an example of how ridiculous our patent system has become. At times, even Jeff Bezos has indicated he realizes this... and yet, the company still keeps on fighting for control over the "one click" concept. In the US, the patent is still involved in a re-exam, but up in Canada, the patent was rejected this summer, along with a rejection of pretty much all software/business model patents in Canada -- saying that without specific new laws from the government, such things would be considered unpatentable in Canada. Michael Geist points out that Amazon, rather than leaving well enough alone, is appealing the rejection in Canada.

I have to admit that I don't understand why Amazon is fighting for this patent any more. The management there has to realize that this patent is case study #1 in the problems of the patent system. And, while it did try to enforce the patent against Barnes & Noble in the past, as far as I'm aware, it hasn't bothered to enforce the patent against anyone else in many years (anyone have any info to the contrary?). Continuing to fight for this patent in both the US and Canada doesn't seem to add any value whatsoever to Amazon, but just highlights how the company appears to be abusing the patent system with ridiculous patents.

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Susannah Breslin pointed me to Marilyn Minter 's latest video months ago, but I didn't get around to blogging 'til now. Green Pink Caviar is described as

A lush and sensual voyeuristic hallucination. Filmed with macro lenses, the video was inspired by a photo shoot where Minter directed her models to lick brightly colored candies while she shot photos from underneath a glass plate. The models' tongues mixed the colorful sugar with saliva, slurping and pushing color across the glass surface to simulate painting.

More: greenpinkcaviar.com, some viewer reactions, Los Angeles Times interview with the artist, NBC LA, and apparently there's some controversy over the billboard installation in Hollywood.

* random recipe
* yumblog
* klingon recipes
* cooking with dexter
* celebrity recipes
* cooking with christopher walken

Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store, Twitter.

[photo: iphone snap of delicious fruits I bought at the local farmer's market yesterday. - XJ]

pkrumins writes 'The ldd utility is more vulnerable than you think. It's frequently used by programmers and system administrators to determine the dynamic library dependencies of executables. Sounds pretty innocent, right? Wrong! It turns out that running ldd on an executable can result in executing arbitrary code. This article details how such executable can be constructed and comes up with a social engineering scenario that may lead to system compromise. I researched this subject thoroughly and found that it's almost completely undocumented.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I like this turtle because he looks just a little deranged. Image by Flickr user audreyjm529, via CC.

The daughter of reader Amie Miller wants to know, "Do turtles have eyelashes?"

Short answer: No.
Eyelashes are, in general, kind of a mammal thing--what with being made out of hair and all. Besides their usefulness in pseudo-comic flirting and as a habitat for freakishly awesome mites (as well as their importance as an advertising revenue stream for Hulu), eyelashes also work as a trap, catching bits of dust and other scrapey-ouchy particles before they can reach our eyeballs.

But as we behold the motes eyelashes protect us from, we have to consider the beams that surely must be getting into the eyes of creatures unfortunate enough to be lash-less.* Poor, little turtle.

Or not. Non-mammals have their own way around this problem. They protect their eyeballs with a nictitating membrane--basically a third eyelid that slides in horizontally from the side. Besides having a great name, the nictitating membrane also has some pretty cool features eyelashes can't claim. For instance, nictitating membranes are translucent. Turtles can close their third eyelid completely, but still see. It's a skill that's particularly useful when you spend a lot of time swimming around with your head mostly below the waterline--kind of like having built-in goggles. Amphibians and reptiles have nictitating membranes. So do birds, who use them to protect and moisten the eye during flight much the same way that turtles use them in the water.

But mammals aren't wholly without nictitating membranes. In fact, you have the vestigial remnants of one. Called the plica semilunaris, it's that little lump on the inside of your eye, next to your nose. In animals that still use them, nictitating membranes are associated with glands that secrete eye-moistening goo. So it's no coincidence that the "sleepies" you pick out of your eye in the morning come from the same area as your plica semilunaris.

For humans, nictitating membrane may be a thing of the past, but other mammals still get some use out of it. Harbor seals, which spend plenty of time underwater, have functioning nictitating membranes. So do camels, who use the third eyelid for added protection during desert sand storms. Aardvarks, awesomely, actually use the thing to keep termites from biting their eyes while they (the aardvarks) are trying to eat them (the termites).

Cats and dogs have nictitating membranes that are somewhere in-between. Their membranes still exist--and still work--but our pets can't control them the way turtles and other creatures can. Instead, nictitating membranes only show up when the cat or dog is sick, or otherwise messed up in the head. Case in point, I last saw my cat, Red's, nictitating membranes on a drive from Alabama to Minnesota, for which the vet had prescribed a slightly higher-than-necessary dose of kitty Valium.

*Please see the Book of Matthew, chapter 7, verse 3. It's an awkward joke, yes. But give me a break, here. I've got four years of Baptist high school-worth of Bible verses memorized and I'm not just gonna let that go to waste.

When I was guesting on BoingBoing last spring, my friends' son Will wanted to know whether cockroaches had a penis. I enjoyed tracking down the surprisingly complicated answer, so I thought I'd keep the theme going now that I'm on full-time. I'm hoping to answer a Science Question from a Toddler once a month, though that depends on me getting questions. Which brings me to this request: If a smallish child you know has a science question--on any topic--send it to me. I'll do my best to answer.

The child does not have to be your own. Questions do not have to be cute or "Kids Say the Darndest Things-ish" in any way. They do not even have to be current. (Baby boomers, got a query that's been nagging at you since 1975? I don't care if the toddler is now in their 30s, send the question!) All I'm looking for are things you can't answer off the top of your head and don't feel like researching yourself. Easy stuff!

Check out the first item: Do Turtles Have Eyelashes?

Zibri did some investigative hacking with the Force Trainer (brainwave controlled toy) and posted a basic interface schematic using a MAX3233 to interface with his PC via serial. It turns out the EEG headset is sending out data as ASCII characters @ 57600 baud - should make for some quick and easy hacking! Time to add mind control to those microcontroller projects.

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John Fenderson was the first of a few of you to send in a link (via Slashdot) to the story of how SPARC, the computer architecture company owned by Sun, is threatening SparkFun over trademark infringement claims. SparkFun is an electronics shop, which sells components and kits and the like. The two are pretty different. This whole situation apparently was "sparked" (heh heh) when SparkFun applied for its own trademark, at which point SPARC sought to block the trademark application. From there, they went on to sending a cease & desist. The folks at SparkFun do a nice job breaking down why the two marks are entirely different, and why even Sun employees seem to have no trouble understanding the difference between the two. This seems like yet another case of overly aggressive trademark enforcement, just because some lawyers feel the need to oppose anything that might conceivably be considered even close to similar.

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Several readers made sure we know about the possible meteorite that crashed into a field in northern Latvia yesterday. It left a crater 9m across and 3m deep according to the AP; 15m x 5m according to AFP; or 20m x 10m according to CNN. Sky News reporting includes a video recorded while approaching the smoking crater on foot; something is burning in its center. Xinhua has a brief mention with a good portrait of the crater in daylight, with people standing on its rim for perspective. Various outlets report that local authorities tested for radiation and found levels to be normal. Some quote an expert who estimates that, if it was a meteorite, it was probably around 1m in diameter when it hit.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I recently ordered some refillable paint pens from Art Primo, and this was in the box as a freebie. It's the exact size, shape, and color as a cigarette, and among a dozen real cigarettes in a pack it'd likely pass any search completely unnoticed. It took me a minute to figure out its nefarious purpose: If you get caught in the vicinity of a fresh tag, after all, it's best not to be found with a marker on your person. They're manufactured by Germany's On The Run, but you won't find them on their website. The one I got was gold; the silver ones below were photographed by Flickr user $30,000.

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reifman writes "For tax purposes, Microsoft reports that it's earned its estimated $143 billion in software licensing revenue in Nevada, where there is no licensing tax, as we discussed a few weeks ago. However, for legal purposes, Microsoft relies on Washington law and its underfunded courts to defend its contracts as it did in Microsoft Licensing GP vs. TSR Silicon. Application of common legal doctrines such as nexus, the step doctrine, and alter ego theory may lead to findings that Microsoft owes the state more than $1 billion in taxes, interest, and penalties."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In need of a compact MIDI footpedal, Marcus decided to try converting his Nanokey controller for floor usage -

tonight i popped all of the keys but five off of my korg nanokey in order to see how it would work as a pedal. it turned out that it worked really well.  i cut some small pieces of plywood out to raise the key height and some scrap plexiglass to cover up the missing keys. a little spray paint and double stick tape and it was all finished. i think it turned out pretty well.  not bad for a cheap keyboard and scrap materials.

Read more on the resulting Nanopedal.

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linuxizer writes "Congress seems poised to turn an effort to create a pathway for generic biotech drugs, such as Remicade, into the exact opposite. Instead of the 5-year protection that traditional pharmaceuticals get, or the 0-year protection that the FTC recommends, the bill offers 12-year exclusivity with renewability for minor changes. The issue is highly charged, with activists waging a campaign to change the bill. Yet it also raises interesting questions for other technologies. To what extent do the traditional contours of patent law need to change in response to new technologies with a different set of market realities (biotech drugs are 22 times more expensive on average, and development costs for generics will be substantially higher) and in what direction? Need every new technological category get its own patent rules, and how do those rules get decided?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A few months back, someone sent over some details about a legal battle involving Peter Boesen, who is both a convicted felon in jail and a patent hoarder who licensed his patents to a "patent troll" firm to assert against tons of tech companies, and Niro Scavone, the law firm representing the patent company (and the law firm famous for, among other things, having been the inspiration for the term "patent troll"). There wasn't much to write about directly, but it looks like Joe Mullin has been keeping on top of things (as always) and has found that via this lawsuit Boesen has exposed some of the underlying details of how much money patent trolls get:

Most intriguing is the sum paid by Apple to settle an SPT suit brought over the iPhone in the Eastern District of Texas in 2008: $865,000. Without any motions being filed after the intial complaint or any substantive discovery, a bit more than 30 percent of that amount, $271,817, went to Niro Scavone, which also billed $46,568 in expenses. Nearly $40,000 went to someone identified as "Ward"--most likely Johnny Ward Jr., who served as local counsel to SPT in the case. Of what was left, almost $109,000 went to SP Technologies, then owned by investor Courtney Sherrer, and $311,400 went to Boesen.

Also noteworthy: a full 10 percent of Apple's payout, $86,500, is marked as going to "LG"--an apparent reference to LG Electronics, which, according to the Boesen receipt, paid $834,964.01 to settle a separate SPT suit in 2006. Why would LG be getting a cut of the settlement in a suit to which it was not a party? And was Apple aware that a piece of that settlement might wind up with one of its competitors? Representatives from Apple and LG did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

There's a lot more in Mullin's post. Not sure how much is worth commenting on, but given that such patent holders and patent hoarding companies tend to be incredibly secretive about all of this stuff, it's still an interesting peak behind the curtain.

Oh yeah, as for Mullin's question about LG receiving 10% of the payout from Apple, that might not be all that surprising really. Last year, we covered how it was becoming increasingly common for patent hoarders to play this neat trick where they sue a bunch of companies and promise the ones who settle quickly a cut of what they can get from the others. This sets up a little an interesting game theory situation, whereby companies have extra incentive to settle quickly, which makes the patent holder very happy, and which they use to tout how "legitimate" their patents must be (yeah, right). It sounds like, perhaps, that's what happened here. Since LG settled earlier, perhaps part of the settlement was the right to 10% of a cut against others.

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You know how, on those reality romance shows, every week, they say: "Get ready for the most exciting rose ceremony, ever!" Yeah, we don't know anything about that either, but that's what we hear they say.

Anyhoo... we probably sound the same, heralding each issue of MAKE as the best, most exciting issue EVER! But this upcoming issue (due on newsstands middle of Nov) REALLY is. I mean, look, it's got Adam Freakin' Savage on the cover! It's the "Kids of All Ages" issue, and who among us doesn't relate to that? There's a hydrogen rocket project, a laser in a lunchbox, plans for building a motorized, Arduino-powered phenakistoscope, an homage to maker toys of the 1960s, and a how-to on toilet-training your cat. A what? Okay, maybe that's not our finest moment. But look, it's Adam Savage!

If you want to pre-order a copy of Volume 20, and you do so in the Maker Shed before Oct 31st, the shipping is only one cent. That's the best issue of MAKE ever, for only $14.99.

If you want to subscribe to MAKE, here's an offer to get five issues for the price of four.

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Mark.JUK writes "The Valuation Office Agency (VOA), which compiles and maintains business rating and council tax valuation lists for England and Wales, is reportedly getting ready to impose business rates (tax) upon UK wireless networks regardless of their status. The move has raised concern because many community driven wireless broadband (Wi-Fi , WiMAX) ISPs, which often exist in locations where the big players have failed to deliver adequate services (remote and rural areas), operate off some already very thin margins."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Steve Sasson, the man credited with inventing the first digital camera, has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Rochester for his work. Sasson developed the first prototype, with a resolution of 0.01 megapixels, in 1975 while working at Kodak and received a patent for it in 1978. Although the diagrams included in the original patent won't look too familiar, its description of 'a solidstate light responsive device' for image capture is instantly recognizable. Earlier this month, Sasson also received an 'Innovation Award' from The Economist magazine for the same work.

So, remember last week when we wrote about how anti-net neutrality lobbyists from AT&T had crafted astroturf letters for various "special interest groups" to sign -- but someone forgot to remove the boilerplate "XYZ Organization" in the first paragraph? We also noted that there was little evidence that the group -- the Arkansas Retired Seniors -- actually existed. However, Matt Cutts did a bit of digging and found that the name of the guy who signed the letter -- Bob Sells -- appears to have worked in PR for Southwestern Bell for 28 years (there appears to be only one Bob Sells or Robert Sells in Little Rock). Southwestern Bell, of course, became better known as SBC. SBC, of course, became AT&T after it bought the old AT&T and took on its name. So, if you're an AT&T lobbyist and you want to convince the FCC that "seniors" are against net neutrality -- and you don't want it to appear to come from AT&T employees -- who better to go to than an ex-employee? Still, next time you get a former employee to shill for you, remember to replace the bogus XYZ Organization you left for him in the text of the letter you sent him.

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SanDisk has announced 32GB variants of its Ultra Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo and Memory Stick PRO Duo memory cards. The Ultra-branded Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo with read/write speeds of up to 30 MB/s will ship from November 2009 at a price of $279.99 while the Memory Stick PRO Duo is available now for $223.99.

Bob Thompson, our resident Make: Science Room lab geek, answered a question in the comments for the "Setting Up a Home Science Laboratory Part II - Gearing Up" topic, about buying digital scales. I thought it was worth posting here for the benefit of others.

Cynthia asked:
What would you recommend in the way of a digital scale for intermediate/high school science? I was thinking of purchasing one that was a 1000 g capacity with a 0.1 sensitivity. Could this both serve chemistry and physics, etc.?

Bob's reply:
Good question. The two big trade-offs in buying a balance are capacity and resolution. Ideally, we'd all like an inexpensive balance with 0.0001 gram resolution, but unfortunately, there aren't any such animals.

The balance I chose two or three years ago for my own home lab is the desktop MyWeigh iBalance 201, which has 200 gram capacity and 0.01 gram (centigram) resolution. That's still a current model, and is available in Maker Shed and elsewhere. However, it's also a $100+ balance.

If you're looking for something a bit less pricey, Maker Shed also carries a portable $33 electronic balance (on sale through 10/31 for $29) that has the same 200 gram capacity and 0.01 gram resolution. I have one of those as well, and it's a very nice little scale. I suspect it probably isn't quite as durable as the i201, but OTOH, it's less than a third the price. (It's also useful around the house. My wife just used it yesterday to see if she needed to put a second stamp on an envelope.)

My take on this is that 200 g is sufficient capacity. Almost any experiment you do that would use the 1000 g capacity of the balance you're considering can be scaled down to work within the 200 g capacity of these balances. OTOH, having 0.01 g resolution instead of 0.1 g resolution is very nice, particularly for chemistry.

It'll also save you money on chemicals. For example, if you need to make up a solution to a particular accuracy, being able to weigh out (say) 7.87 g of the chemical and making up 100 mL of solution is cheaper than having to weigh out 78.7 g of the chemical and make up 1,000 mL of the solution.

This way to the Make: Science Room >>

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The ProtoShield for Arduino kit is an open-source prototyping shield that makes developing new ideas on your Arduino even easier. The shield has plenty of room for attaching a breadboard, DIP components, headers, and more.

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Good tutorial on putting together a pneumatic power system for "home imagineering," as as the folks at Phantasmechanics call it. We've blogged their stuff a couple times before.

More:

• The "Flying Crank Ghost" kit
• Lift-and-turn piston from PVC pipe fittings

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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angry tapir writes "Tilera has announced new general-purpose CPUs, including a 100-core chip. The two-year-old startup's Tile-GX series of chips are targeted at servers and appliances that execute Web-related functions such as indexing, Web search and video search. The Gx100 100-core chip will draw close to 55 watts of power at maximum performance."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

T sez, "I know you folks follow xkcd as good alpha-geeks should, so you won't have missed today's dose of nostalgically eyeball-searing brilliance [ed: a tribute to the soon-to-be-shut-down Geocities]. Just wanted to make sure you took an extra couple minutes to "view source" on the site's "redesign" though. Well worth poring over the lovingly crafted neolithic HTMLer in-jokes there. <FONT COLOR="#88FF88" STYLE="FORTHRIGHT">srsly.</FONT>"

COMIC TITLE: Nachos (Thanks, T!)

The March, 1934 issue of Modern Mechanix introduced this remarkable Depression-era chess-variant that pitted "agitators" against "engineers." Love how the entire historical zeitgeist appears to have been captured in 16 chessmen.

MODERN as tomorrow morning's headlines, a newly simplified form of the game of chess has for its game board the Modern World, and for its pieces Farmers, Mechanics, Engineers and even Agitators struggling against forces symbolized by opposing Armies, Bankers, Radio, Press, Law and Middlemen trying to become Rankers.

The play, which is solely a matter of skill, centers around opposing forces trying to dominate one neutral piece called Government while either the red or white side, as the antagonists are named, is in power.

The game may be played by either two, three, or four persons and is substantially like chess. But gone are the Pawns, the Knights, and the Kings and Queens,

Agitators, Engineers Are Chessmen (Mar, 1934)

R3d M3rcury writes "New Zealand's Dominion Post reports on a new book just released, Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living. In this book, they compare the environmental footprint of our housepets to other things that we own. Like that German Shepherd? It consumes more resources than two Toyota SUVs. Cats are a little less than a Volkswagen Golf. Two hamsters are about the same as a plasma TV. Their suggestions? Chickens, rabbits, and pigs. But only if you eat them."

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I'm going to invent a time machine so I can go back and persuade my parents to name me Jonathan Brilliant, which for now am this guy what made this impressive installation simply called "The Berlin Piece." [via Dude Craft]

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AT&T customers (iPhone users notably among them) have seen some wireless congestion in recent months; Brough Turner thinks the trouble might be self-inflicted. According to Turner, the poor throughput and connection errors can be chalked up to "configuration errors specifically, congestion collapse induced by misconfigured buffers in their mobile core network." His explanation makes an interesting read.

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"Spike" is a cartoonist (caution: "F-word" on the link) who says she's mastered the art of living well on an artist's income and wants to share what she's learned by writing a book, called Poorcraft: A Comic Book Guide to Frugal Urban and Suburban Living. She's using an innovative website, called Kickstarter, to try and raise money to fund the production of the book. Kickstarter allows you to post your project and solicit backers for it. Spike has a whole bunch of different pledge levels. She's looking to get $6,000 pledged. She already has $3,894 (and counting). A $5 pledge will get you a PDF of the book when it comes out, $10 gets you a signed hard copy.

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