An anonymous reader writes "My girlfriend is training to be a speech and language therapist here in the UK (speech pathologist in the US). A number of clients are guys who enjoy playing computer games, and for a variety of reasons some have no incentive to try and improve their speech. The issue is it can obviously inhibit options for jobs/other aspects of life etc. I was trying to think of fun computer based activities for those with speech and language difficulties that encourage individuals to speak and furthermore to speak with greater clarity. Or games/activities that might encourage them to do more speech work. The first options that sprang to mind were the online games with team speak/team talk for those with mild difficulties. The sampling/accent issue might force them to speak with greater clarity or wish to have that ability. Obviously, they can just type. Any thoughts?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here are some of my favorites from CRAFT this week:

CRAFT Video: Hemming Pants

Meatloaf Hand

Cocktail: Dark and Snow-Stormy

Favorite Halloween Costumes from the CRAFT Editors

Laser Engraved Skull in Dollars

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vintagepc writes "TorrentFreak reports that a redesign of the popular BitTorrent client uTorrent allows clients to detect network congestion and automatically adjust the transfer rates, eliminating the interference with other Internet-enabled applications' traffic. In theory, the protocol senses congestion based on the time it takes for a packet to reach its destination, and by intelligent adjustments, should reduce network traffic without causing a major impact on download speeds and times. As said by Simon Morris (from TFA), 'The throttling that matters most is actually not so much the download but rather the upload – as bandwidth is normally much lower UP than DOWN, the up-link will almost always get congested before the down-link does.' Furthermore, the revision is designed to eliminate the need for ISPs to deal with problems caused by excessive BitTorrent traffic on their networks, thereby saving them money and support costs. Apparently, the v2.0b client using this protocol is already being used widely, and no major problems have been reported."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

vintagepc writes "TorrentFreak reports that a redesign of the popular BitTorrent protocol allows clients to detect network congestion and automatically adjust the transfer rates, eliminating the interference with other Internet-enabled applications' traffic. In theory, the protocol senses congestion based on the time it takes for a packet to reach its destination, and by intelligent adjustments, should reduce network traffic without causing a major impact on download speeds and times. As said by Simon Morris (from TFA), 'The throttling that matters most is actually not so much the download but rather the upload – as bandwidth is normally much lower UP than DOWN, the up-link will almost always get congested before the down-link does.' Furthermore, the revision is designed to eliminate the need for ISPs to deal with problems caused by excessive BitTorrent traffic on their networks, thereby saving them money and support costs. Apparently, the v2.0b client using this protocol is already being used widely, and no major problems have been reported."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Don't forget, we're now publishing a monthly Make: Newsletter. The November edition will be emailed out this coming week. The newsletter covers news and happenings around Maker Media, what's going on here at Make: Online, and contains original material, such as my new "Maker's Dictionary" column, a growing glossary of perennial tech terms and cutting-edge DIY, science, and tech-related jargon and slang.

You can sign up for the newsletter here.
Here to see last month's edition.

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holy_calamity writes "A team at Carnegie Mellon University have begun a project seeking to design a kit to cheaply convert second hand cars into cheap electric ones suitable for commuting, if little else. They hope to rely heavily on smart management software to extract as much efficiency as possible from regenerative breaking, and knowledge of terrain from GPS tracking. But they are hampered by a lack of public data on how commuters actually drive. Their solution is to appeal to GPS users to upload .gpx log files of their commute to the team's site. The data is plugged into a simulator that reveals how much cheaper an electric car could do your journey, and an anonymised public dataset will be created. A programming contest will award a production electric car to the coder who designs the best management algorithm using it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

recoiledsnake writes "Groklaw has an extensive look at the latest developments in the Psystar vs. Apple story. There's a nice picture illustrating the accusation by Apple that Psystar makes three unauthorized copies of OS X. The most interesting however, is the last copy. From Apple's brief: 'Finally, every time Psystar turns on any of the Psystar computers running Mac OS X, which it does before shipping each computer, Psystar necessarily makes a separate modified copy of Mac OS X in Random Access Memory, or RAM. This is the third unlawful copy.' Psystar's response: 'Copying a computer program into RAM as a result of installing and running that program is precisely the copying that Section 117 provides does not constitute copyright infringement for an owner of a computer program. As the Ninth Circuit explained, permitting copies like this was Section 117's purpose.' Is Apple seriously arguing that installing a third party program and booting OS X results in copyright infringement due to making a derivative work and an unauthorized copy?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes "In a post last August, Robert X. Cringely voiced fears that Goldman Sachs and others were not so much evil as 'clueless about the implications of their work,' leaving it up to the government to fix any mess they leave behind. 'But what if government runs out of options,' worried Cringely. 'Our economic policy doesn't imagine it, nor does our foreign policy, because superpowers don't acknowledge weakness.' And now his fears are echoed in a WSJ opinion piece by Peggy Noonan titled 'We're Governed by Callous Children.' She writes, 'We are governed at all levels by America's luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they're not optimists — they're unimaginative. They don't have faith, they've just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don't mind it when people become disheartened. They don't even notice.' With apologies to FDR, do we have nothing to fear but fearlessness itself?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Scenting the Dark," Mary Robinette Kowal's debut short story collection is slim and spare and eminently satisfying. Kowal writes science fiction that uses our relationship to technology to expose our relationships to one another. Kowal is one of science fiction's most celebrated new writers, a winner of the Campbell Award for best new writer and a current Hugo nominee, all on the strength of her short fiction (she has two novels forthcoming from Tor), and it's easy to see why.

For me, the standout story here was Jaiden's Weaver, a tale that combines the astronomical reality of life on a ringed planet with a subtle and moving coming-of-age story. Like the other stories in this volume, it epitomizes Kowal's gift for using rigorous science fiction as a lever for prying open the subjective reality of the people who inhabit the futuristic world of now.

"Scenting the Dark" is a slim, handsomely made hardcover volume from the specialist house Subterranean Press, a great gift and a great treasure for yourself.

Be sure to check out Kowal's website for readings of her work (she's a talented and accomplished voice actor and puppeteer -- she read my story After the Siege for Subterranean's podcast), free downloads (she's a copyfighter, too!), and other supplementary material.

Scenting the Dark and Other Stories

schwit1 writes with this excerpt from the Washington Post: "During a 12-month period ended in March this year, for example, the US intelligence community suggested on a daily basis that 1,600 people qualified for the list because they presented a 'reasonable suspicion,' according to data provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee by the FBI in September and made public last week. ... The ever-churning list is said to contain more than 400,000 unique names and over 1 million entries. The committee was told that over that same period, officials asked each day that 600 names be removed and 4,800 records be modified. Fewer than 5 percent of the people on the list are US citizens or legal permanent residents. Nine percent of those on the terrorism list, the FBI said, are also on the government's 'no fly' list."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reader Dave Adams submitted this cool Pac Man pumpkin display, complete with ghosts, dots, and fruit. Shown immediately above under regular and UV light. [Thanks, David!]

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

There's still three days left to enter the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Deadline is November 3rd. Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

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TechCrunch is running a story about the prevalence of scams and shady monetization techniques in popular social games on Facebook and MySpace. As an alternative to buying in-game currency with real money, many games make use of lead-generation offers — letting players sign up for a trial service or take a survey in exchange for the currency. The system is rife with scams, and many game developers turn a blind-eye to them, much to the detriment of the players and the legitimate advertisers — not to mention the games that rightly disallow these offers and fall behind in profits. The article asserts that Facebook and MySpace themselves are complicit in this, failing to crack down on the abuses they see because they make so much money from advertising for the most popular games.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We still have a few more Chumby guts ready for you to hack, modify, or just make a cool enclosure and enjoy. What's a Chumby? Glad you asked! It's an amazing little piece of technology that lets you get what's best on the web and delivers it right to you on it's 3.5" touch screen LCD. You can play games, check the weather, twitter, news, music, and even watch YouTube videos. All of this is done via you home's wireless Internet connection. Get 'em while you can, we have limited stock and we will not receive any more this year...if ever.

Here's what comes in each kit:

• 3.5'' LCD (320hx240v 16bpp TFT) with Touch Screen
  
• Texas Instruments TSC2100 Programmable Touchscreen Controller with Stereo DAC
  
• Plastic Front Bezel
  
• Gasket
  
• Aluminum Frame
  
• 4 x Screws to attach Aluminum Frame to Front Bezel
  
• 350MHz Freescale iMX21 MC94MX21DVKN3 ARM9 controller Motherboard Circuit Card Assembly with Samsung 64MB SDRAM on 32-bit data path and Hynix HY27US 64MB NAND Flash ROM
  
• Kionix KXP74-1050 3-axis accelerometer
  
• Daughtercard Circuit Card Assembly
  
• Three USB 2.0 full speed ports, one internal, two external
  
• Chumbilical Flex Cable from Daughter card CCA to Motherboard CCA
  
• Wifi Riser Circuit Card Assembly
  
• USB Wifi Dongle based on the Xterasys 3135G 802.11g USB Wifi adapter (ralink chipset)
  
• Flex Cable for Wifi Riser CCA to Motherboard CCA
  
• 3 x Screws for Wifi Riser CCA to Motherboard CCA
  
• 3 x Standoffs for screws for Wifi Riser CCA to Motherboard CCA
  
• 2 x 2W StereoSpeakers
  
• 4 x Screws for Speaker to Plastic Speaker Holder
  
• Plastic Speaker Holder
  
• Switch for Bend Sensor
  
• Plastic Switch Holder
  
• 2 wire cable with 2 pin connector (from Daughterboard CCA to switch)
  
• 2 x Screws to Attach Switch to Plastic Switch Holder
  
• 12 V DC 1A Power Supply
  
• Built-in microphone

(Note: actual parts may vary slightly due to manufacturing and availability)

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Capturing the same powerful forces that destroyed the Tacoma Narrows Bridge shortly after it was built in 1940, researchers at the University of Michigan are developing a new way of generating electricity with the slow moving currents found in most of the rivers and oceans of the world.

VIVACE is the first known device that could harness energy from most of the water currents around the globe because it works in flows moving slower than 2 knots (about 2 miles per hour.) Most of the Earth's currents are slower than 3 knots. Turbines and water mills need an average of 5 or 6 knots to operate efficiently. Michael Bernitsas

Michael Bernitsas, professor in the Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, stands before a prototype of his VIVACE hydrokinetic energy device.

VIVACE stands for Vortex Induced Vibrations for Aquatic Clean Energy. It doesn't depend on waves, tides, turbines or dams. It's a unique hydrokinetic energy system that relies on "vortex induced vibrations."

This technology is hoped to be easier to site than traditional windmills and hydropower generators. [Thanks, Amon!]

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mmaney writes "As part of its 2009 open source best practices research, MindTouch asked C and VP level open source executives who they thought are the most influential people in the industry today. The list is ranked by the effect these individuals have had on the open source industry. Over 50 votes from executives in Europe and North America were cast. There were a few surprises from outside of the open source industry. Steve Ballmer got a mention because of his negative remarks on the open source industry and its subsequent positive impact. Vivek Kundra was mentioned because of his contributions to the industry inside the US Federal Government. Notably absent, however, are any influential women." Relatedly, Matt Asay (who is also on the list) writes about the decreased need for open-source evangelism, noting that several people on the list are there "not because they're open-source cheerleaders, but because they have helped vendors and customers alike understand how to get the most from open-source investments."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes "Yale University researchers believe that if evolutionary pressures of sexual selection and reproductive fitness continue for another 10 generations, the trends detected in their study may mean that the average woman in 2409 AD will be 2 cm shorter, 1 kg heavier, will bear her first child five months earlier, and enter menopause 10 months later. 'There is this idea that because medicine has been so good at reducing mortality rates, that means that natural selection is no longer operating in humans,' says Stephen Stearns of Yale University. 'That's just plain false.' Stearns and his team studied the medical histories of 14,000 residents of the Massachusetts town of Framingham, using medical data from a study going back to 1948 spanning three generations, and found that shorter, heavier women had more children than lighter, taller ones. Women with lower blood pressure and cholesterol were also more likely to have large families as were women who gave birth early or had a late menopause. More importantly, these traits are then passed on to their daughters, who also, on average, had more children. The study has not determined why these factors are linked to reproductive success, but it is likely that they indicate genetic, rather than environmental, effects. 'The evolution that's going on in the Framingham women is like average rates of evolution measured in other plants and animals,' says Stearns. 'These results place humans in the medium-to-slow end of the range of rates observed for other living things.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Book publishers use banner ads on flies in Germany... via Wired.

Jung von Matt/Neckar lässt für Eichborn, den Verlag mit der Fliege, 200 mit Bannern bestückte Fliegen auf der Frankfurter Buchmesse starten. To promote their exhibition stand at the Franfurt Book Fair, Eichborn the publisher with the fly prepared 200 flies with an ultra light banner. The banner was attached with natural wax. After a short time the banner dropped off by itself. And the flies were not harmed.

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Dr_Barnowl writes "In an occurrence first postulated in sci-fi and later lampooned by stick figures, it seems that a blogger has actually been responsible for the mass resignation of elected officials — a British town council — largely by calling them 'jack***es' and Nazis. What's next? The deposition of a president with 'your mom' smacktalk?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dr_Barnowl writes "In an occurrence first postulated in sci-fi and later lampooned by stick figures, it seems that a blogger has actually been responsible for the mass resignation of elected officials — a British town council — largely by calling them 'jack***es' and Nazis. What's next? The deposition of a president with 'your mom' smacktalk?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I just watched a fascinating and deeply disturbing documentary on CNN that explained how the infamous DC snipers, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, turned a 1990 Chevrolet Caprice (which, ironically, was a used police car) into a hacked killing machine. Here's an excerpt from the transcript of the show, called Minds of the D.C. Snipers (the original air date was October 2007):

It was a customized killing machine, darker than normal tinting on the back windows. The firewall between the trunk and the rear seat removed, allowing the snipers to lie down and crawl into the trunk, as in this FBI recreation. Half of the inside trunk lid was sprayed with blue paint to prevent light from bouncing off when raised. The car's battery was rigged to run a stolen laptop computer with map software to make killing locations easy to find. And this is the view that John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo had when they pulled the trigger.

Malvo, who was only 17 at the time of the killings, is serving a life sentence in a Virginia prison. Muhammad, 48, will be executed on November 10th.

Over at the BBC, music journalist John Harris speculates on what may become of the music business now that we have entered the golden age of infinite music. "I've just poured the music-related contents of my brain into a book, and I would imagine that 30-ish years worth of knowledge about everyone from Funkadelic to The Smiths has probably cost me a five-figure sum, a stupid amount spent on music publications, and endless embarrassed moments spent trying to have a conversation with those arrogant blokes who tend to work in record shops. Last weekend, by contrast, I had a long chat about music with the 16-year-old son of a friend, and my mind boggled. At virtually no cost, in precious little time and with zero embarrassment, he had become an expert on all kinds of artists, from English singer-songwriters like Nick Drake and John Martyn to such American indie-rock titans as Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. Though only a sixth-former, he seemingly knew as much about most of these people as any music writer. Like any rock-oriented youth, his appetite for music is endless, and so is the opportunity..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OzPeter writes "A wheat farmer in Australia has eliminated adding fertilizer to his crop by the simple process of injecting the cooled diesel exhaust of his modified tractor into the ground when the wheat is being sown. In doing so he eliminates releasing carbon into the atmosphere and at the same time saves himself up to $500,000 (AUD) that would have been required to fertilize his 3,900 hectares in the traditional way. Yet his crop yields over the last two years have been at least on par with his best yields since 2001. The technique was developed by a Canadian, Gary Lewis of Bio Agtive, and is currently in trial at 100 farms around the world."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Guilherme Martins built this "talkie walkie" in response to a challenge to build a robot using only one servo. It responds to sound in real time, automatically controlling the movements of a lip-syncing paper mouth. [via Hack a Day]

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theodp writes "Newsweek's Daniel Lyons (that's Fake Steve to you) explains why Steve Ballmer is no Bill Gates, arguing that what most hurt Microsoft was BillG's decision to step down as CEO in January 2000: 'Gates was a software geek. He understood technology. Ballmer is a business guy.' And the problem with putting non-techies in charge of tech companies, concludes Lyons, is that they have blind spots. So while Microsoft's revenues nearly tripled from $23B to $58B on Ballmer's watch, says Lyons, the company became bureaucratic and lumbering, slowing down while the rest of the world — including Google, Apple and Amazon — sped up."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.