That is not Batman's boat but rather Earthrace, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's ultraslick bio-diesel-powered anti-whaling speedboat. It's 80-feet long and very stealthy. Next month, it will head out to the seas around Japan to, er, protest the country's whaling industry. Life magazine has photos of Earthrace currently docked in Auckland, New Zealand. (Click image to see full photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images.) "Superbad Anti-Whaling Stealth Boat"

Back in September, we wrote about Glenn Beck's misguided attempt to gain control over the domain name used as part of an internet meme that is critical of Glenn Beck, GlennBeckRapedAndMurderedAYoungGirlIn1990.com (it's a dead site now, keep reading). If you're unfamiliar with the meme, it's mocking a favorite tactic of various cable news talk show hosts, to "ask questions" that are accusatory in nature, whether or not there's any substance to back them up. Glenn Beck didn't accuse the site of defamation or anything, but filed a domain name complaint, saying that it violated his trademark. As we noted at the time, the trademark claim was really questionable -- and, of course, only served to draw more attention to the site and the internet meme.

The site brought on lawyer Marc Randazza who filed one of the most brilliant responses (pdf) to a legal threat that you'll ever see. It's quite amusing. Randazza takes the old "moron in a hurry" test up one level, using the "abject imbecile" test. And then there was this:

We are not here because the domain name could cause confusion. We do not have a declaration from the president of the international association of imbeciles that his members are blankly staring at the Respondent's website wondering "where did all the race baiting content go?" We are here because Mr. Beck wants Respondent's website shut down. He wants it shut down because Respondent's website makes a poignant and accurate satirical critique of Mr. Beck by parodying Beck's very rhetorical style. Beck's skin is too thin to take the criticism, so he wants the site down.

Apparently, Randazza's letter worked wonders. The WIPO Arbitration Panel has rejected the attempt to take the domain, saying that it was a legitimate use of Beck's name:

In the present context, this Panel considers that if Internet users view the disputed domain name in combination with a visit to Respondent's website, the "total effect" is that of political commentary by Respondent, capable of protection as political speech by the First Amendment under the Hustler Magazine standard. Respondent appears to the Panel to be engaged in a parody of the style or methodology that Respondent appears genuinely to believe is employed by Complainant in the provision of political commentary, and for that reason Respondent can be said to be making a political statement. This constitutes a legitimate non-commercial use of Complainant's mark under the Policy.

Either way, now that the site's owner has prevailed, he apparently feels he has made his point, and has agreed to voluntarily hand over the domain (pdf), along with an explanation in the First Amendment and how not to respond to internet memes:

It bears observing that by bringing the WIPO complaint, you took what was merely one small critique meme, in a sea of internet memes, and turned it into a super-meme. Then, in pressing forward (by not withdrawing the complaint and instead filing additional briefs), you turned the super-meme into an object lesson in First Amendment principles.

It also bears noting, in this matter and for the future, that you are entirely in control of whether or not you are the subject of this particular kind of criticism. I chose to criticize you using the well-tested method of satire because of its effectiveness. But, humor aside, your rhetorical style is no laughing matter. In this context of this WIPO case, you denigrated the letter of First Amendment law. In the context of your television show and your notoriety, you routinely and shamelessly denigrate the spirit of the First Amendment....

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What's courage? When the Fort Hood gunman turned and shot at her, she ran toward him. She ran toward the bullets, firing. NYT profiles firearms expert Kimberly Munley.

gimmebeer writes to tell us that months after a teen was beaten to death in an Internet boot camp, China has banned the use of physical punishment to help teens kick their net addiction. "The death of 15-year-old Deng Senshan, just hours after he checked into an Internet bootcamp in the southwestern Guangxi region in early August, caused a media storm in China. Days later, another teenager, Pu Liang, was taken to hospital with water in the lungs and kidney failure after a similar attack in Sichuan Province. The government in July had already banned electroshock therapy as a treatment for Internet addiction, after media reports about a controversial psychiatrist who administered electric currents to nearly 3,000 teenagers. The latest guidelines suggest officials in Beijing do not think that those with unhealthy Internet habits should be forced offline permanently."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Craig Smith sent us these pics and note:

My telescope is low end in the scope-world, a 60mm refractor. But I discovered the eyepiece is the same size as my digital camera telephoto lens. My digital camera is low end in the camera world, too, a 3.2MP. But put them together with a custom PVC sleeve aligning lens-to-eyepiece, and I'm getting awesome moon shots. Here is the moon on 11/5/09. I added a camera support arm also, a quick adjustment of the tripod leg's wing nut, and I'm all aligned to photograph the skies.

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I'm heading over to Norway in the next few days to give a talk at the Nordic Music Week event, and it's nice to see that the courts in that country seem to recognize how silly the IFPI's demands that major ISP Telenor block access to The Pirate Bay are. Telenor was smart enough to fight back, and the courts have now said that Telenor is not liable for what its users do, and should not have to block access to a site like The Pirate Bay. From TorrentFreak on the ruling:

The court ruled that Telenor is not contributing to any infringements of copyright law when its subscribers use The Pirate Bay, and therefore there is no legal basis for forcing the ISP to block access to the site.... In making its decision, the court also had to examine the repercussions if it ruled that Telenor and other ISPs had to block access to certain websites. This, it said, is usually the responsibility of the authorities and handing this task to private companies would be "unnatural."

Good to see a court recognize that the entertainment industry doesn't own the internet, and shouldn't be the one to determine what is and what is not legal online.

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The dead don't just get up and walk off. No. They need felonious help for that. Mental_floss has a fun piece on five great grave robberies (some more successful than others)--with guest corpses ranging from Charlie Chaplin to Abe Lincoln.

suraj.sun writes to mention that Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks may have just gotten a boost over WiMax in the battle for wireless broadband dominance. A group of telecom companies has created the "One Voice" initiative, designed to promote a standard that will provide interoperability for broadband voice and SMS. "LTE has been fine at supporting data, which uses IP-based packet switching. But it's faced challenges trying to incorporate traditional circuit-based switching voice and SMS services onto IP-based networks. One Voice is the group's attempt to resolve that issue. The new specification will use existing functionality known as IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), which already defines how to provide data, voice, and other content over an IP-based network. IMS was established by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a group comprised of telecom industry associations trying to set standards for 3G mobile networks."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's not April 1st, so I'm going to guess it's real. The patented 18 button OpenOffice mouse -

In partnership with the OpenOffice.org community, WarMouse announced the release of the OpenOfficeMouse, the first multi-button application mouse designed for the world's leading open-source office productivity suite. With a revolutionary and patented design featuring 18 buttons, an analog joystick, and support for as many as 52 key commands, the OpenOfficeMouse is intended to provide a faster and more efficient user interface for OpenOffice.org applications such as Writer and Calc than the conventional icons, pull-down menus, and hotkeys presently permit.

"You can do far more with this mouse than most people are likely to realize at first," said mouse designer Theodore Beale. "You can launch applications from the desktop, and in your browser you can fire up a specific Internet site with one button, then close it with a double-click on the same button. In Writer and Calc, you can have your most powerful and complicated macros on one row of buttons and simple functions like Bold, Undo, and Format Cell on another. It's very useful in games like World of Warcraft, because even without taking the joystick into account, you've got 16 commands within one click, 40 within two, and all 72 icons on the six action pages within just two double-clicks or less."

I'm hoping they consider the Chumby-style patent so others could improve on the hardware, perhaps adding more buttons.

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An MSNBC headline twitter feed, hacked! But it's surely a clever hoax: known-legitimate accounts don't link to it.

MacHeist is giving away a set of Mac apps free of charge, including Writeroom and Twitteriffic.

I thought perhaps the Peek email device might be a good service to get for a family member who's not very technical. I wanted them to have access to text messaging, and thought its advertised simplicity might be the answer. So I bought a device for $49 and bought one month of service for $19.95, with the understanding that it's not a service plan, and if I didn't like it, I could easily opt-out.

I used it for a few days and decided it wasn't what I wanted. It is simple, but the text messaging feature is a hack on top of email, and they put ads for their service in the text messages, and texting is more or less one-way, and it's the wrong way for my application. It's easy for the Peek user to send text messages but virtually impossible for them to receive them. This didn't suit the application I had in mind, because I wanted the ability to send messages to the family member. I didn't think she'd be sending many on her own (she doesn't now).

So I decided to opt out. There's no way to do it from the website. They don't explain how to opt out the FAQ. When I called the sales department, they said I could turn the service off, but I wouldn't be able to use the remaining time on the month worth of service I had already purchased. I said that's unacceptable. I wanted to get off the monthly plan and use the remainder of the time I had already purchased. (Maybe I'd find another use for it?)

After a lot of back and forth, the service person, Jacqueline, said I should get in touch with the operations manager, David Hung. I'm going to email him a pointer to this blog post.

Net-net, Peek is an attractive device, the service works reasonably well for email, but not for texting. It is simple to set up and use. However they don't make it easy to get out. At this point, I'm still going to charged for $19.95 on December 2. They'll probably do what I asked after reading this blog post, but you shouldn't have to write a blog post for what should be a routine matter. It should be easy to turn the automatic renewal off and on as you wish.

John McCain does not love baby sea turtles. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow does. I'm gonna side with the @maddows on this one.

Martian landscapes - The Big Picture @ Boston.com via Waxy.

Since 2006, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been orbiting Mars, currently circling approximately 300 km (187 mi) above the Martian surface. On board the MRO is HiRISE, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, which has been photographing the planet for several years now at resolutions as fine as mere inches per pixel. Collected here is a group of images from HiRISE over the past few years, in either false color or grayscale, showing intricate details of landscapes both familiar and alien, from the surface of our neighboring planet, Mars. I invite you to take your time looking through these, imagining the settings - very cold, dry and distant, yet real. (35 photos total)

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We've been pretty big critics of the music tax concept, that was being pushed by Jim Griffin's Choruss along with Warner Music (who had hired Griffin to create this program). Of course, we've only been able to criticize what bits and pieces have leaked out from those who have seen Griffin's presentations. That's because, despite a busy conference schedule, Griffin never seems to publicly describe what Choruss really is. So, every time we hear some new info about Choruss, and explain why it's bad, we get angry emails from Griffin calling me all sorts of insulting names, and insisting that I've mischaracterized Choruss. So, we ask for more details, and we don't get them. Instead, we're given amorphous descriptions about how it's "an experiment." But what is the experiment? Well, it will be lots of things. As soon as we narrow in on an example, however, and explain why it's bad, we're attacked because the plan might not include that particular example. But we haven't yet heard an example that makes sense.

Griffin had agreed (as part of an angry email) to answer questions from the Techdirt community, and we obliged by sending him a long list of questions. Griffin had some personal issues to deal with over the summer, which was totally understandable, but we still haven't heard any answers. I'm beginning to wonder if we ever will.

But the biggest question I had was if he could explain who the "tens of thousands" of students were who Griffin told a conference in June would be using Choruss this fall semester. It seemed odd to find out that so many students had signed up for something when we still weren't being told what it was. As the fall semester started, we asked to hear from students who were using Choruss, and got silence -- which seemed odd. Apparently, it's because those tens of thousands of students hadn't signed up for the fall.

However, as a bunch of you have sent in, now the claim is that six college campuses will be testing Choruss this spring semester, but Griffin won't say who they are and the campuses won't admit to participating. They claim that they're afraid of backlash from folks like us -- but that makes me wonder. If the concept is so good, why not stand up and defend yourself for being a part of the program? If you can't defend the reasons for testing the program, it makes me wonder why you're doing it in the first place.

The article at the Chronicle of Higher Education provides a few new details that don't sound particularly appealing. Rather than (as some had suggested earlier, but since Griffin never made it clear, we just don't know if this was ever true) a system that would let students share files freely under some sort of blanket license, it sounds like "yet another limited music service." It will allow unlimited downloads, but you have to use the Choruss service (again, perhaps the article is wrong, but that's what it says). Similar services have been tried on various campuses and failed, so we're curious to hear what's so special about Choruss that will be different.

It still seems like Choruss is trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. We're seeing more and more smart musicians put in place business models that work. They work in a way that lets fans choose to send money to the artists they want to support directly, without a big middleman. Choruss appears (from all we've heard) to be an attempt to set up a big middleman that will take big chunks of money and then use some magical process to figure out how to dole it out. But why do we need that overhead? The market is figuring stuff out. It doesn't need another middleman.

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Yesterday we sent out our second issue of the new Make: Newsletter. It contains news of goings on at Maker Media, several original columns (including the second installment of my Maker's Dictionary column), and special Shed and magazine deals for newsletter subscribers only. Next month, we're even going to launch a mini-projects column.

You can subscribe (free) to the Make: Newsletter here.

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Alleged shooter in yesterday's Fort Hood massacre bought his "cop killer" pistol legally at Guns Galore, in Texas. The ammo can pierce bulletproof vests. (via Danger Room)

Michael J. Ross writes "Of the leading content management systems used by developers for creating websites, Drupal is highly regarded for many characteristics, including a much smaller initial footprint, compared to Joomla and other CMSs. Yet some developers find this a disadvantage as well, because one of the most common criticisms leveled against Drupal is its lack of built-in support for images and multimedia elements — thereby forcing new Drupal developers to choose from the thousands of contributed Drupal modules those that would be optimal for implementing their websites' multimedia functionality. Aaron Winborn's book Drupal Multimedia is intended as a guide to help such developers." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

coder4hire writes "Of the leading content management systems used by developers for creating websites, Drupal is highly regarded for many characteristics, including a much smaller initial footprint, compared to Joomla and other CMSs. Yet some developers find this a disadvantage as well, because one of the most common criticisms leveled against Drupal is its lack of built-in support for images and multimedia elements — thereby forcing new Drupal developers to choose from the thousands of contributed Drupal modules those that would be optimal for implementing their websites' multimedia functionality. Aaron Winborn's book Drupal Multimedia is intended as a guide to help such developers." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yesterday, a shooter opened fire on America's largest Army base, killing 13 and injuring many more. As of this morning, 27 people were still in the hospital. The alleged shooter, Maj. Hasan Nidal Malik, was at first reported dead. Since then, it's been confirmed that he survived and is in custody.

The media, obviously, has been all over this. But one reporter--and a journalism school buddy of mine--Amanda Kim Stairrett, knows Fort Hood and the impact this incident has had on the Base better than most. Amanda Kim is the military editor at the Killeen Daily Herald. Her office is just down the road from the Fort's main entrance and she's been covering military news for more than four years, since before she graduated college. Fort Hood is her beat and this community is a central part of her life.

I called Amanda Kim this morning to get her perspective on the shooting and its aftermath. In our interview, she talked about the confusion that followed the shooting, the history of violence at Fort Hood, the way media circus impacts soldiers' families, and why she won't do speculative reporting.

I'm glad to hear you're alright after yesterday. What was your personal experience during the incident? Were you on base to cover the graduation ceremony where the shooting began?

Amanda Kim Stairrett: We weren't actually on base when this happened. Our cops reporter was listening to the radio and heard some commotion, which included the term "mass casualty." Usually, when we hear that, it's in reference to training exercises. But there wasn't one planned, so he hopped in the car and drop to Post with a photog. They got there, and got inside the gate, just before it was closed down to the media. We were the only news agency with a reporter and photog on Post. I got there just after the gate was closed. At first, there were only three local media outlets at the main entrance. Less than an hour though and the swarm began. The last news conference was around 9:30 last night, but we reporters stayed there at the gate overnight. I was there, but this has very much been a group effort at our paper. Everything we cover--schools, business--it's all been touched by this.

Do you know whether there was just the one shooter? Early reports were talking about three or four people involved.
AKS: We have confirmed that he did act alone. In the chaos and confusion after shortly after the incident there were three other people apprehended. And it was chaotic. The cell phone towers got stuffed up pretty quick and there wasn't a lot of clear information on what was going on, even on base. Those other three people, we got a little word last night that they were around the scene, or running away from it, and may have drawn attention to themselves somehow. They've all been released now.

I've heard that the alleged shooter was a therapist for other soldiers. Is that true?
AKS: Yes, I confirmed that last night, going through army records, that he was a medical soldier. And we got confirmation that he was a psychiatrist this morning. That would mean he's somebody who went through medical school and then joined the Army. Typically, those people are commissioned as officers because they're doctors. I don't know who specifically he treated, but we know he treated soldiers with mental health issues, talking with them to help them mentally prepare for deployment, and helping them work through issues after they return. It's a rough job. I haven't gotten to talk to other Army therapists yet, though, so I don't know how the mental health community is reacting to this.

What can you tell me about the recent history of violence at Fort Hood. There was a murder/suicide last fall and I've read some reporting on rising suicide rates at the Fort, as well.
AKS: I covered the murder suicide. It's still under question what the motives there were. But maybe one common thread that leaders have talked about is the stress of multiple deployments. Since those things happened, they've done a lot to make programs available for stress reduction and preparing soldiers before things get out of hand.

Is violence on Post even a reasonable thing for me to be asking about? Like, if this were a similarly sized town, would anyone think the rate of violence was high? Or try to connect these incidents to one another? AKS: It's an interesting issue. What officials do emphasize is that they have 50,000 soldiers on Post and 20,000 are currently deployed. It is a community, and it's a representation of society. The trends in violence are similar. In fact, with suicides, what really concerned everyone was that, for years, the Army suicide rate used to be below the suicide rate for the general population. The alarm was set off here because we started closing in on the national average suicide rate, not because we were so far above it.

I know one of the hardest jobs for a beat reporter is having to go talk to families of recently deceased. Have you had to do that yet? How do you deal with that part of the job?
AKS: They haven't released the names of victims in this incident yet. We do know that one was a civilian and the rest were soldiers. And we know they're about 90% done with casualty notification of families. Once they finish that, there will be a short wait and then they'll release names. I have had to talk to spouses who have lost a soldier in combat and it never gets easier. I sometimes feel that the media and the public are a little less cautious of a sensitive situation when it involves a soldier. Like soldiers are community property and it's OK to be a more forward. I've talked to a 27-year-old woman who lost her husband four years ago. They were from a very small town and it was huge news. She talked about things like being in her parents backyard, talking on the phone, and there would be photographers almost stalking her over the fence. Trying to go through that situation while being a mother was very hard on her. We've always had a policy that if a spouse loses a soldier in combat, our door is open for them. We don't hound them and go to their door. We just make it known that if they want to talk about their soldier they can talk to us.

Besides the families, people really want to know more about the alleged shooter himself. What are you seeing in this coverage?
AKS: A lot of the news organizations are very much wanting to push his religion. Him being Muslim and the impact of that on the incident itself. We don't have anything with that confirmed yet, so I've been really hesitant to say that that played a big part in the incident. We did had a reporter who was at the shooter's off-Post apartment and talked to neighbors. They said he was outspoken about being Muslim and had a lot of pride in his faith. But right now, I've stayed away from saying whether that played a hand in the shooting. I don't know if it's a big problem that people are speculating. I think it's first instinct. But I don't know why new organizations are so prominently featuring surveillance footage of him in a convenience store in traditional clothing. They're building this background in case it turns out that his religion did come into this. But we just don't know right now. And we're not willing to go that route with our reporting at this time.

What's your take on the speculation that's running rampant on TV news with this incident, in general? How does that compare to the actual facts that you know?
AKS: It's been interesting. Very early after the incident yesterday, I was pretty amazed to stand by and listen to, mostly, TV reporters go on air and speculate and report on rumors they'd heard. Whereas, our newspaper is right next to Fort Hood. We have a close relationship and it's always been our policy where we find that it's best to wait for correct information rather than to speculate. Because there's a large family population that isn't necessarily on Post, and don't know what's going on. It's a dangerous situation to get those people worried and worked up for reasons that maybe aren't correct. It's been really frustrating to see all the speculation. I've even been avoiding watching the TV coverage too closely, because I don't want the speculation to accidentally influence what I write.

Image taken at Fort Hood last year, during a visit by former Vice President Dick Cheney. Image taken for U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Nicole Kojetin.

An anonymous reader writes "WarMouse has announced their new multi-button OpenOfficeMouse for OpenOffice.org at the 2009 OOoCon in Orvieto, Italy. The mouse, which features 18 buttons, a scroll wheel, and an analog joystick, has double-click functionality on every button and stores up to 63 application and game profiles in its 512k of flash memory. The OpenOfficeMouse runs on Windows, Linux, and OS/X; its customization software will be released as free and open source software." We couldn't decide if this was a protest against Apple's new magic mouse, an elaborate practical joke, or just plain insanity run amok. In any case, it is hard to imagine a world in which so many tiny buttons on a mouse make sense.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The trailer above is for Between The Folds, a new feature documentary film presented by PBS's Independent Lens. You can view the whole film on PBS on December 8 or at one of Independent Television Service's free Community Cinema screenings upcoming around the country. From MAKE:

The film documents "a determined group of theoretical scientists and fine artists who have abandoned their careers and scoffed at their graduate degrees to forge new lives as modern-day paper folders."

Featured in the film are MIT's youngest-ever tenured professor Dr. Erik Demaine; mathematician, sculptor, puzzle maker, and self-taught computer scientist Marty Demaine; master free-style folder Vincent Floderer; pioneering Israeli educator Miri Golan; mathematics professor Dr. Tom Hull; trained artist and instructor Paul Jackson; one of the most technically accomplished folders in the world, Eric Joisel; one of only a few handmade origami papermakers in the world, Michael LaFosse; origami "hyper-realist" and physicist Dr. Robert J. Lang (who was profiled in CRAFT Volume 05); material artist with a masterful understanding of patterns and geometry, Chris K. Palmer; and the father of modern origami, Akira Yoshizawa.

More clips from the film after the jump!

Between The Folds (Thanks, Chi Do!)

Thessaly sez, "For those who wish Halloween wasn't over: Caitlin Roper holds the record for making the world's largest collection of jack-o-lantern grapes. She cut the lids of six grapes and hollowed them out before hand-carving faces into each one. They may also possibly be the world's SMALLEST jack-o-lanterns, but this is not verified."

Largest Collection Of Jack-O-Lantern Grapes (Thanks, Thessaly!)

BocasResearchStation sez, "This video shows an octopus cleverly trying to camouflage itself amongst seaweed in Bocas del Toro, Panama. Hiding is the primary defense mechanism for these creatures, and this little guy is making use of branches of algae to try to get by unseen."

An Octopus Pretending to be Seaweed (Thanks, BocasResearchStation!)

Wish you had a skylight, but don't have the ability to cut a hole in your roof? MAKE subscriber Chris did to, and wrote in to share his solution to the problem: a pv+led-based 'fake' skylight. The concept is pretty simple, but with a nice result. He had some unused capacity on his PV (photovoltatic) solar panel, and basically hooked up a bunch of high power LEDs directly to it. To achieve the 'skylight' look, he built a custom metal box with a glass diffuser screen, and mounted the diodes inside of it. He has a nice write-up on his site, along with a calculator to determine how the LEDs should be connected. Excellent work!

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You may recall earlier this year that there was a fair bit of controversy when the White House started putting photos up on Flickr. Or, rather, there was controversy over the licensing. Everyone thought it was great that the White House would have its own Flickr channel and constantly post photos -- but since Flickr only had certain licensing options that you could put on a photo, there was a problem. Even though the White House chose a Creative Commons Attribution license at the time, that was still too much. Government documents are not covered by copyright, and the photos clearly should be public domain. After a bit of back-and-forth, Flickr created a special public domain license so the White House could properly designate the photos.

And yet... it appears that the White House is now trying to claw back some rights over these photos that it just doesn't have. Tim Lee points out that along with these officials photos is a licensing claim that goes well beyond the public domain, stating:

This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.

The problem is the White House has no right to say that you can't manipulate the photo, since the photo is public domain. It's really unfortunate that, once again, we're seeing how little people seem to understand (or value) the public domain.

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Next year, the UK's Royal Mail will sell 1st class stamps that feature images of 10 famous British album covers. The postal service collaborated with music mag editors and design writers to come up with the list — interestingly, no Beatles albums were chosen, but artists represented include Led Zeppelin, The Clash, Pink Floyd, Coldplay, David Bowie, and The Rolling Stones. I wish the USPS would do something like this instead of boring us with stamps decorated with bells and reindeers. Studio Dempsey via Creative Review

Marisa Kakoulas at the excellent tattoo blog Needles and Sins writes about Tattooed Under Fire, a documentary by Nancy Schiesari on the tattoos -- and lives -- of soldiers at Fort Hood. The film was created long before yesterday's mass shooting, and will air on public television stations around the country starting next week.

Fort Hood -- the largest US military facility in the world -- is a major center for soldiers being deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and also houses the Army's Warrior Combat Stress Reset Program, which helps soldiers deal with post-traumatic stress when they return. In both cases, deployment and return home, soldiers work out heavy issues, and many seek tattooing as a way to express them or even see the process as therapy.

Tattooed Under Fire documents the young men and women at Fort Hood who seek solace at the tattoo studio, confessing fears, expressing anger, sharing secrets, and relaying personal war stories.

(Thanks, Susannah Breslin)

Related, on BB: An Insider's View of the Fort Hood Tragedy

James Kuhn is a Michigan-based artist who likes to paint his own face in the most intricate, creative ways. I love the one where he puckers up to represent a dog's butt. I've always wondered what my mouth would look like as an anus. James Kuhn's Flickr via Web Urbanist

This is the Glottal Opera, featuring the vocal chords of the band Kaya: Sally Stevens, Alexi Kaye, Emma Deans and Juleiaah Boehm. John Fink directed the video and Deborah Szapiro was producer. (Thanks, Dean Putney!)

When Shannon McCarthy of Blue Ash, Ohio, was arrested last night -- after police saw her drunk and walking into oncoming traffic -- she escaped from her handcuffs. Not once. Not twice. But three times. So police tased her. (Thanks, Charles Pescovitz!)

In a recent college recruiting tour, Microsoft's Craig Mundie was able to showcase some of the experiments coming out of their Research division. Among some of the interesting projects were another pass at the Minority Report interface, eye-tracking, intelligent data sorting, a global carbon-climate model, and several other software and hardware experiments. A video and supporting slideshow are also available via Microsoft's press site. "Mundie also will discuss the kinds of computers students will soon be using – machines that will respond to gestures through new natural user interfaces; deploy the power of new microprocessors; migrate data to the cloud; and use live data to drive new simulations and visualizations. He’ll center on an environmental theme to show what it might be like to be a research scientist working on zero carbon energy in the future using new interactions with data and computers to increase insight."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Samuel George Botchvaroff of Oakland, California didn't have a car to get to court for his auto theft case, so he stole one. (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)

This work by sculptor and musician Bradley N. Litwin, of Philadelphia, is called "The Octapult." In his words:

With 8 synchronized catapults, 160 plastic balls per minute are launched, caught, and recirculated. Made mostly of wood, the work is ~36 inches in diameter. On permanent display in the lobby of Lower Merion Elementary School, Merion Station, PA.

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It's been a good 20 years since I had a real hankering to wear Doc Marten's around, but I have to say I'm tempted by these skeleton boots whose bones glow in the freaking dark!

1914 BONES 14 EYE BOOT BLACK LAMPER (via Street Anatomy)

Michael Geist sez, "The latest round of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (the secret copyright treaty) talks have now wrapped up with the usual bland press release confirming that the talks focused on Internet and criminal enforcement, indicating that the next meeting will be in Mexico in January 2010, and pledging to complete the treaty as quickly as possible. More interesting is the unofficial release - the leaked document that provided the information on what the Internet enforcement chapter actually says."

The Leaked ACTA Document (Thanks, Michael!)

A group of brick-and-mortar retailers have been pushing for years to pass laws that put liability on online sites, like eBay, if stolen goods are sold through the sites. This really has nothing to do with preventing theft from their stores, as they claim. Instead, it's really an effort to attack online competitors and second-hand sellers to try to boost the primary market. Studies have shown that the number one source of theft in stores is actually employees. If the retailers were serious about cracking down on theft, they would do more to watch their own employees... but instead, they've been trying to create a moral panic by claiming that the use of eBay leads to crime because people get so addicted that, after they run out of their own stuff to sell, they start ripping off stores just to keep that eBay high going. Just look at their own words:

"Thieves often tell the same disturbing story: they begin legitimately selling product on eBay and then become hooked by its addictive qualities, the anonymity it provides and the ease with which they gain exposure to millions of customers. When they run out of legitimate merchandise, they begin to steal intermittently, many times for the first time in their life, so they can continue selling online. The thefts then begin to spiral out of control and before they know it they quit their jobs, are recruiting accomplices and are crossing states lines to steal, all so they can support and perpetuate their online selling habit."

Uh huh. Only problem? Actual stats show that such retail theft is on the decline. But, of course, that won't stop the lobbyists from these stores from pushing -- and that means we've now got the fourth such law introduced just this year to deal with. With the introduction of the new bill, the House Judiciary Committee held hearings with law enforcement officials who did claim that retail theft was a problem, but according to Thomas O'Toole, they also said no new laws were needed. What are the chances of that happening? Apparently, the law enforcement folks said that the online websites like eBay are actually quite cooperative, and the only problem is they need more money and resources -- not more laws. Somehow, that seems unlikely.

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CNETNate writes "You'll laugh, but mostly you'll cry. Some of the questions Google gets asked to deliver results for is beyond worrying. 'Can you put peroxide in your ear?', 'Why would a pregnancy test be negative?', and 'Why can't I own a Canadian?' being just a selection of the truly baffling — and disturbing — questions Google is regularly forced to answer."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

(Watch video: YouTube, Dotsub, or download MP4.)

A quick little goodie from Boing Boing Video. Last night, I sat in on a live recording session at Santa Monica's Village Studios with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, described as "African-American string band revivalists." They were amazing: I have never been so emotionally moved by someone playing a musical jug (and banjos, fiddles, cow bones, and kazoos). Their performance was witnessed by a handful of music biz folks and oldtime music enthusiasts, and made me feel deeply homesick for Appalachia (I'm also craving cornbread and butterbeans today - there's a song for that).

The Chocolate Drops have a new record coming out in 2010, and Boing Boing will be all over it like gravy on grits. If you dig R. Crumb, Smithsonian Folkways recordings of pre-blues and pre-bluegrass banjo music, and love folks who bring new life to authentic American music, you will flip out.

So, the video above: after the Drops' performance and recording session ended, Dom Flemons (of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, seated in center in the video), Blind Boy Paxton (seated at left in the video), and Frank Fairfield (seated far right) sat down together and jammed pure, sweet magic for a spell. I wasn't prepared with a proper camera or crew, but I grabbed my iPhonetraption out of my pocket and got to shootin'. I hope you enjoy it as much as everyone in the room did. Pure magic, these guys.

(Special thanks to Joe Henry; Jeff Greenberg of Village Studios; Tom Osborn, Warner Bros. Records; David Bither, Nonesuch Records, and to Boing Boing Video's tireless editor, Eric Mittleman.)

Freemasonry and the New Age Guestblogger Arthur Goldwag is the author of "Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, The Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Black Helicopters, The New World Order, and many, many more" and other books.

On September 15, 2009, THE LOST SYMBOL came off press. Fans of THE DA VINCI CODE, with more than 80 million copies in print perhaps the bestselling novel of all time, were thrilled--they had been waiting for Dan Brown to write another book for six years. Random House, B&N, and Amazon were delighted; they moved more than a million copies in twenty four hours and another million copies by the end of the week; two months later, it still sits high atop the bestseller lists.

The Masons breathed a sigh of relief, because, even if Brown had sensationalized their secret rites and made them look a little silly (drinking wine out of skulls and all that--which come to think of it, is a lot less demeaning than donning fezzes and driving miniature cars in parades, which members of the Masonic fraternity called the Ancient Arab Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, better known as the Shriners, do right out in public), he portrayed them as men of reason, and implied that their ranks are still as crowded with the powerful and the wealthy -- Cabinet secretaries, plutocrats, Senators, Museum directors -- as they were two centuries ago, when they could count Goethe, Mozart, George Washington, Lafayette and Paul Revere among their members.

I was guardedly hopeful myself. With all those Masonic symbols on its cover, I figured that CULTS, CONSPIRACIES AND SECRET SOCIETIES stood a small chance of being captured by THE LOST SYMBOL's commercial gravity, much as a tiny planetesimal can get pulled into a gas giant's orbit. But happiest of all was Lynne McTaggart, the real-life author of THE FIELD and THE INTENTION EXPERIMENT, whose books and research in the field of Noetic Science are specifically cited in THE LOST SYMBOL's pages.

No one has ever accused Dan Brown of being a literary stylist; he's too easy to parody. His narrators natter on like chatty tour guides, bludgeoning us with trivia and heavy-handed exposition. His hero Robert Langdon seems to suffer from a testosterone deficiency; his celibate bad guys, with their bulging muscles and self-mortified flesh, are creepily fetishized. But ANGELS AND DEMONS, THE DA VINCI CODE, and now THE LOST SYMBOL do more than merely lead their legions of readers on merry chases; they exhort them to reconsider their world view. Though the answers he provides may be trivial and sometimes historically inaccurate, the questions Brown asks us to consider are worth pondering. Does the church misrepresent Christianity? Is history filled with mysteries and intrigues that mainstream chronicles elide? Are science and religion converging?

Brown earnestly wants us to expand our view of human potential, to open ourselves up to a whole new paradigm--one that is more capacious and filled with possibilities than either secular scientism or the traditional Judeo-Christian world view. In a very broad sense, that was the Masons' philosophical program as well. Stripped of all its pageantry and mumbo jumbo, Freemasonry (which, despite its claims of ancient provenance, can't be dated back any further than the early 18th century) celebrates the rational, non-dogmatic, individualistic values of the Enlightenment. God-the-Architect is a Deist idea. The Masonic openness to Rosicrucian arcana, alchemy, and Kabbalah is an attribute of the same unfettered, non-judgmental curiosity that led to the scientific and technological breakthroughs of the early industrial era--and for that matter to the rise of the bourgeois merchant class and the overthrow of entrenched Aristocracy. Masons did play the outsized role in the French Revolution that their enemies accused them of; Adam Weishaupt's Bavarian Illuminati envisioned an age in which Kings and Catholicism would no longer hold sway. Augustin Barruel and John Robison's 1798 exposes of the Illuminati conspiracies sparked a transient panic in the United States that anticipated 1950s-style McCarthyism; a second wave of anti-Masonic paranoia swept the country in the late 1820s. It's ironic that the prospect of world revolution so frightened the post-colonial Americans, since they were revolutionaries themselves. Not only had they thrown off the shackles of king and church, they had thrived because they did so.

Benjamin Franklin -- a reluctant but eventually an ardent revolutionist -- is the very type of the American Freemason. Inventor, scientist, and entrepreneur, he was a mass of contradictions: a sententious moralizer and codifier of bourgeois virtues, he attended séances at the hedonistic Hellfire Club in England; homespun and self-educated, he was a familiar in the royal courts and academies of Europe. He was our Leonardo Da Vinci, except he couldn't paint or sculpt. And like most of our founding fathers, he had a healthy skepticism of democracy.

Just as we worry about what less advanced nations will do with nuclear technology today, the men of the Enlightenment worried about what the ignorant masses would do with the incredible powers -- philosophic, economic, political, technological and scientific -- that they were unlocking. Their fears were not misplaced... we are living with some of the consequences of their discoveries today. Much of our planet is poisoned; its climate is changing; we live under the shadow of weapons of mass destruction.

Esoteric Masonry acknowledges -- as do all the mystery religions and philosophies, going back to Egyptian Hermeticism and Pythagoreanism--that some things are best kept within a select circle. That doesn't mean the Masons were secret aristocrats or magi; only that they knew how dangerous it could be when complex ideas were trivialized, debased, and distorted by people who didn't understand them. Back in the eighteenth century, the boundaries between science and magic were still porous; chemists were still trying to turn lead into gold; physicians were practicing medicine without the benefit of germ theory; physicists were only just beginning to move away from Aristotle's world view towards one that we would now call Newtonian (Newton himself -- a devout, mystically-inclined Christian and a practicing alchemist -- lived into the 1720s).

The fact that the early Masons were as intrigued by ancient esoterica as they were doesn't mean that they were Gnostics or Zoroastrians or Rosicrucians, any more than their knowledge of Latin and Greek classics made them pagans. One legacy of the Enlightenment is our ability to unravel science and superstition, to draw distinctions between theology and natural science, and between ancient wisdom and ancient ignorance. Those boundaries are so clearly demarcated today that many people have come to believe that science and religion are mutually exclusive.

Dan Brown's THE LOST SYMBOL mixes them up again. In its telling, the Freemasons were the keepers of the embers that cutting edge Noetic scientists are fanning into flame--a philosophic technology that will bring us wonders like ESP and teleportation, and that one day might even conquer death. Noetic science takes some of the spookier discoveries of quantum physics--that particles can remain "entangled," even when they are separated by vast distances--and extends it to the "big, visible" world.

There really is an Institute of Noetic Sciences, in Petaluma, California (Obama's much-reviled ex-Green Jobs czar Van Jones is a member of its board; other famous names are Desmond Tutu, Dean Ornish, and Deepak Chopra). And as I noted, there really is a Lynne McTaggart. "All matter in the universe exists in a web of connection and constant influence," she writes, "Which often overrides many of the laws of the universe that we used to believe held ultimate sovereignty....The significance of these findings extends far beyond a validation of extrasensory power or parapsychology. They threaten to demolish the entire edifice of present-day science." McTaggart's Intention Experiment is a web-based project that recruits volunteers to beam thought energy at objects and people and measure the results. Click here for the protocols of some of the early experiments.

For all of her references to quantum physics and her nods to falsifiability and the scientific method, McTaggart mostly hearkens back to nineteenth century New Thought--Phineas Parkhurst Quimby's "mind cure" movement that inspired Christian Science, the Power of Positive Thinking, and the "Think and Grow Rich" philosophy of Napoleon Hill. In 1888, in a biographical sketch of his father that he published in the New England Magazine, Quimby's son George summarized the essential tenets of New Thought: "That 'mind' was spiritual matter and could be changed'; that we were made up of 'truth and error'; that 'disease was an error, or belief, and that the Truth was the cure.'"

Rhonda Byrne's bestselling THE SECRET is infused with New Thought and Noetic Science; one of its "stars" is James Arthur Ray, whose self-improvement empire is teetering on the brink in the wake of the sweat lodge disaster that took three lives in Sedona, Arizona last month.

The crown jewel of the experiments that the Noetic Scientist heroine of the THE LOST SYMBOL had secretly carried out was one in which she weighed a dying man immediately before and after his death, proving that his departed soul had physical mass. This same experiment was really carried out by a Dr. Duncan MacDougal in 1907 (he determined that it weighed 21 grams). MacDougal also killed a bunch of dogs and concluded, with equal scientific authority, that they didn't have souls. As it happens, I also believe that human beings have souls (dogs too), but I don't think they can be weighed and measured. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the soul is precisely that part of us that can't be dissected or quantified.

Like Brown and his Masons, I agree that we have much to learn from the ancients: from esoterica like Hermeticism, Gnosticism, and the Kabbalah, from canonical authors like Plato and Aristotle, and mainstreatm religious scriptures like THE BOOK OF THE DEAD, the Bible, and THE UPANISHADS. Shamans and herbalists know things that scientists are only now acknowledging; we are only just beginning to appreciate Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine. But I somehow doubt that the materialized spirituality of Noetic Science is the bridge to the future that Brown makes it out to be; one can be open-minded without embracing pseudoscience.

Historically, the Masons have stood for the spirit of free inquiry and, their heartily reciprocated detestation of Roman Catholicism aside, religious tolerance. It's nice for a change to see them portrayed as idealistic good guys instead of sinister oligarchs presiding over a malign New World Order. But the Masons aren't New Agers. For all of Dan Brown's earnest talk of a new paradigm, I feel like he's urging us -- and them -- to take a giant step backwards.

As a special preview for our upcoming Alex Rider Dream Gadget Contest, we're giving away two copies of Eagle Strike by Anthony Horowitz, part of the Alex Rider series! Just leave a comment in this post and tell us why you or your kid(s) needs one of these books. That's all you need to do to enter! Please make sure you include your email address in the comment form field (it won't be published). All eligible comments will be closed by Noon PST on Sunday, November 8th. The winners will be announced next week on the site. Good luck!

More:

• Alex Rider's Smokescreen Bike Pump
• Alex Rider's Geiger Counter Game Console
• Alex Rider's High Tensile Yo-Yo
  

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Techdirt has pointed out yet another cable exec that just doesn't quite get it. Comcast's COO, Steve Burke, recently urged the TV industry to find ways to "get consumers to change" rather than figure out better methods to cater to demand. "'An entire generation is growing up, if we don't figure out how to change that behavior so it respects copyright and subscription revenue on the part of distributors, we're going to wake up and see cord cutting.' How many consumers, in any market, are focused on 'respecting' vendors' revenue streams? How, exactly, does he propose to effect this sea change? And why not just develop products that consumers will willingly pay for, rather than trying to change consumer behavior in such a fundamental way?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Via Game Politics we hear about the situation in Venezuela, where the government is apparently blaming video games for the widespread violence in the country, and has issued a ban on the import, production or sale of any video games that include weapons. The link above is a rather heartfelt writeup, by someone in Venezuela, discussing the many problems the people in that country face, and making it clear that it's not violent video games that are the problem. It's long, but is a worthwhile read. Here's just a small snippet:

This situation is painful to behold. Even if I barely game at all these days, I am a gamer at neocortex. I spent countless hours solving puzzles, riddles and fighting monsters in dungeons. I rescued Toadstool many times, only to be told that thanks, but my Princess was in another castle, later I joined Link and rescued Zelda from Agahnim and Ganon, using the Master Sword and the Silver Arrows. I got the Zantetsu sword and cut metal, I summoned Ifrit, Odeen and Behemoth. From Dragoon, I became a Paladin. I sneaked on Big Boss' fortress in Zanzibar and stopped doomsday with Solid Snake. I fought along a Double Dragon trapped on a Final Fight, using my Killer Instinct in a Mortal Kombat in which only the greatest Street Fighter would come alive. I was Linked to the Past by a Chrono Trigger, my Soul Blazing, as I lived my Final Fantasies, Wandering from Ys, arriving to a Lagoon, to learn about the Secret of Mana, and finally understood that there is Ever More to life.

These games are a cherished part of my life, they helped to shape my young mind, they gave me challenges and vastly improved my English, opening the door to a whole new world of literature, music and people from all around the world. What I have achieved, all my research, how I have been able to travel even though I'm always broke, the hard work I've done to convince people to fund a start up for cheap biotech for developing countries and regular folks, none of that would have been possible hadn't I learned English through video games.

Now, thanks to the tiny horizons of the cast of morons who govern me, thanks to the stupidity and ham-fisted authoritarianism of the local authorities, so beloved of so many liberals, my 7 year old brother's chances to do the same could be greatly impacted.

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Image via Sandy Austin's Flickr People always ask me what I like to do in Tokyo. What's fun? What's cool. Well here's my dirty secret. Most nights, I sit in my parents' living room and watch silly game shows while drinking green tea and eating persimmon.

Persimmon is called kaki in Japanese, and it has been constantly battling against mangoes for first place on my list of favorite fruits. Kaki is a prominent part of everyday life in Japan — there's even an adjective almost exclusively used to describe the taste of a bitter persimmon, shibui. (The only other time it's used is to describe older men with graying hair who are nonetheless hot, like George Clooney.)

China, Japan, and Korea are the top three producers of persimmon in the world. The Chinese believe that the fruit helps to regulate energy flow. It's also known to cure digestive problems, and it's a great source of B and C vitamins.

In Korea, some people use dried persimmons to make a traditional fruit punch-like drink called Sujeonggwa. It's supposedly great with soju, too!

In the US, I see a lot of restaurants use cooked fuyu persimmon around this time of the year to supplement salads and meats, but I prefer to eat it raw once its blood orange skin has turned ever slightly soft.

Every installment of Taste Test will explore recipes, the science, and some history behind a specific food item.

Trailrunner7 writes "Two separate bills that would require organizations to notify consumers when their personal information has been compromised have made their way out of committee in the Senate, a critical step toward the creation of a national data-breach notification bill. But the Data Breach Notification Act, S.139, exempts federal agencies and other organizations subject to the bill from disclosing a breach if the data involved in the breach was encrypted. This is a clause that has caused some controversy, as some experts say that simply encrypting data does not render it useless. Also, S.139 would grant an exemption for data that 'was rendered indecipherable through the use of best practices or methods, such as redaction, access controls, or other such mechanisms, that are widely accepted as an effective industry practice, or an effective industry standard.' That is a very broad exemption that could become a sticking point as the bill moves along. The terms 'access controls' and 'other such mechanisms' encompass a huge number of technologies."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Want to claim your city as your own? Competing with a rival gang for turf, and want to avoid messy knife fights? Well now you can, thanks to Urban Defender. Working over a short time period, a team of students from Zurich University of Arts built a system to claim buildings by throwing a specially equipped ball at them. Impacts are detected by an accelerometer connected to an Arduino, which is wirelessly connected to a Beagle board which uses a GPS to coordinate the hit to a specific address.

They apparently didn't have time to finish the multi-player version of the game, but I think the concept is too good to let die. Someone should definitely hook this up to the social networking game foursquare. As a bonus, you could use the sensor units to play the actual game four square when you get tired of fighting for turf.

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alphadogg writes "AT&T has created different mobile calling models for every major city in America as it tries to improve a network that has come under fire for poor performance as the data-friendly iPhone has proliferated, an executive said Thursday. Other carriers just use one nationwide calling model to plan for all cities, claimed CTO John Donovan, speaking at the Open Mobile Summit conference in San Francisco. The nation's second-largest mobile operator has had a hard time planning for bandwidth needs in the rapidly changing mobile world, Donovan said. AT&T has seen rapidly growing mobile data usage — and much criticism over its 3G coverage — as the exclusive iPhone carrier in the US. 'If a network is not fully loaded, it's hard to know exactly how much demand is out there,' Donovan said. 'You put all you can in the ground, and they eat it all up, and then you put more in there, and they eat it all up.'" The story notes that mobile data at AT&T has grown 4,932% over the last 3 years.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ragaboo writes " A congressional report was recently released estimating that the regulation of Internet gambling could amount to around $42 billion in revenue for the U.S. government. Considering both the current financial climate and the fact (given the nature of the Internet) Americans are gambling online anyway, whether the government likes it or not, it seems like an incredible waste not to simply regulate the industry. Regulation provides much-needed funds, allows standards to be imposed and oversight to ensure safety, and also allows safety nets and safeguards to be forced to be put in place against underage and problem gamblers. As it currently stands, millions are playing online poker alone from within the United States (whether or not the government approves of it, which in an of itself isn't explicitly clear) and countless others are gambling, and yet every cent being made in that industry is going overseas."

Indeed. Online gambling seems like one area where a regulated market would make a lot more sense than outright prohibition. Many other countries already do this, and it's really odd that the US continues to resist it. Many claim that it's really just an effort by the existing casinos to block out competition, but it would seem that those casinos would benefit greatly themselves by being able to offer their own online offerings. And, even with this new evidence, it looks like Congress is actually going in the opposite direction.

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"Grumpy people are better decision-makers! Eat it, Sunshine!" (BBC, thanks Jason Weisberger)

Just Posted: Our in-depth review of the Canon EOS 7D. With a new 18 MP sensor, a 100% viewfinder, weather-sealed body, a new 19 point AF system and Dual Digic 4 imaging processors the EOS 7D is clearly aiming for the top spot in the semi-pro/enthusiast bracket of the market. What does the competition have to say about that? How does the camera fare in our studio tests? Read our in-depth review and find out.

I had to do it. Went down to the Verizon store in El Cerrito and put down $350 and bought the $99 per month unlimited texting plan. Took it home, fell in love. It really is beautiful. I'm an iPhone user who loves the esthetics of the iPhone. The DROID is different, but also very nice.

I'm sure there will be annoyances, always are, but the first-time experience is great.

The web browser display is large enough to be usable. The gestures that work on the iPhone don't work on the DROID.

I find both the on-screen keyboard and the physical keyboard hard to use. The keys are too small.

Oddly, when entering text into Facebook or an email, typing is natural and easy. It's only a pain when entering a username or password. I wonder why this is. (Probably has more to do with the operator than anything.)

The setting system makes sense. There are a few puzzlers. It allows you to format an SD card, but I don't see one. I've read the docs, very limited, but they make no mention of it.

They just sent me a text message asking me to sign onto their website, but the password doesn't work. Tried 8 times. Asked them to send a new one, they sent the same one again. I'll come back to this.

Took some pictures with the camera. Example.

Can't figure out how to get some music onto it. Plugged in the USB cable into my Mac but it doesn't mount as a hard drive. Don't tell me I need to use iTunes -- please!

Update: Quick podcast review, recorded on the DROID speaker phone using Cinch. A little baseball philosophy thrown in at no extra cost!

Update: How do I get music on this thing? Tried something dumb, after mounting it on my Mac desktop, I copied the contents of a Little Feat album into a folder I named Music. Let's see if the Music app on the Droid can find it. I launch the Music app and it says Sorry, your SD card is busy. Interesting! Let me try unmounting it. I had to click in the menubar to unmount it, and then boom (sorry Steve) the music app found my Little Feat songs. This is how it's supposed to work. Goodbye iTunes. Forever.

Update: It plays iPod-size movies, just watched a bit of fargo.m4v. Looks great.

Look, Ma, it's a motorcycle with four wheels. Not a bike but, um... a "quike," maybe? It's the 4RWF V8 from "Cosmos" Muscle Bikes. ("Cosmos?" Really?) Four wheels or no, they're at least going to have to hire a copy editor for their website before they'll persuade me to part with the nearly $100K it reportedly costs. [via Born Rich]

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Mark blogged earlier the very special benefit event for Machine Project taking place on the evening of Saturday, November 7 at Mister Jalopy's personal studio in LA this weekend -- and, well, dammit, I'm blogging about it again.

I stopped by the space a few days ago to see how preparations were going, and HOO BOY, if you can afford the fundraiser tickets (I know times are tough for many), they're really going to great effort to construct what is sure to be an amazing event. And, of course, all proceeds benefit one of the world's coolest independent tech-art institutions. If you love something like that, you have to feed it, and Mister Jalopy's going to feed it lasers and pizza.

For starters, Jalopy's "awe-inspiring Silverlake studio is almost never open to the public," as Mark said, but I saw the stuff they're constructing: laser mazes, fake museum ID creation stations, an industrial pizza oven, all kinds of crazy crafty Maker pranky goodness.

More about the event from Dinosaurs and Robots...

Proceeds from this once-a-year event will enable Machine Project to continue welcoming any and all to free Machine public events in 2010. Tickets start at $75 for members, or $100 for non-members, with a Benefactor level ticket available for $250, which includes entry to a special pre-event reception and more. 90% of the cost of all tickets is tax deductible.

Have you been curious about the Los Angeles heroes that call themselves Machine Project? With over 20 participating artists, technologists and musicians, the 2009 Benefit will pack a month's worth of events into a single intimate evening. What to expect? Opportunities to steal art from a laser-protected, action movie-style set, wager on microscopic slime mold races, try your hand at gold panning to prospect for real gold nuggets, stay late to huddle around the firepit to make 'smores, partake from the amply stocked wine and beer bar, have a wood-fired pizza from an on-site brick pizza oven, enjoy music from four different acts, replace your old Getty Museum fake ID, participate in head-to-head speed soldering contests and eat noodles supplied by Kwong Dynasty Noodle Cart.

Tickets still available online at Machine Project, or swing by in person at Machine Project or Coco's Variety at 2427 Riverside Drive, Los Angeles. Benefit is Saturday, November 7th, 2009, 9pm - Midnight.

Adobe has introduced Photoshop.com Mobile as an application for mobile phones running the Android operating system. It enables users to view, edit and apply effects to images. Once edited, images can be uploaded to the user's Photoshop.com account for sharing or back-up purposes. The application is available as a free download from the Android Market.

Greg George writes "Researchers at Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology have announced that they have found an enzyme that helps nerves to grow in areas damaged after trauma. In typical injuries, scar tissue forms around the damage point and the body removes the tissue so that new muscle and nerves can regrow in the damaged area. In spinal cord injuries, scar tissue forms and that is the end of the story. Special chemicals form that stop the body's cells from moving in and removing the scar tissue and then allowing the healing process to start. Studies have been done attempting to bypass the scar tissue, but none has been successful in large-scale repair of injured muscle and nerves in the spinal column. The researchers for this paper have found that sugar proteins near the damage point stop the healing and that an enzyme can be used to break down these proteins so that the body can then begin repairs. The enzyme, chondroitinase ABC (chABC), is sensitive to heat, and breaks down quickly in a human body. To stop that process they found that by replacing the ABC with another sugar called trehalose, they were able to stabilize the ABC, allowing it to break down scar tissue over a large area. The gel formed by these sugars is stable for up to six weeks in the bodies of test animals, allowing the research team to inject growth factors that increased the healing, to the point that the animals started to use their limbs again. The work is still in the beginning stages." Reuters reporting adds a few more details: "...many other approaches will be needed to repair spinal cord injuries in humans, including controlling inflammation, which can cause additional injury, stimulating nerve fiber growth, and getting nerves to reconnect and communicate with the brain."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A quick interview with Carsonified’s Keir Whitaker, on bulletproof design, CSS3 and a little leak on what Dribbble is.

Conrad2468 on Thingiverse printed this LED clip for his glasses. Great for reading, soldering, and face tracking (use an IR LED for that one).

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In the US, if you really want to "protect" your copyrighted works, you have to register the works. Unlike for a patent or a trademark, it's pretty much a rubberstamp process. Every so often the Copyright Office will reject a registration, but it's rare. It does still go through them all, though. Or at least it's supposed to. However, we recently wrote about the weird case of the site Bluebeat.com selling Beatles MP3s for $0.25. We noted that nowhere on the site did the company explain how it had the rights to do so, but in its response to the lawsuit filed by EMI, it explained its bizarre logic.

Basically, the company claims it somehow re-recorded the songs via a "psycho-acoustic simulation" (don't ask) and then added an image to the file, making it a totally new work (um... yeah). And then it registered the copyrights on those new recordings, claiming that the re-recording is a new work where Bluebeat.com actually owns the copyright. Its "proof" is that the Copyright Office okayed the registration -- suggesting that the rubber stamp at the Copyright Office is a bit too quick at times. A judge isn't buying it and has barred the sale of the MP3s for the time being (i.e., almost certainly forever). While it's amusing to see Bluebeat's tortured explanation, perhaps some of the blame needs to go to the Copyright Office for allowing these registrations in the first place. Of course, you have to wonder if this now also opens up Bluebeat to additional charges of false representation in registering the copyright...

In the meantime, some readers have noted that this is not the first time that the folks behind Bluebeat.com have had ridiculous interpretations of copyright law. Two and a half years ago, it sued Apple, Microsoft, RealNetworks and Adobe for not using the DRM created by Bluebeat's parent company, Media Rights Technologies. Basically, the company claimed that by not preventing the ability to rip files, these companies were violating the DMCA. Of course, that makes no sense.

Given that it's now twice that we're seeing totally foreign interpretations of basic copyright law, it almost makes you wonder if the company is doing this to make a point about the ridiculousness of copyright law, rather than for any legitimate reasons. Either that, or the company actually thinks that filing lawsuits as publicity stunts is smart. I would imagine that a judicial slapdown might correct the folks behind Bluebeat and MRT of that notion.

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blackest_k sends along a Wired piece on EMI's successful suit to get Beatles music off the Net. Here is the judge's ruling (PDF). "A federal judge on Thursday ordered a Santa Cruz company to immediately quit selling Beatles and other music on its online site, setting aside a preposterous argument that it had copyrights on songs via a process called 'psycho-acoustic simulation.' A Los Angeles federal judge set aside arguments from Hank Risan, owner of BlueBeat and other companies named as defendants in the lawsuit EMI filed on Tuesday. His novel defense to allegations he was unlawfully selling the entire stereo Beatles catalog without permission was that he — and not EMI or the Beatles' Apple Corp — owns these sound recordings, because he re-recorded new versions of the songs using what he termed 'psycho-acoustic simulation.' Risan faces perhaps millions of dollars in damages under the Copyright Act. And copyright attorneys said his defense was laughable and carries no weight."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

November 9 would have been Carl Sagan's 75th birthday. To celebrate the man, his work and the awesome wonderment of science, Broward College in Davie, Florida is hosting the first ever Carl Sagan Day tomorrow (Saturday the 7th). If you're in that area, they've got a whole day's worth of activities going on---from planetarium shows and stargazing, to a "Cosmos" marathon, to appearances by Bad Astronomy blogger Phil Plait and James "The Amazing" Randi (who was a personal friend of Sagan's).

The majority of us not conveniently located in southern Florida, however, will have to find other ways to celebrate. Perhaps you've already got a Beethoven's Birthday-style public march planned, but, if not, you can at least enjoy some fine video tributes. BoingBoing already linked to the soothing memorial techno remix of Sagan's "Cosmos" PBS show, so I'm going to go in a different direction and offer you one of his last interviews, from May of 1996, on Charlie Rose. Among other things, Sagan talks about his (then) new book (and one of my favorites), "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark". Enjoy.

Thanks to the Bad Astronomy blog for the holiday tip-off!

Tech support says 64% of the men and 24% of the women who call didn't read the manual before doing so. Caveat: tech support is actually a "gadget helpline" that costs $3 a month. [BBC]

Several readers sent in an update on DTN, the interplanetary Internet protocol that Vint Cerf has been working on for many years (and we have been discussing for nearly as long). The news now is that Cerf has added a DTN stack to the open source Android code, seeing uses in mobile applications for a protocol that does not assume a continuous connection.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Usually I write about ham radio. But looking at communication devices of the future from the past, I thought it would be fun to have a Star Trek: The Original Series Bluetooth communicator for a cellphone. I worked with Dave Clausen to hack one together from a toy Star Trek communicator, a Bluetooth module, and a microcontroller. Following are the directions and program to make your own. And of course a video to show how the Star Trek Bluetooth Communicator works.

And if you really want to geek it up, the Star Trek Bluetooth Communicator can also be used with the Yaesu VX-8R ham radio. It also makes an awesome gift. Read on for the full tutorial.

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In the latest sign of bizarre and ridiculous lawsuits brought about by the belief that every concept and idea must be owned and licensed, Richard alerts us to the news that the folks behind the infamous Riverdance show are being sued by the costume designer who created outfits for the show in the mid-1990s. While the original agreement had the show paying royalties to the clothing designer to the tune of 60 euros per performance, that deal ran out in 2001. Now, the designer, Jen Kelly complains that Riverdance continues to "use and modify his designs without licence or payment." Frankly, it seems pretty silly to think that a stage show should need to pay the clothing designer for every performance and that it would be some sort of violation of that designer's rights to "modify" the designs. Next, will designers start demanding that people pay a royalty fee every time they wear the clothes outside the home? After all, isn't that a "public performance"?

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Joe R Lansdale's comic book adaptation of Robert E "Conan" Howard's classic horror story Pigeons From Hell has everything going for it: a spooky original story to adapt, a masterful horror writer on the adaptation, and terrifying art and colors by Nathan Fox and Dave Stewart. Together, they are a potent mix of gore, suspense, folklore, and terror.

Howard's original story is a much-loved gothic bayou horror classic, about a haunted house where the blood of slaves and the cruelty of their masters wreak a curse on a huge, rotting mansion. Lansdale's update of the story -- the new protagonists are a pair of sisters descended from the slaves who inherited the house from their masters; they go to take possession with their friends in a kind of Scooby Doo pack -- only lightly changes the material, leaving the scare intact.

But best of all is Fox's art and Stewart's coloring, which are blood-soaked, entrail-laden, and painted in an eerie palette.

If you like a good scare -- and creepy, gothic art -- then this is your thing. Many thanks to Dark Horse for supplying a review copy.

Pigeons From Hell

CWmike writes "The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched an effort this week to better and more easily track for H1N1 and other seasonal influenza activity throughout the US. The CDC said it is now tracking data on 14 million patients from physician practices and hospitals stored on a database hosted by GE Healthcare. The data is submitted daily from physician's offices and hospitals that use GE's electronic medical record system. The data is then uploaded to GE Healthcare's Medical Quality Improvement Consortium , a database repository designed with HIPAA-compliance parameters of patient anonymity and best practices, where it can be the subject of medical data queries. The CDC can perform queries to look for flu-like symptoms being reported by physicians, and then disseminate the data for health care providers and local government officials throughout the country, who can alert businesses and others about flu outbreak hot spots. The CDC also hopes its analysis of the data helps it better understand the characteristics of H1N1 outbreaks and to determine who is most at risk for developing complications from the virus. Prior to implementing the new system, the CDC relied heavily on tracking insurance claims data, which could take days or weeks to make its way to the agency's medical staff for analysis. The medical data is normalized so that fir example reports of hypertension, HTN, and high blood pressure all mean the same thing when a researcher enters a query against the data."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A reader just sent me a link to servodatabase.com, which lists RC servo specifications and provides user reviews, a comparison engine, and various forms of sorting. Looks like a very good resource. [Thanks, Phil!]

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Though for die-hard RPG nuts it'll have been a red letter week with the release of Bioware's Dragon Age: Origins, it hasn't been enough to wean me off my daily regimen of pushing further into the Borderlands and compulsively playing through the two levels that make up the Left 4 Dead 2 demo (above, now fully released to the public) with each character, hoping for just one more scrap of rarely-triggered dialogue to more fully flesh out just who these characters are that I'll be spending most of the winter with. But it's without any facetiousness that I admit that there's one game release this week that's particularly pricked my ear:

Lego Rock Band [Harmonix/TT Games, 360/PS3/Wii/DS]

The Lego version of Harmonix's staple has taken its fair share of heat from purists for the unconventional pairing, but for a version of Rock Band targeted toward the youngest among us -- which is, it should be noted, LRB's central goal -- Lego seems just about the least offensive toy-aisle license for potential pairing, especially taken with the lightly chaotic and perfectly parodic tone TT Games has brought to its own Lego series to date (Star Wars, Batman, Indy Jones).

LRB caters to the youths with an added Super Easy difficulty and other low-failure-rate options, shortened versions of certain tracks to keep the attention deficit constantly hammering away without wading through intro/outros, and a selection of family friendly songs honestly no less recognizably Rock Band (including, even, the series' first Vampire Weekend), and includes the ability to export all the tracks back to Rock Band 2 (for an additional charge) if your plastic-rock goes only so far.

[And as a side note: on top of the console releases, I'm just as intrigued by (but have not had a chance to play) the DS version, which promises to bring Harmonix's classic multi-track single player experience established by its original PS2 games like Amplitude down to size, as it did with Rock Band Unplugged for the PSP, and did in lesser form with EA Mobile's iPhone version -- as seen in action here.]

But the real reason I haven't had as much time as usual to make my way further through the bigger names is that, if you hadn't heard the faint eruption in the distance, the Independent Games Festival has unleashed the record 300+ strong list of entrants in this year's competition, which means (being a judge) a thorough playthrough of as many as my machine can handle.

If you want a more compressed guide to start doing the same yourself, Tale of Tales has provided a YouTube/Vimeo playlist to see as many in action as are available on the video services, and UK outlet SavyGamer is laboriously compiling direct download links for all currently released games in one place here.

Interestingly, one game that'd caught my eye just a day or two before the list was announced is one that presumably came out of hiding just to make that list: Rocketbirds: Revolution by Ratloop, creators of last year's "draw your own level solution" game Mightier.

As you can see in the video above, the premise is quite easily summed as classic roto-scope-ish PC games like Out of This World, Blackthorne or Flashback meets Oddworld, done up gorgeously and playable online in Flash, with a wickedly darkly comic militaristic bent. Before you make your way through the rest, stop there first.

Hugh Pickens writes "Evidence that the smell of fear is real was uncovered by US scientists last year who studied the underarm secretions of 20 terrified novice skydivers and found that people appear to respond unconsciously to the sweat smell of a frightened person. Now the Telegraph reports that researchers hope a 'fear detector'' will make it possible to identify individuals at check points who are up to no good. ''The challenge lies in the characterization and identification of the specific chemical that gives away the signature of human fear, especially the fear in relation to criminal acts,' says Professor Tong Tun at City University London who leads the team developing security sensor systems that can detect the human fear pheromone. The project will look at potential obstacles to the device, such as the effects of perfume and the variances in pheromone production and if the initial 18-month feasibility study is successful, the first detectors could be developed in the next two to three years. ''I do not see any particular reason why similar sensor techniques cannot be expanded to identify human smells by race, age or gender to build a profile of a criminal during or after an incident,'' Tong added."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Learn how to make a cheap and effective fire starter made from an old t-shirt.
To download The Char Cloth video click here and subscribe in iTunes.
See Char Cloth in action with the Fire Piston from William Gurstelle.
For more info on what Swedish Fire Steel is, check out this article.

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Brooks writes "Speaking at a cable broadcaster's summit, Steve Burke, Comcast's COO, said: "An entire generation is growing up, if we don't figure out how to change that behavior so it respects copyright and subscription revenue on the part of distributors, we're going to wake up and see cord cutting." How's that for cart before the horse?

His ultimate goal -- to maintain or increase revenue for Comcast -- makes perfect sense, and is positively what a cable COO should be focused on. From there on out, though, he's off in the weeds. How about offering this new generation new and innovative services that are worth paying for? That's challenging, of course... but how challenging will it be to change the next generation's behavior "to respect subscription revenue." Yikes.

How many consumers, in any market, are focused on "respecting" vendors' revenue streams? How, exactly, does he propose to effect this sea change? And why not just develop products that consumers will willingly pay for, rather than trying to change consumer behavior in such a fundamental way?"

The quotes really are quite stunning. Burke basically seems to be saying the focus needs to be on figuring out ways to get consumers to change, rather than changing to match what customers want. A business model based on going against what consumers want doesn't seem likely to last that long.

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TechRev_AL writes "A team from the University of Washington has attached an RFID chip capable of sensing neural activity to a live moth, to pick up the spikes that occur as it beats its wings. Most neural implants are still relatively bulky, but the Washington researchers wanted to show the components in an RFID could be adapted for the same purpose. The NeuralWISP chip is a collection of low-power components such as a specialized signal amplifier, on a circuit board just over two centimeters long. The circuitry converts usable power from the reader — roughly 430 microwatts — to a voltage that can turn on a microcontroller. The sensor is also configured to 'wake up' only when a neuron fires. The ultimate goal is to create more compact, wirelessly-powered brain and nervous system implants for people."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

To make your pockets a little lighter this holiday season, we have put together a list of rebates and discounts available from leading digital camera and lens manufacturers. So, before you shell out money for your gifts make sure to go through the list of available promotions. We will update this article regularly over the holiday season.

Imagine a terminal program that accepted commands like:

twitter> follow davewiner

twitter> follow ev

twitter> unfollow sexygirl209

twitter> addtolist scoble halfmoonbay -u

The first few commands are obvious, the last would add scoble to a list called halfmoonbay and unfollow him.

I stumbled across this as I was thinking about how to implement follow and unfollow commands in listbrowser.org. Usually this would mean supporting OAuth, which is not a big deal, I already have the code, but it's a pain for users. Another site they have to trust. Even though OAuth is better than giving away my password, it's not much better.

Then I thought how nice it is for a developer to just be able to shoot the text of a tweet over at the status box on Twitter, where the user is already logged-in. But that just works for tweets. What about follow and unfollow, and list operations? And a myriad of other chores that now you can do either interactively or through the API.

Why not have something in the middle, more techy than the point and click interface, but easier than the API. We already have an idea how that works -- it's a command-line interface.

To be clear, there are already command-line interfaces for Twitter, but they run on the desktop. We need a CLI that runs as a web app from a public server. It could come from Twitter, Inc, or could be done by a developer. If there's more than one, it would be nice if they used the same syntax.

If you're already working on this, post a note in the comments or send me an email at dave dot winer at gmail dot com.

Lincoln Braun writes "I play an online web game. BATracer which is designed to simulate a number of racing series including Formula 1, LeMans, A1 Grand Prix, Ferrari Challenge, and more. This week, however, the owner of the site received a legal notice from Ferrari, ordering a cease & desist from using Ferrari cars. BATracer has somewhere between 2000 and 3000 active users, most of whom arrived at the site because of Formula 1. The letter by Ferrari has really annoyed many of the most passionate fans and they have lost a lot of goodwill."

It looks like BATracer shut down for a bit before opening up again without Ferraris. Now, Ferrari has a big licensing business, but at some point you have to wonder if legal actions like this make any sense or if there's a reasonable fair use claim. In the case of team sports simulations, courts have ruled that name and stats are facts -- and not covered by intellectual property, so couldn't you say the same thing for car names and specifications? And while I could potentially see a trademark issue, it's not as if BATracer is actually "competing" in the same space as Ferrari. I can already hear the excuses about how Ferrari needs to keep its brand special and being seen in such a game might cheapen it -- but that's not the purpose of intellectual property law. Either way, it seems pretty dumb to piss off so many people even if many of them probably can't afford a Ferrari in real life (probably what the company is betting on). There may be some who can (or who will be able to someday), and pushing them away for no good reason can't help matters.

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Having just arrived home from a quick trip to the hardware store, I was pleasantly surprised to see a large, unmarked, cardboard box sitting on my front steps. This isn't an uncommon event, since I am constantly checking out cool products and projects for the Maker Shed, however this box was a bit larger than normal.

Oh wow, it's the CupCake CNC kit from MakerBot Industries! I'd ordered it weeks earlier and had completely forgotten about it. (The truth is out: I have an atrocious memory, sad but true.)

And so the adventure begins! I'm going to document my "out of box experience" with a MakerBot. How many posts will the series be? I'm not sure since I've never built one. How often will I post about the build? Again, not sure, but I'll try to do at least one a week, maybe more, it all depends on how much free time I have between all my other maker-ly projects.

A little background: My CNC experiences

I've been tinkering with CNC for about 10 years, and consider myself an enthusiast, not an expert. I do own a few CNC mills, routers, and lathes. I have retrofitted old mills, and even build one from scratch. Pictured above is my mobile CNC machine, dubbed the "MobileC." I stuffed all the components into a mobile tool cart so I could bring it to hackerspaces, workshops, and events, all in the hopes of helping out fellow makers.

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From Photobucket user 8jarjar8, this video of a Chinese-lion-dragon style AT-AT costume with lighted cheek-lasers. Don't really know anything about the makers/wearers. Anybody with info, please feel free to comment. [via Geekologie]

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Jeff sez, "'Guerrilla archivist' Rick Prelinger is once again joining forces with the Long Now Foundation for the 4th in his series of screenings titled, 'Lost Landscapes of San Francisco.' In the first talk of this series, Rick unveiled a jaw-dropping, now-famous restoration of a first-person perspective streetcar ride up Market Street, circa 1905."

As in past years, Lost Landscapes 4 will be an eclectic montage of rediscovered and rarely-seen film clips showing life, landscapes, labor and leisure in a vanished San Francisco as captured by amateurs, newsreel cameramen and industrial filmmakers.

This year's Lost Landscapes will include much new and unseen material from Prelinger Archives and other collections, including newly discovered films shot by longtime San Francisco residents. Unlike most film screenings, Lost Landscapes relies on audience members for the soundtrack -- we encourage viewers to interact with the film, shout out questions and identify mystery scenes.

Rick Prelinger's Lost Landscapes of San Francisco 4 « Spots Unknown San Francisco (Thanks, Jeff!)

The Succeedblog is a lovely, optimistic, "wonderful things" approach to the web -- rather than amusing its readers with pictures of bad things, captioned with "FAIL," it focuses on pictures of great things, captioned with "SUCCEED". Lovely.

Succeedblog (via Make)

The Brainwave Sofa is a sofa modelled on your very own brainwaves. Stop thinking spiky thoughts. Try to think, you know, cushy. Soft. Inviting. That's it. Right there. Hold it now. Print!

Dutch industrial designer Lucas Maassen, co-designer of the Brainwave Sofa with Belgian designer Dries Verbruggen (of Unfold), had his brain activity measured at the EPI (Eindhoven Psychology Institute) while he closed his eyes for 3 seconds. The moment a person closes his eyes, during this measurement, the Alpha-activity becomes 8 to 12 Hertz larger. This Alpha-activity prepares the brain for multiplication of the visual stimuli when the eyes are opened again. Such a measurement creates a 3D Landscape of (brain)waves, which looks different with every measurement. This three dimensional form, in other words is a unique display.

Brainwave sofa by Unfold & Lucas Maassen (via Medgadget)

Philip K Dickhead writes "Is Douglas Adams scripting the saga of sorrows facing the LHC? These time-traveling Higgs-Boson particles certainly exhibit the sign of his absurd sense of humor! Perhaps it is the Universe itself, conspiring against the revelations intimated by the operation of CERN's Large Hadron Collider? This time, it is not falling cranes, cracked magnets, liquid helium leaks or even links to Al Qaeda, that have halted man's efforts to understand the meaning of life, the universe and everything. It now appears that the collider is hindered from an initial firing by a baguette, dropped by a passing bird: 'The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Transgender papaya: scientists change the sex of a tropical fruit to help farmers. With papaya, there are three options: male, female, "intersexed." The latter taste best, but don't breed so well. (via oxbloodruffin)

"Terror in Mumbai," an HBO film premiering Nov. 19, explores the planning of the Mumbai terror attacks with extensive cellphone audio of terrorists coordinating attacks and preparing to die. (Thanks, Susannah Breslin)

Techdirt reader Kathy writes in to let us know about the 200 different flavors of Kit Kat candy bars in Japan. Public Radio International describes how Nestle has developed an interesting sales strategy in Japan where the competition among retailers is apparently so great that stores benefit from constantly updating their shelves with new products. In such a marketplace, Nestle has adopted numerous varieties of its Kit Kat candy bars that can only be purchased in certain locations or at specific times of the year. So instead of trying to peddle the same merchandise to everyone, Nestle has effectively given consumers a reason to buy (RtB) -- by making limited edition flavors and targeting the local tastes and customs in Japan. Nestle caters to Japan's omiage gift-giving culture (where friends are expected to bring back unique trinkets when they travel) with regional Kit Kats. So for example, a potato-flavored version is only sold in the northern part of Japan known for its potatoes, so northerners (or traveling southerners) can give out unique treats that aren't available nationwide. And all over Japan, the candy bars have also been packaged with mailing labels -- so that the candy can be sent as "good luck" charms. Due to the ingenious connection to the Japanese words Kitto Katsu which mean "you will surely win", the "good luck" symbol for Kit Kats in Japan was also successfully manufactured and marketed and as a result, Kit Kats have been popular with exam-taking students who seem to want good luck, however they can get it.

Clearly, Nestle must be admired for its efforts to connect with candy fans. And it's particularly brilliant to see them bundle candy bars as good luck charms -- a story that adds intangible value to the otherwise ordinary snacks. Perhaps it's only a matter of time before some artists write some flavor-inspired songs/plays/films and try to sell loooots of Kit Kats, too.

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CWmike writes "Ever wonder exactly what Google knows about you? Google took a step today to answer that question with the unveiling of Google Dashboard, which is designed to let users see and control the copious amounts of data that Google has stored in its servers about them. 'Over the past 11 years, Google has focused on building innovative products for our users. Today, with hundreds of millions of people using those products around the world, we are very aware of the trust that you have placed in us, and our responsibility to protect your privacy and data,' Google said in a blog post today. 'In an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control over their own data, we've built the Google Dashboard.' Dashboard is set up so that users can control the personal settings in each Google product that they use. Google said the tool supports more than 20 products, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts and Google Latitude. Consumer Watchdog said in a statement today that it applauds Google for giving users a single place to go to manage their data. But at the same tine, the group also came down hard on Google, contending that it needs to give users a vehicle for stopping the company from collecting any personal data."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lord Mandelson, the UK Business Secretary who has been the leading force behind putting in place the entertainment industry's desired plan to require ISPs to kick accused file sharers off the internet under a "three strikes" plan, apparently is also saying that young people need better technology skills. Along with that, he's supporting a plan to get universities to do more technical skills training. Now, I'm all for more tech skills training in universities, but wouldn't it be nice if Mandelson started by getting some tech skills training himself -- including a basic understanding of why an IP address is not an accurate indicator of who is doing something online? Or, perhaps, an understanding of how BitTorrent actually works and a brief primer on encryption technologies....

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"FAIL" is a shortcut for thinking, not very encouraging and overused, "SUCCESS" is where it's at - many of the "success" posts found on this new site are projects from MAKE!

SUCCEED Blog: "A collection of the world's most epic, awesome, mind blowing Succeeds"

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Iphone game developer Storm8 exploited an "electronic backdoor" to learn the phone numbers of players, according to a class action lawsuit filed in San Francisco. Filed on behalf of Lynnwood, WA resident Michael Turner, the suit claims that the practice is not authorized by Apple and involves the execution of "malicious software code."

"Storm8 has written the software for all its games in such a way that it automatically accesses, collects, and transmits the wireless telephone number of each iPhone user who downloads any Storm8 game," the suit alleges. " ... Storm8, though, has no reason whatsoever to access the wireless phone numbers of the iPhones on which its games are installed."

Storm8 makes popular multiplayer games such as iMobsters and Vampires Live, available in both free and paid versions for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Its titles allow players to spend money in-game to acquire better weapons and other competitive advantages.

The number farming was not disclosed to players until an acknowledgement in August that described it as a "bug." The lawsuit claims that only "very specific and specialized software code" could do so, however, and seeks injunctive relief and damages.

Update: Storm8 hasn't returned inquiries.

Text of the lawsuit (PDF)

EFF points us to yet another massively expensive computer system that can't do some rather basic things. Apparently the state of Texas has pulled its election systems from an $863 million computer system project it had with IBM, after failures and glitches in the system took down the voter system and lost data, which was unrecoverable. State officials realized that if this had happened during an actual election, the state wouldn't have been able to verify new voters, in violation of federal law. So, it dumped IBM and set up its own system that (gasp) actually has multiple backups of the data. I guess things like redundant backups aren't included in the $863 million package.

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Riskable writes "Remember that $200,000 Contest For a Better Open-WRT Wireless Router GUI? Today Ubiquiti posted the winning entries to their support wiki. The grand prize was a tie between PyCI (written by yours truly) and NETSHe with OpenNET as the runner up. Source code and firmware images for each entry are available for download on their respective wiki pages. I'll be setting up a project page for PyCI (and l2sh) soon to make it a participatory open source product. Even if you don't have a RouterStation, or don't care about OpenWRT, there are numerous Python modules and tools inside of PyCI that could prove useful to other open source projects (e.g. iptables.py can read/interpret over 400 permutations of the iptables command). I'll also be checking the comments if anyone has any questions for me about PyCI or the contest in general. BTW: I'd like to thank all the commenters in the original article that insinuated that the technical requirements were impossible and/or that making a GUI to configure such complex things is a waste of time. I read every one and I wouldn't have made it such an obsession otherwise!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For folks interested in the intersection of arts and science, the PBS series Independent Lens is presenting a fascinating in-depth look into origami titled Between the Folds. The film documents "a determined group of theoretical scientists and fine artists who have abandoned their careers and scoffed at their graduate degrees to forge new lives as modern-day paper folders."

Featured in the film are MIT's youngest-ever tenured professor Dr. Erik Demaine; mathematician, sculptor, puzzle maker, and self-taught computer scientist Marty Demaine; master free-style folder Vincent Floderer; pioneering Israeli educator Miri Golan; mathematics professor Dr. Tom Hull; trained artist and instructor Paul Jackson; one of the most technically accomplished folders in the world, Eric Joisel; one of only a few handmade origami papermakers in the world, Michael LaFosse; origami "hyper-realist" and physicist Dr. Robert J. Lang (who was profiled in CRAFT Volume 05); material artist with a masterful understanding of patterns and geometry, Chris K. Palmer; and the father of modern origami, Akira Yoshizawa.

Screenings are part of the Independent Television Service's (ITVS) Community Cinema series, which are free, followed by discussion panels and access to resources.

Between the Folds will be showing in the Bay Area in Oakland on Tuesday, November 17 at 6:00 p.m. at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center and in San Francisco on Wednesday, November 18 at 5:45 p.m. at the San Francisco Main Library. For a list of screenings taking place across the country, check out the film site.

Here are a couple of interesting excerpts from the documentary to get a flavor for it. The following clip features Paul Jackson, an origami artists and art teacher living in Tel Aviv, Israel, speaking of the "one fold":

And this clip shows Michael LaFosse, a master artisan who not only makes origami, but is one of the only handmade origami paper makers in the world, providing a window into his workshop and processes:

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While I guess there are still some people who think that sitting around on your computer isn't "interacting" with other people, I would have thought that the myth that computer users are loners died off a long time ago. However, apparently we still need studies to debunk that. The latest, from Annenberg and Pew found that people who use social networks have a larger social circle than those who don't. And, no, the study didn't just count how many friends you have on Facebook, but found out from people the number of people with whom they felt comfortable talking over important issues. That number was noticeably higher for those who used modern technology more frequently. So again, even though I had thought the stereotype died off ages ago, here's a bit more evidence that being an internet geek doesn't mean you're a loner.

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We make technology, but our technology also makes us. At the online science/culture journal Edge, BB pal John Brockman went deep -- very deep -- into this concept. Frank Schirrmacher is co-publisher of the national German newspaper FAZ and a very, very big thinker. Schirrmacher has raised public awareness and discussion about some of the most controversial topics in science research today, from genetic engineering to the aging population to the impacts of neuroscience. At Edge, Schirrmacher riffs on the notion of the "informavore," an organism that devours information like it's food. After posting Schirrmacher's thoughts, Brockman invited other bright folks to respond, including the likes of George Dyson, Steven Pinker, John Perry Barlow, Doug Rushkoff, and Nick Bilton. Here's a taste of Schirrmacher, from "The Age of the Infomavore":

We are apparently now in a situation where modern technology is changing the way people behave, people talk, people react, people think, and people remember. And you encounter this not only in a theoretical way, but when you meet people, when suddenly people start forgetting things, when suddenly people depend on their gadgets, and other stuff, to remember certain things. This is the beginning, its just an experience. But if you think about it and you think about your own behavior, you suddenly realize that something fundamental is going on. There is one comment on Edge which I love, which is in Daniel Dennett's response to the 2007 annual question, in which he said that we have a population explosion of ideas, but not enough brains to cover them.

As we know, information is fed by attention, so we have not enough attention, not enough food for all this information. And, as we know -- this is the old Darwinian thought, the moment when Darwin started reading Malthus -- when you have a conflict between a population explosion and not enough food, then Darwinian selection starts. And Darwinian systems start to change situations. And so what interests me is that we are, because we have the Internet, now entering a phase where Darwinian structures, where Darwinian dynamics, Darwinian selection, apparently attacks ideas themselves: what to remember, what not to remember, which idea is stronger, which idea is weaker...

It's the question: what is important, what is not important, what is important to know? Is this information important? Can we still decide what is important? And it starts with this absolutely normal, everyday news. But now you encounter, at least in Europe, a lot of people who think, what in my life is important, what isn't important, what is the information of my life. And some of them say, well, it's in Facebook. And others say, well, it's on my blog. And, apparently, for many people it's very hard to say it's somewhere in my life, in my lived life.

The Age of the Informavore