jimicus writes "I'd like a multiroom audio system but I'm thoroughly confused by the options available — and the difference in prices is huge. For instance, Philips have a wireless system which starts at around £280 — and Russound have a product which comes in around £1,000. I've already got all my music as MP3s and it lives on a NAS box — I don't really want to repeat that process. I also have a perfectly capable amp and speakers in my living room, so I don't really need anything else there. Whatever I go for has to pass the wife test — so something which requires a separate amp, speakers and PC in each room and requires a keyboard to control is right out. I don't mind spending a little money but I don't really want to find that every little extra thing adds up to £thousands. Has anyone else dealt with a similar problem? How did you solve it?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that Professor Carol Tilley, a professor of library and information science at the University of Illinois, says that comics are just as sophisticated as other forms of reading, children benefit from reading them at least as much as they do from reading other kinds of books, and that there is evidence that comics increase children's vocabulary and instill a love of reading. 'A lot of the criticism of comics and comic books come from people who think that kids are just looking at the pictures and not putting them together with the words,' says Tilley. 'But you could easily make some of the same criticisms of picture books – that kids are just looking at pictures, and not at the words.' Tilley says that some of the condescension toward comics as a medium may come from the connotations that the name itself evokes but that the distinct comic book aesthetic — frames, thought and speech bubbles, motion lines, to name a few — has been co-opted by children's books, creating a hybrid format."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One problem with making lots of neat projects is that you need a place to display them. And, where could be better than on a table that you built yourself? A nice place to start might be this tutorial on building a folding table, by the folks at HandymanWire. I like their design because it can be made from a single piece of wood, and because it can be folded for storage or easy transportation. [via curbly]

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postfail writes 'lwn.net coverage of the 2009 Linux Kernel Summit includes a recap of a presentation by Google engineers on how they use Linux. According to the article, a team of 30 Google engineers is rebasing to the mainline kernel every 17 months, presently carrying 1208 patches to 2.6.26 and inserting almost 300,000 lines of code; roughly 25% of those patches are backports of newer features.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CowboyRobot writes "Paul Vixie (AboveNet, ARIN, ISC, MAPS, PAIX) has a fresh rant titled What DNS Is Not about the abuses of the Domain Name Server system. 'What DNS is not is a mapping service or a mechanism for delivering policy-based information. DNS was designed to express facts, not policies. Because it works so well and is ubiquitous, however, it's all too common for entrepreneurs to see it as a greenfield opportunity ... a few years ago VeriSign, which operates the .COM domain under contract to ICANN, added a "wild card" to the top of the .COM zone (*.COM) so that its authoritative name servers would no longer generate NXDOMAIN responses. Instead they generated responses containing the address of SiteFinder's Web site — an advertising server.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes "Science Daily reports findings from a new study which suggest that infants begin picking up elements of what will be their first language in the womb, long before their first babble or coo, and are able to memorize sounds from the external world by the last trimester of pregnancy, with a particular sensitivity to melody contour in both music and language. Newborns prefer their mother's voice over other voices and perceive the emotional content of messages conveyed via intonation contours in maternal speech (a.k.a. 'motherese'). 'The dramatic finding of this study is that not only are human neonates capable of producing different cry melodies, but they prefer to produce those melody patterns that are typical for the ambient language they have heard during their fetal life, within the last trimester of gestation,' said Kathleen Wermke of the University of Würzburg in Germany. Wermke's team recorded and analyzed the cries of 60 healthy newborns, 30 born into French-speaking families and 30 born into German-speaking families, when they were three to five days old. The recordings of 2,500 cries as mothers changed babies' diapers, readied babies for feeding or otherwise interacted with the youngsters show an extremely early impact of native language, with analysis revealing clear differences in the shape of the newborns' cry melodies, based on their mother tongue."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I have at least a couple of new things this weekend.

The first is that FlickrFan, the Feed Reader for Pictures, has merged into River2. You can now use River2 the same way people were using FlickrFan, to subscribe to photo feeds from any source, including the AP and AFP feeds, and feeds from Flickr itself.

I've explained the transition on the FlickrFan home page.

An anonymous reader writes "A visually impaired gamer has sued Sony because game products allegedly violate the Americans With Disabilities Act. 'According to the suit, Sony ignored repeated requests through postal mail and e-mail to come up with reasonable modifications to its games to make them more accessible.' This suit seems to be a combination of National Federation of the Blind v. Target, which complained of inaccessibility to the visually disabled (which settled for $6 million) and Martin v. PGA Tour, Inc., where the US Supreme Court ruled a disabled golfer was entitled to a golf cart where one was not already allowed as a reasonable accommodation. If the plaintiff wins, Sony will have to make 'reasonable accommodations' which are not an 'undue financial burden.' In my humble opinion, providing access for the disabled is not only the right thing to do but it will generate more profit for Sony."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Goatbert writes "Rafael Rivera over at WithinWindows.com has found evidence that Microsoft has potentially stolen code from an open source/GPL'd project (ImageMaster) for a utility made available on the Microsoft Store to allow download customers to copy the Windows 7 setup files to a DVD or USB Flash Drive. If Rivera's evidence holds up, this could be some serious egg in the face for Microsoft at a time when they're getting mostly good press from the tech media."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A few more products were added to the Maker Shed lineup this week. We finally have more Danger Shields back in stock, along with a bunch of other new products. Earlier in the week, we posted another 45 second in the Maker Shed video, this time it was the Gakken Gennai Hiraga's Spark Generator. Last but not least, don't forget about our Chumby Guts, get 'em while you can!

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I'm in the market for a new MP3 player -- my second-gen iPod Nano is finally dead, and I don't want to buy another iPod, or any other player with DRM built in. I figure that any company that wants to devote its engineers to figuring out how to frustrate my desires doesn't really want my business.

Who'd got a suggestion? I'm looking for something:

• * small (Nano-sized or smaller),

• * low-capacity (8GB is fine, all I use it for is podcasts),

• * chargeable and connectable with a standard USB cable,

• * reasonably rugged,

• * with an LCD,

• * capable of marking some files as podcasts or audiobooks and remembering where you stopped playing them, and,

• * most importantly, I'm looking for something that can be connected to a set of lanyard headphones like these

I don't care if it has WiFi or Bluetooth, or if it plays games, or if it has a "store" on the net that lets me get music for it directly. I just want a chunk of solid-state storage with a headphone jack and a decent menuing system and headphones I can wear around my neck so that they don't get tangled in things.

Suggestions? Feed the comments, below (don't send email, I'm taking a break from it for the weekend).

alphadogg writes "Cisco has finally publicly acknowledged it won't add support for new third-party devices to its security information and event monitoring appliance, ending months of speculation about the future of its Monitoring, Analysis and Response System. Some claim it's the beginning of the end for MARS as a multi-vendor SIEM device. 'MARS customers can expect non-Cisco network device data and signature updates to continue for currently supported third-party systems, but no new third-party devices will be added,' Cisco declared in a statement, noting that 'Cisco MARS continues to focus on supporting Cisco devices for threat identification and mitigation.' Cisco's SIEM competitors this week have eagerly grabbed at the topic of Cisco MARS freezing third-party support because of a Gartner research memo published Oct. 29 in which analyst Mark Nicolett stated, 'Cisco has quietly begun informing its customers of a decision to freeze support for most non-Cisco event sources with its [MARS].'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Master haunt modeller Ray Keim sez, "After a little bit of experimentation and a lot of patience, I figured out how to carve Putka Pods [ed: small, pumpkin-like dried seeds] into extremely tiny jack-o-lanterns!"

Putka Pod Possibilities! (Thanks, Ray!)

And Now, Some Ripped-From-the-Headlines Context.....

First, why a beating heart? Traditionally, if you had a clogged artery on your heart and doctors wanted to sew in some "bypass" arteries to get around the sluggish ones, the surgeon would shut your heart down, using a heart and lung machine to pump your blood instead. Less than a decade ago, though, doctors started collecting evidence suggesting that being on the pump could, occasionally, lead to strokes, memory loss and personality issues. Off-pump, beating-heart, bypass surgery became an alternative.

I'd had this video planned for the last couple of weeks. But, on Thursday, a big study came out that suggests off-pump isn't as great as everyone was hoping it would be--nor was on-pump as bad as everyone was worried about. The New York Times explains it thusly:

In the study, published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, 2,203 patients were randomly assigned to have their bypass surgery on pump or off. Because the study was sponsored by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the patients were mostly men. A year later, those who had had off-pump surgery had poorer outcomes. Fewer bypasses stayed open and patients were more likely to have needed a repeat operation or to have had a heart attack or to have died. They were no less likely to have had strokes or difficulty thinking.

Older 'Pump' Heart Bypass is Best, A Study Finds, from the New York Times

Thumbnail image courtesy Flickr user Gustty, via CC

fulldecent writes "The New Hampshire Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit that calls into question the legal protections available to independent Web sites that cover news. The case involves mortgage lender Implode-Explode, a Las Vegas-based site launched in 2007 that publishes stories about the meltdown of the mortgage industry. Associate Justice Carol Ann Conboy pressed the point with [defense lawyer Jeremy Eggleton], questioning, 'Can anyone who posts a blog be considered a reporter,' for the purposes of claiming protection of anonymous sources? Eggleton answered yes, within limits: 'The test is whether the person has an intention to gather, analyze and disseminate.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Christian sez, "Just now it has been announced in the press by the official Danish Anti-Piracy agency, Antipiratgruppen, that they are throwing in the towel and will seize their operations completely; to find and prosecute music copyright offenders. Here is a translation of the first published article in today's Danish press."

"We have to, because it is has been announced by the state court, that it takes very strong and concrete evidence to have these people prosecuted. We have simply not been able to establish the necessary evidence..."

An overview of Danish trials shows an extremely small possibility of getting sentenced - unless the the accused confesses. Four principal state court trials last year lead to three acquittals and only a single sentence for illegal file sharing. And this sentence only came into place because

"Out of the four cases we can establish, that the courts do not sentence owners of Internet connections simply because of technical identification of IP-adresses and technical recognition of files," they say.

Danish anti-piracy agency throw in the towel (Thanks, Christian!)

Yesterday afternoon I arrived home to see a box on the doorstep. The return address was from the Maker Shed. That could only mean one thing: The Chumby has landed!

My daughter had to draw first blood on the package. We cracked the box and checked out the stuff inside. After going to the hypnotist show to benefit the school drama department and doing strange things on stage, I felt refreshed and motivated to assemble and play with Chumby Guts until long past my bedtime.

I didn't take any photos, in large part because of the very helpful images already taken and posted to the Make Flickr Pool.

Build instructions are on one double sided sheet of paper. I missed it the first few times I looked through the box because I thought I would find a booklet. There is a link to the instructions pdf on the Chumby Guts page in the Maker Shed. The directions are pretty good, but leave a bit to be desired. I found the photos by Make Flickr Pool members MTBFO and ewee to be essential. Early in the build, I was wondering which of two sets of small screws to use, and found that the silver ones were likely the ones by checking a photo. I also found the notes on many of ewee's pictures to be really useful.

So now there is a new tooltoy in the arsenal. This should be fun, and already the big question is "How do you case this thing?" Kent Barnes has extended the chumbillical cord that connects the mother and daughter boards and seems ready to move things around. John Park has a nifty laser cut case. The box that it came in is sized about right for a first enclosure. The next case will probably be a cigar box, which is very alluring lately. You can clothe your naked Chumby Guts by following these instructions.

As soon as it was plugged in, the disembodied Chumby woke up, started talking and showed a tour of the basic functions. Within a few minutes, it had upgraded the firmware and brought me to the website to register it. Finding the household wireless was a snap. Over on the Chumby wiki, you can find resources on hardware, software, and more.

In all, this has already been a fun project with few pitfalls. The next steps of customizing the case and configuring the software are exciting prospects at this point. Now that she's awake, my daughter is curious about how each of the widgets work. This will be a fun thing to have.

Have you got a some Chumby Guts waiting to be animated? If you've already built yours, please weigh in with your tips and tricks by adding a comment or two. If you have a glamour shot to share or process set of pics, post them over to the Make Flickr pool.

In the Maker Shed:

Chumby Guts

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AMESN writes "The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, launched last year, detects gamma rays from light years away, but recently it detected gamma rays from lightning on Earth. And the energy of the gamma rays is specific to the decay of positrons, which are the antimatter flavor of electrons. Finding antimatter in lightning surprised researchers and suggests the electric field of the lightning somehow got reversed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brainwave sofa by Unfold & Lucas Maassen... modeled on your brainwaves! via BB.

The design of the Brainwave Sofa is driven by a brain scan. Brain wave activities are being recorded by an electroencephalograph by placing electrodes on the bare skin on the head. Via BioExplorer, a computer program that records biophysical data, processes and visualises it, a three dimensional waved landscape is generated. The x-axis shows the brain wave activities in hertz. The Y-axis shows the amount of activity in percentage. The Z-axis is the time expressed in milliseconds.

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TechnologyResource writes "More than two years ago in California, a police officer wrote Shaun Malone a ticket for going 62mph in a 45-mph zone. Malone was ordered to pay a $190 fine, but his parents appealed the decision, saying data from a GPS tracking system they installed in his car to monitor his driving proved he was not speeding. What ensued was the longest court battle over a speeding ticket in Sonoma county history. The case also represented the first time anyone locally had tried to beat a ticket using GPS. The teen's GPS pegged the car at 45 mph in virtually the same location. At issue was the distance from the stoplight — site of the first GPS 'ping' that showed Malone stopped — to the second ping 30 seconds later, when he was going 45 mph. Last week, Commissioner Carla Bonilla ruled the GPS data confirmed the prosecution's contention that Malone had to have exceeded the speed limit and would have to pay the $190 fine. 'This case ensures that other law enforcement agencies throughout the state aren't going to have to fight a case like this where GPS is used to cast doubt on radar,' said Sgt. Ken Savano, who oversees the traffic division. However, Commissioner Bonilla noted the accuracy of the GPS system was not challenged by either side in the dispute, but rather they had different interpretations of the data. Bonilla ruled the GPS data confirmed the prosecution's contention that Malone had to have exceeded the speed limit."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A British corporate law firm has created a new unit that will help easily offended corporate giants track down and sue anonymous Internet forum posters. They will also target whistle-blowers. They specialize in figuring out how to get ISPs to turn over their subscribers' personal information.

A spokeswoman for Wragge said: "Courts can compel Internet Service Providers or telephone service providers to make information available regarding registered names, email addresses and other key account holder information.

One growth area is identifying individuals involved in leaking confidential information, such as client or financial details, to competitor companies. With the help of employment law specialists, the team can assist both in finding the source of such leaks and advising on any subsequent employment aspects."

Birmingham Wragge team to focus on online comment defamation (via Futurismic)

Skeptics who believe that a university is actually a diploma mill often prove their point by enrolling their cats in the university's program and seeing whether the cat can get a degree. Some enterprising Wikipedians have assembled a list of several such cats.

Colby Nolan is a housecat who was awarded an MBA degree in 2004 by Trinity Southern University, a Dallas, Texas-based diploma mill, sparking a fraud lawsuit by the Pennsylvania attorney general's office.[1]...

Ben Goldacre, a UK-based science journalist, obtained a diploma in nutrition from the American Association of Nutritional Consultants for his dead cat, Henrietta, while investigating allegations about fake qualifications.[5]

List of cats with fraudulent diplomas (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

(Image: Count the cats!, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike photo from Eva 101's Flickr stream)

If you're a self-identified vampire, "otherkin" or "energy worker," there's a Meetup for you in the Bay Area.

The Vampirism, Energy-work and Otherkin Society (VEOS) is a loosely-organized San Francisco based group. This group is open those identifying as vampire (sang or psy), donor, otherkin, and to those who wish to learn more about such topics. Other energy-workers are also welcome, so long as you have no problem with the vampiric side of energy work.

This group is NOT open to role-players, recruiters of any type, or those seeking to promote any form of religion (discussion about religion is OK, preaching is not).

You know, I bet it's actually a pretty nice night out. As one member says, "we are all nice people and we have a good time when we get together."

Welcome to Bay VEOS (via JWZ)

We'll never know what was originally intended for this Techdirt tee, but we can see the aftermath of the takedown notice it attracted!

DMCA Takedown T-shirt (Thanks, Dennis!)

chill writes "Skype's co-founders, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, have agreed to transfer ownership of the remaining Skype technology that eBay didn't own, paving the way for eBay to complete its sale of a majority stake in Skype to an investor consortium. In exchange, Friis and Zennstrom will join the investor consortium and obtain a 14 percent stake in Skype. The other consortium partners, led by Silver Lake, will own a 56 percent stake in Skype, and eBay will hold on to 30 percent, eBay said Friday."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

My latest Locus column, "Teen Sex," explains why I think young adult literature should have sex -- and other "mature" topics -- in it.

There's really only one question: "Why have your characters done something that is likely to upset their parents, and why don't you punish them for doing this?"

Now, the answer.

First, because teenagers have sex and drink beer, and most of the time the worst thing that results from this is a few days of social awkwardness and a hangover, respectively. When I was a teenager, I drank sometimes. I had sex sometimes. I disobeyed authority figures sometimes.

Mostly, it was OK. Sometimes it was bad. Sometimes it was wonderful. Once or twice, it was terrible. And it was thus for everyone I knew. Teenagers take risks, even stupid risks, at times. But the chance on any given night that sneaking a beer will destroy your life is damned slim. Art isn't exactly like life, and science fiction asks the reader to accept the impossible, but unless your book is about a universe in which disapproving parents have cooked the physics so that every act of disobedience leads swiftly to destruction, it won't be very credible. The pathos that parents would like to see here become bathos: mawkish and trivial, heavy-handed, and preachy.

Cory Doctorow: Teen Sex

C4st13v4n14 writes "In a sudden outbreak of uncommon sense yesterday, a Norwegian District Court handed down the decision that Telenor, Norway's largest ISP, will not have to block access to The Pirate Bay. Telenor was sued earlier this year by the IFPI after being threatened and not backing down. '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.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A demo on how to create an 11-piece MIDI drum kit using Rock Band and Guitar Hero drum sets together. It includes velocity-sensitive triggers and a high-hat open/close pedal.

Create a full MIDI Drumset with Guitar Hero and Rock Band Drums

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This "collectible" and curious coaster set from Wendy's is up for auction on eBay. The starting bid is $9.99. According the listing, "All pieces are in EXCELLENT condition except the corner of the cheese has a small chip but still very usable."
"Collectible Wendy’s Restaurant Hamburger Coaster Set" (Thanks, Michael-Anne Rauback!)

BB pal Tim Biskup has a show of paintings and sculptures opening at the Barracuda Shop in Los Angeles next Friday evening, November 13. The show, titled "I Hate Everyone But You," will also feature prints by designer Matt Goldman and runs until December 3. Dig Biskup's psychedelic Vader above? Check out his take on Astroboy after the jump.

Gorgeous! ... and likely a future ad campaign for Staples or OfficeMax...

Steven Nicholson is a 2yr student at Plymouth university in the United Kingdom studying Graphic communications with typography. And apparently he is a genius with a hole punch? Check out this self portrait using 10 different sized single hole punches on a a1 piece of paper that he just sent over.

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Michael Scott alerts us to a recent paper by professor and copyright expert Jessica Litman about "Real Copyright Reform." While there's been some chatter here and there about doing real copyright reform, there seems to be no real effort behind it. That's for a few reasons, including the fact that many people still remember what a pain the last attempt at real copyright reform was (it took decades) combined with the realization (especially on the part of copyright holders) that their ability to push through laws that solely favor themselves to greater and greater degrees may not be so easy this time around. Thanks to the internet and various "wars" on consumers, copyright isn't just an arcane subject that the day to day person doesn't know much about. A serious attempt at remaking copyright laws might actually draw out well-reasoned and well-argued points that go against the current views held by the record labels and movie studios. See what's been happening in Canada, for example.

Litman's paper goes through the problems with today's copyright law, and begins to explore what real copyright reform should entail, even while noting the political difficulty of having it go anywhere:

A wise approach to copyright revision might inspire us to rethink the model. If both creators and readers are ill-served by distributor-centric copyright, and if the economics of digital distribution now makes it possible to engage in mass dissemination without significant capital investment, perhaps it is time to reallocate the benefits of the copyright system. The consolidation of control in distributors' hands does not appear to have made life easier or more remunerative for creators. Copyright lobbyists have not shown that recent enhancements to copyright have made it easier or more rewarding for readers, listeners and viewers to enjoy copyrighted works. Perhaps the classic picture of copyright is too far removed from its reality to be useful.

From there, Litman makes similar arguments that have been made recently by James Boyle and William Patry (among others), wondering why there is little investigation into the actual impact of changes in copyright law, rather than just assuming that "stronger protections" lead to better results, when so much of the evidence suggests otherwise. And, of course, all of this harkens back to the speeches by Thomas Macauley from over a century and a half ago, back when he was able to point to the lack of evidence from those who wished to extend copyright law:

Copyright is monopoly, and produces all the effects which the general voice of mankind attributes to monopoly.... I believe, Sir, that I may safely take it for granted that the effect of monopoly generally is to make articles scarce, to make them dear, and to make them bad. And I may with equal safety challenge my honorable friend to find out any distinction between copyright and other privileges of the same kind; any reason why a monopoly of books should produce an effect directly the reverse of that which was produced by the East India Companys monopoly of tea, or by Lord Essexs monopoly of sweet wines. Thus, then, stands the case. It is good that authors should be remunerated; and the least exceptionable way of remunerating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good.

And yet, in copyright reform today, there seems to be no one in the political realm with enough power to play the role of Macauley today. But Litman raises these same issues:

Instead of asking how to enhance copyright owner control, I suggest, we ought to be asking why. Does a particular proposed enhancement of copyright owner prerogatives seem likely to expand opportunities for creators or improve reader, listener or viewer enjoyment of copyrighted works? Is it likely to make the copyright system simpler, more effective, or more transparent? Does it seem to be designed to shore up copyright's apparent legitimacy? If not, it seems as likely to make the current mess worse instead of better.

Litman goes on to suggest that the fact that so many people out there don't have any respect for copyright law at all is pretty clearly the fault of the current copyright holders who have twisted and abused the law to the point that people just don't respect it. So, her ideas for copyright reform are based on bringing back "legitimacy" to copyright law by focusing on four principles:

1. Radically simplifying copyright law
2. Empowering content creators (rather than intermediaries and distributors)
3. Empowering readers, listeners and viewers (who, after all, are supposed to be part of the beneficiaries of copyright law)
4. Disintermediating copyright away from the middlemen who seem to control the law today

To then accomplish this, she suggests the following steps:

1. Focus on commercial exploitation (rather than personal use)
2. Simplify what copyright covers (rather than breaking out each separate exclusive right within copyright)
3. Reconnect creators to their copyright (via a termination right that lets them take copyrights back from third parties)
4. Clearly recognize readers' (or viewers', listeners', users', etc) rights
5. Get rid of existing compulsory license (and similar) intermediaries, such as ASCAP, BMI, SoundExchange and others

It's definitely an interesting proposal, though I think there are some serious problems with it. I've said in the past that the line between commercial use and personal use is increasingly blurry, so trying to draw that distinction may be a lot harder than most people think. We're already seeing the kind of mess termination rights create, and I'm still not sure why they help matters, rather than just make them more complex. And, of course even as Litman notes, new intermediaries will spring up to fill the void of the old ones.

Still, if you're interested in copyright and copyright reform, it's certainly a worthwhile paper to read just to get you thinking.

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Big Ben strikes Twitter: BONG!. [Thanks, Brian!]

Jiilik Oiolosse writes "KDE founder Matthias Ettrich was decorated today with the German Federal Cross of Merit for his contributions to Free Software. The Federal Cross of Merit is both the most prestigious as well as the only general decoration awarded by the Federal Republic of Germany. It is awarded by the Federal President for outstanding achievements in the political, economic, cultural, and other fields. Matthias was awarded the medal in recognition of his work spurring innovation and spreading knowledge for the common good."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I've discussed in the past the question of whether or not there's even a moral question to consider when it comes to copyright, if you can first show a situation where everyone is better off (i.e., if the end result of content being shared, willingly, is better for both the content creators and consumers, why should morals even be a question?). Separately, I have made clear that I do not engage in any sort of unauthorized file sharing -- noting that it is illegal and, I personally believe, wrong. Some people have pushed back on that latter point, suggesting that my labeling it as "wrong" is, in fact, a moral statement as well. A couple months ago (yes, I'm slow, but I'm catching up on some old "saved" submissions), SteelWolf sent over some thoughts on why file sharing is not wrong, and why there's actually a moral argument in favor of sharing:

It is through sharing that we develop a culture and advance humanity. Creative works like art and music are, at their core, about sharing with others. They tell stories, reveal personalities, or comment on the world in ways that others can appreciate, forming a part of our culture as they are spread around. Gregor Mendel's discoveries about genetics had no value while they were gathering dust on the monastery bookshelf; it is only when those discoveries were shared with the world that they became vital.

Infinite Goods Should Be Shared

Say you have something that is good for others, and it is infinite, so you will not lose any of it by giving some away. I don't think it's a stretch to say that most people's idea of morality would dictate that they should share that thing. In general, information is something that can be seen as a public good. If somebody has a discovery or an idea, it costs nothing to give it away, it is not scarce, yet it can potentially benefit the world.

On this, I absolutely agree -- but it is much more the argument for why the content creators themselves should share their content first. And that's where things get tricky. I do think it makes sense to share content. I think that content creators would find themselves better off if they share their works (and do so strategically, in combination with a business plan that takes advantage of it). But what if the original creator doesn't want the content shared? Then what?

SteelWolf argues that there's a moral imperative to share, but again, this seems to apply more to the content creator, than those downstream:

Faced with an infinity of good things in the form of content information, why would somebody chose not to give it away? What is gained by hoarding something that can help others and costs nothing to share? Let's say you figure out that you can protect people from a deadly virus, say, influenza, with a vaccine. While it costs something to manufacture physical vaccines and mail them to everybody in the world, sharing the information behind it is free. Others can chose whether or not they want to invest money in creating their own, but sharing has given them the option to do so where before it did not exist. Faced with this situation, who would chose to let thousands of people perish by denying them even the potential opportunity to save themselves?

Yet this is exactly the choice many people are making in the name of "intellectual property." They would rather see others suffer than share something infinite with them, desperately clinging to business models that depend on scarcity. In the 21st century, ideas, information, digitized content are all infinitely available. For these things, the Star Trek replicator has been made, and it's time to use that as a stepping stone to greater things.

Faced with an infinite supply of information that can potentially benefit billions of people, I chose to share. Those who try to hoard this information are both attempting to drink the ocean and doing wrong.

While I think this is interesting, and at times compelling, in the end I'm still not convinced there's a moral component here, except potentially for the creator/innovator. But, at the same time, I still believe that we're better off taking the moral discussion out of it. Perhaps a moral argument like the one above is helpful to convince some, but it leads right back to the economic discussion, where some will ask why anyone would bother in the first place, if they're just told they need to give it away for moral reasons.

Instead, I'm more convinced by economic arguments that show greater opportunity in sharing infinite goods, in that it decreases the cost of creation, promotion and distribution, while making it easier reach a larger audience for selling scarce products. Again, if you can make the economic argument, and then throw in the moral benefits of spreading information on top of it, that makes sense. But a purely moral argument still falls a bit short for me. Still, I'm sure it will lead to an interesting discussion here.

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Last year, we wrote how odd it was that former VP Al Gore banned reporters from a speech he gave, where all audio-video equipment was also banned. These days, such "no reporters allowed" speeches make no sense -- because anyone can be a reporter. Yet, it seems that there's something in the veep sauce (or veep wannabe sauce) that leads to these sorts of positions, as former VP candidate, Sarah Palin, is trying to do the same thing, barring "reporters" along with any kind of recording devices from a talk that she is giving. You can understand, perhaps, why politicians like to do this, but it seems both out of touch and completely pointless. Every single person in that room can be a reporter in one way or another -- and it doesn't take a recording device, but a pencil and some paper (or a decent memory). Trying to block out the "official" press is just a waste of time.

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Here's an interesting take on a coil gun, by Russian YouTube user fuckertrezv. Not content to simply make a high-power electromagnetic device, he designed his to be portable and run on batteries. Once charged, he claims it is capable of accelerating metal rings to over 200 meters per second. It looks well-built, however no instructions are provided. [via hacked gadgets]

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We had a great contest this year, with tons of awesome projects, and frankly we had a heckuva time picking winners. But the votes are all in now, and with the scores finally tabulated, I am pleased to announced the winners of the Make: Halloween Contest 2009.

The envelope please....

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Third runner-up: Everett Bradford's "Prometheus Device"

Everett has won an F1 Evaluation Platform (valued at $39.99), plus a $50 Maker Shed gift certificate.

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Second runner-up: Eric Kingston's "Silly String Shooting Pumpkin"

Eric has won a PICKIT 3 (valued at $69.99), plus a $50 Maker Shed gift certificate.

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First runner-up: Ian Fagan's "Ghostbusters Proton Pack"

Ian has won a PICDEM Lab (valued at $124.99), plus a $50 Maker Shed gift certificate.

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Grand Prize Winner: Jared Martin's "Mr. Bones and the Gourditos"

Jared has won a Microchip Starter Kit Bundle (valued at $600.00) which includes a PIC18 Starter Kit, a PIC24F Starter Kit, a dsPIC DSC Starter Kit, a PIC32 Starter Kit, a Memory Starter Kit, an F1 Evaluation Platform, and a PICKIT 3.

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Congratulations to all our winners and, indeed, to everyone who entered! And thanks to our sponsor, Microchip Technology, for making the whole thing possible!

Happy Halloween!

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Is Rupert Murdoch flip-flopping on paywalls again? Way back when (i.e., two years ago) Murdoch was a big believer in the idea that news should be free online, and that he could more than make it up with other business models. But, then, earlier this year, he did a complete flip-flop, declaring that all his publications would put up paywalls, saying that free content is bad, and accusing aggregators and search engines of "stealing" content. Some speculated that it was all a ploy to get others to put up paywalls. Though, others just think Murdoch's getting a little senile. Either way, it looks like he's stalling a bit. Jay Rosen points us to the news that Murdoch is "postponing" the date for when he wants his papers to have paywalls. It's not clear if the delay is due to technical difficulties in implementing a paywall, or if he's actually reconsidering. Either way, it doesn't look like the great big paywall is going up any time soon.

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An anonymous reader writes "It's not just Microsoft investigating full body, markerless motion capture. Sony has enlisted the help of Swiss firm Atracsys to develop similar technology. Sony has openly discussed the technology with New Scientist, and has realistic expectations for the new system — it can capture broad body gestures but not individual fingers. That's just one trade-off needed in order to develop a real-time system that anyone can use, according to a markerless motion-capture expert." It's still in the early stages of development, but the accompanying video shows the use of face-recognition software as well. The demo game has players moving their heads left or right to position their character, and then smiling to "catch" an object.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We were already somewhat concerned about the nomination of Victoria Espinel for the IP Czar job in the administration (forced on the administration by the silly and pointless "ProIP" Act from last year). On Thursday, she had her confirmation hearings where she said pretty much what we expected about how important intellectual property is, and how she viewed her job as coordinating different government agencies to crack down on infringers. Much of her (brief) testimony (pdf) talked up the usual industry claims about the importance of intellectual property on the economy, not recognizing how misleading they are. These are stats that simply credit anything covered by intellectual property laws, as if the only reason those industries exist is because of those laws. That's a mistake.

But more troubling? Espinel made it clear that her job is not to do as the Constitution requires, and make sure that intellectual property laws are properly "promoting the progress of arts and the useful sciences" (she never mentions this part), but, instead she claims her focus is cracking down on infringement to protect jobs:

If I am confirmed as the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, I will work side by side with agencies, Congress, stakeholders and the public to ensure that jobs that depend on intellectual property are not compromised by others' unwillingness to respect and enforce the rule of law....

But intellectual property law is not about "protecting jobs" it's about encouraging innovation. Innovation can be disruptive. Jobs can get shifted around. Protecting jobs is not encouraging innovation. It's the opposite.

Better and smarter protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights will create more jobs...

There's simply no evidence to support that. Shouldn't our IP Czar rely on actual evidence rather than broad industry claims that are unproven?

Then, on being questioned she appeared to support Hollywood's position that any net neutrality laws won't apply to mandating content filters on ISPs. It's looking like -- just as was initially feared -- this position is really to get Hollywood's own representative in the White House. What a shame. If you must have an "IP Czar" shouldn't it be someone who's actually focused on making sure progress is being promoted, rather than someone who wants to blindly crack down on infringement with no thought towards whether or not it makes sense?

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CWmike writes "An offshore AMD foundry is having trouble ramping up production of a new 40-nanometer GPU, forcing PC makers to delay shipments of desktop and laptop computers, AMD confirmed today. TSMC is struggling to get up to speed manufacturing AMD's 5800 series, 40-nm GPUs, according to Jim McGregor, an analyst at In-Stat. He added that the foundry is in full production, but so far yields are below expectation. Matt Davis, a spokesman for AMD, confirmed that TSMC is having issues with production of the chips. He added that it's not clear how far behind the foundry is on production expectations. 'The design is sound. It's just a matter of trying to get TSMC to a point where they can yield. They're feeling the manufacturing crunch,' said Davis. 'We're a little bit under yield but we're working back into a manufacturing schedule we want for these parts. TSMC can only kick them out so fast at this point.' He said that PC vendors are being affected but declined to say how many vendors are feeling the pinch or which ones. 'It's the end of the whip,' he added. '[The vendors] are going to have a hard time.'" A post at Anandtech suggests we'll see price hikes for the 5800-series Radeons until this situation sorts itself out.

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It supports Windows, Linux, and Macintosh operating systems, will retail for $74.99, and is not a joke. [OpenOfficeMouse]