It's actually quite pretty (again, relatively speaking), but this slug is most likely an Arion rufus, a species that's native to Europe, but has been found in British Columbia and is apparently now also at large in Ontario. Hermaphroditic in nature, some slugs can even knock themselves up, so it only takes a single invader to build an army. Once the population is established, the slugs become (and I quote) the "slow moving lions of the vegetable world."

So how do you get rid of them? The story offers two possibilities. First, you can leave out beer for the slugs. They're attracted to fermented yeast, but they're a little dumb and they can't swim, so they'll end up crawling in and drowning themselves. The other option: Collect the slugs when they come out at night and "immerse them in boiling water." The article, unfortunately, does not mention whether you can then eat Arion rufus in a nice butter sauce.

10 cm Etobicoke Slug a Big, Slimy Mystery in the Toronto Star

(Thanks, Margaret Atwood. Yes, that Margaret Atwood.)

Image taken by Etobicoke, Canada resident Lisa Bendall. Used under fair use.

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the Nordic Music Week event held in Stavanger, Norway. It was a smaller event, mainly involving those involved in the music industry in the Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland), with a heavy emphasis on independent musicians, as there were no major label representatives there. As such, the event was quite different than most of the typical music industry events I go to. There was very little fretting and worrying about "piracy" and such, and most of the discussions were quite forward looking and forward thinking. In fact, I'd say much of the event was downright optimistic about where the music industry was heading. While there were many great discussions (and I liked the fact that much of the event was focused around open table discussions, rather than just presentations), one of the most interesting presentations was by Òlafur Arnalds, an Icelandic musician, who started his presentation off by saying he disagreed with me and my presentation (which had been an updated variation on my NARM presentation), and had adjusted his presentation to be a response of sorts to mine. Except it wasn't. His presentation was yet another great example of a musician who understood exactly what works in the industry, even as he thought he disagreed with me. We later chatted briefly about it, and realized we're actually very much in agreement about where we stand on the industry. The confusion came about because he is really focused on the music, and felt that my presentation focused too much on the money aspect.

And, indeed, my presentation did focus somewhat on how to make money, but that's because if I just focus on the music, people complain that no one will make money and then no one will make music. But, of course, that's ridiculous. None of these models work particularly well if you don't make great music. And Òlafur Arnalds makes great music -- and once we started talking, even he admitted that in order to do what he does, he needs (and wants) to make a living (which he does). And his actual presentation was about how to do just that. It was all about how he closely connected with his fans and gave them a reason to buy (even if he didn't like to think that way). Instead, he noted that he needed to come up with a good story to go with the music, that would help attract his fans, better connect them to him while also giving them a reason to support him monetarily.

So, with that idea (having a story behind the music) as his basis, he came up with a great project called 'Found Songs', where he would write, record and release a new song every single day for seven straight days. He did it all out of his bedroom. His fans then stepped up and created artwork for each song, and in some cases, amazing videos, such as this one below, which is truly beautiful, and within days had thousands upon thousands of views: You can watch the videos, look at the artwork people created for the songs and even download all the songs for free as mp3s. But, there's also a store where you can buy the beautifully packaged vinyl or CD versions of the album, and some higher quality digital downloads. In other words, it was yet another perfect example of connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy (and, yes, it involved great music as well -- which is, in fact, key). The importance of having a good story to go along with things, as we've seen with other projects, is a particularly good point. And, again, it shows how an infinite good (a good story) can increase the value of a scarce good (the products you're selling). He also showed how his own fanbase increased massively after doing this project -- much more so than when he was out opening for Sigur Rós. So, in the end, we absolutely agreed, and I found out about some more great music and yet another great story and example to go along with all the others.

Beyond that, I met a bunch of fascinating people doing very interesting and unique things in the music industry in the Nordic region. All of the Nordic countries are working hard to help enable their bands to adapt to a changing music environment, and there are definitely some very creative indie labels, artists and managers who are thinking through and implementing some great ideas that left me quite enthusiastic for what comes next. I also got a chance to meet Moto Boy, who took part in our CwF+RtB experiment, and see him perform live (which was fantastic). Overall, a very encouraging trip.

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Lucas123 writes "Scientists at Intel are working on developing sensors that would be implanted in a person's head in order to harness brain waves that could then be used to control computers, televisions, cell phones and other electronic equipment. Intel has already used Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) machines to determine that blood flow changes in specific areas of the brain based on what word or image someone is thinking of. People tend to show the same brain patterns for similar thoughts. 'Eventually people may be willing to be more committed ... to brain implants. Imagine being able to surf the Web with the power of your thoughts.' said Intel research scientist Dean Pomerleau."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MAKE editor and publisher Dale Dougherty has his five minutes of creativity fire-starting with this recent presentation of "Blessed are the Cheesemakers," at Ignite Sebastopol II. Take a whiff of "the feet of God."

Ignite

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"They're very colorful and big. Some of them are like 2 feet tall." A US Customs and Border agent on the shipment of bongs seized at an LA seaport, sneakily labeled as "Christmas Ornaments" by their Chinese shipper, and worth nearly $3 million.

On a tight budget, documenting art that lives in a lake can be quite a challenge - especially when it's composed of "6,000 tons of rock and soil" -

After considering nearly every possible way to document "Spiral Jetty" from above -- Rent a weather satellite? An airplane? A helicopter? Use a kite? -- the institute, which often works in countries where conservation projects are carried out on shoestring budgets, came up with a remarkably simple solution: a $50 disposable latex weather balloon, easily bought online. Along with a little helium, some fishing line, a slightly hacked Canon PowerShot G9 point-and-shoot digital camera, an improvised plywood and metal cradle for the camera and some plastic zip ties (to keep the cradle attached and the neck of the balloon cinched), a floating land-art documentation machine was improvised, MacGyver-like.

Full Story over at NYTimes. [Thanks, Erica!]

Related:


Students photograph Earth from space on the cheap

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As Cory wrote earlier today, the Chumby is a hackable Internet device with a full-color display.

You can buy a pre-built Chumby, or you can buy a Chumby Guts kit and incorporate it into your own DIY project. A second (and most likely final) batch of Chumby Guts are now for sale at the Maker Shed.

Here's a testimonial from a happy Chumby Guts owner:

It took me a half hour to assemble this and a short time to set up an account and configure it.  Everything worked perfectly the first time.  The device operates without a case if desired.  I'm completely satisfied.  Chumby is an amazing product!

Chumby Guts

CWmike writes "Microsoft has denied that it has built a backdoor into Windows 7, a concern that surfaced yesterday after a senior National Security Agency (NSA) official testified before Congress that the agency had worked on the operating system. 'Microsoft has not and will not put "backdoors" into Windows,' a company spokeswoman said, reacting to a Computerworld story Wednesday. On Monday, Richard Schaeffer, the NSA's information assurance director, told the Senate's Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security that the agency had partnered with the developer during the creation of Windows 7 'to enhance Microsoft's operating system security guide.' Thursday's categorical denial by Microsoft was accompanied by further explanation of exactly how the NSA participated in the making of Windows 7. 'The work being discussed here is purely in conjunction with our Security Compliance Management Toolkit,' said the spokeswoman. The company rolled out the Windows 7 version of the toolkit late last month, shortly after it officially launched the operating system."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Every so often, internet pontificators try to come up with ways to "kill Google." It's a silly game, but in an oddly timed move, three people (who have all put forth "how to kill Google" ideas in the past) all suddenly published similar ideas, yet again. Jason Calacanis, Mark Cuban and Tom Foremski all posted similar ideas about how certain sites (such as the top sites in the top search results) could all choose to opt-out of Google and, say, join another search engine like Bing. It's one of those ideas that sounds good for about 5 seconds. And then you actually think about it. First, the numbers being tossed around concerning how much it would cost, say, Microsoft, to convince most of these sites to opt-out of their number one driver of traffic is significantly higher than what's being mentioned in these articles. Many of these sites rely on Google traffic to make a ton of money, and they're not going to throw that away easily. At least in Calacanis' plan he suggests Microsoft offer "50% more than they make in Google referrals" which certainly beats Cuban's idea that many sites would opt-out of Google for $1,000.

Here's the thing, though. Most of those sites worked hard to get to the top of Google for a very good reason: they understand the value of being easily findable. As such, they also recognize that it makes little sense to make themselves less findable at almost any price. Getting anyone to opt-out first (other than suicidal sites like Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.) is going to be nearly impossible. Who would want to risk that? Because the instant they opt-out, someone else would take their place. Quickly. And decisively.

There's value in being found these days, and to be found you need to be easily findable from anywhere if someone's looking for you. Not only would traffic decrease, but so would basic reputation. Even if Microsoft pays you a ton to drop out of Google, people are going to search for your business in Google and when they can't find it, they're not going to care how much Microsoft paid, they're going to think you're a small-time nobody. The best strategy these days, as most web site operators know, is to be as widely available as possible. Opt-ing out of Google because someone pays you some money is a lot more costly than just the lack of traffic.

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Instructables user jvalal didn't like the look of his Powermat inductive device charging station, so he stripped out the guts and "re-skinned" it with a handmade wooden case.

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paleisthenewtan.com. A blog about the dangers of fake tanning. (via JDP)

I met with a bunch of YouTube folks in the Bay Area recently, and learned of new features and services they'll be launching. One of those is a new anaglyph 3D channel, where you can find lots of videos, amateur and pro, to view wearing those funny blue-and-red glasses. The blooming rose, above, looks kinda cool even without the glasses.

YouTube: 3D Channel

aaaaaaargh! writes "I'm using a laptop with Ubuntu 8.04 for work, a netbook with Ubuntu 9.10 when I'm outside, Mac OS X 10.5 for hobby projects, and Windows XP for gaming. For backups, I'm currently using Jungle Disk and Apple's Time Machine, and I use a local svn repository for my work data. Now I need to frequently exchange and synchronize OpenOffice and Latex files and source code in various cross-platform programming languages between one machine and another. Options range from putting everything online (but Jungle Disk disks seem to be too slow for anything else than backup), storing my data on external media like USB sticks or SD cards, or working with copies by synchronizing folders over the network. I don't want to give my data away to some server outside without strong encryption (controlled by me, including the source code) and external media like USB sticks are a bit too fragile according to my taste. The solution should be reliable, relatively failsafe, as simple as possible, and allow me to continue to use Jungle Disk for backup. So what would you recommend?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

LIFE kindly invited me to guest edit a photo slideshow about the great industrial designer Raymond Loewy. I selected the photos from LIFE's archives and wrote the captions.

Six years after opening his office in New York in 1927, Loewy created this pencil sharpener, which looks as if it might have been designed using a wind tunnel. The pointed shape nicely conveys the purpose of the machine, while still offering a bit of mystery, and even adventure, to anyone brave enough to introduce a pencil into its jet-black lacuna. The warm wooden crank, meanwhile, invites users to interact with a device that, in all other respects, appears to be alien technology.

Raymond Loewy - The Man Who Designed America

Ask MAKE is a weekly column where we answer reader questions, like yours. Write them in to mattm@makezine.comor drop us a line on Twitter. We can't wait to tackle your conundrums!

Bjorn writes in:

I'm doing my 2nd Arduino project (and 2nd electronics project ever) and am trying to design some of the circuit stuff on computer instead of just wiring it up or scribbling some stuff on paper. I'm trying out Fritzing and am wondering if you have any other suggestions for software that can be used for breadboard, schematic and/or PCB design. I would like to maybe figure out/learn/teach myself enough about electronics to be able to design my own PCBs, so it'd be nice if I could do all the types of designing in one program. I downloaded Eagle but haven't really tried that out yet and am not entirely sure what that's used for, but I think it relates to PCBs.

You sound like you are off to a good start. The kind of programs you are looking for are referred to as Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools, and traditionally allow you to draw out a symbolic representation of a circuit using a schematic capture interface, (sometimes) simulate it with a circuit simulator, and then finally lay out the circuit on a printed circuit board (PCB). In the commercial world, many companies use tools designed by Synopsys, Cadence or Mentor graphics, but these are prohibitively expensive and overly complex for most hobbyist use. You are on the right track with Fritzing and Eagle. They are both good choices for documenting your circuits and designing PCBs, although they have been designed for somewhat different purposes.

For people who don't already have a strong background in electronics, Fritzing is a great place to start. Instead of forcing you to understand the circuit schematics for each piece, you can use it's pictorial 'breadboard' mode to connect drawings that look like the actual pieces that you would place on your breadboard. It sounds kind of cutesy, but it is pretty powerful because it also generates a schematic view of your circuit. This way, you can learn what the symbols for all of your parts look like by just connecting them up and flipping between the two views. You can either leave it at that to document a project that you made on a breadboard, or try out the PCB mode to design a simple 1-layer board that you can then etch yourself. To get started, check out their tutorials.

While Fritzing is a great way to get started with electronics, if you start to do more complex things, you will eventually need to turn to a more powerful tool. The second program that you mentioned, Eagle (Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor), is a good choice for this. It isn't open source software, however they offer a freeware version that is powerful enough to build many useful circuits. It doesn't have a breadboard mode, so you have to start by making your circuit as a schematic. Once you have a schematic drawn up and have checked to make sure everything is connected properly, you create a new PCB and lay the components out. To get started, check out this tutorial by the folks at Sparkfun.

There are a multitude of other free PCB design programs out there. For instance, ExpressPCB is a proprietary schematic capture/PCB layout program that is closely integrated with the companies PCB fabrication service. gEDA aims to be a comprehensive open source circuit simulation/design environment, but appears to be quite complex. FreePCB looks good for designing PCBs, however it doesn't appear to include a schematic capture program.

My advice would be to stick with Fritzing and Eagle for a while, use them to design and build a few PCBs, and if you aren't satisfied with them, try out one of the other tools to see if it works better for you. Good luck!

[photo by Flickr user Zach Hoeken]

Related:

• Primer: Printed Circuit Boards
• How-To: Make your EAGLE schematic into a PCB

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Chip giant Intel has a bit of a reputation for being a trademark bully at times, threatening or suing many companies just for having "intel" in their name somewhere -- including a travel agency and a jeans company. Now, before anyone brings it up, yes, as a trademark holder the law requires you to enforce your trademark against infringement, lest it become considered "generic" (such as xerox machines, kleenex tissues, aspirin and other brand names that became generic). But, the key in all of those generic situations was that the use was applied to things that directly competed with the original brand's products. People referred to other tissues as "kleenex" and it stuck. Intel's lawyers seem to go out of their way to find potential infringement where there obviously is none at all.

Paul Alan Levy alerts us to the latest such case, where Intel has sued the operators of the Mexico Watch newsletter, because its domain is LatinIntel.com. Of course, the reason for that is that it is using the commonly accepted abbreviation of "intel" as short for "intelligence." It's common shorthand, especially within government circles, to refer to gathered intelligence as simply "intel." The owners of the site explained this to Intel, and in return were given a boilerplate explanation about trademark law, insisting that since Intel's trademark is so valuable, it still has to stop others from using it -- even if they're in a totally different business, which is an interesting interpretation of trademark law, and one not supported by the courts in most cases.

More importantly, no one is going to look at LatinIntel.com and confuse it for the world's largest computer chip maker. No one is going to look at that site and wonder how come they can't order a Centrino processor. There's simply no confusion at all. Even worse, it appears that Intel's lawyers dragged out this situation far too long. They first contacted the site back in 2007, and the site's owner responded with a clear explanation of why the name was not infringing. Since then, there have been periodic bursts of contact from different Intel lawyers (it apparently seems to change each time), followed by months of silence, before a new group of lawyers starts pestering the site again. Finally, after more than two years of this back and forth, Intel sued Mexico Watch, even though it's not even close to competitive and any "moron in a hurry" (as the popular trademark test notes) would clearly know the difference between a site about Mexican politics and a company selling microprocessors.

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A federal judge has ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers botched maintenance of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, and that this failure was directly responsible for flood damage of homes in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Damage claims against the government could total billions of dollars.

Everyone's asking questions about the decade that's coming to a close, I'd like to ask what's the coolest software you used this decade?

For me, it might be Dropbox. I keep thinking of new uses for it.

For a guy with a huge number of computers (I don't even want to count them), it's not only a lifesaver but an idea factory. I've already built utilities on it. The basis: polling a folder is incredibly low-cost. You can do a lot of it without impacting the performance of your machine. That was true in 2002 when we made Radio do upstreaming. It's even more true today.

Because Dropbox wires together folders on any machine you link into it, it's a very simple content distributor. You can have 18 computers looking for something, when one finds it, they all find out and get the thing. It could be large or small.

Like all cool things, it's fairly obvious, and has probably been done many times before. But they put it together now and it works and is trivial to set up. I keep thinking of things to use it for. All of which makes it very cool. Unless I'm missing something, it's my CSOTD.

Update: There's a thread on this topic on Ycombinator.

An anonymous reader writes "Gamers are used to confronting invading terrorists, nuclear attacks, and natural calamities—in virtual form. But those living in New York State could soon receive warnings about real emergencies through their favorite video console. State authorities are testing a plan that would see the Emergency Management Office issue alerts over online gaming networks in addition to regular channels."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This horribly conceived anti-domestic-violence web PSA from Denmark "allows you (or someone like you), in the guise of a meaty male hand, to beat the crap out of a woman. (...) to simulate the beating, you can use either your mouse or your webcam."

For nearly a century, there have been strange sightings of people flying through the air, or hovering anyway. Now, I'm not talking about Superman, but rather groups of people on floating platforms or rocketmen launching through the sky propelled by jetpacks. I think it's intriguing that these sightings are so very different (and more interesting, in my opinion) than classic flying saucer reports. Fortean Times surveyed these accounts of "aeronauts from the future," or hallucinations, or platforms hanging from zeppelins, or, depending on the year, maybe experimental flying platforms in development. For example, the Hiller VZ-1 Pawnee was built in 1954, but the first report referenced the Fortean Times article is from 1916 (and published decades later as a letter-to-the-editor in the Daily Mirror.) Details after the jump.

From Fortean Times:

Mr AE Whiteland described the unusual sight witnessed by his mother around 1916 or 1917, when she lived in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. One day she had gone upstairs, looked out the window, when "at a height of about 30ft [9m], eight to twelve men appeared, on what seemed to be a round platform with a handrail around it... They were wearing blue uniforms and little round hats, not unlike sailors' hats. She heard no sound from the machine as it came off the nearby marshes. It turned a bit, and went over the railway yard, to dis­appear behind some houses..."

The men were holding tightly on to the handrail, which was "brass, and a second rail, also of brass, was at the height of the men's knees. As she was trying so hard to take it all in, she cannot say of what mat­erial the platform seemed to be made... Mother says that she kept wondering what was making the thing move, and looked up in the sky and then at the men and then in between their legs to see if there was an engine there in the middle, but she could see nothing there. There was nothing in the middle, just a hollow, with the men around the sides."

The platform was totally silent and moved at about the speed of a running man.

"Aeronauts from the Future"

Our former guest blogger and kimchimonger Connie Choe says: "Here's our magical new video about how kimchi is made. We used free software (AnimatorDV), a hand-me-down camcorder, a garage sale tripod, our home kitchen, and help from friends."

(Warning: fish is not dead)

Publisher's Weekly's Heidi MacDonald, who has been covering the Jessamine County Library League of Extraodinary Gentleman controversy, reports that a heated library board meeting that took place yesterday in which pro-censorship and pro-1st amendment folks faced off. A traveling evangelist held up a copy of the Alan Moore comic book and shouted: "If this is not pornography, what is?"

The library board heard speakers — limited to two minutes each — on both sides of the case, which involves two library workers who felt that LOEG: BLACK DOSSIER should not fall into the hands of an 11-year-old girl and took it upon themselves to remove the book from circulation, thereby violating library policy and getting themselves fired. Although the traveling evangelist, a homeschooling mother and over 200 kids who signed a petition begging for books to be censored all seemed to think that others should decide what they can read, the other half of the speakers felt, as Bobbi Stout, herself the daughter of a preacher, that “It’s dangerous to democracy when an interest group imposes its views on another,” she said. “Stand up for the Constitution.”

Evangelist: If Alan Moore isn’t porno, what is?

Kelson writes "Google has released the source to what will eventually become Chrome OS, and will begin developing it as an open source project like Chromium. The OS differs from the usual computing model by (1) making all apps web apps (2) sandboxing everything and (3) removing anything unnecessary, to focus on speed." Reader Barence adds "Google said consumers won't be able to download the operating system — it will only be available on hardware that meets Google's specifications. Hard disks are banned, for instance, while Google said it will also specify factors such as screen sizes and display resolutions. Google said it plans to officially launch Chrome OS by the end of next year."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As pretty much everyone who reads Techdirt has been submitting today, Lord Peter Mandelson over in the UK -- the guy who just discovered copyright law after a resort vacation dinner with entertainment industry mogul David Geffen -- wants to go even further in changing copyright law against consumers' rights. We already know that he was the major force behind getting the UK to move forward with a plan to kick file sharers off the internet based on a "three strikes" plan that involves accusations, not convictions. This was despite a study by the government which had already concluded that three strikes was a bad idea.

However, the latest plan seems even more ridiculous. Not only would it include a new offense for those who download unauthorized material, it would allow the government to give powers to "any person as may be specified" to do whatever is necessary to try to stop online infringement. In other words, it would allow the government to basically deputize anyone they wanted (such as record labels...) with near complete power and little oversight to do whatever they thought necessary to fight online infringement. And this includes changing copyright law at will through "secondary legislation" that involves no Parliamentary oversight or debate. Talk about a broad, sweeping and totally ridiculous change to copyright law.

Part of the reasoning, supposedly, is to be able to force online digital lockers like YouSendIt, which are quite useful for legally sharing all sorts of things, to get rid of privacy, so that any infringing works sent via those tools can be revealed. The whole thing is an incredible overreach of power, well beyond anything that is necessary. Mandelson doesn't even hide the fact that this is done purely in support of copyright holders and against consumers' rights:

"These can be used entirely legitimately, but recently rights holders have pointed to them as being used for illegal use,"

Because if rights holders don't like it, it must be stopped? He admits in the letter that consumer groups will oppose this proposal, but he doesn't seem concerned. Consumers, after all, don't take him out to dinner at expensive resorts.

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Homo floresiensis was a kind of adorably tiny human being that lived on the island of Flores up until 18,000 years ago. Nature says "These astonishing little people, nicknamed 'hobbits', made tools, hunted tiny elephants and lived at the same time as modern humans who were colonizing the area."

There has been some debate as to whether or not the Flores Man was just descendants of Homo Sapiens "dwarfed by disease." But that debate has been settled, according to researchers from Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York who claim Homo floresiensis is a "genuine ancient human species."

Using statistical analysis on skeletal remains of a well-preserved female specimen, researchers determined the "hobbit" to be a distinct species and not a genetically flawed version of modern humans. Details of the study appear in the December issue of Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society, published by Wiley-Blackwell.

In 2003 Australian and Indonesian scientists discovered small-bodied, small-brained, hominin (human-like) fossils on the remote island of Flores in the Indonesian archipelago. This discovery of a new human species called Homo floresiensis has spawned much debate with some researchers claiming that the small creatures are really modern humans whose tiny head and brain are the result of a medical condition called microcephaly.

Photo by FunkMonk is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License.

'Hobbits' are a new human species -- according to the statistical analysis of fossils

Homo floresiensis was a kind of adorably tiny human being that lived on the island of Flores up until 18,000 years ago. Nature says "These astonishing little people, nicknamed 'hobbits', made tools, hunted tiny elephants and lived at the same time as modern humans who were colonizing the area."

There has been some debate as to whether or not the Flores Man was just descendants of Homo Sapiens "dwarfed by disease." But that debate has been settled, according to researchers from Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York who claim Homo floresiensis is a "genuine ancient human species."

Using statistical analysis on skeletal remains of a well-preserved female specimen, researchers determined the "hobbit" to be a distinct species and not a genetically flawed version of modern humans. Details of the study appear in the December issue of Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society, published by Wiley-Blackwell.

In 2003 Australian and Indonesian scientists discovered small-bodied, small-brained, hominin (human-like) fossils on the remote island of Flores in the Indonesian archipelago. This discovery of a new human species called Homo floresiensis has spawned much debate with some researchers claiming that the small creatures are really modern humans whose tiny head and brain are the result of a medical condition called microcephaly.

Photo by FunkMonk is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License.

'Hobbits' are a new human species -- according to the statistical analysis of fossils

For nearly a century, there have been strange sightings of people flying through the air, or hovering anyway. Now, I'm not talking about Superman, but rather groups of people on floating platforms or rocketmen launching through the sky propelled by jetpacks. I think it's intriguing that these sightings are so very different (and more interesting, in my opinion) than classic flying saucer reports. Fortean Times surveyed these accounts of "aeronauts from the future," or hallucinations, or platforms hanging from zeppelins, or, depending on the year, maybe experimental flying platforms in development. For example, the Hiller VZ-1 Pawnee was built in 1954, but the first report referenced the Fortean Times article is from 1916 (and published decades later as a letter-to-the-editor in the Daily Mirror.) Details after the jump.

From Fortean Times:

Mr AE Whiteland described the unusual sight witnessed by his mother around 1916 or 1917, when she lived in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. One day she had gone upstairs, looked out the window, when “at a height of about 30ft [9m], eight to twelve men appeared, on what seemed to be a round platform with a handrail around it… They were wearing blue uniforms and little round hats, not unlike sailors’ hats. She heard no sound from the machine as it came off the nearby marshes. It turned a bit, and went over the railway yard, to dis­appear behind some houses..."

The men were holding tightly on to the handrail, which was “brass, and a second rail, also of brass, was at the height of the men’s knees. As she was trying so hard to take it all in, she cannot say of what mat­erial the platform seemed to be made… Mother says that she kept wondering what was making the thing move, and looked up in the sky and then at the men and then in between their legs to see if there was an engine there in the middle, but she could see nothing there. There was nothing in the middle, just a hollow, with the men around the sides.”

The platform was totally silent and moved at about the speed of a running man.

"Aeronauts from the Future"

Instructables user garagemonkeysan made this guitar amp from the popular Little Gem circuit, and put it in this useful little case with a cord reel on the back. Nice work!

More:

Flashback: The $5 Cracker Box Amplifier

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Hugh Pickens writes "The advantages of RISC are well known — simplifying the CPU core by reducing the complexity of the instruction set allows faster speeds, more registers, and pipelining to provide the appearance of single-cycle execution. Al Williams writes in Dr Dobbs about taking RISC to its logical conclusion by designing a functional computer called One-Der with only a single simple instruction — a 32-bit Transfer Triggered Architecture (TTA) CPU that operates at roughly 10 MIPS. 'When I tell this story in person, people are usually squirming with the inevitable question: What's the one instruction?' writes Williams. 'It turns out there's several ways to construct a single instruction CPU, but the method I had stumbled on does everything via a move instruction (hence the name, "Transfer Triggered Architecture").' The CPU is implemented on a a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) device and the prototype works on a 'Spartan 3 Starter Board' with an XS3C1000 device available from Digilent that has the equivalent of about 1,000,000 logic gates costing between $100 and $200. 'Applications that can benefit from custom instruction in hardware — things like digital signal processing, for example — are ideal for One-Der since you can implement parts of your algorithm in hardware and then easily integrate those parts with the CPU.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes "The advantages of RISC are well known — simplifying the CPU core by reducing the complexity of the instruction set allows faster speeds, more registers, and pipelining to provide the appearance of single-cycle execution. Al Williams writes in Dr Dobbs about taking RISC to its logical conclusion by designing a functional computer called One-Der with only a single simple instruction — a 32-bit Transfer Triggered Architecture (TTA) CPU that operates at roughly 10 MIPS. 'When I tell this story in person, people are usually squirming with the inevitable question: What's the one instruction?' writes Williams. 'It turns out there's several ways to construct a single instruction CPU, but the method I had stumbled on does everything via a move instruction (hence the name, "Transfer Triggered Architecture").' The CPU is implemented on a a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) device and the prototype works on a 'Spartan 3 Starter Board' with an XS3C1000 device available from Digilent that has the equivalent of about 1,000,000 logic gates costing between $100 and $200. 'Applications that can benefit from custom instruction in hardware — things like digital signal processing, for example — are ideal for One-Der since you can implement parts of your algorithm in hardware and then easily integrate those parts with the CPU.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brian Turner from WFMU's Beware of the Blog has a post about an 80s band I've never heard of -- The Men with No IQ's. The two MP3s ("Can't Resist It," and "Dreamin'") are really good. Here's a comment from The Men with No IQ's' My Space page (run by a third party):

"When I was 15 I used to sneak in to a dive called W.C. Don's in Jackson, Miss to see the monthly hardcore shows that seemed to come around at that point. Inevitably, Men With No IQ's would be opening the show. They were three African American guys who looked about as out of place as anyone ever could. The bass player, Booger Man White and the drummer, Steve Harris (no relation to the bass player from Maiden) were so huge that they would literally dwarf their tiny pawn shop instruments. Sylvester was the hot shot of the band, and he had like 10 Peavey practice amps, all stacked up on one another. Sylvester would always play with his shirt off while the other two guys wore custom MNI shirts and baseball caps that were most likely made at one of those iron-on shops in the Jackson Mall. THEY WERE AWESOME. I regret to say that I didn't appreciate them nearly enough at the time but they would always SLAY."

Men With No IQ's: True Black Metal from Mississippi

Brian Turner from WFMU's Beware of the Blog has a post about an 80s band I've never heard of -- The Men with No IQ's. The two MP3s ("Can't Resist It," and "Dreamin'") are really good. Here's a comment from The Men with No IQ's' My Space page (run by a third party):

"When I was 15 I used to sneak in to a dive called W.C. Don's in Jackson, Miss to see the monthly hardcore shows that seemed to come around at that point. Inevitably, Men With No IQ's would be opening the show. They were three African American guys who looked about as out of place as anyone ever could. The bass player, Booger Man White and the drummer, Steve Harris (no relation to the bass player from Maiden) were so huge that they would literally dwarf their tiny pawn shop instruments. Sylvester was the hot shot of the band, and he had like 10 Peavey practice amps, all stacked up on one another. Sylvester would always play with his shirt off while the other two guys wore custom MNI shirts and baseball caps that were most likely made at one of those iron-on shops in the Jackson Mall. THEY WERE AWESOME. I regret to say that I didn't appreciate them nearly enough at the time but they would always SLAY."

Men With No IQ's: True Black Metal from Mississippi

Justice Scalia says stupid things during oral arguments at the Supreme Court. Lawyers cannot help but poke fun. The result: an angry, red-faced Scalia, "reducing the time in which advocates might address more open or sympathetic justices."

Justice Scalia says stupid things during oral arguments at the Supreme Court. Lawyers cannot help but poke fun. The result: an angry, red-faced Scalia, "reducing the time in which advocates might address more open or sympathetic justices."

Clara, a delightful woman in her nineties, has a series of videos that show you how to cook like many people did during the Great Depression. She tells wonderful stories while she prepares the meals.

Great Depression Cooking

Clara, a delightful woman in her nineties, has a series of videos that show you how to cook like many people did during the Great Depression. She tells wonderful stories while she prepares the meals.

Great Depression Cooking

It's been many years since we first wrote about how stores like Walmart were dealing with ridiculous copyright laws by telling employees to simply not allow the printing of "professional-looking" photos, just in case they were covered by someone else's copyright. Last year, a story popped up about a Walmart employee not letting a family print their own old family photos for this reason. It looks like we've got yet another such story. greenbird was the first of a few of you to send in this story about Walmart (yet again) not allowing the printing of family photos (this time for a funeral, which makes it that much more tragic), with copyright used as the reason. Once again, the employee made some dumb statements, such as saying "copyright is forever."

But, just like last time, I have to say that we shouldn't blame the Walmart employee, who is just trying to protect her job, and lives in a world where copyright maximalists constantly push this sort of message. It's not her fault, it's the fault of current copyright law, which makes such things seems reasonable, and the ongoing effort by lobbyists and politicians to only push copyright law further in that direction.

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I sort of understand why people don't like the new retweet, but I like it very much, and probably for many of the reasons they don't like it.

If you follow me on Twitter you know that a lot of my tweets are links to stories on the web. I would probably forward other people's links more if there were a way to give them credit for the link without adding all that overhead to the text. I find that once you add a bit of text to a tweet you dilute its meaning. Do it two or three times and its a confusing mess. I don't know who said what.

Worse, often the meaning of messages are reversed when they're retweeted. Not only does the person show off that they didn't understand what was said, but they propogate the mistake by sending it to all their followers.

In the new method, forwarding a link through Twitter is error-free, no noise is added because it can't, and the lineage is carried as metadata, and doesn't take up any of the 140 characters.

I applaud features that don't use up the 140 characters, and like even more features that give them back to us. I think Twitter should be encouraged to do more to pull data out of the text of a tweet and carry it as metadata, so apps can do stuff with it, and so people get to use the 140 chars to say what they have to say.

I do almost no retweeting in the old regime. But I already do a lot more now, and will do even more once everyone has the feature. Once it's been out there for a few weeks I think we'll wonder how we ever lived without it.

I sort of understand why people don't like the new retweet, but I like it very much, and probably for many of the reasons they don't like it.

If you follow me on Twitter you know that a lot of my tweets are links to stories on the web. I would probably forward other people's links more if there were a way to give them credit for the link without adding all that overhead to the text. I find that once you add a bit of text to a tweet you dilute its meaning. Do it two or three times and its a confusing mess. I don't know who said what.

Worse, often the meaning of messages are reversed when they're retweeted. Not only does the person show off that they didn't understand what was said, but they propogate the mistake by sending it to all their followers.

In the new method, forwarding a link through Twitter is error-free, no noise is added because it can't, and the lineage is carried as metadata, and doesn't take up any of the 140 characters.

I applaud features that don't use up the 140 characters, and like even more features that give them back to us. I think Twitter should be encouraged to do more to pull data out of the text of a tweet and carry it as metadata, so apps can do stuff with it, and so people get to use the 140 chars to say what they have to say.

I do almost no retweeting in the old regime. But I already do a lot more now, and will do even more once everyone has the feature. Once it's been out there for a few weeks I think we'll wonder how we ever lived without it.

Those of you who know me will know I'm slightly biased toward chemistry, the discipline in which I'm trained, so it's hard for me to resist the natural temptation to focus on gifts that I might like for myself. So, if you astronomers, physicists, biologists, geologists, mathematicians, ecologists, computer scientists (and anybody else I may have accidentally left out) have suggestions for those in your own disciplines, please feel free to submit them in the comments! Chemists, too, of course!

Molar beach ball ($7.50 from the American Chemical Society)
A "mole," in case you don't know, is the unit used by chemists to enumerate atoms or molecules. One mole is Avogadro's number (6.02 x 10²³) of individual atoms or molecules. One of the remarkable things a person learns in general chemistry is the huge difference in molar volumes between liquid and gas phases. A mole of liquid water, for instance, takes up 18 mL, whereas the same number of water molecules in the gas phase takes up 22400 mL! Another interesting fact is that, because molecules interact so little with each other in the gas phase, all gases have effectively the same molar volume, which, again, is 22400 mL, or 22.4 L, at average atmospheric temperatures and pressures. The American Chemical Society has designed this cool beach ball to contain 22.4 L, or one mole, of gas. It's a great teaching aid and a nifty idea in general.

Borosilicate coffee cup ($9.99 from ThinkGeek)
Part of the experience of becoming a chemist is learning to appreciate glass. Glass is totally ubiquitous in our world, but only after working with it under the relatively extreme conditions of the lab does one really begin to appreciate how truly amazing its properties are. Worked with relative ease, resistant to almost all chemicals, capable of enduring extremes of temperature and pressure, and to top it all off, transparent so you can see what's going on, borosilicate glass is surely one of the greatest achievements of materials science. Besides these reasons, chemists and other scientists tend to run on coffee (I've even gone so far as to suggest that coffee causes scientific thinking, to some extent), and at ten bucks, you'd be hard pressed to find a more cost-effective gift for one than this borosilicate coffee mug from ThinkGeek.

Water aspirator ($19.90 from Science Kit)
Every hobby chemist wants a vacuum pump, but many of us can't afford one, either in terms of absolute cost or in terms of available space. Fortunately, there's a wonderful low-tech way to generate a low vacuum, suitable for filtration and many distillations, using an ordinary sink and this inexpensive bit of kit called an "aspirator." The aspirator exploits the Venturi effect (Wikipedia) to generate negative air pressure at the sidearm from the flow of water out the bottom. And while it may look like the sort of thing you could build yourself from hardware store bits and pieces, in point of fact the hydrodynamics of a good aspirator are fairly complicated and it makes much more sense to just buy one. You may have to buy an adapter to make it fit your particular sink, but these can almost always be found at the corner hardware store for a couple of extra bucks.

Theo Gray's Mad Science ($24.95 from The Maker Shed)
I reviewed Theo Gray's newest book for MAKE, Volume 19, and had this to say about it:

If you've ever thrilled to a chemistry demonstration, Mad Science will bring you great joy. If, like me, you've ever wiled away an evening (or eight) figuring out just how hard it would really be to construct your own 3 MeV linear accelerator for making Lichtenberg figures, you may be unable to put it down. My review copy is dog-eared at nearly half of the fifty chemical wonders included: Investigate this. Build that. Would it be possible to...?. In the week since I got it, I've already been to the shop more than once to fan some spark that struck while leafing through its pages.

The book has beautiful photos of those experiments that are too dangerous for most of us to try on our own, and plenty of safer fare for those who want to play along at home.

Robert Bruce Thompson's Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments ($29.99 from The Maker Shed)
Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments is absolutely the best guide to hobby chemistry that I have ever encountered. In 22 chapters across 413 pages, Bob takes his readers through the basics of keeping a notebook and safely storing chemicals to the subtleties of organic synthesis and forensic analysis, and all with a ferociously independent, hands on, less-is-more DIY style. I really love this book.

1000 mL separatory funnel ($39.95 from The Science Company)
The dedicated amateur or hobby chemist can achieve amazing things using old jelly jars and coffee pots, but there are several pieces of "professional" laboratory glass that are difficult to improvise from common materials, and the most useful of these is probably the separatory funnel. A good sep funnel, with a teflon stopcock and a ground-glass joint and stopper, is essential to perform the liquid-liquid extractions that are a routine part of even the most basic isolations and syntheses. And you can almost never have too many. This 1000 mL version from The Science Company is large enough for nearly any purpose. A ring stand and 4" support ring to hold it in place makes a nice afterthought.

Distilling apparatus ($49.95 from The Maker Shed)
The Maker Shed offers this really beautiful borosilicate glass distillation kit, including a 1000 mL sidearm flask with stopper and a 200 mm spiral "Graham" condenser, all at the truly astounding price of $49.95. All the joints are easily demountable gas/liquid-tight ground glass, so there's no monkeying around with rubber stoppers or bits of glass or rubber tubing to make the connections. Distillation is used for separating mixtures of liquids having different boiling points, and the most common use, of course, is in making liquors like whiskey or brandy from beer, wine, or mash. Again, you might want to throw in a couple of ring stands and utility clamps.

Electronic tabletop balance ($117.00 from The Maker Shed)
A good balance is a totally indispensable tool for quantitative chemistry of almost any type. The important figures of merit for a balance, in rough order from most to least vital, are resolution (the number of zeroes after the decimal point), capacity (the maximum upper mass limit), precision (the consistency of repeated measurements of the same mass), accuracy (how close it reads to the "true" value, which is easily corrected by calibration), and linearity (how well precision and accuracy are maintained across the balance's mass capacity). The better each of these figures, the more the balance will cost. Professional "analytical" balances, capable of weighing to a milligram (0.001 g) or less, cost thousands of dollars and include an enclosed glass cabinet over the weighing pan to prevent interference from air currents, which they are sensitive enough to detect. Hobby chemists generally have to compromise, but good centigram (0.01 g) balances are quite accessible and are adequate for most purposes. This My-Weigh iBalance 201 digital balance from The Maker Shed has centigram resolution and a capacity of 200 g, and was recommended to us by Robert Bruce Thompson, author of our Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments.

Laboratory hotplate / stirrer ($149.95 from The Maker Shed)
After using a stirring hotplate for awhile, you'll start to get annoyed that your kitchen stove doesn't include a magnetic stirrer. And for $150 new, you'd be hard-pressed to beat this combination unit from The Maker Shed, which includes a built-in ring stand support, rod, and thermometer clamp. Don't forget a couple of teflon stir bars to actually do the stirring.

For many more chemistry and science-related gift ideas, check out the Science Room in the Maker Shed.

The Maker Shed has all sorts of other great holiday gift ideas, Arduino & Arduino accessories, electronic kits, science kits, smart stuff for kids, back issues of MAKE & CRAFT, box sets, books, robots, kits from Japan and more.

Holiday Shipping Deadlines in December:

04 (Fri) - Deadline for microscope shipping
11 (Fri) - postal shipping deadline
14 (Mon) - ground shipping deadline
18 (Fri) - FedEx 3-day shipping deadline
21 (Mon) - FedEx 2-day shipping deadline
22 (Tue) - FedEx overnight shipping deadline

*Customers experiences on orders with these ship methods placed after these dates may vary, the dates listed are what we call "safe dates"

USPS (Any Method):
Due to the high volume of mail that the postal service deals with around the holidays, order by Dec. 10th, however, many packages are lost or delayed in transit and we do not replace or refund any orders lost using this ship method, we strongly encourage you to not use this method in December.

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eldavojohn writes "Chinese gamers have a pretty hard life. From crackdowns on 'undesirable' games to bans on gangster games to delayed World of Warcraft expansions, they suffer. The worst part is that in order to qualify for operating in China, you face a maze of conflicting bureaucracy and regulation. Well, it just got a little worse. Now, if you want to operate, you need to hire a 'specialist' to oversee content, and you need to 'enhance socialist values' in your game. They also want to limit in-game marriages and how many player-versus-player combat sessions one can engage in. The circular issued from China's Ministry of Culture contained all the vague verbiage giving them easier reign over who operates and who doesn't. It's a large market, but is it worth the gamble to game developers?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of the cool things about riding on a train is that you meet a lot of people.

There are Europeans who are visiting the US and have the train riding habit from home.

There are people who remember the golden age of trains and can tell you how this or that is a shadow of its former self.

And there are people who are afraid of plane travel and prefer trains to buses.

There are also people like me who had a cross-country train trip on their bucket list, and found that the fantasy was better than the reality. (Partially because this trip follows the route of I-80 and I-70, which for me is well-traveled, by car.)

When you're sitting with strangers in the dining car, conversation turns to What You Do, and part of my story is Rebooting The News. In explaining what was happening with the news system in the US, I came up with a new analogy this time, which I told in Rebooting The News #33, and thought I should repeat here.

Journalism is like skiing in the 50s or 60s. Previously it had been a sport that very few people enjoyed, and they were all very good. But now the doors were opening to amateurs, as it did with skiing. The pros are going to have to share the slopes with people who don't take the sport as seriously as they do. They're still going to be able to ski, but the rest of us are not just going to admire them for how skilled they are, we're going to do it too. They can even earn a living as ski patrol and ski instructors. Or lift operators or more mundane jobs like people who work in hotels and drive the shuttle bus. There are still jobs in skiing after the arrival of the amateurs. But the exclusivity is gone.

This moose gets an A for effort.

This moose gets an A for effort.

"Where Are Your Keys?" is an open source, high-speed language game that uses sign language as a "bridge" to learn any spoken language. The sign language supposedly keeps you from thinking in your native language while allowing other players in the game to know what you are thinking.

The game, according to its creator Evan Gardner, is based partially on another language teaching technique called "Total Physical Response," where you talk about things that are actually around you. "Where Are Your Keys?" takes "Total Physical Response" to a "ridiculous end" where every word has a sign so you can "build a muscle memory of the word and act out what we are trying to say."

Has anyone tried "Where Are Your Keys?" to learn a language? I'd love to hear what you think.

"Where Are Your Keys?" a language fluency game

"Where Are Your Keys?" is an open source, high-speed language game that uses sign language as a "bridge" to learn any spoken language. The sign language supposedly keeps you from thinking in your native language while allowing other players in the game to know what you are thinking.

The game, according to its creator Evan Gardner, is based partially on another language teaching technique called "Total Physical Response," where you talk about things that are actually around you. "Where Are Your Keys?" takes "Total Physical Response" to a "ridiculous end" where every word has a sign so you can "build a muscle memory of the word and act out what we are trying to say."

Has anyone tried "Where Are Your Keys?" to learn a language? I'd love to hear what you think.

"Where Are Your Keys?" a language fluency game

airshowfan writes "Boeing's directed-energy weapons (a.k.a. frickin' laser beams) have been getting some attention lately. The Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) is a C-130 that famously burned a hole through a car's hood, and the YAL-1 AirBorne Laser is a 747 that shoots a laser from its nose that is powerful enough to bring down an ICBM. But even cooler is the Mobile Active Targeting Resource for Integrated eXperiments (MATRIX), a laser that is mounted on a truck (which probably costs less than a 747, but who knows) and that can shoot down small aircraft, as shown in the picture on this article. (The Laser Avenger supposedly also has this capability). We live in the future!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A little more than a year from now, all televisions sold in California will be required to meet energy-saving spec guidelines mandated by the state.The Consumer Electronics Association is not pleased.

We've seen recently how some companies have turned copyright into something that certainly approximates a tool for extortion. Rather than threatening to break up your store with a baseball bat, they threaten to sue you if you don't pay them for infringing on their copyrights. Even in the cases where the copyright has been infringed, this whole process seems incredibly sleazy and underhanded -- and it's even worse when it's done against those who are clearly "accidental" or "unaware" infringers. Or you can take it even further: using this method to demand a non-negotiable payment from a church.

Reader Sam Cook writes in to let us know how a woman named Linda Amstutz is going around threatening pretty much anyone who posts her essay/poem called "If my body were a car." It's apparently one of those essays that gets regularly passed around the internet -- often without attribution. While you can understand why the author might get a bit upset about it getting passed around without attribution, it appears that Amstutz has taken it to another level. She could alert those who are posting it with the evidence that she's the author and ask, nicely, for proper attribution. She could also then use that fame and celebrity to get other commissioned writing projects, or maybe a book.

But no. She just sends them bills.

She (or, rather, her "literary agent" Mary Taylor Smith) sends nasty letters to people demanding immediate payment of $750, significantly more than anyone would ever pay for such reprint rights -- using the fact that statutory copyright infringement violations have a $750/infringement starting point (which, we already know is ridiculous). Of course, Taylor Smith never seems to suggest that anyone might have a fair use exemption. She just sends the letter and an invoice demanding payment.

A couple years ago, the well-known author Orson Scott Card found out about Amstutz and Taylor Smith's effort to abuse copyright law, and wrote up a blog post that pretty accurately described the picture. He notes that those who are posting the essay are almost certainly infringing on the copyright, but that's no excuse for Amstutz's actions, whom he refers to as "a moderately talented but extremely greedy, litigious, and self-righteous author:"

Now, her essay was originally published in Ozark Senior Living magazine. You can bet that she did not receive $750 for first publication. She may not have been paid at all.

Furthermore, $750 is a ridiculously high price for reprint rights for essays. I have stories reprinted all the time -- sometimes award-winning stories twenty times the length of "If My Body Were a Car," and for which I was originally paid many times $750. But the reprint rights usually go for $300 or less, and that's fair.

Besides the money, you see, I get to have that story out there collecting new readers for me...

The web is full of people who don't understand that websites are publications. Nobody gave them a course in copyright law before they put stuff up online. Most of them are decent folks who, as soon as someone tells them they're doing something wrong, will immediately correct their error.

But Amstutz is not interested in understanding human failings. Instead, she has seized upon a means of terrifying people into paying her ridiculous amounts of money.

It's as if you went into a store, inadvertently broke a vase worth $75, only to find that the store manager is going to make you pay $750 on the spot, or else you'll be hauled off to jail for vandalism and fined $30,000.

Yep. $30,000. Because that's what Mary Taylor Smith, Amstutz's agent, misleadingly tells you you'll have to pay. Here's her exact language: "The minimum damages for copyright infringement in a court of law is $750 and is punishable up to $30,000, plus attorney fees and court costs."

Yes, but that $30,000 is a maximum. There is zero chance that a rational court would charge a mom-and-pop non-profit website anywhere near that amount for infringing the copyright of a piece of writing that probably earned $100 or less on first publication. Especially when they took the essay down the moment they realized it was a copyright infringement.

Amstutz also has a rather obnoxious webpage up about this topic, saying that she's building a list of all the people who refused to pay and will soon sue them all (at which point she'll also "rescind" the invoice for $750, and try to get much more in court. She also has a "lesson" in copyright which gets a lot of the details wrong (she calls infringing stealing, makes no mention of fair use at all, and says you can never use someone else's words without permission, etc.)

Card points out that this does, indeed, feel like extortion, even if it is infringement:

Amstutz brags about just how much money she intends to extort from anyone who trips over her essay.

Because that's what it seems like to me: extortion. Yes, republishing her essay is an infringement of copyright. But most people who do it are ignorant of what they're doing. Amstutz preys on these people, hovering to see who falls into the trap, and then threatening them and bullying them to pay her far more than the reprint rights are worth, under threat of maximum fines they would never have to pay.

There are plenty of people like this in the world -- vultures who prey on people who make mistakes. I'll wager that Amstutz makes far more money from legal extortion than she makes as a writer. She has left writing far behind. Now she's just a bully, like a big kid threatening little kids so they'll turn over their lunch money.

Card, as he did when JK Rowling started bullying the author of the Harry Potter Lexicon, points out how unoriginal the idea of Amstutz essay is in the first place. He points out that plenty of others have written similar things. While he says, correctly, that this doesn't change the fact that her specific expression is covered by copyright, it does raise questions about why Amstutz thinks her work is so special. His suggested solution: stop posting or forwarding her writings and return her "to obscurity where she belongs."

Finally, he shows how an author should respond to such flattery, by granting everyone the right to forward his works online, as long as they properly credit it. He does ask that people ask permission to repost his essays, but says he'll often grant the right, free of charge with little hassle.

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That Apple's tablet shall eventually come is all but certain. But now that uncertainty over the release date has emerged, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster hedges that it's irrelevant.

That said, Munster seems to be the master of inaccurately predicting the imminent release of the Apple Tablet--perhaps this is a sign that it actually came out yesterday and we all missed it.

My chin fell to the floor this morning as I read a BBC article quoting Twitter co-CEO Biz Stone advising Rupert Murdoch to be more open.

This got me to think about where Twitter is and where they're going and how similar it is to where Murdoch's newspapers are.

In a newspaper, reporters get the prime space with the big headlines, and the readers are placed in a corner, Letters to the Editor. Or represented by a "Public Editor" who does a better job of representing the editors and owners.

In Twitter there's a similar hierarchy developing, pretty rapidly.

The prime space is allocated, in a totally non-transparent way, to certain people, and the rest of us are mostly talking to ourselves, in very small numbers.

I was having coffee the other day with a former colleague at Berkman, Ethan Zuckerman, who said he would try to do something special if he had the millions of followers you get when you're on the Suggested Users List. I've seen people go that route. All of a sudden it's not good enough to be yourself, now you have to do something to take advantage of the flow you're able to generate. I wonder if that distortion, when it all shakes out, will be all that different from the feeling a reporter gets that he or she is more than a person writing from their own point of view. My guess is that it's more or less the same thing.

Stone has made a mess of something that could have been great by not being tranparent. How ironic that he advises Murdoch on something he himself so badly needs to do. Pretty typical of the way the tech industry relates to media.

Anyway, I think it's inevitable that Murdoch and many others in the media business will see the need to challenge Twitter for dominance in the realtime message distribution network. I don't see Twitter as being any more or less open than Mudoch's company. The basis for success will come elsewhere.

The Chicago Sun-Times is offering a suggestion that could vastly improve your Thanksgiving meal, or turn this year's family gathering into a disaster of Michael Bay proportions. Depending on your point of view. Behold, the recipe for slider stuffing, which calls for "18 White Castle hamburgers (no pickles), chopped into 1-inch pieces," along with more usual suspects like button mushrooms, chicken stock, butter, onions, celery and sage.

Nutrition facts per serving: 162 calories, 10 g fat, 5 g saturated fat, 22 mg cholesterol, 13 g carbohydrates, 6 g protein, 259 mg sodium, 1 g fiber

Oddly, the recipe does not seem to clarify what the size of a serving is, just that the recipe makes 12 of them. Whatever they may be.

Article about the couple who came up with this wonder/abomination in Chicago Sun-Times

Image courtesy Flickr user Marshall Astor - Food Pornographer, Via CC

wiedzmin writes "Facebook's Joe Hewitt, Second Gear's Justin Williams, the long-time Mac software developer known as 'Rogue Amoeba' and other respected App Store developers have recently decided to discontinue their work on the platform, citing their frustration with Apple's opaque approval process. Continued issues with erroneous and snap rejections of applications and APIs are prompting more and more developers to shun the platform entirely. Though there are tens of thousands of other developers who have pumped out over 100,000 apps for the platform, continued migration away from iPhone development will most likely result in lower quality software."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We keep hearing from folks how the collections societies in the US for songwriters and composers, ASCAP, BMI and SESAC, are supposedly the "good guys" in that they actually give money to the actual musicians, and they aren't like the RIAA at all. But the evidence continues to be lacking on that front. In fact, it increasingly looks like they're doing a lot more harm to most musicians. Earlier this year, we noted that their aggressiveness in getting just about any small venue to pay up fees was killing off open mic nights and other sorts of venues that allowed musicians to play live. Mike points us to the news that many venues are simply giving up on live music. The problem? Well, ASCAP, BMI and SESAC are all demanding huge fees. Even the restaurants that don't bring in cover bands are being told they need to pay up, just in case a musician happens to do a cover in the middle of a wholly original set. The licensing organizations don't seem to care, they just want you to pay, just in case. When asked how they know that covered music is being played, they admit they don't:

"Basically, we don't know," said Dave Ascher, the SESAC Music Licensing Consultant who sent the letters. "To make a long story short, there's no way, logistically, for us to know whether on a day-to-day basis they're playing SESAC music."

But, just in case, you need to pay up. Of course, rather than doing that, the venues are just giving up on live music, providing fewer places for musicians to perform, hone their craft, and build up a following (and a business model).

As for the claim that these organizations help bring in money for those musicians, well, that's not seen either. We've already seen how they only give money to big name artists in most cases, because that's all they're able to track. In fact, the article talks to one musician who's upset about all the venues closing, but is still registering his songs with ASCAP. When asked if he's received any royalty check at all, the answer was no. So, how do the collections organizations respond? They tell them to become more famous:

"I'm sorry to hear that, but what I would like to tell him is that he needs to write a hit song," BMI's Bailey said.

How nice. They funnel all the money to big name artists, force venues to close so new artists can't become famous, and then when asked about giving money to those up-and-coming artists, they flippantly tell them to become more famous.

At some point, musicians and songwriters need to learn that these organizations are not doing things in their best interests at all. They're simply bureaucracies to funnel money to big names, while limiting the competition.

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mouthbeef writes "A source very close to the UK Labour government just called me to leak the fact that Secretary of State Lord Mandelson is trying to sneak a revision into the Digital Economy Bill that would give him and his successors the power to create future copyright law without debate. Mandelson goes on to explain that he wants this so he can create private copyright militias with investigatory and enforcement powers, and so he can create new copyright punishments as he sees fit (e.g., jail time, three strikes)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A slow-moving, cold-blooded goat once lived on the island of Majorca. "They also saved energy by having a brain half the size of hoofed mammals its own size, and its eyes were only a third of the size." (Via Bruce Sterling)

Wow, rad physics experiment in which FIRE is used to visualize sound. Don't try it at home, unless you're a physics teacher, in which case please show this to your students. [Thanks, Tyler!]

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If you're sitting in an American airport this morning, wondering why you're sitting there and not on a plane that was supposed to leave an hour ago, we have an explanation for you. There seems to be a glitch in the FAA's flight plan computer system today, and it's causing delays and cancellations nationwide. If they won't open the bars yet, we think you at least deserve a conciliatory Cinnabon. (Thanks Sparky!)

seven of five writes with this excerpt from an Associated Press report: "A problem with the FAA system that collects airlines' flight plans caused widespread flight cancellations and delays nationwide Thursday. It was the second time in 15 months that a glitch in the flight plan system caused delays. The FAA said in a statement that it is having a problem processing flight plan information. 'We are investigating the cause of the problem,' the agency said. 'We are processing flight plans manually and expect some delays. We have radar coverage and communications with planes.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An upscale horseback riding club in Lithuania has been revealed as one of the CIA's "black sites," used to interrogate and torture Al-Qaeda suspects. ABC News reports that the riding academy and cafe near Vilnius was used to torture and interrogate up to eight prisoners at a time.

If you thought that the entertainment industry would stop at having the ability to force ISPs to kick people they accuse (not convict) of file sharing offline, you might want to pay attention to what's happening in South Korea. South Korea, of course, is home to very high broadband penetration, with exceptionally high speeds. And, not surprisingly, there's a lot of unauthorized file sharing going on there. Of course, if you looked at the Korean cultural world, you'd immediately learn that smart entrepreneurs and entertainers quickly learned to adapt and take advantage of this new world. Entrepreneurs like JY Park recognized the changing marketplace, and adapted -- and the massive success he's had with artists like Rain and Wonder Girls, suggests that perhaps "piracy" wasn't a big deal. All you need is some smart business people who can adapt.

But, of course, we've all seen what sorts of companies are afraid to adapt. The big record labels and the big movie studios couldn't be bothered with the tricky proposition of actually understanding the new marketplace and adjusting their business model. So, they went to the US government and said "something must be done." That "something" turned out to be a new "free trade" (ha ha!) agreement with South Korea, that had little to do with free trade, but plenty to do with pushing ridiculously draconian copyright laws on South Korea (i.e., protectionism for the entertainment industry, not free trade). Of course, these new laws went way beyond what any other country had, and included getting the government to shut down file sharing sites while restricting how user-generated content sites could work as well. Not surprisingly, once the law passed, various sites began restricting how they could be used, even limiting the uploading of any songs, even ones that users themselves had created. And, of course, with all that, a "three strikes" plan to kick people off the internet was also included.

You would think that the industry would be happy and leave well enough alone, right?

Of course not. Reader Dan alerts us to the news that some entertainment industry lobbyists are now demanding that all file sharing services must use content filters. Otherwise, they plan to sue. Just another reminder that for some of these folks, enough will never be enough. They will keep pushing for more and more, just as consumers keep pushing back on having their own rights stripped away.

And, don't think this is limited to South Korea. Many of the "leaked" points about the needlessly secretive ACTA deal are supposedly "based on" the trade agreement that was done with South Korea. So take a look at what's happening there and see if that's how you think copyright law should work in the US.

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Barence writes "Microsoft has unveiled the first details of Internet Explorer 9, promising that it will close the performance gap on rival browsers. The major newcomer is a revamped rendering engine that will tap the power of the PC's graphics card to accelerate text and graphics performance. 'We're changing IE to use the DirectX family of Windows APIs to enable many advances for web developers,' explains Internet Explorer's general manager, Dean Hachamovitch. As well as improving performance, Microsoft claims the hardware acceleration will enhance the appearance and readability of fonts on the web, with sub-pixel positioning that eradicates the jagged edges on large typefaces."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A source close to the British Labour Government has just given me reliable information about the most radical copyright proposal I've ever seen.

Secretary of State Peter Mandelson is planning to introduce changes to the Digital Economy Bill now under debate in Parliament. These changes will give the Secretary of State (Mandelson -- or his successor in the next government) the power to make "secondary legislation" (legislation that is passed without debate) to amend the provisions of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988).

What that means is that an unelected official would have the power to do anything without Parliamentary oversight or debate, provided it was done in the name of protecting copyright. Mandelson elaborates on this, giving three reasons for his proposal:

1. The Secretary of State would get the power to create new remedies for online infringements (for example, he could create jail terms for file-sharing, or create a "three-strikes" plan that costs entire families their internet access if any member stands accused of infringement)

2. The Secretary of State would get the power to create procedures to "confer rights" for the purposes of protecting rightsholders from online infringement. (for example, record labels and movie studios can be given investigative and enforcement powers that allow them to compel ISPs, libraries, companies and schools to turn over personal information about Internet users, and to order those companies to disconnect users, remove websites, block URLs, etc)

3. The Secretary of State would get the power to "impose such duties, powers or functions on any person as may be specified in connection with facilitating online infringement" (for example, ISPs could be forced to spy on their users, or to have copyright lawyers examine every piece of user-generated content before it goes live; also, copyright "militias" can be formed with the power to police copyright on the web)

Mandelson is also gunning for sites like YouSendIt and other services that allow you to easily transfer large files back and forth privately (I use YouSendIt to send podcasts back and forth to my sound-editor during production). Like Viacom, he's hoping to force them to turn off any feature that allows users to keep their uploads private, since privacy flags can be used to keep infringing files out of sight of copyright enforcers.

This is as bad as I've ever seen, folks. It's a declaration of war by the entertainment industry and their captured regulators against the principles of free speech, privacy, freedom of assembly, the presumption of innocence, and competition.

This proposal creates the office of Pirate-Finder General, with unlimited power to appoint militias who are above the law, who can pry into every corner of your life, who can disconnect you from your family, job, education and government, who can fine you or put you in jail.

More to follow, I'm sure, once Open Rights Group and other activist organizations get working on this. In the meantime, tell every Briton you know. If we can't stop this, it's beginning of the end for the net in Britain.

Hasselblad has announced a Multi-Shot (MS) version of its H3DII-50 medium format camera. First shown in the H3DII-39 MS in 2008, the system captures four shots in a row, moving the sensor by one pixel between each shot to record full RGB values at each position. THe H3DII-50 MS costs €23,000 with less expensive trade-in prices and a trade-up route for Hasselblad owners.

kai_hiwatari writes "It looks like the Ubuntu developers consider GIMP to be too powerful for a normal desktop user. They are removing it from the upcoming Ubuntu 10.04. Among the reasons cited are that the UI is too complex, it takes up room on the disc, and 'desktop users just want to edit photos and they can do that in F-Spot.''"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The glass is aligned to concentrate the sun's rays, lighting the cannon's fuse at high noon. More pics here, and a very detailed .pdf from the British Sundial Society on so-called "noon cannons" here. [via Neatorama]

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FutureDomain writes "A federal judge in Atlanta has declined a restraining order from AT&T that would have prevented Verizon from running ads that compared their 3G coverage to AT&T's. AT&T felt that Verizon's ads 'mislead consumers into thinking that AT&T doesn't offer wireless service in large portions of the country, which is clearly not the case.' Verizon argued that the ads clearly indicated that the maps were only of 3G coverage, and that AT&T is only suing because it doesn't want to face the truth about its network."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As you hopefully know, back in 1999, the RIAA had a Congressional staffer named Mitch Glazier slip four words into a totally unrelated bill on satellite retransmission of broadcast TV, literally in the middle of the night, that effectively changed the way copyrights worked on songs by major label artists. It effectively took much of the control out of the hands of the artists and handed it right to the labels. Remember that the next time the record labels claim they're representing the best interests of artists. The use of four simple words, buried deep within the bill, which no one other than the RIAA knew about (seriously, those who voted on it later said they had no idea), turned songs recorded by artists signed to record deals to works made for hire. That meant that those artists could not reclaim the copyrights to their songs later on via a "termination" right, as any other content creator could. Glazier, the staffer who slipped this into the bill, ended up going to work for the RIAA just three months after putting this text into the bill. He was apparently hired with a $500,000 salary. Not a bad payoff for changing a key component of copyright law in the middle of the night when no one's looking.

Luckily, soon after this passed a few people did notice, leading to a big uproar from artists, and an eventual backtracking from Congress, who never did believe the RIAA's line that this "change" just "clarified existing law" rather than changed it entirely.

But, it's important to remember all of this when discussing termination rights for music. Back in October, we had discussed how the songs of many top musicians were quickly approaching those termination rights, and some of the major record labels stood to lose the copyrights on some of their biggest hit albums. Wired recently ran a similar article about this "ticking time bomb," and I wasn't going to post it, because I wasn't sure it added much new, until reader Mesanna pointed out one little factoid down at the bottom:

The second option is to re-record sound recordings in order to create new sound recording copyrights, which would reset the countdown clock at 35 years for copyright grant termination. Eveline characterized the labels' conversations with creators going something like, "Okay, you have the old mono masters if you want -- but these digital remasters are ours."

Labels already file new copyrights for remasters. For example, Sony Music filed a new copyright for the remastered version of Ben Folds Five's Whatever and Ever Amen album, and when Omega Record Group remastered a 1991 Christmas recording, the basis of its new copyright claim was "New Matter: sound recording remixed and remastered to fully utilize the sonic potential of the compact disc medium."

Now, of course that sounds ridiculous, to hear that record labels can get a new copyright on just remastering a work... but, that sounds an awful lot like the argument made by Bluebeat.com, concerning its "psycho-acoustic simulation" re-recordings of famous songs, that enabled it to claim a new copyright. Now, the record labels are crying foul about this, and the vast majority of copyright law experts say that Bluebeat's claim has no chance at all. But, if that's the case, then the record labels own attempts to get new copyrights on remastered albums to avoid the termination rights might also be in jeopardy. It seems like any argument that is made against Bluebeat can soon be used against the labels as well if they really do try to claim copyright on remastered albums.

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An article in The American Journal of Forensic Medical Pathology entitled "Use of a pig model to demonstrate vulnerability of major neck vessels to inflicted trauma from common household items" describes all the ways you can stab people with stuff you're allowed to take through airport security, like pens and plastic knives.

Commonly available items including a ball point pen, a plastic knife, a broken wine bottle, and a broken wine glass were used to inflict stab and incised wounds to the necks of 3 previously euthanized Large White pigs. With relative ease, these items could be inserted into the necks of the pigs next to the jugular veins and carotid arteries. Despite precautions against the carrying of metal objects such as knives and nail files on board domestic and international flights, objects are still available within aircraft cabins that could be used to inflict serious and potentially life-threatening injuries. If airport and aircraft security measures are to be consistently applied, then consideration should be given to removing items such as glass bottles and glass drinking vessels. However, given the results of a relatively uncomplicated modification of a plastic knife, it may not be possible to remove all dangerous objects from aircraft. Security systems may therefore need to focus on measures such as increased surveillance of passenger behavior, rather than on attempting to eliminate every object that may serve as a potential weapon.

Use of a pig model to demonstrate vulnerability of major neck vessels to inflicted trauma from common household items. (via Schneier)

(Image: TSA Security Checkpoint, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike photo from BillyPalooza's Flickr stream)

This weekend, I'll be wrapping up my US/Canada tour for Makers, my new novel, with a weekend at Philcon, near Philadelphia. I'll be signing books, doing a reading, giving a speech, and appearing on several panels. Hope to see you there!

Important note: I had previously announced a couple of readings tomorrow at the Philadelphia Free Library. It turns out that these are not open to the public (they're for school groups, which no one told me until last night). Sorry about this, folks.

Philcon: Nov 20-22
The Crowne Plaza Hotel, Cherry Hill, NJ

US/Canada Tour

The Chumby One -- the successor to the incredibly innovative Chumby device -- is just about ready to ship, and is available for $99. Chumby is a cute, squeezable hand-held device that is wide open -- everything from the circuit board designs to the software is open-licensed and freely downloadable. The idea is to produce an adorable, versatile device that any hacker, anywhere, can improve, so that all Chumby owners can get more out of it. I have a couple of them at the office and I love playing with them. The new version looks amazing.

In addition to being about half the price of the original chumby, the new device added some features: it has an FM radio, and it has support for a rechargeable lithium ion battery (although it's not included with the device, you have to buy one and install it yourself). There's also a knob so you can easily/quickly adjust the volume. But I don't think those are really the significant new features. What really gets me excited about this one is that it's much more hackable. The most significant improvement is that the firmware is stored on a microSD card.

The microSD card isn't replaceable from the outside -- this is to prevent non-hackers from pulling it out and wondering why the device isn't booting anymore -- but if you take the back panel off (screws this time, no glue seals), it's fairly easy to access. The key here is that no longer do you have to worry about bricking your chumby device: if you screw up the firmware, you just pull it out, mount it on your dev box, and dd a new image onto it. Also, microSD is a "managed" NAND device, unlike our previous generation device which used a raw NAND device. This means that we don't have to rely on a MTD layer for the filesystem, and instead we can directly drop ext3 onto the device. While we still mount the root partition as read-only to harden the device against accidental damage, unlike our original cramfs implementation, you can trivially remount it as read/write and modify the linux on the device. Also, our OS image takes up only a small portion of the total device capacity, so there's actually over a gigabyte of extra space on there for you to load extra applications and libraries.

chumby One (Bunnie Huang's blog)

Chumby Store

MAKE contributor Michael Una posted a review of Highly Liquid's MD24 kit which converts MIDI events over to an array of 24 +5V outputs -

The new MD24 falls into the latter category. It takes a MIDI input and gives you 24 discrete +5V outputs that can be used to drive relays, transistors, or servo motors. Functionally, the MD24 is similar to HighlyLiquid’s MSA-T or MSA-R kits, except that you now have 24 outputs instead of just 8- a significant improvement.

More over at Create Digital Music.

From the pages of MAKE:


Make - Volume 15 - Drumbot Activate!

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DeeFresh writes "ReadWriteWeb has an article up today discussing an incident in which a school employee lost his job after leaving a comment on the website of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper. After the school employee responded to the newspaper's poll of 'the strangest thing you've ever eaten' with a feline-inspired vulgarity, Kurt Greenbaum, the site's director of social media, tracked down the commenter's identity through his IP address and reported him to school officials. When confronted, the school employee resigned from his job."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jeff sends us these 1889 opium den photos, noting, "Unlike some guerrilla photogs of the era who would barge into dens with their new-fangled flash tech, snap a shot, and flee, these shots were taken by someone who had clearly established a connection with the users."

San Francisco Opium Den Photos circa 1889 (Thanks, Jeff!)

Synth DIY's amphibious mascot, better known as "Mr. Braska", has been visiting a series of home labs via postal transport. The photo galleries of his modeling efforts serve as a nice way to bring together otherwise unconnected, private workspaces - plus he's getting pretty good with an iron -

See a whole lot more from Mr. Braska's travels over at SynthFrog. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Digg this!

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's international policy crimefighting duo, Eddan Katz and Gwen Hinze, have published a scholarly article analyzing the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement in light of US law and policy. Called "The Impact of ACTA on the Knowledge Economy," it was recently published in the Yale Journal of International Law, and constitutes a fantastic, reference-heavy resource for understanding just how creepy it is that the Obama administration is sneaking around behind Congress's back (not to mention the backs of the American public) to create a privacy-invading, internet-breaking trade agreement that the US will be bound to bring into its law.

In brief, the ACTA process has been deliberately more secretive than customary practices in international decision-making bodies to evade the debates about intellectual property (IP) at established multilateral institutions. The Office of the USTR has chosen to negotiate ACTA as a sole executive agreement. Because of a loophole in democratic accountability on sole executive agreements, the Office of the USTR can sign off on an IP Enforcement agenda without any formal congressional involvement at all. But the negotiations do not have to be secret, and the sole executive agreement process does have mechanisms for oversight: they have not been used in ACTA, but can and should be.

The excuse for using sole executive agreements is that ACTA will be fully respectful of U.S. law. But the constraint of coloring within the lines of US law, as one anonymous trade official described it, is a fragile linchpin upon which the weight of public trust and democratic legitimacy is bearing down.

Stopping the ACTA Juggernaut

Unity3D hacker Pieter Floris writes in to say that he's finally got his Arduino connected compass controlling a camera in Unity3D. The barrier of entry continues to be lowered by projects like this. Kudos, Pieter!

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I usually find Larry Magid's columns pretty reasonable, so I'm a bit surprised to see him calling for a special "news tax" to fund failing newspapers. Most of the column is a decent enough explanation of how the newspapers are losing subscribers and are having trouble making as much money as they used to. He even notes (as so few in this debate do) that subscriber revenue to newspapers has never really been about funding the news operations, and has always been a very small piece of the revenue puzzle. And he suggests, as we have many times, that it's quite unlikely that a paywall solution will work.

But, right towards the end, he writes the following:

Maybe we need to find another model? I realize there would be a lot of objections to using tax money to finance journalism, but I wonder if we should take a look at the British model that finances the BBC's TV, radio and online programming with a $237 tax on whatever device you use to watch TV, be it a computer, personal video recorder, mobile phone or TV set. In Britain, according to the British government's TV licensing Web site, "watching TV without a valid license is a criminal offence."

I'm quite sure that criminalizing unlicensed Web surfing or TV viewing would be even more unpopular with Americans than mandatory health insurance. But unless media companies can find another way to stay in business, we may very well see some serious proposals along these lines.

Magid is, certainly, not the first person to call for government funding of newspapers, but he does little to actually explore the idea -- such as looking at the recent report talking about how as more government money goes to funding newspaper activities, the coverage of gov't corruption drops. On top of that, there are serious practical issues here. The BBC setup, involves funding a single national operation, not many different newspapers (which is what the rest of Magid's piece is about). It seems odd that he would effectively be suggesting that we wipe out local newspapers in favor of a gov't funded national news organization.

And, of course, there are all sorts of questions about whether or not this is even needed. Certainly, many newspapers are struggling, though in many cases it's not due to trouble funding operations, but due to the massive debt loads they took on a few years back when management stupidly thought that they were invincible to market changes. At the same time, we're seeing new and innovative startups hiring journalists and doing good work. Shouldn't we let the system work itself out before we suddenly decide to have the government intervene?

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Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that 4,000 microscopic worms were onboard Space Shuttle Atlantis when it launched today. Their mission: to help experts in human physiology understand more about what triggers the body to build and lose muscle. The worms are bound for the Japanese Experiment Module 'Kibo' on the International Space Station, where they will experience the same weightless conditions which can cause dramatic muscle loss, one of the major health concerns for astronauts. 'If we can identify what causes the body to react in certain ways in space we establish new pathways for research back on earth,' says Dr. Nathaniel Szewczyk."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Adobe has released 'Release Candidates' of Photoshop Camera Raw 5.6, Lightroom 2.6 and DNG Converter 5.6 for immediate download from Adobe Labs. The updates fix minor issues and provide additional Raw support for 19 more DSLRs, including the Canon EOS 7D and Nikon D3s, with additional DNG support for the Leica M9. The 'release candidate' label means the downloads are 'well tested' but not yet final versions.

Recently, AT&T sued Verizon over its "There's A Map For That" ad, that mocked AT&T's 3G network coverage, while playing on the Apple iPhone slogan of "there's an app for that." It seemed like an odd thing for AT&T to do, as it really just called more attention to the ad and the differences in 3G networks. Now, to make matters even worse, a judge has refused to issue an injunction stopping the ad. That doesn't stop the lawsuit, though, and the ad might still get taken down if AT&T wins, but it's unlikely Verizon's ad campaign is going to last until the lawsuit is finally decided, anyway. So for now, all it's done is driven a lot more attention to the ad, in which Verizon comes out favorably.

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The 6-in-1 Educational Solar Robotic Kit is an excellent beginner building kit designed to teach how solar power is used to drive a small motor. Kids use the 21 snap-together parts (no tools required) to build 6 different working models including an airboat, car, windmill, puppy, and 2 different airplanes.

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We keep hearing stories of law enforcement officials, such as Sheriff Thomas Dart of Cook County Illinois, trying to blame Craigslist for the actions of its users, rather than recognizing that Craigslist can be a great tool for actually monitoring and tracking down crime. Some are realizing this, and Eric Goldman point us to the latest example of this. Police in Palo Alto, California (right in the heart of Silicon Valley, so it's a good sign that they get this), used a Craigslist ad to help track down a bicycle thief. This is, obviously, a rather simple example, but it does make you wonder why more law enforcement agencies don't regularly do similar things. It has to be better than suing (or threatening to sue) Craigslist for the activities of its users.

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MikeChino writes "Working in partnership with the US Army Corp of Engineers, Berry Plastics has rolled out a new breed of bomb-proof wallpaper. Dubbed the X-Flex Blast Protection System, the wallpaper is so effective that a single layer can keep a wrecking ball from smashing through a brick wall, and a double layer can stop blunt objects (i.e. a flying 2×4) from knocking down drywall. According to its designers, covering an entire room takes less than an hour."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hector of Make: en Español sent us this piece from the site:

What happens when you give an Arduino to a student whose resources barely provide for the most basic maker needs, but is nonetheless eager to create something awesome? You get tech-art in the making.

David Busto Torres, the newest member of the elite robotics club from ITESM SLP campus (Mexico), shares with us his creation. It is a robot made only with an Arduino, some Ethernet cable, a couple of IR LEDs, two salvaged DC motors, an improvised H-bridge, and of course, some Lego bricks.

The total cost was less than US$10 (around $100 Mexican pesos) -- the Arduino was provided by the crew at Make: en Español.

David promised to share a video with us once he's finished creating an Arduino shield to replace all the cables and improve the robot's aesthetics, but for me, what could be more beautiful than the pictures above?

[Thanks, Hector!]

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IE9 Standards and Interoperability [MSDN via Daring Fireball]

Here's a set of chassis parts for a line-following robot, made on a RepRap machine, by a member of the IEEE Robotic Club at Rutgers. The mechanical and electronics parts were part of a kit everybody got. This builder created this RepRap body to go with his kit.

RepRapBot Mrk II
Chassis for Line Following Bot (on Thingiverse)

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Matthew Cruse alerts us to the news that the Netherlands is the latest in a long line of governments that are considering a "mileage tax" that would require drivers to have GPS devices that track how far they drive, and then tax you for every mile driven. Various US states, including Oregon, California and Massachussetts have toyed with such ideas, and while some in Congress have pushed for it on a national scale, the Obama administration has come out against the idea.

There are lots of problems with the idea, including the privacy implications of the government collecting data on your driving habits. Plus, the massive expense of equipping cars with such devices should not be underestimated. But, the biggest question of all is why such a thing is needed at all. We already have taxes on fuel, which approximates the same thing (the more you drive, the more you pay) which doesn't have the same expense or privacy implications and has the added benefit that it helps encourage more fuel efficient driving. The idea to do a GPS-based mileage tax seems like one of those things that politicians come up with because they want more money, and they get infatuated with some new technology, without thinking through the implications (at all).

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Timothy Liles Crayon rings...

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An anonymous reader writes "Officers from the Metropolitan Police's Central e-Crime Unit have made Europe's first arrests in the battle against the ZeuS or Zbot Trojan which threatened to compromise thousands of computers. Officers arrested a man and woman, both aged 20 years, in Manchester for offenses under the 1990 Computer Misuse Act and the 2006 Fraud Act. Both suspects were interviewed by PCeU detectives and have been bailed for further in-depth inquiries to be completed. The arrests in connection with the malware represent some of the first in the world, and the first in Europe to combat the distribution and control of ZeuS."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot alerts us to the news that Spain will be following Finland's lead in declaring broadband as a basic legal right. I'm still not convinced that declaring it as a full legal right makes sense, but it does show how important broadband is becoming to society. It will be interesting to see how this growing trend matches up with the efforts from the entertainment industry to have countries pass laws to kick people off the internet for file sharing. It would certainly appear that the two positions are not compatible.

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One of Jay's ideas for rebooting professional news applies equally, imho, to personal news. I wrote it up over at rebootnews.com.

Back in August of 2006, on the pages of MAKE Volume 07, Colin Berry shared the story of his maker brother Kevin Berry and the role that the Soap Box Derby played in his short life. This intimate story moved us all. In October of 2006, Colin read the story as part of our Maker Files series, with an introduction by Dale Dougherty, MAKE's editor and publisher. Below is Colin's story in full. To hear him tell the tale, here is the MP3. Or you can get the audio delivered automatically with iTunes.

Spinout
Was building a Soap Box Derby racer my brother's last best chance at escaping his fate?
By Colin Berry

All his life, my brother Kevin was plagued with terrible luck. It began when he was a teenager in the early 70s, in Longmont, Colorado — our hometown — and soon became something of a family legend. If the Trojan theater was giving away free tickets to Planet of the Apes, the kid in front of Kevin in line would get the last one. If Kevin sold enough newspaper subscriptions to win a clock radio, it was broken when he opened the box. If one of his friends shoplifted a pack of Odd Rods bubblegum cards on the way home from school, Kevin got collared for it. It was a pattern. He weathered it well, half-joking about his luck with his shy, gap-toothed grin, but over time it took a terrible toll.

In shop class, however, Kevin seemed to step out from its shadow. He was adept with tools and proved himself a skilled carpenter at an early age. I was seven years younger and remember marveling at the projects he brought home from junior high school: a varnished gun rack; a Newton's Cradle, with its five suspended steel balls; a sturdy set of bedroom shelves for his Revell models. Looking back, it follows that the noisy, meditative setting of the woodshop appealed to Kevin. It was a place where no one shouted at him and where no electronic parts could mysteriously fail.

In our basement, Dad had a woodshop, too, a flagstone-floored, fluorescent-lit grotto with an oversized plank workbench, barrels of wood scraps, and tools hung on a pegboard. It was here, from 1969 to 1972, that my brother built four Soap Box Derby racers. He would start in late winter, when snow still covered the ground outside, transforming a small stack of lumber and paper sacks of hardware into a teen-sized, gravity-propelled vehicle.

Balancing the shell of the car across two sawhorses, he built each the same way: a pine plank floorboard supported several plywood bulkheads, to which he anchored Masonite sides and a top. Each car ran on four red-rimmed Soap Box Derby wheels, controlled by a simple cable steering system and foot-pedal drag brake. Each was painted and then lettered with Kevin's name, number, and sponsor logo (Weicker Moving and Storage). And each one got faster.

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Autumn sez, "DJs at local underground parties have been losing their laptops to police raids - even when they're not DJing. They're being told that they'll lose their laptops - and often their livelihood - for an indefinite period of time, with no information on when or how to get their property back. The EFF has taken on the defense of several local DJs, but this is having a huge effect already on the local dance scene."

Over the past six months, music fans who have been spinning records -- or even just attending friends' events -- claim their laptops, soundboards, and mixers have been taken by the cops in police raids. The busted gatherings include an illegal dance party, an artist fundraiser, and a private Halloween bash. While it's unclear whether the lack of official permits was enough reason to close down all these parties, the bigger question is why the police are seizing and holding private property that DJs and attendees use as valuable tools for making their art and living.

Mike Holmes, aka DJ White Mike, was a recent victim of an SFPD sweep. On Halloween night, he DJed at the Beauty Bar and then hit a friend's costume party at a SOMA loft. He stored his bag, which held his laptop, in the DJ booth to prevent it from getting swiped. Ten minutes later, around 2:30 a.m., he says the police arrived and announced that they were taking all the laptops in the warehouse space. "I tried to explain that I wasn't even playing at the party," he says. Nonetheless, his computer was seized by a cop who identified himself as part of a "task force," who told him that he shouldn't expect to get his laptop back "for at least three months." Other DJs at the party claim to have received similar warnings -- as well as threats of jail time, if they were seen DJing at warehouses again -- from officers who said they were part of a task force.(The SFPD claims it does not have a specific task force looking at underground parties, but it does routine checks in the SOMA area, sometimes with other agencies such as the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, for permit and other violations.)

S.F. cops may have gone too far in seizing DJ gear at underground parties

Stop the War on Fun

(Thanks, Autumn!)

Presto Vivace writes "Brian Kreps of the Washington Post reports on a study jointly released Tuesday by the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner and the Future of Privacy Forum. It seems that in the process of collecting all that feedback about energy use utility companies will inevitably collect a great deal of information about us. From the article, 'Instead of measuring energy use at the end of each billing period, smart meters will provide this information at much shorter intervals, the report notes. Even if electricity use is not recorded minute by minute, or at the appliance level, information may be gleaned from ongoing monitoring of electricity consumption such as the approximate number of occupants, when they are present, as well as when they are awake or asleep. For many, this will resonate as a 'sanctity of the home' issue, where such intimate details of daily life should not be accessible.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"If I published only one book a year, and it did as well as this one, my net would be only around $2500.00 over the income level considered to be the US poverty threshhold," writes a bestselling author. The math: $50k advance, half of it lost to agent and other costs, and even bestseller royalties don't immediately cover the advance to create a return. But ... what if one wrote two books in a year?

Looking to take a break from tinkering on your latest project this weekend? Here are some fine maker events to check out, from The Maker Events Calendar. Wish your event was on the list? Add it to the calendar!

Coming up this week:

Dorkbot SF
San Francisco, CA
Wednesday, Nov 18, 2009, 7:30pm +

AUTOMATIC: An Art Show Benefit for RoboGames 2010
San Francisco, CA
Thursday, Nov 19, 2009 - Saturday, Nov 21, 2009, 5pm - 8pm

Breadboard Arduino Class
Garland, TX
Thursday, Nov 19, 2009, 7pm +

BRAF Presents - The Artumnal Gathering
San Francisco, CA
Friday, Nov 20, 2009, 9pm +

Make an Arduino from scratch workshop
Columbus, OH
Saturday, Nov 21, 2009, 11am - 2pm

Electronics 101
Atlanta, GA
Saturday, Nov 21, 2009, 2pm - 4pm

Los Angeles Microcontroller Club meeting
Topanga, CA
Saturday, Nov 21, 2009, 11am +

Google Sketch Up Workshop
Baltimore, MD
Saturday, Nov 21, 2009, 1pm - 4pm

Craft Night: Intro to Screen Printing @i3Detroit
Royal Oak, MI
Monday, Nov 23, 2009, 7pm - 9pm

Drop-in Arduino and Electronics classes
Berkeley, CA
Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009, 7pm - 9pm

Project Lab with Expert Included
Berkeley, CA
Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009, 3pm - 6pm

Start planning for:

Make:KC - Show and Tell
Parkville, MO
Tuesday, Dec 1, 2009, 6pm - 8pm

Intro to Welding @Willoughby and Baltic
Somerville, MA
Tuesday, Dec 1, 2009 to Tuesday, Dec 22, 2009, 7pm - 9pm

Woodshop Fundamentals @Willoughby and Baltic
Somerville, MA
Tuesday, Dec 1, 2009 to Tuesday, Dec 22, 2009, 7pm - 9:30pm

build your own lightsaber!
New York, NY
Wednesday, Dec 2, 2009, 1pm - 4pm

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Tom sends us video of a Maricopa County Sheriff's Deputy named Adam Stoddard stealing a public defender's paperwork, during a court proceeding, in front of the court's security camera. Tom adds, "The local news clip is really worth seeing, if only for the reporter's incredulous lead-in: 'The Maricopa County Sheriff's office backing one of its deputies after he takes away a lawyer's paperwork in court.' If you live in Arizona you're subject to the daily outrage from Sheriff Joe Arpaio. It's a bit like Philadelphia during the Rizzo years."

The deputy claims he wasn't stealing the paper, he was searching it for contraband. H's been found in contempt of court, and the judge has ordered him to apologize:

Those conditions are:

1) On or before November 30th, 2009, at a time convenient for Ms. Cuccia, a news conference to take place in the plaza on the north side of the central court building where he is to give Ms. Cuccia a sincere verbal and written apology for invading her defense file and for the damage that his conduct may have caused to her professional reputation.

2) If at the news conference, Ms. Cuccia does not state that the apology is sufficient, Stoddard will report to the jail on December 1, 2009 and be detained until further order upon a finding that he has complied with the purge clause.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio responded to the ruling early Wednesday, saying Superior Court judges do not order his staff to hold press conferences.

MCSO officer who took lawyer's paperwork might go to jail (Thanks, Tom!)

Update: Dan Gillmor points out that the Heat City blog has done great work on this, breaking the story.