coondoggie writes to mention that IBM researchers have an internal smartphone software project that is capable of translating text between English and 11 other languages (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, French, Italian, Russian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Arabic). There are no concrete plans to release this as a public product, but IBM certainly isn't shutting out that possibility. "Hosted as an internal IBM service since August 2008, n.Fluent offers a secure real-time translation tool that translates text in web pages, electronic documents, Same time instant message chats, and provides a BlackBerry mobile translation application. According to IBM the software, n.Fluent, was developed from an internal IBM crowd-sourcing project where Big Blue's nearly 400,000 employees in more than 170 countries submit, update and continuously refine word translations. Every time it's used, n.Fluent 'learns' and improves its translation engine. To date, the tool has been used by IBMers to translate more than 40 million words, IBM stated."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I'm beginning to sense a trend. Just last month, we talked about a top exec at Paramount claiming that his "real worry" about movie piracy online was how it was going to harm indie films, since, as a big company, Paramount could take it. Then, just a week or so later, Sony Pictures' boss, Michael Lynton, also started talking about how fewer movies were being made due to piracy. Unfortunately, he was wrong. In the past five years the number of films being released has more than doubled and the major studios are making more money than ever at the box office. And yet... they keep trying. Dark Helmet points us to the news that the CEO of Fox Films, Jim Gianopulos, is the latest to claim that movie "piracy" is harming independent films the most (while saying it's harming everyone in the movie business, despite no evidence to support that claim). He made this statement while suggesting that the US needs to follow France in kicking people off the internet for file sharing accusations (not convictions).

It looks like the heads of the studios have all received their talking points from the same source (MPAA?) on this one. They're going to talk up the supposed harm to indie films, even as the indie film market appears to be figuring stuff out on its own (in part due to smart indie film producers embracing file sharing as a better means of distribution and promotion). My guess is that the strategy is a response to the realization that those massive box office returns don't look good when the major studios argue for more draconian copyright laws, so just as the RIAA makes up stories about "protecting the up-and-coming artist," the major studios and the MPAA are now using a bogus PR strategy of "protecting the indie filmmaker," when all they really want are more laws to offer additional protectionist policies for the next blockbuster.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that a program to detect plutonium or uranium in shipping containers has stalled because the United States has run out of helium 3, a crucial raw material needed to build the 1,300 to 1,400 machines to be deployed in ports around the world to thwart terrorists who might try to deliver a nuclear bomb to a big city by stashing it in one of the millions of containers that enter the United States every year. Helium 3 is an unusual form of the element that is formed when tritium, an ingredient of hydrogen bombs, decays — but the government mostly stopped making tritium in 1989 after accumulating a substantial stockpile of Helium 3 as a byproduct of maintaining nuclear weapons. 'I have not heard any explanation of why this was not entirely foreseeable,' says Representative Brad Miller, chairman of a House subcommittee that is investigating the problem. Helium 3 is not hazardous or even chemically reactive, and it is not the only material that can be used for neutron detection. The Homeland Security Department has older equipment that can look for radioactivity, but it does not differentiate well between bomb fuel and innocuous materials that naturally emit radiation like cat litter, ceramic tiles and bananas — and sounds false alarms more often. In a letter to President Obama, Miller called the shortage 'a national crisis' and said the price had jumped to $2,000 a liter from $100 in the last few years. With continuing concern that Al Qaida or other terrorists will try to smuggle a nuclear weapon into the United States, Congress has mandated that, by 2012, all containers bound for the US be inspected overseas."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon continues to aggressively pursue variations on its "one-click" patent, even as it is repeatedly held up as an example of how screwed up the patent system has become. In the latest story, found on Slashdot, a patent application for method of buying gifts online was originally rejected under the CAFC's recent Bilski rules because the invention "may be performed largely within the human mind." But the wonders of some sophisticated wordsmithing have apparently won over some at the USPTO. Good thing Santa doesn't have a website, or he might infringe.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

I continue to work on my new editorial system. Whether it will see the light of day remains to be seen. I'm finding it useful and may at some point publish the tools. In the meantime, I'm learning a lot about the various publishing environments.

I supported WordPress right off the bat.

Then I wanted to do Posterous, but they are missing one parameter on their API for editing a post. As a result you can post something but if the user wants to revise it, they have no choice but to do it through the web interface, can't do it through the API. Tumblr doesn't have this limit, nor does WordPress. I have gotten in touch with the Posterous team and made the feature request. I've also checked with Steve Rubel, the most famous (imho) Posterous user to confirm that there are no desktop editing tools for Posterous. Confirmed. Without this simple addition to the API, it would be impossible.

I know I am putting pressure on them to add the feature. But it's in a good cause. I want to enable people to use their product in the same way they use the other publishing environments.

Talking with Steve earlier today he says something obvious that's worth repeating. There is a position between the lightweight Twitter and the heavyweight WordPress. And Tumblr, Posterous and now TypePad are positioning themselves right there. I expect this sweet spot to become more important over time. Twitter is, no doubt, introducing a great number of people to the joys of blogging. When they want more, some of them will certainly move to these "lite" blogging tools.

An anonymous reader writes to share the findings of a recent transatlantic survey which suggests that the recession is pushing workers to be a little bit more accommodating when it comes to sharing, viewing, or stealing sensitive information from the company they work(ed) for. "Pilfering data has become endemic in our culture as 85% of people admit they know it's illegal to download corporate information from their employer but almost half couldn't stop themselves taking it with them with the majority admitting it could be useful in the future! [...] The survey entitled 'the global recession and its effect on work ethics,' carried out for a second year by Cyber-Ark – found that almost half of the respondents 48% admit that if they were fired tomorrow they would take company information with them and 39% of people would download company/competitive information if they got wind that their job was at risk. Additionally a quarter of workers said that the recession has meant that they feel less loyal towards their employer."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes to share the findings of a recent transatlantic survey which suggests that the recession is pushing workers to be a little bit more accommodating when it comes to sharing, viewing, or stealing sensitive information from the company they work(ed) for. "Pilfering data has become endemic in our culture as 85% of people admit they know it's illegal to download corporate information from their employer but almost half couldn't stop themselves taking it with them with the majority admitting it could be useful in the future! [...] The survey entitled 'the global recession and its effect on work ethics,' carried out for a second year by Cyber-Ark – found that almost half of the respondents 48% admit that if they were fired tomorrow they would take company information with them and 39% of people would download company/competitive information if they got wind that their job was at risk. Additionally a quarter of workers said that the recession has meant that they feel less loyal towards their employer."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An update... Two circulating beams bring first collisions in the LHC. Every time we have a post about the LHC the crazy comes out of the woodwork proclaiming the world is going to end if the machine is operational, it didn't, so let's call a bonkers truce, ok? :)

Today the LHC circulated two beams simultaneously for the first time, allowing the operators to test the synchronization of the beams and giving the experiments their first chance to look for proton-proton collisions. With just one bunch of particles circulating in each direction, the beams can be made to cross in up to two places in the ring. From early in the afternoon, the beams were made to cross at points 1 and 5, home to the ATLAS and CMS detectors, both of which were on the look out for collisions. Later, beams crossed at points 2 and 8, ALICE and LHCb.

There's more here too... Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Science | Digg this!

Our own Brookelyn spotted this awesome lightbulb terrarium over on Instructables. [via CRAFT]

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Crafts | Digg this!

An anonymous reader writes "Only four days after the first attempt to send a particle beam around the LHC, we have arrived at the point when all four experiments got their first real collisions from the machine. This was met by celebrations and champagne, as people have been waiting years and years for this moment. It is a testament to the engineering of the machine that collisions were reached already, so few days after restarting. The LHC had already demonstrated ca 10h stable beams, and now also stable beams in both directions at the same time. In the coming weeks, we need only wait for increased intensity and the first attempts at acceleration."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rocky & Balls, my favorite female uke-playing duet, recorded another song about facial hair. This one is for charity.

The proceeds will go to The Prostate Cancer Charity and we would love it if you could all buy a copy since it is for a very very very good cause!

In addition, we will keep a track of your names, if you purchase the song, and feature them in our music video when we finally get together to record it!  Be part of Rocky and Balls history ;)

It is a minimum of $2 so everyone is donating about a british pound, but think of the good that could do!

The Mo Song by Rocky & Balls

Earlier this year, we wrote about plans in the wealthy coastal town of Tiburon here in northern California to photograph and record the license plate info of every car entering or leaving the town. It kicked off quite a debate in the comments, and now comes the news that the town is moving forward with the plan, despite complaints about civil liberties and privacy violations. Of course, it's worth noting that just as this plan is moving forward, reports out of the UK are indicating that law enforcement there has been abusing traffic cameras for purposes well beyond traffic monitoring. They're using traffic camera images of traffic around political protests to note cars that appear at multiple such events, and placing them on some sort of terrorist "watch lists." Police are apparently going through the database of images and "marking" certain cars, which then allow them to be searched in the fight against terrorism. Not that there's a big protest culture in Tiburon, but this certainly shows how a simple traffic camera effort can escalate into something that is much more questionable from a civil rights standpoint.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

I assumed that because we elected Obama to end the war in Iraq that it went without saying that the war in Afghanistan would be ended as well.

Apparently not so.

The President is now considering an escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

I can't imagine he will not face substantial opposition in the US and elsewhere, if the answer is escalation. I will be working to change this, and if it means working against the Democrats and the President, so be it.

What would you do if you want a jigsaw puzzle with your significant other's mug on it? The standard method would be to have a custom puzzle printed up that features their photo, however Mark Setteducati and Ken Knowlton have come up with a better way: Jicazu. Using 300 generic pieces of varying intensity, their puzzle can be assembled to look like anyone's photo. For build instructions, you simply upload a photo to their website, and it tells you where to put each piece. Unfortunately, it only appears to be available in Japan. [via neatorama]

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!

In a speech at the White House today, President Obama launched a new campaign, "Educate to Innovate," designed to get American students fired up about science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). The full text of the speech is also available on whitehouse.gov. "The new campaign builds on the President's Inaugural Address, which included a vow to put science 'in its rightful place.' One of those rightful places, of course, is the classroom. Yet too often our schools lack support for teachers or the other resources needed to convey the practical utility and remarkable beauty of science and engineering. As a result, students become overwhelmed in their classes and ultimately disengaged. They lose, and our nation loses too. The partnerships launched today aim to change that. They respond to a challenge made by the President in April, when he spoke at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences and asked the nation's philanthropists, professional and educational societies, corporations, and individuals to collaborate and innovate with the goal of reinvigorating America's STEM educational enterprise. The partnerships announced today — dramatic commitments in the hundreds of millions of dollars, generated through novel collaborations and creative outreach activities — are just the first wave of commitments anticipated in response to his call."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mike sez, "Bob Altemeyer's excellent book 'The Authoritarians' is online in full pdf format. It's a result of 30+ years of research into what he calls 'right-wing authoritarianism'- right in the sense of 'might makes' rather than 'opposite of left'. It's a fascinating explanation of how the minds of this subset of the population works- or in some cases, fails to: how they are able to assiduously apply double standards, fail to notice inconsistencies in their beliefs, justify abominable behavior, etc. Somehow, knowing that these people really, truly, can't reason in the same way the majority of us can makes them a little less irksome, if not less frightening."

I've read a couple chapters, and he's a funny and engaging writer who seems to have a lot of experimental evidence to present. Good stuff.

The second reason I can offer for reading what follows is that it is not chock full of opinions, but experimental evidence. Liberals have stereotypes about conservatives, and conservatives have stereotypes about liberals. Moderates have stereotypes about both. Anyone who has watched, or been a liberal arguing with a conservative (or vice versa) knows that personal opinion and rhetoric can be had a penny a pound. But arguing never seems to get anywhere. Whereas if you set up a fair and square experiment in which people can act nobly, fairly, and with integrity, and you find that most of one group does, and most of another group does not, that's a fact, not an opinion. And if you keep finding the same thing experiment after experiment, and other people do too, then that's a body of facts that demands attention.3 Some people, we have seen to our dismay, don't care a hoot what scientific investigation reveals; but most people do. If the data were fairly gathered and we let them do the talking, we should be on a higher plane than the current, "Sez you!"

The Authoritarians (Thanks, Mike!)

Tom Gauld, author of the astounding The Gigantic Robot book, has a new print available at Buenvaventura Press, called "Characters for an Epic Tale."

9.5 x 12.5 inches, 2 colors [note the apparition, done in a gray spot-color -- Mark], letterpress printed on Hahnemühle Mould-made Ingres paper. Signed and numbered edition of 150, half available through Buenaventura Press and half through Tom Gauld himself. This edition of 150 has been divided between BP and the artist. If you are in North America you can order direct from us here, for the rest of the world you can order it soon directly from the artist's website www.tomgauld.com

Buy yours now! These are going fast, and the price will increase to $150 when we are down to the last ten!

While you are at Buenaventura Press's website, note that they are having a 20% off sale on every book they publish!

Tom Gauld print: "Characters for an Epic Tale"

Ladies and gentlemen, we have (hot, natch) particle-on-particle action. If the time-traveling, LHC-hating Higgs boson particles are really out there, they don't have a whole lot of time to get together another baked goods-based offensive.

The first protons collided in the Large Hadron Collider today at CERN outside Geneva, Switzerland. These first collisions are another milestone on the way to the ultimate goal: high-energy collisions of protons in the center of the LHC experiments. They follow a weekend of rapid progress for the LHC. After more than one year of repairs, on Friday evening, November 20, beams were once again circulating in the collider. Over the weekend, the LHC team carefully studied the beams one at a time. Today at approximately 1:30 local time, two beams circulated at the same time for the first time in the LHC. As the two circulating beams passed through each other, protons from each beam hit one another, and the resulting spray of particles registered in the ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb detectors.

The first two protons collided at the relatively low energies with which they were injected into the LHC, 450 GeV each. Over the next few months, LHC scientists will raise the beam energy, aiming for collisions at the world-record energy of 3.5 TeV per beam in early 2010. With these high-energy collisions, the teams on the LHC experiments will embark on their quest to solve some of the mysteries of the universe.

Symmetry magazine, First Particles Collide in the Large Hadron Collider

Carbon/Silicon (a band fronted by The Clash's Mick Jones and Generation X's Tony James) has a new album called The Carbon Bubble. They are giving it away in the MP3 format on their site.

Carbon/Silicon's The Carbon Bubble album

If you find yourself at a Fry's in California, you might see one of these handsome Maker Shed kiosks. The Make team did a great job coming up with an attractive kiosk that took up just 4 square feet of floor space.

Gareth writes: "We think this is big news, not only for Maker Media, but for all indie makers -- a major retail chain is now giving small kit-makers this level of exposure. And, we think it's particularly cool that we designed and built these kiosks in-house, and even personally delivered them to the stores! What other publisher could claim that?"

Maker Shed kiosks at Fry's

Peter Kafka has an odd story about an executive at Island Def Jam Recods, James Roppo, who was supposedly arrested for not using Twitter to get crowds to disperse at a Long Island mall, after they had gathered to see singer Justin Bieber:

Police arrested a senior vice president from Bieber's label, Island Def Jam Records, James A. Roppo, 44, of Hoboken, N.J., saying he hindered their crowd-control efforts by not cooperating.

He was in custody Friday night, pending charges that could include criminal nuisance, endangering the welfare of a minor and obstructing government administration, Smith said.

"We asked for his help in getting the crowd to go away by sending out a Twitter message," Smith said. "By not cooperating with us we feel he put lives in danger and the public at risk."

Now, that's quite a charge to make: that by not following police orders to send out Twitter messages you were "obstructing government administration" or involved in "criminal nuisance." Of course, the case may be made even more difficult because, as Kafka notes, Bieber's Twitter account actually did warn people to leave. Still, it makes you wonder how they get "not Twittering on command" to stick as a crime.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Opera 10.10 has been released, and with it their new "Unite" technology, which allows users to share content directly between all of their own devices. Unite wraps both web browser and web server into a single package in an attempt to change the way users think about their browser. "'We promised Opera Unite would reinvent the Web,' said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera. 'What we are really doing is reinventing how we as consumers interact with the Web. By giving our devices the ability to serve content, we become equal citizens on the Web. In an age where we have ceded control of our personal data to third-parties, Opera Unite gives us the freedom to choose how we will share the data that belongs to us.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fair warning: These jokes are total groaners. Like science-based vaudeville. Frankly, that's what makes them so awesome. I've only had this video since Saturday, and my husband is already sick of me trying to make people laugh at the Schrödinger's Cat joke. But hey, now we all have something to fill the awkward silent moments at Thanksgiving...or create awkward silent moments, depending on your family.

Science comedian Brian Malow.
Watch his full 15-minute set from 2009 Wonderfest science festival

(Thanks, Nemski!)

A 65-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman were charged last week with trying to sell six fake Warhol pieces to a collector. The couple told the collector that the subject of the art was Mathew Baldwin, one of the famous Baldwin brother actors. The pieces were signed and dated in 1996.

After giving the couple a down payment of $25,000, the man took the art to an appraiser in California. The appraiser informed the man the art was fake because there was no Mathew in the famous Baldwin family. He also pointed out that the signatures were forged because Warhol died in 1987, charging documents state.

Couple charged with trying to sell fake Warhols (Via Museum of Hoaxes)

B&H, the photo and video gear company much-loved by photogs and filmmakers worldwide, is in hot water over employment discrimination claims - again. Four women claim they were denied sales positions because of their gender. According to reports I'm seeing, there are historically no female sales staff at B&H? Also: earlier this year, the store paid $4 million to Latino warehouse workers who claimed they were denied promotions. CBS, NYT, The Photo Forum. (via becthomasphotography , via Joseph Linaschke)

A Spanish design firm called The Emotion Lab created a series of home furnishings inspired by things we see on the street. For example, this room lamp is based on mirrors that let motorists see around corners. Also: a coat hanger reminiscent of antennas, and bookshelves inspired by scaffolding. The Emotion Lab via Dezeen

An anonymous reader writes "Using the latest build of Google's Chromium OS source code, Phoronix built it out to run on a Samsung netbook and ran sixteen benchmarks, putting it up against Moblin 2.1, Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10, openSUSE 11.2, and Fedora 12. They ran some of their usual desktop benchmarks (encoding, video, etc..), but more interestingly they ran a number of battery, CPU usage, and memory consumption tests under different settings that show some of the advantages and disadvantages for each of the Linux distributions, and spotted a few bugs along the way."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As part of the US government's "Educate to Innovate" program, they're doing something called National Lab Day, a "national barn-raising for hands-on learning." On the projects page for Lab Day, they have a bunch of Maker Shed kits and a PDF article from MAKE, Volume 15. FINALLY, they've caught onto us. Exciting. [via adafruit]

National Lab Day

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Makers | Digg this!

Northwestern economics professor Jeff Ely has a fun post on his blog about the economics of pinball:

In 1986, Williams High Speed changed the economics of pinball forever.  Pinball developers began to see how they could take advantage of programmable software to monitor, incentivize, and ultimately exploit the players.  They had two instruments at their disposal:  the score required for a free game, and the match probability.  All pinball machines offer a replay to a player who beats some specified score.  Pre-1986, the replay score was hard wired into the game unless the operator manually re-programmed the software.  High Speed changed all that.  It was pre-loaded with an algorithm that adjusted the replay score according to the distribution of scores on the specified machine over a specific time interval. ...

The other tool is the match probability: you win a free game if the last two digits of your score match an apparently random draw.  While adjustments to the high-score threshold is textbook price theory, the adjustments to the match probability is pure behavioral economics.  Let’s clear this up right away. No, the match probability is not uniform and yes, it is strategically manipulated depending on who is playing and when.  For example, if the machine has been idle for more than three minutes, the match probability is boosted upward.  You will never match if you won a free game by high score.  And it gets more complicated than that.  Any time there are two or more players and they finish a game with no credits left, one player (but only one) is very likely to match.  Empirically, the other players will more often than not put in another quarter to play again.

The Economics of Pinball

(Above: my photo of the Visible Pinball Machine built by Michael Schiess of the Lucky JuJu Pinball Arcade)

It seems that Spain is a country that is pretty consistently figuring out that we shouldn't just throw out all other rights the second "piracy" is shouted by the entertainment industry. We've noted recently that the country hasn't just rejected three strikes and declared broadband a basic right, but has also ruled, repeatedly, that personal file sharing is legal. And now, it even has judges who realize that "anti-circumvention" laws should have limits as well.

As you probably know, one of the key things that the entertainment industry has pushed for throughout the world is "anti-circumvention" clauses in copyright law. In the US we have this in the DMCA and it's a total mess. The law basically says that any attempt to circumvent (or to make or sell a tool to circumvent) DRM on a digital work is a violation of the copyright law -- even if making a copy of the content in question wouldn't violate copyright law.

Spanish copyright law includes an anti-circumvention clause, but as Leo Martins alerts us, a judge in Salamanca, Spain has taken a much more nuanced view of it in a case pitting Nintendo against Grupo Movilquick, who produced alternative cartridges for Nintendo DS devices. The judge's ruling (translated from the original) appears to find that the alternative cartridges do, in fact, circumvent Nintendo's DRM and can be used for "pirating" games, but also extend the utility of the devices for perfectly legal purposes. For that reason, the judge dismissed the lawsuit (translation from the original) noting that it doesn't make sense that the law would be intended to say that only Nintendo can expand the functionality of its devices, and the fact that Nintendo doesn't offer similar functionality shouldn't preclude others from doing so. There are areas where Nintendo can still bring a lawsuit, such as for patent and trademark issues, but the judge notes those should be dealt with in a civil court.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Thanksgiving is almost here, so if you're thinking of frying a turkey this Thursday, read through Lextone's instructable for safely doing so. I've never had deep fried turkey; what's your favorite way to prepare a Thanksgiving bird?

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Holiday projects | Digg this!

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a series of hacked emails and documents that were recently posted on Wikileaks are causing quite a stir in the scientific community. All told, more than 1,000 emails and 2,000 documents were stolen from the Climate Research Unit in East Anglia University in the U.K. "The emails include discussions of apparent efforts to make sure that reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group that monitors climate science, include their own views and exclude others. In addition, emails show that climate scientists declined to make their data available to scientists whose views they disagreed with. [] Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics' research was unwelcome: We 'will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!' Neither man could be reached for comment Sunday."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CNETNate writes "Most of us assume modern life is the peak of human achievement, but is it really? CNET decided to take a look at the major technologies of the modern world and compare them to their closest equivalent of pre-digital mankind — Facebook vs dinner parties, World of Warcraft vs actual war craft, iPhones vs hills on fire — and the results are surprising. And slightly dumb, so laugh."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Plum Song is the newest music video created by Omodaka, the Japanese experimental electropop group that describes itself as a "mutational fusion of music and motion graphics." It features the voice of folk singer Akiko Kanazawa and art direction by Teppei Maki, and pays homage to the Edo period (1603-1868) red light district in Tokyo called Yoshiwara. The video hit YouTube a few weeks ago, but the song will be available for purchase on iTunes today or tomorrow (or you can buy it on Hear Japan now). via TokyoMango

At around 19 seconds into this police car video, an alleged bank robber eats a piece of paper, which police say was a stick-up note. I think the guy is suppressing a grin.

Raw Dash Cam: Bank Robber Gobbles Up Holdup Note

In this short video by C. Coy, designer Milton Glaser draws a picture of Shakespeare while talking about the ways that drawing helps him think and perceive: "for me, drawing has always been a primary way of encountering reality."

His ideas reminding me of cartoonist Seth's short essay for The Walrus called "The Quiet Art of Cartooning." Both Seth and Glaser are in agreement that your mind opens up on interesting ways while you draw. Teachers who prevent students from drawing and doodling while being taught a lesson are hindering their learning.

Chris Connors of MAKE has a post about "a new way of generating electricity with the slow moving currents found in most of the rivers and oceans of the world." (Video here.)

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

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

Ocean currents can power the world, say scientists

Good stuff out of President Obama's speech on the importance of science education. Govt. will be working with media to help kids get science literate and, more importantly, help them get that science is fun. What I'm really excited about, though, is the first annual National Lab Day (coming early May 2010!)--a nationwide, community driven event that will give kids a hands-on science experience. National Lab Day organizers are looking for scientists, engineers and science-positive folks of all professions to volunteer.

Aeonite writes "The third book in a pseudo-trilogy, Writing for Video Game Genres: From FPS to RPG offers advice from 21 experts in the field of video game writing, pulled from the ranks of the IGDA's Game Writers Special Interest Group and wrangled together by editor Wendy Despain. It follows in the footsteps of Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing and Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames, and in keeping with the trend offers the most specific, targeted advice for how to write for an assortment of game genres." Read below for the rest of Michael's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PeaceLove sez, "My buddy Chris 'Orbit' Brown just hipped me to this lovely video of one Dimitri Arleri doing some amazing card flourishes, set to an unidentified piece of ambient opera. Most flourish videos are rapid-fire montages of jaw-dropping excellence (ie. the brilliant Buck Twins) but this guy slows the pace and goes for a more flowing, elegant style. Magicians are taking note. Watch to the end; it's killer!"

Card Flourishes: Dimitri Arleri - "Opera" www.thecuso.info (Thanks, PeaceLove)

Glitter and Doom is the latest Tom Waits CD, a double live-disc featuring tracks from his US/Euro 2008 tour, along with a disc of him basically telling jokes and shooting the shit with the audience. It's a real winner.

Waits is one of my favorite recording artists and an even better performer. This album amply demonstrates why a Tom Waits concert ticket is worth anything they want to charge for it, as old favorites like "Singapore" are brought to new life with a sprightly, sinister rendition that reminded me of how I was transported the first time I heard it. The torchy numbers like "I'll Shoot the Moon" are heartbreaking loser's ballads, shot through with hope and sorrow. And the angry, uptempo songs like "Falling Down" and "Goin' Out West" make you want to do something self-destructive and brave and dumb.

Honestly, there isn't a single sub-par track on this disc, nor should there be. After all, this is Tom Waits, the reeling hurdy-gurdy poet of the rasping voice and the ominous circus lyrics. And it's Waits live, palpably feeding off the energy of the audience. It's magnificent.

Glitter and Doom

Vadim Ryazanov of Let's Make Robots is at it again with the LadyBugBot. If you were wondering what he was going to make with his papier-mâché shell, this is it! I really appreciate his choice of materials and homebrew parts, such as the combination bump/cavity sensor pictured above. His inspiration for the project:

Once upon a time I was getting into my fridge for another bottle of beer, and after closing the door, my eyes stopped at little funny ladybug magnet... And I thought: "Hmmm... Why don't I build slightly bigger one, intelligent, robotic fridge magnet? :)"

Related:

• Wallbots: Robots that climb your fridge!
• Mr. Wake, the uncatchable alarm clock robot
• Make robot parts with papier-mâché

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Robotics | Digg this!

One of the points we've tried to make around here regularly is that this blog is not a traditional journalism effort. I am not a "reporter." I do not go out seeking stories to report on. I write about what I find interesting and I give my opinion on it -- and I do so in a way where I expect a discussion to happen in our comments from which we can all learn. I find that to be a lot better of an experience for everyone involved than to go out talking to a bunch of people behind closed doors and then writing up a "one true report" on the matter that probably leaves out half of the interesting stuff. Instead, I post what seems interesting and the comments are then very much a part of the story.

I've written many times before that we get more than enough stories sent to us by readers -- and I find plenty of interesting stories myself. I can't think of a single case where a PR person has turned me onto a PR story that I've cared about and hadn't already seen elsewhere. But PR people still fill my inbox daily with stories about all sorts of stuff we'd never write about, because they clearly don't read the site. They assume that any tech story is automatically relevant, so they spam me and probably 100 other sites. Perhaps some of them care and find the emails useful, though I doubt it.

In the last year or two, there's been a growing number of PR people who have moved on to a new tactic. Since actually getting press to cover the company you're representing is difficult, they now send around emails to writers about certain news stories, saying that so-and-so exec at such-and-such company, which has absolutely nothing to do with the story at hand, is "available for comment" on this story. So, for example, if two big companies announce a partnership, a PR person will send an email saying that some startup CEO in a market impacted by that partnership (barely), is "available for comment" about that partnership. It's basically a desperate PR person's attempt to get some press for a client where none is warranted.

Except, of course, we never quote people for posts here. We're not reporters. We're not looking for sources. We write about our opinions on stories and that's it. We'll quote another article, in order to comment on it, but we're not looking for sources at all. If you read Techdirt, you'd know that.

I recently put a message on Twitter about this, saying that, for all the PR people who had someone "available for comment" on stories, the comments on Techdirt are enabled and open for them to comment on any story they feel is relevant. It got a really good response on Twitter, so I figured I'd expand on it into a post. If you are a PR person, and you represent someone who has "a comment" on a particular story, please point them to the site where they are free to comment away, along with everyone else, as a part of a conversation, not some PR effort. And, please don't be offended if I just emailed you a link to this post in response to your offer to have some random exec "comment" on some unrelated story.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

In Melbourne today, an angry kangaroo attacked a man while he walked his dog, cutting the owner's abdomen with its hind legs and pinning the dog underwater. The man ended the attack by jabbing the kangaroo in the throat with his elbow.

The true magic of LittleBigPlanet -- the PS3 debut from former Lionhead designers at then upstart Media Molecule -- wasn't fully understood until the game was in our collective hands for some time after its initial release. What was then (mis-)understood as the videogame that would let us design our own videogames turned out to be one level abstracted from that. LittleBigPlanet had no intention of letting us faithfully recreate Mario's World 1-1 or Sonic's Green Hill Zone with pixel precision. Instead, what it does is take us back to the childhoods where we built those levels -- and every other bit of the world around us -- with the only materials we had at the time: markerpens, cardboard, felt and stickers. And that's precisely what gives the game -- still continuing to grow and evolve both on the backs of its dedicated community (last reported to have created some 1.3 million levels) and through updates from MM themselves (their upcoming water pack has caused more excitement over a ubiquitous liquid than anyone imagined) -- its peerless charm. That's not to discount the brilliance of its digital puppetry -- turning your tiny plush avatar into something you actually embody rather than simply propel forward -- or the delicate balance of its 'co-opertition' (as you attempt to hinder your friends' race toward score bubbles as evenly as you beg for their help). But it's the naive and innocent joy inherent in a game that's at heart about the arbitrary rules of the real-world games we created as kids ('you can only walk on the couch cushions, the floor is made of lava') as it is about its own crafted experience that's made it a modern classic. So, in celebration of its recent first birthday, and its even Littler debut on the PlayStation Portable, below is a collection of the concepts and sketches (happily provided by its relaunched community site) that trace how the game's little pan-planet were cut-out constructed.

Neat idea from students at the University of Edinburgh, who claim to have used Tom Knight's BioBricks technology to produce a strain of bacteria that are bioluminescent in the presence of explosives or explosives residue. The notion is that liquid cultures of the bugs could be sprayed onto the ground in mined areas and would glow green wherever mines were to be found. I can think of lots of reasons why this might not work as well as one might hope, however, and because no technical details seem to be available, nor any peer-reviewed data, the news should probably be taken with a grain of salt. If anybody has any more info, please link us in the comments. [via Boing Boing]

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Biology | Digg this!

It seems that a recent survey of global broadband practices by Harvard's Berkman Center at the behest of the FCC has stirred the telecommunications hornets nest. Both AT&T and Verizon are up in arms about some of the conclusions (except the ones that suggest offering large direct public subsidies). "Harvard'sBerkman Centerstudy of global broadband practices, produced at the FCC's request, is an 'embarrassingly slanted econometric analysis that violates professional statistical standards and is insufficiently reliable to provide meaningful guidance,' declares AT&T. The study does does nothing but promote the lead author's 'own extreme views,' warns a response from Verizon Wireless. Most importantly, it 'should not be relied upon by the FCC in formulating a National Broadband Plan,' concludes the United States Telecom Association. Reviewing the slew of criticisms, Berkman's blog wryly notes that the report seems to have been 'a mini stimulus act for telecommunications lawyers and consultants.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"I screamed, but there was nothing to hear." NPR reports on the disturbing story of a man whom doctors thought was in a coma for 23 years. In reality, he was totally conscious, but couldn't communicate. Improved brain imaging technology--which made his real state apparent--was "like a second birth."

Have you ever considered cloning your dog? I have. Ruby is so cute and sweet, but she probably won't be around a decade from now. Since I don't know how to find her family and she can't have babies, maybe it's the only way possible to keep a part of her near me forever. I contacted RNL Biostar, a Maryland-based company that has successfully cloned several dogs already, to find out how exactly it would work. The company's director of strategic planning, Jin Han Hong, broke it down to me as four main steps: 1. The vet obtains small samplings of skin and fat tissue. The tissue samples are placed in separate containers with sterile saline and antibiotics, then shipped in a Styrofoam box with pre-frozen ice bags overnight to RNL's lab in Maryland. 2. RNL does a feasibility check, which takes one to three weeks. Researchers isolate stem cells from the tissue and attempt to culture them into millions of cells. If this works, the living cells are cryopreserved in liquid nitrogen at -196 degrees celsius — this allows them to be preserved for shipment overseas or for long periods of time, usually 15+ years.

3. The cryopreserved cells are sent to a cloning facility in Seoul, Korea. There, researchers make embryos using donor cells and enucleated eggs from egg donors. They're zapped with electricity, at which point they begin to divide and grow. The completed embryos are transplanted into surrogate mother dogs.

4. Approximately two months later, the surrogate gives birth to a healthy cloned puppy.

Hong tells me that it will take three to six months from the day the sample is submitted until I receive my Ruby clone. The whole procedure normally costs $150,000 but, he says, "If you can make a commitment for dog cloning within a few weeks, we can offer you great rate."

I'm not really going to clone Ruby — I realize that nothing lasts forever, and that even if I did artificially bring Ruby's physical existence back to life, her spirit may not necessarily follow. There are so many dogs in the world who need homes, and I don't really have $150K to be playing around with like that.

I am curious, however, to find out what would happen if I cloned Ruby now, and then kept the clone as a pet, too, while Ruby is still alive. Would they become best friends? Nemeses? Co-conspirators against human domination? Would the world come to an end?

Advisor is a column about how to juggle technology, relationships, and common sense. Got a story to tell? Email me at lisa [at] boingboing [dot] net.

What's scariest about this animated visualization of American jobless rates? The animation doesn't include the figures released just last week, which would make the final frame even darker.

The Decline: Geography of a Recession, by Latoya Egwuekwe (American Observer, via Jason Calacanis)

Oscar-winning writer/director Roger Avary (Pulp Fiction, Beowulf) is serving a year in prison for vehicular manslaughter and DWI. Apparently, he's tweeting from prison: @avary. I'm not sure how one tweets while incarcerated (TWI?) in the US, since internet access is not generally afforded to prisoners. Perhaps he's permitted a cellphone with a texting plan. Update: All is explained in the comments. (via Shane Nickerson)

Donald Duck is apparently pretty busy on the trademark law front. On the same day, I heard about two separate legal incidents involving Donald Duck, which is just the sort of coincidence that can't be ignored. The first story, admittedly, is more bizarre than the second. It involves Mickey Mouse suing Donald Duck. Literally. It's got to be some sort of prank, but the lawsuit has actually been filed. The complaint is rather basic, with Mickey Mouse's lawyer Juan Abogado ("Abagado" apparently is the word for "lawyer" in Spanish.) stating simply:

COMES NOW Plaintiff, by and through undersigned counsel, and states:
1. This is an action arising under the Trademark Protection Act, 15 USC 78.
2. The Plaintiff is the owner of the trademark no. 0134148349208, (Walt Disney World patent).
3. The Defendant is a duck.

Donald Duck, represented by his lawyer, Pluto the Dog, Esq., quickly shot back:

1. Admitted.
2. Denied.
3. Admitted.

A quick search fails to turn up the trademark in question, though, I'll admit to not putting much effort into it.

The other case involving the same Donald Duck is a bit more bizarre. Reader Kevin Brody lets us know that the University Oregon has a stylized version of Donald Duck as its mascot, on license from Disney. Some students and fans of the University football team put together a song about how much they love the team. Great, right? Well, except that in the video they made, the Donald Duck-alike mascot makes a few appearances, and the school's marketing director flipped out and ordered them to edit out the duck, supposedly because Disney either was, or could get, upset about the usage. As the author of the column notes, this is ridiculous. It's just a few guys having fun and does no damage to the trademark at all. It's unclear if Disney actually got involved here, and my guess is that this is more the university stepping up before Disney said anything to protect itself. Given Disney's aggressive enforcement of its copyrights and trademarks in the past, perhaps this isn't a huge surprise.

Still, with Donald Duck being summoned by court clerk "Goofy" to the Florida courtroom where Mickey is suing, you have to wonder if he'll be able to make it back in time for the the Oregon Ducks game...

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

eldavojohn writes "Eufloria is a strategy game made by independent game company Dyson. I bought it on the Steam service this weekend for $20 and was impressed that it is a visually and aurally pleasing game. It's a real-time strategy game, but isn't a rehashed Civilization or Age of Empires — it employs a different kind of mechanic to conquer. Like a lot of games that rely on novel game mechanics (Braid & Spore come to mind), part of the game's experience relies on you learning as you progress through the 25 or so levels. They will definitely push you to utilize different strategies and tactics, so don't read this review if you're already planning to play this game, as it'll most likely be filled with spoilers about developing a strategy. I give the game an average 6 out of 10 and would like to say that with titles like Braid and Eufloria out there, 'independent' no longer equates to 'sucks.'" Read on for the rest of his thoughts.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dave sez, "From the site of a group of radical origami artists called 'Le Crimp', here's a fascinating video on making a near-photo-realistic mushroom from a piece of wrapping paper. Le Crimp was featured in the new origami documentary 'Between the Folds' (which boing boing alerted me to) showing on PBS stations in December (check local listings)."

CRIMP!!! origami: (Thanks, Dave!)

There are reports of a new worm that targets jailbroken iPhones and behaves like a botnet. It targets people in the Netherlands who use their iPhones for online banking with the Dutch bank ING, and the worm affects devices with SSH installed. (via Bruce Sterling)

blee37 writes "This is a side-by-side comparison of the Apple and Microsoft multi-touch mice. It includes video demonstrations of using the mice in applications, first-person shooters and 3D manipulation. It also has new photos of the internals of all the mice."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While there was some concern that prosecutors would push forward with an appeal of a judge's decision to toss out the ridiculous ruling against Lori Drew, federal prosecutors have now said that they're dropping the case and will not pursue it further. Drew may still face a civil lawsuit, but it's a good thing that the government is out of this. No matter what you think of Drew's behavior in dealing with her daughter's friend, Megan Meier, it was never a good idea to twist computer hacking laws to try to convict her.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

All the major DSLR makers have responded to the launch of Windows 7 and we've collected together the links with more information on compatibility. Meanwhile, Nikon has said it will offer compatible versions of its Transfer and ViewNX software by the end of January 2010 (although it claims there are currently no problems with 'basic' operations).

theodp writes "In May, the USPTO rejected Amazon.com's patent claims (PDF) for its Method and System for Placing a Purchase Order Via a Communications Network (a 1-Click spin-off). At the time, a USPTO Examiner cited Bilski, explaining that elements of CEO Jeff Bezos' gift-delivery invention 'may be performed largely within the human mind,' coming to essentially the same conclusion a NY Post reporter arrived at in 2002. But Amazon's attorneys have worked their legal wordsmithing magic (PDF), convincing the USPTO that 'obtaining delivery information for a gift from one or more information sources other than the gift giver and recipient' is indeed novel and patentable. A Notice of Allowance for the patent was mailed to Amazon on November 17th, just in time for Holiday Season injunction-giving!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here are some gift ideas for your favorite creative skeptic, guerrilla artist, or depressed teenager. I'm trying to keep it fresh, so if you're looking for some more ideas, check out last year's Culture Jamming Gift Guide too. You have plenty of time before the holidays take hold, so set some time aside to MAKE something awesome for that artist friend or relative, or supply him/her with awesome tools and inspiration for creative deviance.

AVAILABLE ONLINE FOR FREE: Selected works by Evan Roth 2003-2008 ($free download or $20 in print)

Evan Roth is a groundbreaking artist who uses lasers, computers, and graffiti, and this book celebrates his most awesome projects. AOFF is an inspiring full-color look back at the last few years of Roth's work.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Gift Guides | Digg this!

For some of us trying to sharpen our PCB layout skills, the right way to handle digital/analog ground planes can be a bit of a confusing topic. Eric Archer points out this straightforward article on the subject from Mr. Henry Ott -

Some people suggest splitting the ground plane in order to isolate the digital ground currents from the analog ground currents.  Although the split plane approach can be made to work, it has many potential problems especially in large complicated systems.  Can you list some of these problems?  One of the major ones is that you can not route a trace over the split in the plane […]  It is always better to have only a single reference plane for a system.

Hmm - ya learn somethin' new every day. Read more on the Grounding of Mixed Signal PCBs.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Electronics | Digg this!

destinyland writes "Sunday night saw a reading of the William Gibson's classic cyberpunk novel featuring porn star Sasha Grey at a New York art museum, along with sculpture-props simulating virtual reality. Artist Brody Condon promised to combine "Gibson's 1980s dystopian techno-fetishism with early twentieth-century abstraction," but the editor of H+ magazine challenges that description. "In a 1993 interview, Gibson himself told me:'I think my world looks dystopian if you're a middle class white guy doing reasonably well in 1993... There are so many places in the world today that are so much crappier than anything I'm writing about.'" And earlier this month William Gibson shared his response to a blog post about the event. "Gol' dang! It's news to me!""

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DeviantArt's Sugarcoatidli3z whipped up this smart, creepy Pikachu ski-mask just in time for the bad weather. It converts to a toque with pointy ears for warm weather/formal occasions.

Pikachu convertible ski mask (via OhGizmo)

Well, look at that. Last week it was just a silly suggestion from some netheads, and now come reports that Rupert Murdoch is at least in the early stages of considering opting out of Google, with Microsoft paying it to be "exclusive" on Bing. Apparently, Microsoft has actually approached a few publications about doing similar deals. It's no surprise that Microsoft and Murdoch would explore this. Microsoft has experimented for years with programs to bribe people to use its search engine over Google's -- but it hasn't done much to help. Meanwhile, Murdoch continues to not actually understand how the internet or copyright law works, and has some oddly misplaced dislike for Google (despite the fact that Google alone is pretty much what kept Murdoch-owned MySpace alive for years, and Murdoch owns a bunch of sites that aggregate info just like Google).

Still, if this does go forward, it will signal incredibly short-sighted thinking on the parts of everyone who participates. The initial reaction would be significantly less traffic to any site that agrees to participate, considering that Google still drives a ton of traffic to most major sites. Simply giving that up for a chunk of cash is a very risky proposition. Second, in factionalizing the web, it harms everyone. No one wants to have to think about which sites are included in which search engine, and if the battle begins in earnest, then you have a situation where you end up in an inevitable stalemate, with certain sites in Google's search engine, but not in Microsoft's, and others in just Microsoft's but not Google's -- and no one wins. Third, the cost of this program to a company like Microsoft to make it meaningful is huge. It's much bigger than the numbers that were being tossed out before. Finally, all this would really do is open up new opportunities for one of three things (or a combination) to happen (1) a new meta search engine shows up that aggregates both Microsoft and Google results (2) technology hacks that will allow you to combine the two results in one or (3) Google realizes that it has copyright law fair use on its site and keeps indexing sites anyways. I'm not sure Google would take that last step, but if things go nuclear, it might make the most sense.

But the key thing is that none of this does anything to help users. And that's the problem. It's not adding even the tiniest sliver of additional benefit to users. And these days, that's a strategic error. If your business is focused on making life more difficult for a competitor, rather than adding more value to users, you're doing the wrong thing. Microsoft and News Corp. should be trying to provide more value to users, and instead, they seem to be plotting ways to make consumers' lives more annoying and more difficult. They may think that's smart, but in the long term, such strategies always backfire.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Virgil England's life-size dragon skeleton installation in Alaska's Chugach National Forest. A lot of readers were curious about the elaborate back-story that England has created for his fantasy armory work, so Virgil himself pointed me to Debra McKinney's article from the Anchorage Daily News of last May that explains more:

This is an ancient world where armorers are the masters of applied physics, where dragons and hellhounds lurk and where he with the biggest bad-ass weapon wins. England spends as many as 70 hours a week immersed in this alternate universe, creating tools of an ancient culture that never existed -- a time and place where reptilianlike bad guys drop in from a distant galaxy, where ritual assassination is sanctioned by the temple, where if someone steals your goat, dueling daggers settle the matter. The Het Lands, he calls it. He knows this place in such intricate detail he can talk of its history, social order and warrior ways until your ears leap from your head and take off running.

Virgil uses only techniques and materials that correspond to 10th-century "Earth" technology in crafting his pieces. There's more info at his personal website.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Makers | Digg this!

ObsessiveMathsFreak writes "Coming hot on the heels of Microsoft's censoring of Chinese search results, web browser maker Opera has become the latest company to joyfully contribute to prosperous growth of the Great Firewall of China. For speed and convenience, the mobile phone based 'Opera Mini' browser receives formatted web page via Opera's own line of proxy servers. These unfiltered proxies gave Opera's Chinese users rare unfettered access to the wider web. However, this loophole has now been closed, with Chinese users now being directed to 'upgrade' to 'Opera Mini China', which closes this loophole, returning them to the buxom of party censorship, and Opera to the favour of the Chinese Government. Truly; 'To Get Rich Is Glorious'."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Novation's new Monome-lookalike gets the take-apart treatment over at Illuminated Sounds -

For those of you that are curious like myself, here are some images of me disassembling the Novation Launchpad.   I hope this inspires some of you to do some cool modifications to the controller, and make sure to send us some images of your modified launchpad.

Check out the post for full-size pics including a close-up of the board's programming header.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Gadgets | Digg this!

Hugh Pickens writes "The Financial Times reports that Microsoft is in discussions to pay Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, owner of newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal of the US to The Sun of the UK, to 'de-index' its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry. Microsoft is desperate to catch Google in search and, after five years and hundreds of millions of dollars of losses, Bing, launched in June, marks its most ambitious attempt yet. Microsoft’s interest is being interpreted as a direct assault on Google because it puts pressure on the search engine to start paying for content. “This is all about Microsoft hurting Google’s margins,” said the web publisher who is familiar with the plan. 'It's easy to believe that [Microsoft] may spew senseless riches into publishers' pockets, radically distorting the news market, just to spite Google,' writes Rob Beschizza at BoingBoing. 'Murdoch could be wringing cash out of a market he knows is doomed to implosion or assimilation. And he doesn't even have to be an evil genius, either: he just has to be smarter than Steve Ballmer.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earlier this year, we noted that ESPN had come out with rules on how its staff could (and could not) use Twitter. Apparently, Bill Simmons broke those rules, and has been suspended from Twitter for two weeks. His crime? Apparently calling radio station WEEI, a partner of ESPN, deceitful scumbags. That does seem a bit over the top, but why should ESPN have a say in how Simmons uses a totally unrelated service in which he speaks his mind? If he's going to say something dumb, isn't that his decision?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Michael created the Hack-a-Sketch -

An Arduino board reads the inputs from two potentiometers (the knobs), and sends the information via USB to a Processing sketch which displays the path of the stylus on the screen. This was extremely easy to build because the Arduino is just running the StandardFirmata firmware. No custom code on the board. The Processing sketch was surprisingly easy to write. Using this really did feel like using an Etch-a-Sketch.

The shake sensing comes courtesy of a mercury switch behind the monitor. Of course a lot of laptops come with built-in motion sensors nowadays - might be fun to tap use those as erase triggers instead.

Related:


Arduino based Etch-A-Sketch interface

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arduino | Digg this!

Have a gander at this magnificent transparent sea cucumber, found in the sunless ocean depths by the Census of Marine Life and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Thousands of strange creatures found deep in ocean (Thanks, Brandon!)

(Image: Larry Madin / AP)

PopeHilarius writes in to alert us to an unfortunate situation. Apparently the private school Adelphi in Bay Ridge, New York, couldn't handle the fact that there was a Bay Ridge messageboard that had a critical thread about the school, including links to some news articles that were highly critical of the school.

Rather than respond to those claims, the school sent the messageboard owner a cease and desist letter, demanding the entire thread be removed. Tragically, the message board owner apparently was unfamiliar with Section 230 of the CDA and the rights of a service provider to resist such efforts, and just took down the whole thread. This is unfortunate, though, commenters on the thread appear to be reposting the same articles (and explaining section 230 to the board operator).

But, really, this is why lawyers still send bogus cease-and-desist letters: all too often they work. Having been on the receiving end of a few such letters, it's pretty damn scary to know you might get sued, and even if you know you're right, the whole concept of having to fight it can be scary (and expensive) unless you can find a good lawyer to represent you pro bono -- which isn't easy for many to do. It's legal bullying at its finest, but it works way too often. This is one reason, by the way, that we really could use a strong, federal, anti-SLAPP law, that would help sites understand that they can't be silenced just because someone doesn't like what they say, and gives those sites an easy, clear and inexpensive way to get any such cases dismissed quickly.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

This iPhone macro lens carousel mod is a great way to recycle that pile of scavenged optics you've got laying around. [via LifeHacker]

More:

• Cheap iPhone macro lens for barcode scanning


• Cameraphone DVD macro lens hack


• Macro-Lens iPhone hardware mod

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in iPhone | Digg this!

bennyboy64 contributes this excerpt from CRN Australia: "The CSIRO will this week launch a new supercomputer which uses a cluster of GPUs [pictures] to gain a processing capacity that competes with supercomputers over twice its size. The supercomputer is one of the world's first to combine traditional CPUs with the more powerful GPUs. It features 100 Intel Xeon CPU chips and 50 Tesla GPU chips, connected to an 80 Terabyte Hitachi Data Systems network attached storage unit. CSIRO science applications have already seen 10-100x speedups on NVIDIA GPUs."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New in the Maker Shed, OLLO kits! What are OLLO kits? OLLO is a reconfigurable construction kit for beginner robot enthusiasts. Using an easy to build plate and rivet system, you'll be on your way to making your own robots in no time! We carry the Motorized Action kit, which allows you to build 12 different types of robots. Also, we carry the more advanced Bug kit where you can make robots that trace lines, detect objects, or be controlled via a wireless remote. Either one makes a great gift for the holiday season. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Maker Shed Store | Digg this!

Photo: PDVos In 1909, British explorer Ernest Shackleton aborted an attempt to reach the south pole. He abandoned two cases of scotch at base camp. A century on, we've found it.

Whyte & Mackay, the drinks group that now owns McKinlay and Co., has asked for a sample of the 100-year-old scotch for a series of tests that could decide whether to relaunch the now-defunct Scotch. Workers from New Zealand's Antarctic Heritage Trust will use special drills to reach the crates, frozen in Antarctic ice under the Nimrod Expedition hut near Cape Royds.

Thought discovered in 2006, conservation guidelines impose strict rules on how the ice-embedded bottles may be recovered. Whyte & Mackay's master blender says it will taste extactly as it did 100 years ago. Company Wants To Drill For Whiskey Lost In Antarctic [CBS]

An anonymous reader writes "The community at www.MicroPCTalk.com have spent the last few years devising all sorts of mods and tweaks for the Sony VAIO UX-series UMPC. Now they've thrown nearly all of their major breakthroughs into one machine. Using the latest UX model (UX490) as the base, the original SSD has been swapped for a speedy 128GB SSD, the CPU has been unsoldered from the mobo and replaced with a Core 2 Duo U7700 (making this probably the smallest computer to use said CPU). The original EDGE module has been removed and carefully put in it's place is an E169 Huawei terminal which provides up to 7.2mbps 3G (HSDPA), voice, and texting. On top of this, the unit quad-boots Mac OSX, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP (and the Huawei terminal works under Mac OS X as well)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SparkFun BlueSMiRF found in credit card sniffer, interesting Sparkfun product placement. Nate writes -

That is an officer of the law holding up a device that was found within a 'PIN pad' in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. I didn't know what a PIN pad is, so here's a wikipedia article and google images. From the article (November 5th, 2009), it looks like someone has found a couple serial pins on the hand-held credit card reader commonly used within Canadian retail stores. They've wired those pins to a BlueSMiRF. This allows a person sitting ~100 feet away to see all the serial traffic including all the credit card information and pin #s. Not hard - all it takes is a bit of time, and malicious intent... All things can be used for good or evil, including our products. You can build amazing things that encourage children to learn (checkout Gever Tulley's amazing presentation at TED), or you can build things that steal. We believe that sharing knowledge and selling products that encourage innovation outweigh the inherent dangers. We believe that stifling innovation or suppressing knowledge lead to much more dangerous outcomes.

Thing about this scam is that the person(s) who modified the device needed a lot of access to the device(s) and then they need to hang around 100ft away all the time... inside job? Either way, the more this story gets out the more people will know about it.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Electronics | Digg this!

MAKE Japan is having a meet up, check out this iPhone instrument! It looks like 3 iPhones mounted to a laser cut body and the player "blows" to produce music!

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Gadgets | Digg this!

Microsoft is ready to pay Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. to remove its news content from Google, according to the Financial Times. Microsoft has also approached other "big online publishers" with similar deals.

"One website publisher approached by Microsoft said that the plan 'puts enormous value on content if search engines are prepared to pay us to index with them",' wrote the FT's Matthew Garrahan. "... Microsoft's interest is being interpreted as a direct assault on Google because it puts pressure on the search engine to start paying for content."

This he calls a "ray of light to the newspaper industry."

Now, every site in Google is currently there by choice. As it could conceivably change its mind and shank Balldock and Murmer with fair use, let's assume that they're planning on exclusivity. End-user license agreements, paywalls, spider-blocking, that sort of thing. Maybe even encryption and plugins and other delights. Sayonara, RSS!

In any case, participating publishers have to become invisible to search engines who don't pay up. Think of all the gambles encoded in that decision: that the U.S. ad market won't rebound enough to go it alone. That subsidized foreign competitors like the BBC aren't a domestic threat. That people will change their surfing habits to find them. And so on.

But there's one gamble which does make some twisted sense: that Microsoft is an irrational consumer. It's easy to believe that it may spew senseless riches into publishers' pockets, radically distorting the news market, just to spite Google. In this case, Murdoch could be wringing cash out of a market he knows is doomed to implosion or assimilation. And he doesn't even have to be an evil genius, either: he just has to be smarter than Steve Ballmer.

0xdeadbeef writes "Two weeks ago, MIT artist-in-residence Joe Davis use the Arecibo radio telescope to send a message to three stars in honor of the 35th anniversary of the famous Drake-Sagan transmission to M13 in 1974. It was apparently allowed but not endorsed by the director of the facility, and used a jury-rigged signal source on what will now be known as the 'coolest iPhone in the world.' The message encoded a DNA sequence, but no word yet on whether it disabled any alien shields. You can get the low-down on Centauri Dreams: Part 1, Part 2."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From Flickr user Bloodthirsty Vegetarians, who also produce an eponymous podcast. [via Neatorama]

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Gaming | Digg this!

pdclarry writes "A recent study by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History and Columbia University found that a piece of tuna sushi may not be tuna at all: 'A piece of tuna sushi has the potential to be an endangered species, a fraud or a health hazard,' wrote the authors. 'All three of these cases were uncovered in this study.' The study, published in PLoS ONE examined 68 samples of tuna sushi purchased from 31 restaurants in Manhattan (New York City) and Denver, Colorado. Some of these were from endangered species, others were not as labeled, and some one not tuna at all. Of these last 5 samples labeled as "white tuna" were from a toxic fish, Escolar, which is a gempylid species banned for sale in Italy and Japan due to health concerns. "It can cause gastrointestinal symptoms range from mild and rapid passage of oily yellow or orange droplets, to severe diarrhea with nausea and vomiting. The milder symptoms have been referred to as keriorrhea [i.e. flow of wax in Greek]." Fraud in sushi is not new; Slashdot also reported study on mislabeling in 2008. This new study shows that some sushi can actually make you sick. The study was also reported in Wired."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

True story: A small college in the Midwest wanted to put up a wind turbine on their campus. The school, being on top of a hill in the middle of the prairie, had enough wind to produce upwards of 3/4 of their needed electricity, so the project made good sense. But when it came time to talk to the people living nearby, the school ran into some opposition. In particular, from a farmer who thought the noise and appearance of the wind turbine would lower property values.

The punchline: He was a pig farmer.*

The point here is not that irony is funny. (Although, it totally is.) Instead, this is about the cultural role that farmer represents. NIMBY--Not In My Backyard--is traditionally defined as what happens when people are, generally, in favor of something, but don't want the necessary infrastructure built anywhere they can see it. Bacon is delicious, but you don't want to live next door to a pig farm. Sustainable energy is great, but you don't want a wind turbine mucking up your views.

It's really easy to write off any opposition that gets labeled as NIMBY. After all, infrastructure has to be built somewhere, and everywhere is somebody's backyard. Therefore, NIMBYists are selfish twits who can't see beyond their own nose. But the truth, as per usual, is more complicated. Thanks to wind power projects, and the supposedly NIMBY reactions against them, political and social scientists are learning what we really talk about when we talk about NIMBY. Their discoveries could have wide-reaching implications, both for how we understand public opposition to infrastructure projects--and for how we respond to it and get what needs to be built built.

Note for city dwellers and others who don't get the joke: Large pig farms are generally smelly, considered unattractive, and tend to lower property values.

Real quick: I'm not planning on dealing much here with the arguments for and against wind, or with how wind power compares to coal, other renewables, or the magical electricity elves that live in our walls. That's a whole other post, to be written in the future. Whatever you think about that topic, you'll probably agree that we still have to build energy infrastructure of some sort, which means NIMBY matters.

Wind power is important here mostly because it's the reason researchers are rethinking NIMBY. See, there's a weird disparity with wind. In a traditional NIMBY situation, you'd expect to see nationwide polls that show high support for wind power, with support dropping off only in communities where a wind turbine might be built. But that's not what the researchers are finding.

Instead, the popularity plummet happens when you compare nationwide public opinion polls with nationwide academic surveys. And, at the local level, opinions aren't much different than the nationwide academic survey results.

What's going on? Partly, it has to do with the difference between the way pollsters ask questions, and the way academics do that same job. Eric Smith is a professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He told me that polls tend to offer broad questions that result in top-of-the-head responses. You don't have to have a fully formed opinion on something to answer a public opinion poll. In fact, Smith argues, most people don't. Academic surveys, on the other hand, get more into the nitty gritty, asking questions about potential downsides of a project that people might not have thought about before. If you'd been laboring under the impression that wind power had no downsides, an academic survey might force you to reexamine your position in ways that a poll wouldn't. In these kind of surveys, the majority of Americans still favor wind projects, Smith said, but that majority is smaller.

Once you're looking at the nuanced opinions, he said, there's not much difference between local and national viewpoints. In fact, protests often characterized as NIMBY are, instead, really national activism drawn to a specific place because that's where stuff is going down.

"It seems local," he said. "But it's not really. Or, at least, it's not specifically local."

In other words, what we call NIMBY is less about what people do or don't want in their backyards, and more about people in and out of the community using the backyard as a flashpoint for national opposition. If you're in favor of wind, you're likely to be in favor of it in your community. If you oppose wind, you'll oppose it in your community. But the specific location of the wind turbines isn't really a huge factor in your decisions.

I think NIMBY is something that's used to persuade people to ignore opposition as selfish, irrational. I think it's a fairly powerful political argument. But I don't think it's true," Smith said.

Frankly, if Smith is right, NIMBY might not even be that great of a political argument, because it forces you to fight an expensive and time-consuming battle that isn't really necessary. If you write off the NIMBYists, you have to shout them down. If you accept that "NIMBY" is something more honest and more nationally applicable, then you can deal with it in other, more productive, ways.

Take Denmark. I spoke with Jan Hylleberg, CEO of the Danish Wind Industry Association. In his country, he said, developers don't go into a community assuming support and writing off any opposition as NIMBY.

We respect the issues much better than years back," he says. "Before you can put up turbines you have to do a lot of detailed analysis on environmental issues. Most important though is that you need enough time to have a local dialogue about the individual projects. If you don't have time for dialog and debate, then of course you'll have more people being against the project because they haven't had the time to get involved and understand what's going on."

The other big difference in Denmark is local financial incentives. This bit was interesting to me, because I've spoken with researchers here in the states who theorize that smaller wind projects, with local public investment, would get more support because local people would feel ownership of the project. From Denmark's example, that seems to be true. Hylleberg says that if a developer there wants to put up one wind turbine, he or she has to offer the community a 20% stake. If they want to build a whole wind farm, they have to offer a least one full turbine to the community.

The solution to anti-wind power "NIMBY" may simply be expecting opposition, respecting the opponents and dealing with it via proactive communication and community involvement. Or, to be folksy about it, setting out honey for the flies instead of vingar.

Learn more about Eric Smith's research.

Image courtesy Flickr user phault, via CC.