Years ago, I got turned on to the psychedelic New Orleans "voodoo" vibe of Dr. John (aka Mac Rebennack, Jr.). His 1968 debut Gris-Gris is a fantastically weird amalgam of R&B, dark psych rock, and NOLA culture. I'd never seen footage of the Night Tripper, as Dr. John is also known, until today. Quite a spectacle. From music critic Richie Unterberger's liner notes for a reissue of Gris-Gris:

Gris-Gris was the first record credited to Dr. John, and to most listeners he seemed to have dropped out of nowhere with his mystical R&B psychedelia and Mardi Gras Indian costumes.  The album, however, was actually the culmination of about 15 years of professional experience, during which Dr. John -- born Mac Rebennack in New Orleans -- had absorbed the wealth of musical influences for which the Crescent City is famed.  Gris-Gris's roots reach back well beyond the dawn of the twentieth century, even as the album took in cutting-edge influences such as 1960s progressive jazz, and pushed into territory that no popular musician had ever explored in quite the same fashion.

"Gris-Gris" itself is a New Orleans term for voodoo, and the name Dr. John taken from a New Orleans root doctor of the 1840s and 1850s.  Also known as John Montaigne and Bayou John, he was busted in the 1840s for practicing voodoo with Pauline Rebennack, who may or may not have been a distant relative of our man Mac.  One of Mac's grandfathers sang in a minstrel show, and the latter-day Dr. John adapted one of grandpa's favorite tunes, "Jump Sturdy," into the track on Gris-Gris of the same name.  His onstage costumes and feathered headdresses, the source of shock and delight to audiences since the late 1960s, are similarly adapted from those worn by Mardi Gras Indians in New Orleans, famed for the infectious tribal percussive rhythms and chants they perform in local parades.

"Gris-Gris" by Dr. John, The Night Tripper (Amazon)

xchg writes in with a somewhat speculative, though plausible, piece from WiseAndroid claiming that Google is gearing up for an all-out assault on the mobile-phone market that will include a new, Google-branded handset and the first comprehensive Google phone service with unlimited free calls. "The real breakthrough, however, will come with the marriage of the Googlephone to Google Voice, the Californian company’s high-tech phone service. Google Voice gives US users a free phone number and allows unlimited free calls to any phone in the country — landline or mobile. International calls start from... just over a penny a minute. Google Voice also uses sophisticated voice recognition to turn voicemails into emails, can block telemarketing calls automatically and offers free text messaging. Google sounded its intentions two weeks ago when it purchased a small company called Gizmo5... [E]xperts are predicting that the Googlephone will be launched in the US early next year."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

siddesu writes in with "compelling" new data that chemical and fossil evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars was carried to Earth in a Martian meteorite. The finding is being highlighted by the same NASA team who made the initial discovery 13 years ago. Spaceflight Now has more details of the analysis.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ssssssh, what's that sound? Why, it's the sound of a million deejays weeping. Rumors abound that Panasonic may kill off the iconic Technics 1200 turntable. One DJ site compared the (unconfirmed) news with "parents talking about where they were when they heard that JFK was shot, or that man had landed on the Moon." Say it ain't so! (via Jay Smooth)

Nat sez, "Six thousand marauding camels have rampaged though a small Australian outback town. Apparently there are over a million in the outback, doubling their numbers every nine years, and despoiling the ecosystems, water supplies, and Aboriginal resources. Wikipedia knows all. One proposed solution involves an export-licensed, halal-certified abattoir to produce camel meat for export. Just goes to show that there's no tasty meat source so invasive and pestilential that it doesn't have an industry and lobby group."

They have smashed water mains, damaged homes, buildings and the local airstrip - threatening emergency medical evacuations - and scared local residents from venturing outside.

"The community of Docker River is under siege," said the Northern Territory's Local Government Minister, Rob Knight.

"This is a dire situation which requires immediate action

...Central Australian Camel Industry executive officer, Peter Seidel, said camel meat was low in fat and cholesterol and tasted like beef.

"There is substantial demand worldwide (for camel meat). An investor from Oman is already interested," Mr Seidel said.

Feral camels ruling the roost in Outback (Thanks, Nat!)

(Image: Deve (Camel), a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Veyis Polat's Flickr stream)

Whether the reasons are ideological, demophobia-based, or a little bit of both, many of us would rather avoid today's mass shopping chaos. As an alternative to Black Friday, Story Corps is promoting today as the National Day of Listening--an opportunity to sit down for an hour with family members and other people you care about, ask them about their lives and preserve their stories for future generations.

At the National Day of Listening site, you'll find helpful How To's for recording and preserving family stories and a question generator, to help you get over that "what the heck do I ask Grandma?" hump.

Your family stories can also become part of the oral history archives at the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress. To do that, though, you'll have to get hooked up with a Story Corps professional recording session. They've got semi-permanent booths in New York, San Francisco and Atlanta, and they're traveling the country with a portable system all year.

Image courtesy Flickr user Adam Selwood, via CC.

You were warned.

http://blog.rsscloud.org/post/259781743/fake-popularity-stats-for-real-time-feeds

Hope you like!

Rob sez,

"Documents recently obtained through access to information legislation show that author David Bernans was being spied upon by investigators at Concordia University in Montreal.

"In this first-person narrative, Bernans chronicles his experience dealing with Concordia's security apparatus, and questions the motivations of a university that spies on and censors its students."

Christ, a university with its own private eye squad made up of failed Fed cops? What's next, a no-fly list for the campus shuttle-bus? Lookit these Keystone Kop bumblers, chasing people around because they're "interested in bilingualism." Hey, Concordia grads, is this how you want your alumni donations being spent?

The entire text of Investigator Lachance's September 7, 2006, email report on my activities is reproduced below (translated from its original French by the bilinguaphile yours truly).

Greetings,

I learned this morning that Dr. Bernans will give two readings for a "launch" of his book, "Beyong 9/11" (sic.): one at McGill University, on September 11, 2006, at 4:30 p.m. and one at Concordia University, the same day at 7 p.m. at the Coop Bookstore.

It seems that Dr. Bernans is interested in bilingualism at Concordia. He was photographing posters this morning.

Jacques Lachance, Investigator

The email was sent from the investigator to the head of Concordia Security, Jean Brisebois (a former RCMP agent), and a copy sent to Robert Rivard (another member of the Concordia Security establishment). Robert Rivard replied the same day to thank the investigator for his report, saying cryptically (at least from my perspective as outsider trying to make sense of these internal communications) "Agents will be informed."

To be honest, I was more than a little miffed that the investigator got the title of my book wrong. For the record, the novel is called North of 9/11 (Cumulus Press, 2006). He managed to get the time and place of both events right, but neither of the readings could be described as a "launch" since the book had already been launched at Concordia the previous spring. I have no clue what the reference to bilingualism means and I have no recollection of having taken any photographs of posters that morning at the Montréal downtown campus. In fact, it would have been quite a feat since I had no camera. I do recall a photographer from a McGill student newspaper snapping pictures of me going up and down the clunky escalators connecting the floors of the concrete bloc that is Concordia's Hall Building. I suppose that could have been what the investigator was reporting to his superiors, thinking the photographer was working for me on some secret terrorist bilingual reconnaissance mission. But why "agents" (presumably campus security guards) needed to be informed about any of this, is puzzling to say the least.

Documents show university spied on novelist

(Thanks, Rob!)

bennyboy64 writes "The Australian court case between the film industry and ISP iiNet drew to a close yesterday after the film studios issued an ultimatum: Take copyright responsibilities seriously or leave the industry. 'Businesses such as ISPs want to enjoy the benefit of being able to make money out of the provision of Internet service facilities and they enjoy that benefit. But it carries with it a responsibility,' said Tony Bannon SC, the film industry's lawyer. 'They provide a facility that is able to be used for copyright infringement purposes. If they don't like having to deal with copyright notices then they should get out of the business.' iTnews has done a short one minute interview with iiNet's CEO Michael Malone as he left the court on the final day. Also on the final day, the judge dismissed the Internet Industry Association's involvement in the case."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Until they make Black Friday a goth holiday, where you dress all in black, sit around listening to Bauhaus and Bella Morte, and stare at the floor, Black Friday will scare me. Yes, the running of the shoppers scares me MORE than goth.

As we've pointed out before, this holiday season provides an excellent opportunity to give yourself "permission to play," to make things, either to decorate your house or to give away as gifts. Or both. Last year, I made the above "Gift of Robot Invasion" LED Christmas tree ornaments, for our own tree and to give away as presents. They turned out to be a lot more work than I expected, so I didn't make many. But I still have lots of the parts, so I may start early and make more this year. If I give them as presents, I'll make a box for them as well. My son and I have made ornament presents in the past and created custom, commercial-looking, box art to package them. I love the idea that our recipients will store them away with their holiday decorations and get a little visit from us every time they take out our box and hang our ornament. "Robot invasion" ornaments lend themselves to all sorts of sci-fi silliness for the box copy.

We announced a DIY Friday initiative this morning on our Twitter channel, as an alternative to Black Friday. If you're doing any handmade gifts this holiday, post them here in the comments, or tag them #diyfri on Twitter.

And check out Becky Stern's Gifts You Can Make guide.

I got the plans for making the Robot Invasion ornaments from The Best of Instructables Volume I (the little robot dude is even on the cover). This book has all sorts of great DIY gift ideas.

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Well our family Thanksgiving feast is over, and it was a major success.

Everyone got along, though there were a few moments where, in the past, things might have flamed out.

There are two reasons why this year was special.

1. We learned this year how important we are to each other.

2. The advent of Shea Stadium Rules.

Maybe I don't even need to explain them to you.

I think baseball people get this. And mine is a family of baseball people.

Just to be complete.. There's no fighting in Shea Stadium among Mets fans. We may fight with fans of the other guys, but when you cut to the core, a guy wearing a Mets hat is family. There's a deep bond we share. It goes much deeper than words. So while we may disagree, when we're in Shea Stadium, we don't fight. So, in a family gathering, just invoke the same rules you do inside your team's ballpark.

What else needs to be said other than it works. It really does. Give it a try.

PS: When I explained it to a longtime friend who is a Cubs fan, he understood immediately. Of course he calls them Wrigley Field Rules.

SubComdTaco writes "Harvard has announced their approach towards an implantable cancer vaccine (press release here). To anyone familiar with how the immune system works, this appears to be a synthetic lymph node, an intriguing bit of biomimicry. From the Science Daily article: 'A cancer vaccine carried into the body on a carefully engineered, fingernail-sized implant is the first to successfully eliminate tumors in mammals, scientists recently reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The new approach, pioneered by bioengineers and immunologists at Harvard University, uses plastic disks impregnated with tumor-specific antigens and implanted under the skin to reprogram the mammalian immune system to attack tumors. The new paper describes the use of such implants to eradicate melanoma tumors in mice. ... The slender implants... are 8.5 millimeters in diameter and made of an FDA-approved biodegradable polymer. Ninety percent air, the disks are highly permeable to immune cells and release cytokines, powerful recruiters of immune-system messengers called dendritic cells. These cells enter an implant's pores, where they are exposed to antigens specific to the type of tumor being targeted. The dendritic cells then report to nearby lymph nodes, where they direct the immune system's T cells to hunt down and kill tumor cells.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What's that Roomba, you say Timmy is stuck in a well? A Roomba vacuuming robot did more than clean the floor for one family in Israel, killing a venomous Vipera palaestinae by, apparently, running over the snake and wrapping the creature around one of its rotating brushes. The family credits the robot for sparing their children and pets from possible snakebite. Good boy. (Via Engadget)

soulprivate writes "My cable company has recently begun to offer Internet access plans with speeds over 30 Mbps (60, 80 and 100 Mbps). However my D-link router is unable to go beyond 30 Mbps if I use NAT; it reaches 60-70 Mbps only if NAT is disabled. Is there any recommendation for a brand/model of residential router that is able to get more than 70 Mbps with NAT enabled? I have been looking for benchmarks or comparisons, to no avail. Does anyone knows one? And/or what are your experiences at home?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yesterday the popular Mininova search engine for BitTorrent radically cut back its service.

Previously, they indexed torrents for all programming that was submitted, without concern for who owned the copyright. A Dutch court ruled that they could no longer do that. So now they only index torrents where copyright ownership can be validated. Note the Mininova never stored the content, just links to files that pointed to the content.

Probably some uses of the site were illegal, in some jurisdictions, even though the mainstream media has generally been saying all uses are illegal. For example, consider this BBC article.

I often used Mininova to locate downloads of BBC programming. I've watched excellent dramatic series such as State of Play and documentaries on black holes, Darwin, wars, you name it. I also used Mininova to find PBS shows such as Frontline, Bill Moyers and Nova.

For example, last night I watched an episode of Frontline about credit and debit cards that would be hugely more powerful if everyone who had a credit or debit card would watch. It opened my eyes. An hour totally well spent.

I don't know how the BBC and PBS feel about this. Part of the purpose of this essay is to put the question out there. Since neither network charges directly for programming, is there any reason not to make the programming freely available over BitTorrent?

I've been trying to figure out the best way to ask this question, and decided that making a public appeal to both PBS and BBC was the best approach. Please consider making your content available, with your permission, via BitTorrent.

In the wake of the CRU "climategate" leak, reader Geoffrey.landis sends along a New York Times blog profile of Judith Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech. "Curry — unlike many climate scientists — does not simply dismiss the arguments of 'climate skeptics,' but attempts to engage them in dialogue. She can, as well, be rather pointed in criticizing her colleagues, as in a post on the skeptic site climateaudit where she argues for greater transparency for climate data and calculations (mirrored here). In this post she makes a point that tribalism in science is the main culprit here —- that when scientists 'circle the wagons' to defend against what they perceive to be unfair (and unscientific) attacks, the result can be damaging to the actual science being defended. Is it still possible to conduct a dialogue, or is there no possible common ground?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cheap laser-cutting has come to the world's crafters, and Etsy is awash in lovely, precision-cut tchotchkes of all description. Case in point: Edgar Allan Poe in black stainless steel, $26 from FableAndFury.

Edgar A. Poe Memento cameo necklace in black stainless steel (via Wonderland)

A burglar hired a moving company to clean out a three-story home in Nottingham, UK, and arranged for the contents to be sold at a public auction. Police went to the sale and nabbed the perp, who had no prior record according to the article in ThisIsNottingham.

Tired of snaring your Grandma with sob stories about deposed princes and their locked bank accounts, email scammers are branching out. Their new target: Academia. Researchers get invitations to a hot, new scientific conference and are asked to send their personal information in order to register. But when The Scientist checked up on the conferences, the location hadn't been booked, the named speakers didn't know anything about it and the organizer asking for info fell strangely silent. (Full story is free, but you may need to log in.)

blee37 writes "Here is an excellent video demonstration of a new program developed by Qi Pan, a graduate student, and other researchers at the University of Cambridge. The 'ProFORMA' software constructs a 3D model of an object in real time from (commodity) webcam video. The user can watch the program deduce more pieces of the 3D model as the object is moved and rotated. The resulting graphics are of high quality."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ponca City, We love you writes "In medicine, plasma, the fourth state of matter, is already used for sterilizing surgical instruments; plasma works at the atomic level and is able to reach all surfaces, even the interior of hollow needle ends. Now the BBC reports that researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics have demonstrated a plasma device that can rid hands, feet, or even underarms of bacteria, including the hospital superbug MRSA, by creating cold atmospheric plasma that produces a cocktail of chemicals that kills bacteria but is harmless to skin. 'The plasma produces a series of over 200 chemical reactions that involve the oxygen and nitrogen in air plus water vapor — there is a whole concoction of chemical species that can be lethal to bacteria,' says Gregor Morfill. 'It's actually similar to what our own immune system does.' The team says that an exposure to the plasma of only about 12 seconds reduces the incidence of bacteria, viruses, and fungi on hands by a factor of a million — a number that stands in sharp contrast to the several minutes hospital staff can take to wash using traditional soap and water. Morfill says that the approach can be used to kill the bacteria that lead to everything from gum disease to body odor and that the prototype is scalable to any size and can be produced in any shape."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"It is colossal. If it was sited at the centre of our Solar System, it would extend beyond the orbit of Saturn." And it is ready to go supernova.

1sockchuck writes "the data center of the future may have no central UPS units, and be filled with servers with on-board batteries. Facebook says it will adopt a new power distribution design that shifts the UPS and battery backup functions from the data center into the cabinet by adding a 12-volt battery to each server power supply, an approach pioneered by Google. Facebook says the move will slash its power bill and save millions in capital expenses on UPS systems and PDUs. Facebook acknowledged that these types of custom designs are limited to large companies, but called on server vendors and data center builders to adapt their offerings to make them available to smaller companies."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader sends in a CNet Crave interview with a working physicist at CERN. The interview is full of detail about what it's like to work in this geek paradise (if a bit dumbed-down for an audience assumed not very technical). Dr. Paul Jackson, a particle physicist working on the LHC's Atlas experiment, says there's no chance of black holes wiping us out, and that the time travel speculation is bunkum. He is 100% convinced that they will find the Higgs boson. The scientists there favor Macs, while computers in the control room are Linux-based. "What would happen if you were standing in front of the beam? You would die. It would be a pretty spectacular death, and you wouldn't know a lot about it. ... It would be the equivalent of having 87kg of TNT dumped into your body."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader points out a blog post reporting that on Monday The EU Council is set to give US intelligence services full access to SWIFT banking data, despite a unanimous call by the European Parliament not to do so. "The move of SWIFT the data server to Switzerland would be an excellent opportunity to stop the nearly unlimited access of US authorities on EU bank transactions. But EU justice and interior minister are apparently keen [on agreeing to] a deal as soon as possible, on 30 November. Why 30 November? Because one day later, on 1 December 2009, the EU’s Lisbon Treaty will be in force and would allow the European Parliament to play a major role in the negotiations of the deal with the US. A deal one day before will be a slap in the face of democracy in the EU. ... [W]hile the US will be able to access EU banking data, no access to US banking data by EU auhtoirties is being foreseen."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A judge in New York has wiped out a $525k mortgage after OneWest bankers misled the court while trying to secure foreclosure.

A post by Cyberveillance a couple of weeks back revealed a complex black-hat operation involving Google searches leading to hundreds of thousands of bogus blogs, exploiting the "long tail" of search results and isolated from Google's auto-detection of malware sites by a shifting network of redirectors. The fake blog posts are innocuous when visited directly, but make aggressive attempts to install a fake Windows anti-virus tool (which is actually a Trojan horse) if clicked through from Google. Other search engines do not index the bogus sites. The Unmask Parasites site has a detailed two-part analysis of the badware operation, which puts some numbers on its scope: almost 688,000 bogus scareware blogs can be located in Google; some of them have upwards of 1000 posts. This analysis also reveals that a large majority of the sites hacked to host fake blogs are on the network of Servage.net. From the second Unmask Parasites link: "What we have here is millions of rogue web pages targeting the long tail of web search (millions of keywords) where each page tries to install fake (and malicious) "anti-virus" software on visitors' computers. While this black-hat campaign is active for at least 6 months, webmasters of the compromised sites and their hosting providers don't simply notice this illicit activity. The good news is Google seems to have noticed this problem. Probably thanks to the Cyveillance blog post. During the week after that post I see a steady decrease in search results returned by the queries that you can find in this post."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Comic fandom's rarely held to be a welcoming place for girls. But one correspondent remembers fondly her trip to the 1978 San Diego Comic-Con, when she was a wee 8-year old girl. Other females, however, were few and far between.

ROB: How did you find yourself, as a little kid, at the El Cortez Hotel in '78?

CANDACE: When I was 8, my father took me to my first Comic-Con.  He was not an overt comic junkie although he liked SciFi well enough, but I was, having been captivated by the Pini's ElfQuest comics, introduced to me by a boy of course.  Wendy Pini was there.  I still have my original Warp Graphics versions, plus two or more of each of the graphic novels that I now share with my 5 year old.  I believe it was still called San Diego's West Coast Comic-Con at that time.   

ROB: Any other well-known comic writers and artists that you recall?

CANDACE: There were others there that are now part of the iconic comic lexicon (say that five times fast) - Matt Groening and Boris Vallejo come to mind.  Later, I remember Ray Bradbury and Douglas Adams - I think in the downtown San Diego convention center.  Maybe 1983 or so.   

ROB: It must have been overwhelming!

CANDACE: Seeing as how I was only eight I was not old enough to really appreciate what it all really meant. 

ROB: How many other girls were there?

CANDACE: My impressions are of being one of the few girls there either my age or even into the teens.  This persisted for the next 8-9 years.  There were no scantily clad "models" marketing their wares or even promoting films.  That started much later. I am certain that I was missing out on a lot of the after hours screening events, knowing from later experiences that the films tended toward less mainstream and more risqué fare.   

ROB: You mention how the event's changed, how bit it's become. The whole vibe of the show must have been completely different in those days.

CANDACE: I remember lots of booths with just a couple of guys and their boxes of comic books.  Golden and Silver Age comics were star attractions.  There were lots of early Star Trek and Superman fans and even some early costume wearers.  Some of the big comic retailers that have continued to stick it out over the years were there even then, Mile High and others.   

ROB: What was the atmosphere like? Was it easy to just hang out?

CANDACE: One thing I loved was that many artists would do custom work at the convention.  You could see the work in process.  It would then be donated to the convention and auctioned off.  Though that tradition still continues to some degree, you had a much greater chance of seeing the work in progress and eventually even winning it at auction than you do today.   

I loved the flashing gorgeous neon signs of that old hotel and it's Sky Room restaurant.  Being able to be see and talk to my heroes, awestruck and tongue-tied, without standing in huge lines - just feeling like part of the gang.  I miss it.  

ROB: When was the last time you went along?

CANDACE: I am still a regular "con" attendee, lucky enough to obtain a free professional pass as my husband is an award-winning Pixar animator.  I am responsible for introducing him to the Comic-Con as well in 1993.  He used to push me to the front of the crowd to get freebies as women were still a minority at the show.  Our then regular attendance started him on a path of taking a fine arts education and turning it into a more lucrative career of video games (Journeyman Project - I even got to voice a space station computer) and included the creation of a true 1998/1999 internet viral video, Alien Song - seen here: http://www.navone.org/HTML/AlienSongDownload.htm.  When founder of Pixar, Ed Catmull saw it, he hired Victor.  So in some ways, Comic-Con has shaped my life for more than 30 years.   

Now we go and battle our way through the crowds, hunting down our favorite artists and items.  We cannot stand more than a day of the chaos.  It is information overload at it's finest.  But I'll always love it!

mdsolar writes "In the Dec. 7 edition of The Nation, Christian Parenti details what he considers to be the real problem with nuclear power as a solution to carbon emissions in the US: Not the high cost of new nuclear power, but rather the irresponsible relicensing of existing nuclear power plants by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The claim is that the relicensed plants — amounting to more than half ot the 104 original 1970s-era nukes in the US — operate like zombies beyond their design lifetimes only because of lax regulation spurred by concern over carbon dioxide emissions. But these plants are actually failing, as demonstrated by a rash of accidents. And some of the ancient plants are now being allowed to operate at 120% of their designed capacity. There is a video interview with Parenti up at Democracy Now."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes "Nicholas Carr has an interesting analysis of Rupert Murdoch's threat to de-list News Corp's stories from Google and Microsoft's eager offer to make Bing Murdoch's exclusive search engine for its content. Carr writes that newspapers are caught in a classic Prisoner's Dilemma with Google because while Google's search engine 'prevents them from making decent money online — by massively fragmenting traffic, by undermining brand power, and by turning news stories into fungible commodities.' If any single newspaper opts out of Google, their competitors will pick up the traffic they lose. There is only one way that newspapers can break out of the prison — if a critical mass of newspapers opt out of Google's search engine simultaneously, they would suddenly gain substantial market power. Murdoch may have been signaling to other newspapers that 'we'll opt out if you'll opt out,' positioning himself as the would-be ringleader of a massive jailbreak, without actually risking a jailbreak himself. There are signs that Murdoch's signal is working with reports that the publishers of the Denver Post and the Dallas Morning News are now also considering blocking Google. In the meantime, Steve Ballmer is more than happy to play along with Murdoch because although a deal with News Corps would reduce the basic profitability of Microsoft's search business, it would inflict far more damage on Google than on Microsoft."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

nk497 writes "F-Secure researchers are calling attention to the fact that it's impossible to run third-party anti-virus on iPhones, because the SDK doesn't allow for it. It's a problem, as they claim malware will start to target the phone. 'None of the existing anti-virus vendors can make one, without help from Apple,' chief research officer Mikko Hypponen said. 'Apple hasn't been too interested in developing antivirus solutions for the iPhone, because there are no viruses, which of course, isn't exactly true.' At the moment, the only worms faced by the iPhone have targeted unlocked, jailbroken devices — so Apple's not too bothered protecting users of such phones." While Apple claims that the iPhone's closed nature offers protection to its users, and security vendors maneuver for a piece of a market now closed to them, clearly both sides are pushing their own self-interest.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mark.JUK writes with this excerpt from ISP Review: "Solicitors at ACS:Law have been granted approval by the Royal Courts of Justice in London to demand the private personal details of some 30,000 customers suspected of involvement with illegal file sharing from UK broadband ISPs. The customers concerned are 'suspected' of illegally file sharing (P2P) approximately 291 movie titles, they now face threatening demands for money (settlement) or risk the prospect of court action. It's noted that 25,000 of the IP addresses that have been collected belong to BT users."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Work on your bicycle the simple way with this inexpensive and easy to build bike stand.
Thanks go to Shaun Wilson for the original article in MAKE, Volume 18.
To download The Bike Repair Stand video click here and subscribe in iTunes.
Check out the complete Bike Repair Stand article in MAKE, Volume 18 and you
can see that in our Digital Edition.

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Work on your bicycle the easy way with this inexpensive and easy to build bike stand.
Thanks go to Shaun Wilson for the original article in MAKE, Volume 18.
View the PDF of this project. and then subscribe to MAKE Magazine for other great projects
you can do over the weekend.

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SilkypixUK has launched the full release version of Silkypix Developer Studio v4 (4.0.27.2) and Pro (4.1.27.2) with full support for the Sigma SD14, DP1, DP1s and DP2. These version also add support for Sony's recently launched A500 and A550 DSLRs. UK customers can obtain updates from the company's website. The updates should be available from US distributor Shortcut Software very soon.

Welcome to the sixth serialized installment of J.C. Hutchins' human cloning thriller 7th Son: Descent. If this is your first exposure to our free serialization of 7th Son, you can easily catch up by experiencing part one, part two, part three, part four and part five. You can also dive in right away, thanks to...

THE STORY SO FAR: John, Kilroy2.0, Father Thomas and four other unwitting human clones have been assembled by the U.S. government to track their villianous progenitor, a psychopath responsible for the murder of the president. His plans of terror are just beginning.

In the last episode, the clones continued to decipher John Alpha's Morse code clue. Meanwhile at a military base in the Russian wilderness, a former CIA agent named Doug Devlin reminisces about his past -- and his current alliance with Alpha. A much larger conspiracy is unveiled.

Check out this week's installment below. If you're enjoying this serialized experience, support the book by purchasing a copy at Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Borders, or printing this PDF order form and presenting it at your favorite bookstore. You can learn more about the book at J.C.'s site.

Seventh Son, Part 6

avishere writes "The International Robot Exhibition kicked off this week in Tokyo, unveiling the latest whirring and buzzing inventions from 192 companies and 64 organizations from at home and abroad — an bringing humanity another step closer to irrelevancy. Among the humanoid cavalcade was a prototype robo-chef, showing off its cooking and cutting skills, along with robots to play with your children, model clothes and search for disaster victims. There was also one made almost exclusively of cardboard. The exhibition — which opened with a human-like robot called Nextage cutting the ribbon — runs until Saturday."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Forget Black Friday, 3am sales, and long lines of unhappy people buying giant flatscreen TVs, it's time to MAKE something this holiday season! Impress your loved ones with a truly special gift from the heart, not from a store. Spend the day after Thanksgiving with your family and friends, making gifts instead of trying to remember where you parked the car.

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Beer

Homemade beer makes a fantastic gift. It's fun to make and celebratory to share! I've found the best way to get started in brewing is to brew with an experienced friend (thanks to Contributing Writer Matt Mets for being that friend to me), but if that's not feasible check out the Home Brewing Wiki  to see what you'll need to get set up and even find a local brew store near you.

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With the Fuel Cell X7 kit you can assemble and experiment with a unique reversible hydrogen Fuel Cell. This fuel cell kit provides a playful introduction to one of the most significant technologies of the 21st Century. With this kit you can build a model car that actually runs on water! The full-color, 16-page manual contains easy, step-by-step instructions for assembling and using the car, as well as scientific explanations.

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Library and Archives Canada has released a whole ton of WWI images to Flickr, including some stunning color paintings of Vimy Ridge and related places.

LAC / BAC's photostream (via Resource Shelf)

(Image: Anti-conscription parade at Victoria Square / Défilé anti-conscription au Square Victoria)

Clever Cake Studios made this smashing game-themed, Tetrisoid cake for the opening of a local Play'N'Trade store -- the little faces are caricatures of store employees.

Clever Cake Studio (via The Boing Boing Flickr Pool)

Penn State researchers have conducted a study into the use of search engines and conclude that we don't just search to find out facts, but rather, to learn:

The researchers sought to discover the cognitive processes underlying searching. They examined the search habits of 72 participants while conducting a total of 426 searching tasks. They found that search engines are primarily used for fact checking users' own internal knowledge, meaning that they are part of the learning process rather than simply a source for information. They also found that people's learning styles can affect how they use search engines.

"Our results suggest the view of Web searchers having simple information needs may be incorrect," said Jim Jansen, associate professor of information sciences and technology. "Instead, we discovered that users applied simple searching expressions to support their higher-level information needs."

Search Engines Are Source of Learning

angry tapir writes "India plans to set up a centralized system to monitor communications on mobile phones, landlines and the Internet in the country, a minister has told the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament. Indian laws allow the interception and monitoring of communications under certain conditions, including to counter terrorism. A pilot of the new Centralized Monitoring System (CMS) is to be started by June next year, subject to clearances by other government agencies."

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Attention, readers! If you don't vote for Boing Boing in Adweek's "blog of the decade" poll, Perez Hilton may win. Do your duty.

Taking an Open-Source Approach to Hardware @ WSJ.com...

The main producer of the Arduino is Smart Projects Snc, based in the tiny town of Scarmagno, Italy. This year, the two-person firm is on track to sell at least 60,000 of the microcontrollers, which retail for at least $30 a piece, up from 34,000 last year. Owner Gianluca Martino, an electrical engineer, has had to contract out much of the production to keep up with growth. It's a peculiar predicament, since the Arduino's designs are on the Internet for anyone to download and use.While there are clones on the market, the microcontrollers that Mr. Martino produces, with the map of Italy printed on the back of it, are by far the most popular.

This is huge! Open source hardware in the WSJ!

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British hacker Gary McKinnon, tinkerer in U.S. military systems, has all but lost his legal battle to avoid extradition. What's worse? That his real crime was to reveal his supposed victims' criminal incompetence and expose a lopsided extradition treaty, or that the British press will bullshit relentlessly about his likely sentence--and portray Aspergers sufferers as mental and moral infants--just to hype his story? And then there are his laywers, ready with the ultimate moral blackmail: He'll kill himself if forced to face American justice.

ElectricSteve writes "Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway officially opened the world's first osmotic power plant prototype on November 24. The prototype has a limited production capacity and will be used primarily for testing and data validation, leading to the construction of a commercial power plant in a few years time. Statkraft claims that the technology has the global potential to generate clean, renewable energy equivalent to China's total electricity consumption in 2002 or half of the EU's total power production" What's osmotic power? Wikipedia to the rescue!

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I've posted before about my brother Mark Pescovitz's fine art photography. In his spare time, Mark is a transplant surgeon and medical research scientist. Today, he and his colleagues published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine about a new way to slow and possibly even stop the progression of type 1 diabetes, also known as juvenile-onset diabetes. The approach uses the drug Rituxan, normally indicated to treat non-hodgkins lymphoma and rheumatoid arthritis. Is it nepotism for me to post about my brother's accomplishment? Nah, just nachas. Keep up the great work, Mark! From Reuters:

"What this study does is open the door to a whole new way to approaching type 1 diabetes," Dr. Mark Pescovitz of Indiana University, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

Rituxan, known generically as rituximab, is made by Genentech, a unit of Roche Holding AG and Biogen Idec Inc. It was designed to wipe out immune cells known as B lymphocytes, which proliferate out of control in lymphoma.

The same cells are also involved in the autoimmune destruction of healthy cells and tissue seen in rheumatoid arthritis and, in theory, in juvenile diabetes.

Usually, by the time diabetes symptoms appear, 80 to 90 percent of those insulin-producing cells have been destroyed. The Pescovitz team gave Rituxan hoping to save the remaining cells.

The treatment worked at first and the body produced more insulin. But over time, the effects faded, and insulin production began to decline at the same rate as among people who received placebo.

Pescovitz said he was not disappointed. Further tests will show if repeated treatments with Rituxan or newer drugs that also eliminate B lymphocytes will keep insulin production up.

"Cancer drug preserves insulin cells in diabetes" (Reuters)

"Rituximab, B-Lymphocyte Depletion, and Preservation of Beta-Cell Function" (New England Journal of Medicine)

Shokaster writes "The Register reports that Virgin Media are to begin monitoring file sharing using a deep packet inspection system, CView, provided by Deltica, a BAE subsidiary. The trial will cover about 40% of customers, although those involved will not be informed. CView's deep packet inspection is the same technology that powered Phorm's advertising system. Initially Virgin Media's implementation will focus on music sharing and will inspect packets to determine whether the content is licensed or unlicensed, based on data provided by the record industry. Virgin Media emphasised that records will not be kept on individual customers and that data on the level of copyright infringement will be aggregated and anonymised."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.