kkleiner writes "You may remember Liam Hoekstra, the baby apparently born without the myostatin gene, and consequently sporting 40% more skeletal muscle than his peers. Using gene therapy, NCH scientists have been able to get follistatin (a myostatin blocker) to promote phenomenal muscle growth in macaque monkeys. NCH is now working with the FDA to perform the preliminary steps necessary for a human clinical trial. Is this the prelude to a super-strength gene therapy for all of us?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bre has posted an item about the MakerBot watch he's been working on. He's selling some prototype kits really cheap ($30) to get them out there so others can give feedback, mess around with it, improve it, etc. He writes:

I've wanted to have an Arduino style watch in my pocket and I got my friend Raphael to teach me how to use Eagle CAD and I did it! I also got lots of help from Adam and Zach and Charles and Liz and Ryan and the NYCResistor to pull this together!

I ordered a bunch of prototype boards and I've made them into 18 kits to just get them out there in the world and get friends playing with them. This is for alpha users because it is realllllly hard! I have soldered up 4 of them and 3 of them had major solder bridges that made me swear a lot. Be prepared for a serious smd challenge! They are super cheap at $30 which is basically cost of parts because I know they are hard to make and I just want to get them out to the smd ninjas out there.
i'm at the nextgens con and multitasking. grammar fail.

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pmdubs writes "Princeton University Professor Michael Freedman, creator of CoralCDN, discusses how he received around 100 pre-settlement letters in one month from various copyright agencies after invalid BitTorrent tracker requests were issued through CoralCDN's proxies. Interestingly, the participating agencies made no effort whatsoever to verify that the Coral nodes were actually running BitTorrent, which they weren't! He questions just how much effort agencies take to reduce false positives when it comes to DMCA notices. Considering the credence that network operators give to such notices (they'll often cut your service upon receipt), it would seem that the answer is 'not enough.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This post is part of the IT Innovation series, sponsored by Sun & Intel. Read more at ITInnovation.com. Of course, the content of this post consists entirely of the thoughts and opinions of the author.

There's a new, massively detailed, study coming out on the secrets to being a great innovator, and the key finding really stands out:

"What the innovators have in common is that they can put together ideas and information in unique combinations that nobody else has quite put together before."

Notice that one of the key components of all of this is seeing ideas and information that are already out there, and then doing the useful part of putting them together in a different way. This is something we've noted time and time again when it comes to innovation. Often, the actual "idea" isn't new -- but it's that it is put together in a better or different way than before, and that new way works better for people. Yet, when you have something like patents on the basic ideas (and, before some patent lawyer shows up to say patents aren't on ideas but inventions, let's all just agree how ridiculous that claim is), it makes this much more difficult and expensive. The classic example of this is RIM. The idea of wireless email was hardly new. Lots of folks had been trying to do it right. The technical issues behind providing email wirelessly were not difficult either. What RIM did was put it all together in a compelling way -- by recognizing how to package it all in a manner that was significantly more usable than previous attempts. And yet, another firm, NTP, who had failed to innovate and had failed to actually figure out a way to make wireless email useful, came along and sued, because it held patents on the very concept of wireless email. After a long legal battle, RIM was eventually forced to pay over $600 million to NTP.

Those sorts of situations should really bother anyone who believes in the importance of innovation. As this study has shown (yet again), real innovators need to be free to combine different ideas and experiment to see what actually works. The problem, as it appears to be so often, is the faulty belief that the "innovation" is in the idea itself. That's almost never the case. The innovation is in figuring out the right combination of factors that packages it up the way the market wants things. And now we've got another study showing this, though it seems unlikely to actually impact policy decisions, and that's a huge shame if you're a supporter of innovation.

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The Parable of the Good Samaritan is pretty well-known. Even if you haven't had much exposure to the New Testament of The Bible, you probably know the gist of the story: Traveler gets the crap beat out of him by thieves, who then leave his half-dead body by the side of the road; a couple of ostensibly holy men walk by, but go out of their way to avoid even making eye-contact with the poor guy; finally, a Samaritan comes along and gets the traveler some much-needed medical attention.

The tale is meant to be ironic, as in, "Isn't it crazy that a Samaritan helped that dude when the holy men wouldn't?" Personally, though, I never really understood why the Samaritans had such a bad rap to begin with.

Turns out, the missing context of the Good Samaritan is rooted in a dispute that connects ancient ethnic animosity with 21st-century genetics.

The story starts around the 7th century BCE, when the Assyrian Empire conquered the Kingdom of Israel. Part of that process involved swapping a chunk of the Ancient Israeli population with Assyrian citizens--the deported Israelis were sent to live in Assyria, and vice versa. But that was only a small part of population. Many more were left behind.

Meanwhile, Israel wasn't the only Hebrew state. The Kingdom of Judah, just to the south, hung around, running more-or-less independently and worshiping the Deity Currently Known as God (among others) until the 5th century--when it got itself conquered by the Babylonians, who pulled a similar citizen swap.*

Fast forward some 70 years. The exiled Judaens return to their homeland. When they get there, they find a bunch of people who claim to be descendants of those left-behind Israeli citizens who weren't taken captive by Assyria. They call themselves the Children of Israel and practice a religion that's similar to, but not exactly like, the one practiced by the Judaens themselves. Naturally, conflict ensues. The Children of Israel insist that the Judaens are worshiping God all wrong. The Judaens insist that the Children of Israel are really just Assyrians in drag and are, natch, worshiping God all wrong. Over time, the Judaens come to be known as the Jewish people, while the Children of Israel are called Samaritans. By the time the Parable of the Good Samaritan was recorded, Jews generally thought of Samaritans as untrustworthy, blasphemous and potentially evil. Thus, the irony.

As the 21st century dawned, the few Samaritans left (712 in 2007, up from a low of 146 in 1917) still claimed to be descended from the ancient Hebrew tribes. Jewish religious authorities still disagreed. And strong evidence either way was still lacking. Until 2004.

See, that tiny population (which wasn't real big on converts) led to a decent amount of inbreeding. In fact, according to research done in the late 1990s, 84% of Samaritan marriages are between cousins--making them the most highly inbred population on the planet. Unfortunately, that title comes with a propensity for genetic abnormalities, concern about which eventually led several Samaritans to turn their DNA samples over to a team of genetics researchers.

The results turned up some surprising confirmation of the Samaritans' personal origin stories. The study compared Samaritan Y-chromosome DNA (genetic information passed mostly intact from father to son) and mtDNA (ditto, but from mother to daughter) with that of several different Jewish populations from across the Middle East and Africa, as well as with a couple of non-Jewish groups from the same areas. Not only do the Samaritan Y-chromosomes seem to be closely related to Jewish Y-chromosomes, but most of the Samaritans actually carry a distinctive set of Y-chromosome mutations known as the Cohen Modal Haplotype--which is connected with men descended from the ancient Jewish priestly class.

On the other hand, Samaritan mtDNA doesn't match up to its Jewish counterparts at all, said Marcus Feldman, Ph.D.,professor of biological sciences at Stanford University and part of the research team that studied the Samaritans in 2004.

To Feldman and his colleagues, the genetic evidence suggests that modern Samaritans are descended from Hebrew men, left behind after the Assyrians conquered ancient Israel, who went on to marry non-Hebrew women. It's probably not just coincidence that Samaritan ethnicity (at least, the official social recognition of that ethnicity) is traditionally passed to a child through its father--exactly opposite from the way Jewish ethnicity has been traditionally passed down.

In that way, the evidence suggests that both the Jews and the Samaritans are right, sort of. If you believe ethnicity is something passed down from the mother, then the Samaritans probably aren't Children of Israel. But if you think ethnicity comes from the father's side (or, you know, from both parents) then the Samaritans have a good case. It's all about how you use culture to interpret the science.

*The details of this history, by the way, aren't real clear, as much of what usually gets reported as "Israel and Judah Facts" comes directly from the Bible, sans independent corroboration. But the basics of two kingdoms, conquered and dispersed are generally backed up by extra-Biblical historical records.

Image of Samaritans, circa 1899, courtesy Flickr user libraryimages.net, via CC.

supersloshy writes Today Mozilla released Thunderbird 3. Many new features are available, including Tabs and enhanced search features, a message archive for emails you don't want to delete but still want to keep, Firefox 3's improved Add-ons Manager, Personas support, and many other improvements. Download here."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Do you need shots of ordinary people doing things? They got that b-roll. A short film by Dylan Osborn, written by Sergio Cilli. Full credits here. (Thanks, Matt West!)

Water Bears are some of nature's most durable microscopic creatures, capable of surviving almost anywhere, including the vast reaches of space. They are also extremely cute and have inspired a song by the band, Ekoostik Hookah.

(Thanks, Robin Kolnicki!)

On the Public Radio program "Future Tense," John Moe interviews Julian Assange of Wikileaks about the 9/11 intercepts blogged previously on Boing Boing. "Interesting discussion on the right to privacy vs. the responsibility of transparency," says John. And Julian says, "There is a tradeoff between the integrity and value of the historic record and the reform that can come out of exposure and some individuals' privacy rights."

darthcamaro writes "America is no longer the spam king. According to Cisco, US-originated spam dropped by over two trillion messages — American-based IP addresses sent about 6.2 trillion spam messages. The new world leader is Brazil at 7.7 trillion messages. 'I'm not completely surprised to see US falling to number two in the spam stats, but I didn't expect it to happen yet,' said Cisco Fellow Patrick Peterson. 'I was really gratified to see the actual spam volume decrease, not just ranking, but we [also] decreased the amount of spam that is pouring out of the United States.'" The drop in US spam might have had something to do with the temporary shutdown of the McColo spam ISP.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More than five years ago, we wrote about a ridiculous lawsuit that involved a lawsuit against Cingular (now a part of AT&T) seeking to pin liability on Cingular for an accident caused by a driver who was talking on his phone. That lawsuit was tossed out as ridiculous (and again on appeal) with the court noting that the mobile phone operator was not at all responsible for what a driver did. Apparently, some folks are unaware of this case. Broadband Reports alerts us to the news that Sprint is being sued in a similar lawsuit. In this case, a woman was killed by a driver on the phone, and the woman's daughter is claiming that Sprint should have warned people of the risks of driving while talking on the phone. Nice try, but chances are, this lawsuit is going to get tossed just as fast as previous ones.

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Paul Overton spotted these cool hand-turned lamps/shades at a local craft show. Per artist Billy Hall's website:

The wood of choice is the knot clusters in the Southern White Pine. The outer shape of the shade is turned first. After the outside shape is turned the wood is treated with two thick coats of epoxy. After this dries the inner side of the shade is turned. The thickness of the shades varies from 1/32 to 3/32 of an inch, depending upon the translucent properties of the particular wood and the final desired color of the glowing wood. The final thickness of the shade is achieved by turning the inside of the shade in the dark with the workpiece backlit.

[via Dude Craft]

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What do you do when faced with the threat of an invasive fish species capable of eating 40% of its own weight in a day, weighing up to 60 pounds, and giving grown men concussions by flying into their heads? Naturally, you crank up the Bon Jovi and declare it open season.

Asian carp are fast-breeding, fast-eating monsters that quickly starve out native species. There are rivers in Illinois where the fish population is now 90% Asian carp. Bow hunting the suckers was simply a natural evolutionary step. In fact, the town of Bath, Illinois has an annual Redneck Fishing Tournament every year where participants attempt to catch Asian carp using anything BUT traditional fishing equipment.

All that aside, Asian carp really are serious business. Last week, fear of a carp-decimated Great Lakes prompted authorities to spend$3 million to poison the Chicago River so maintenance could be done on a $9 million electrified net that keeps the carp out of Lake Michigan. For a slightly more sober look at the threat of Asian carp (quotes about the fish smacking people in the head, and shots of a documentary host beating one carp with a stick keep things from getting too stuffy) I recommend watching the Asian Carp Invasion videos at AsianCarp.org.

hweimer writes "The German government plans on paying to set up a call center to help Windows users with malware infections. I think this has the effect of being a malware bailout for Microsoft, discouraging them and other software companies from writing better code and giving users little incentive to switch to more secure alternatives. How much government money is needed to run the call center is also not revealed." The call center, running in cooperation with ISPs (but not manufacturers), is envisioned to have a staff of about 40.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Charles Palen writes in to share his RC telepresence car. By combining a remote control car, netbook, and his homebrew USB-based RC Interceptor, he was able to create a robot that could be controlled over a WiFi connection. To make it a telepresence car, he used the open source Red5 Flash server to stream video to and from the bot.

I'd like one of these to use to spy on my cat when I'm not at home. What would you do with one?

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NBC Universal is probably wishing that people didn't remember stuff from a few years ago right now. The folks over at the National Journal dug up NBC Univeral's vehement opposition to the AOL/Time Warner merger, which used all sorts of arguments that I would imagine NBC Universal would prefer were not used against its pending merger with Comcast. The letter, sent to the FCC in July of 2000 included this point:

"Given the size and scope of the proposed merged company, AOL/Time Warner will have both the ability and the incentive to discriminate against unaffiliated content providers such as NBC."

Furthermore, NBC Universal was quite worried about how that deal would impact net neutrality and asked the FCC to make clear net neutrality principles if it allowed the merger to move forward, asking the FCC:

"to establish firm principles of non-discrimination in the treatment of unaffiliated content providers in the broadband services marketplace"

Of course, Comcast is now very much against that concept.

Not surprisingly, the letter was signed by NBC Universal's General Counsel, Rick Cotton, who has a long history of sticking his foot in his mouth in saying things he later regrets -- such as his still hilarious quote about how corn farmers were being harmed by movie piracy, and who was a major source for the bogus Hollywood propaganda piece on 60 Minutes. Still, you have to imagine that he now regrets that letter -- and the fact that reporters have now brought it back to light.

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In my previous post, I finally started to make some progress with my Windows Embedded CE project. I was able to get a simple test application running which could send and receive messages via a serial port on my iCop eBox 2300 computer. I first sent messages to a host computer using an RS232 crossover cable. Once I confirmed that there were no problems sending and receiving messages or changing the baud rate, I cut the cable and plugged in a pair of XBee modules in place of the crossover cable. I wasn't ready to install custom device drivers in my Windows Embedded CE operating system image, so I used an XBee serial explorer ordered from SparkFun to connect an XBee to the eBox computer. After confirming that everything was working as expected, I was ready to modify the serial port test application to run my wireless light controller.

The secret sauce is my home-brew Arduino clone running from a capacitive power supply.
More about that next week!

Before I continue, I want to briefly reflect on some of the steps required to get my program to finally work. I initially suspected that I had a serial port buffer overrun problem, since I couldn't send messages longer than 16 characters. When I noticed that my serial port test program would hang at the end of a serial port transmission of any length, I started to think that the problem may be interrupt related instead of buffer related. If the serial port call was waiting for a "buffer empty" signal before it returned control to my program, hanging at the end of a transmission meant that it never got that signal. Since I had been editing a number of serial port settings in the BIOS and registry while trying to disable or reroute serial debugging messages, I might have inadvertently modified a critical registry key. Rather than retrace my steps and restore the factory settings, I started with a clean copy of the BSP to build the operating system image. I had also notice that many of the build directories for my Visual Studio 2005 installation were pointing to a more recent version of Visual Studio on my computer. After mapping all the directories to the correct location, I rebuilt the operating system using clean copies of all the drivers and BSP.

Finally, everything worked flawlessly when I tested the new operating system with the simple Visual Basic serial port terminal example from Samuel Phung's Windows Embedded CE 6.0 online resources.

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Following our recent discussions about the growing evidence pointing to possible life on Mars, reader skywatcher2501 writes with news of a study that has ruled out one possible explanation for the levels of methane seen on that planet — that it might be replenished by disintegrating meteors entering the atmosphere. So two theories remain: either the gas is created as a by-product of reactions between volcanic rock and water, or it is a by-product of a lifeform's metabolism.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Women who thought they were getting a dose of testosterone behaved more aggressively and selfishly--whether or not they'd really been given the hormone. Women who got testosterone and didn't know it were actually more altruistic. The researchers suspect macho testosterone lore created a "license to misbehave" in the women who thought they were under its influence.

Over a decade ago, Sun founder Scott McNealy famously said "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." Apparently former McNealy protege, Eric Schmidt is now taking the same basic view in his current job as CEO of Google. In a recent interview he suggested that people pushing for privacy are the one's at fault:

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

This sounds suspiciously like a reheated version of "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to worry about," that's trotted out by law enforcement types when pushing for stronger laws to violate individuals' privacy. It's an odd statement for someone like Schmidt to make, especially given the incredible level of scrutiny given to Google for the view it has into people's lives. To folks who are worried about such things, it sounds positively dismissive, which isn't the position that Google should be cultivating with those who are concerned right now. Furthermore, given Schmidt's own thin skin when reporters posted some personal info (found via Google to prove a point) that resulted in a "ban" on talking to reporters from CNET for a bit, it's really out of place.

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kai_hiwatari writes "The Google Chrome Extensions site is now open for Windows and Linux users — but not yet for Mac — and contains around 300 extensions. AdBlock is not yet available, however. (The closest thing to it is Adsweep, but right now it seems to be broken. Who wants to take this on?) Does the availability of extensions put Chrome at risk of becoming bloated, like many complain about with Firefox?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you're in Milan anytime between now and February 14, 2010, I highly recommend that you check out octogenarian avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama's exhibit at the Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea. Kusama lives in a mental hospital in Tokyo, but she's still a prolific producer of art filled with dots and repetitions; in a biographical documentary titled I Love Me, she claims that drawing is the only thing that makes her feel normal.

Pascagoula, Mississippi is a favorite Fortean town, where the lore involves a mermaid, a "singing" river, mysterious abductions, and, my favorite, a Phantom Barber that terrorized residents in 1942. He apparently broke into ten homes and snipped the hair of sleeping women. Police eventually charged a 57-year-old German chemist but he was never convicted. And according to a feature on the strange case in Fortean Times, evidence suggests he may not have been the culprit. From Fortean Times:

According to one newspaper, a pattern had established itself: the Phantom Barber only struck on Mondays and Fridays at midnight - breaking this habit only once - and gained entry by slitting the window screens:

"Thus, on the Friday following the Monday when he had raided the convent of Our Lady of Vict­ories, he struck again, this time at the home of David G Peattie on one of the town's principal residential streets. Mrs Peattie was in the hospital at the time, a Mrs Walter Henshaw and her husband being on hand to look after the 6-year-old Peattie twins, David and Carol, a girl. Hearing a noise in the children's room late at night, Mrs Henshaw woke her husband and together they went to investigate. At first glance all seemed as usual; both children were sound asleep.

"Then Mrs Henshaw noticed the print of a man's bare foot etched in sand on the white counterpane of the vacant bed by the window. Awakened, Carol sat bolt upright, feeling for the blond locks that ordinarily swept her shoulders. "Why - why!" she stutt­ered, looking dazedly around her. "Where's my hair?"

"The Phantom Barber of Pascagoula"

My latest Guardian column, "Streaming will never stop downloading," argues against the idea that streaming can "solve the copyright problem" because "no copies are made." This is technically untrue, and the more we pretend it isn't, the worse it will get for us.

First of all, while streaming music from Last.fm is a great way to listen to music you haven't discovered yet, there's no reason to believe that people will lose the urge to collect music.

Indeed, the record industry seems to have forgotten the lesson of 70 years' worth of radio: people who hear songs they like often go on to acquire those songs for their personal collections. It's amazing to hear record industry executives deny that this will be the case, especially given that this was the dominant sales strategy for their industry for most of a century. Collecting is easier than it has ever been: you can store more music in less space and organise it more readily than ever before.

People will go on using streaming services, of course. They may even pay for them. But people will also go on downloading. Streaming won't decrease downloading. If streaming is successful - that is, if it succeeds in making music more important to more people - then downloading will increase too. With that increase will come a concomitant increase in Big Content's attacks on the privacy and due process rights of internet users, which, these days, is pretty much everyone.

If you want to solve the "downloading problem" you can't do it by waving your hands and declaring that a totally speculative, historically unprecedented shift in user behaviour - less downloading - will spontaneously arise through the good offices of Last.fm.

Streaming will never stop downloading

When asked why he strangled his little brother to death, 17-year old Andrew Conley of Rising Sun, Indiana said: "Like, I had to. It's like when people have something like when they're hungry and there's a hamburger sitting there and they knew they had to have it."

An anonymous reader writes "CNET reports on the world's most geeky Christmas card, and also the most expensive. The card is made out of a 1st gen iPhone, hacked into a Christmas card using cardboard, paper and glue. The card includes a virtual 'bauble' which uses the iPhone's accelerometer to recreate Christmas decorations that bounce and move with the card. The makers of the card say that because of the iPhone's battery life 'you probably don't want to post it anywhere it will take more than 3 days to arrive.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We were just talking about how SOCAN, the Canadian copyright collection society, was going after gymnastics clubs for kids using music in their practice routines. Now they're getting some well-deserved attention for other antics. Michael Geist explains how SOCAN tried to keep its submission to the government copyright consultation secret. The organization apparently requested that its submission not be posted online, even though that was part of the consultation process. The government made it available anyways, but only by email upon request. Of course, it's now available online elsewhere [PDF].

SOCAN's recommendations aren't surprising. They call for a making available right (article 22 of the submission), a broadening of the private copying levy (article 30), anti-circumvention provisions (55-56), notice-and-takedown (59), copyright term extension (60), and no further exceptions to copyright (34, 48). But rather than outright declaring war on consumers, they copy the language (poorly) of those seeking more effective copyright reform. For example, they claim that the "rights of users and creators" are already "balanced" because "the Copyright Board of Canada provides a fair mechanism to set the royalty" (45) -- someone had better tell the gymnastic clubs! Another great example: They want to expand the private copying tax levy to digital audio players so that it's "technologically neutral." (11) No word on when they'll want it to apply to hard drives in general. SOCAN also repeats the ridiculous argument from the Toronto copyright townhall that "unwarranted" fair dealing provisions would mean asking creators to "work for nothing:"

Copyright amendments must not set up unwarranted exemptions, or otherwise limit the copyright royalties paid... If you deprive SOCAN's members of copyright royalties, you are basically asking over 35,000 Canadian individuals to take risks and work for nothing. That's not realistic, and it's not fair. (34-35)

It's just laughable to suggest that more flexible fair dealing (i.e., something like the American concept of fair use) would mean artists not getting paid. Do artists "work for nothing" in the U.S.? Though, it should be no surprise from an organization that claims that, if you use a Creative Commons license, you "won't get paid" and your work may become devalued. To a collection society, getting paid can only mean royalties, and the value of music can only mean... well, royalties.

Best of all, they seem nervous about Industry Minister Tony Clement, who's given some indication that he wants to craft forward thinking policies. SOCAN recommends that the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage have sole responsibility for copyright reform (article 66). The Heritage committee is involved in the process, but as Geist points out, this recommendation betrays some discomfort with Clement and the Industry Committee, since the Copyright Act clearly grants the Minister of Industry responsibility for copyright. So, first, we get a laundry list of maximalist demands using the language of "balanced" copyright reform, then a suggestion to ignore the Copyright Act and exclude the ministry they're not comfortable with (you know, the one focusing on the economic concerns) from having any responsibility in reform? No wonder they wanted to keep the submission secret.

Blaise Alleyne is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Blaise Alleyne and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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I like the art and colors of these Japanese subway posters that remind people to be considerate of others. However, I think it is fun to watch people apply makeup in public. It's like watching someone paint, which I enjoy.

Japanese subway etiquette poster campaign

Technorati Tags: poster

Japanese artist Motoi Yamamoto sculpts with salt. Hi-Fructose interviewed Yamamoto about his incredibly-intricate, yet temporary, installations. From Hi-Fructose:

Salt seems to possess a close relation with human life beyond time and space. Moreover, especially in Japan, it is indispensable in the death culture. After my sister's death, what I began to do in order to accept this reality was examine how death was dealt with in the present social realm. I posed several related themes for myself such as brain death or terminal medical care and picked related materials accordingly. I then came to choose salt as a material for my work. This was when I started to focus on death customs in Japan. In the beginning, I was interested in the fact that salt is used in funerals or in its subtle transparency. But gradually I came to a point where the salt in my work might have been a part of some creature and supported their lives. Now I believe that salt enfolds the ?memory of lives?. I have thus had a special feeling since I started using it as a material.

Video after the jump.

A woman walks into a restaurant. She's alone, but she requests a table for two. She sits down, pulls a giant piece of cardboard out of her oversized bag, and unrolls a three-foot cutout of a human being. It has what looks like a computer-generated cartoon man etched on one side. She places the cardboard man gently on the seat across from her, making sure his body folds neatly at the hip crease and that his legs dangle comfortably below him. Then she opens up her menu.

Joel Massey happened to be her waiter that night. "She was just a real normal-looking woman in her mid-40s," he says. Everything else was normal, too — it was just a typical Tuesday night at the popular San Francisco restaurant.

The woman called her companion Peter or Stan. She ordered an appetizer for herself and a halibut dish for Peter/Stan. She was probably a tourist; she wanted to take pictures with Peter/Stan as the sun was setting, and while she was waiting for her food, she asked Joel if he could recommend any memorabilia from the gift shop so she could buy him a little something. When Joel was away, he could see her at her table talking to Peter/Stan as if he was a real person. Once or twice, she reached over to adjust him in his seat, or maybe to hold his hand. "When I walked up to the table, I felt like I was interrupting a date," Joel tells me. After about 45 minutes, the woman got up, walked to the kitchen, and told Joel that she would have to take her and Peter/Stan's dinners to go — they had a trolly car ride to catch, and she didn't want to be late.

Was Peter/Stan symbolic of a non-existent significant other or perhaps one she had lost? Was she playing a joke on the world around her? Was she nuts?

Whenever I write articles about Japanese men who have body pillow girlfriends or marry their video game girlfriends, a flood of comments about how crazy and f****ed up Japanese culture is inevitably follow. But this type of virtual relationship exists in the US, too. In September, NBC Miami reported on a woman who carries around a cardboard cutout of her soldier boyfriend, and Joel's testimony of the woman and Peter/Stan suggests that she's not the only one.

The idea of a person developing an emotional attachment to an object is easy to ridicule, but it's actually common. Whether the object of that affectionate bond is a teddy bear, a cardboard version of your hubby, or an imaginary character etched on a body pillow doesn't really matter. But within the spectrum of objects that people can have feelings for, some anthropomorphized things tend to make spectators feel more uncomfortable or weirded-out than others. The fact that some "love objects" are okay, while others stigmatize, challenges our notions of acceptable human behavior. As inanimate objects increasingly take on roles that humans used to fill, those challenges are likely to become more common.

(Thanks, Rachel Swaby, for the tip!)

Image via Torley's Flickr

lunchlady55 writes "I have been happily working for my current employer for five years. After moving up the ranks within my department from Intern to Technical Lead, a new manager essentially told me that I have to move into a different role oriented towards, 'administrative duties and management.' We are a 24x7 shop, and will now be required to work five 8-hour days rather than four 10-hour days and be on call during the other two days of the week. Every week. Including holidays. My question is, have any Slashdotters been forced into a non-technical role, and how did it work out? Has anyone said 'No thanks' to this kind of promotion and managed to keep their jobs?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Good news for me: According to a Harvard Medical School study, "men who drank the most coffee had a 60 percent lower risk of aggressive prostate cancer than men who did not drink any coffee."

Kathryn M. Wilson, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the Channing Laboratory, says the caffeine in coffee doesn't pay a role in reducing the risk of prostate cancer. Instead, coffee's "many biologically active compounds, like antioxidants and minerals," could be responsible.

Using the Health Professionals' Follow-Up Study, the researchers documented the regular and decaffeinated coffee intake of nearly 50,000 men every four years from 1986 to 2006; 4,975 of these men developed prostate cancer over that time. They also examined the cross-sectional association between coffee consumption and levels of circulating hormones in blood samples collected from a subset of men in the cohort.

"Very few lifestyle factors have been consistently associated with prostate cancer risk, especially with risk of aggressive disease, so it would be very exciting if this association is confirmed in other studies," said Wilson. "Our results do suggest there is no reason to stop drinking coffee out of any concern about prostate cancer."

Coffee consumption associated with reduced risk of advanced prostate cancer

Technorati Tags: health, coffee

Here's a neat process video where Richard Liddle shows how he makes the RD Chair. It's an excellent idea- after melting the used plastic, he extrudes it by hand onto a collapsible wooden form, and removes the form after everything cools down. Neat stuff! I don't imagine that you can melt just any old plastic down in this way- anyone know how to do it? [via core77]

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Rogier van Bakel reports that a Missouri farm family "was put under surveillance, then prosecuted, for selling raw milk from its own cow, Misty."

From Naturalnews.com:

...the bovine mother's milk, unpasteurized, unprocessed, non-homogenized and wholly pure, natural and innocent. The stuff America was raised on. The stuff your parents fed you when you were a kid, if your family was lucky enough to have a cow. In Missouri today, selling such a natural product is now apparently a criminal act. What's next? A ban on farm-fresh eggs because the Dept. of Health doesn't control their quality?

Farm family put under surveillance for selling raw milk

Technorati Tags: food

We had high hopes for Robert Iger when he took over Disney from Michael Eisner (whose views on intellectual property were positively wacky). Iger surprised a lot of people by taking a very progressive view towards digital and online content, as well as recognizing the need for new business models, rather than attacking your fans and customers. In 2006, he noted that the recording industry had screwed up and he intended to respond differently:

"The bottom line is they were not in tune with what their customers wanted and what the world was demanding of them and I think it hurt them significantly."

So we were disappointed last year when Iger came out strongly in support of rules to force ISPs to kick customers off the internet based on a "three strikes" plan, where accusations, not convictions, are all that matter.

It seems that he's not giving up. Chris points out that, at President Obama's recent "Jobs Summit" Iger gave a speech where much of it was focused on the need for stronger intellectual property protection from the government, and no talk about all of the innovative business models that others are creating without relying on governments to prop up their business model. In discussing his talk, he noted:

So when you hear about "stealing intellectual property," a term that may have little meaning to you, think about it as a means of contributing to unemployment and harming our economy.

Of course, there's no indication that this is actually true. Even if people are saving money by not spending on Disney content, they are spending that money elsewhere, contributing to jobs in those sectors. If you want to use Iger's logic, you could just as easily claim that copyright laws allow them to charge monopoly rents on products, thus depriving many other industries of money and jobs. Thus -- again, using Iger's own logic -- copyright contributes to unemployment and the harming of our economy. Not sure he really wants to go there.

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A judge has ordered the state of Florida to hire a makeup artist to cover the tattoos of a white supremacist on trial for stabbing a teenager to death.

His lawyer argued in a pretrial motion that the tattoos, which Ditullio acquired after his arrest, could prejudice a jury. The judge agreed but ruled that any tattoos Ditullio had before his arrest should not be covered.

I've always had pleasant conversations with makeup artists who have powdered my face before I've appeared on TV. I wonder if the makeup artist and this fellow engage in a bit of cheerful banter each morning as she/he covers up the large swastika on his neck?

Makeup hides neo-Nazi's swastika in Florida court

Atiev and D.J. Pataeve walked the a long length of Ontario's Yonge Street, that originates at Lake Ontario and stretches all the way up to the Arctic Circle (depending on how you define the street), taking stop motion images all the way. It's a really lovely bit of video.

Stopping to Take in Yonge Street (Thanks, Jonny!)

wkurzius writes with this nugget from Mac Rumors: "As anticipated, Google has finally released an official beta version of its Chrome browser for Mac. The initial beta version, termed Build 4.0.249.30, requires Mac OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard, and is only compatible with Intel-based Macs." And hierofalcon writes with word that Chrome has also been made available as an official Linux Beta.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

You can pre-order yours now at Fastmac. Supposedly they will ship "in early 2010." Or you could just make your own. If you try it, remember Louie the Lightening Bug: "You gotta play it safe around electricity." [via Slippery Brick]

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I'll be printing some ornaments as gifts this xmas on my MakerBot CupCake CNC, and you can too! Thingiverse is filling up with holiday printables, check out the newest added things!

More:

CupCake CNC build, part 5: Pulley & enclosure finishing

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We've had stories about consumers complaining that ebooks are too expensive and about book publishers complaining that ebooks are too cheap. Guess who's getting squeezed in the middle? According to this unsourced report (so, perhaps take it with a grain of salt), Amazon is losing $2 per ebook sale, because publishers are wholesaling the books at $12, while Amazon wants to keep selling its ebooks at $10. The conclusion is the same all the way around, however: the publishers are living in a fantasy world if they think that $12 makes sense as a wholesale price for an ebook. Without the cost of printing, binding and distribution, the wholesale price should be a hell of a lot lower.

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An anonymous reader writes "Molinker, a Chinese developer of iPhone apps, has been booted from the App Store after being caught trying to game the App Store review system. It seems reviewers were being paid off with free apps in return for 5-star reviews." This means the removal of over 1000 apps, described in this article as "knock-offs of existing applications."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

(Boing Boing guestblogger Ned Sublette is a writer, historian, photographer, and singer-songwriter who lives in New York City and travels often to New Orleans. Embedded audio in this post: Ned reads the introduction to his latest book, The Year Before The Flood, live at Joe's Pub in New York City. After the jump, the full text of that intro, republished in entirety here on Boing Boing.)

I'm Ned Sublette. I'll be guest-blogging for the next two weeks, serving up a few excerpts and ideas from my new book The Year Before The Flood (Lawrence Hill Books). (Which is not to be confused with a similarly-named book by Margaret Atwood, unfortunately published about the same time as mine - jeez, couldn't she have called it Oryx and Crake 2?) As well as words and ideas that turn up in my two previous, The World that Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square (Lawrence Hill) and Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo (Chicago Review Press), along with other topics from my usual beat of music, culture, and politics.

I study history through music, and vice versa, including the history I've lived through. I place music at the center of understanding, and at the center of my musical understanding is the current that sweeps around the Gulf of Mexico, linking New Orleans to its historic great trading partner Havana by a river in the sea.

To give what I do a name, I've started calling it "Postmamboism." It's clear there are a lot of Postmamboists out there. More on that later. I also write songs and occasionally release recordings, and I travel with my guitar wherever someone wants me to speak or sing.

I've lived in New York City since 1976, but my wife Constance and I spent the almost-year from August 2004 to May 2005 in New Orleans. I'm not an academic, but I had a one-year (non-teaching) fellowship from the Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane University that gave me the opportunity to do full-time research into that most American of cities, studying its history in the libraries and archives and the living culture in the street.

We set out memorizing New Orleans as if it were about to disappear. The World that Made New Orleans is the product of that--a history of Louisiana's colonial years, from 1718 to 1819, about the layers of Africans and Europeans that made up New Orleans culture.

The Year Before The Flood, on the other hand, is a memoir of what we lived in New Orleans--a play-by-play of the last year the city was whole, as we experienced it from our highly subjective point of view. The World that Made New Orleans is about the city's space, while The Year Before The Flood is about its unique sense of time--its calendar rhythm of festivals, parades, and observances. It's about the music we lived that year, and the city's horrifying murder rate that kept ticking off victims.

I started writing in November 2004, when I had no idea that our year in New Orleans would be . . . the year before the flood.

Allow me to begin my two blog weeks on a somber note, with the Introduction to The Year Before The Flood. If you want to listen along while you read, here's a clip of me reading it on November 20 at Joe's Pub in New York City. And hell yes, we're going to Mardi Gras this year.

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INTRODUCTION (MP3 Link to audio)

I knew it was going to happen. I just didn't know when.

On August 26, 2005, I was at home in New York City, working on what turned out to be an early version of this book.

By Saturday morning, August 27, the forecast models had converged. The hurricane was Category Five, headed straight for New Orleans. It was easy to see what was coming. And not because I'm clairvoyant.

Everyone knew what was going to happen.

Not the details. But in the broad outline, we all knew it.

Three weeks before, when I photographed the exterior of Fats Domino's pink-tile-and-yellow-brick house on Caffin Avenue in the Lower Ninth Ward, I didn't know it was about to go underwater, or that my childhood hero's white Steinway grand would be lying upside down in six inches of filth when the water receded, or that Fats would have a diabetic crisis in triage, hallucinating that he was about to go onstage after being rescued by boat from the top of his flooded house. But I knew I was seeing something imperiled.

"You described it to me before it happened," said my friend Peter Gordon. During the weeks after New Orleans was flooded, people said things like this to me repeatedly. When pianist/bandleader Arturo O'Farrill visited New Orleans in spring 2005, I took him to see Rebirth Brass Band uptown at the Maple Leaf. The following year, after the flood, he reminded me that I'd talked about the inevitability of a major disaster as we drove around New Orleans that night. "They're all in denial," he remembers I said to him.

My description had always included what was obvious to everyone in New Orleans: the poor would be left behind to drown.

Everyone knew it. But especially, the poor knew it. Part of the fearsome nihilism of New Orleans was the awareness on the part of the city's poor that they were, and had always been, so expendable that they would be abandoned when it started to rain. But fatalistic as they were, even the poor of New Orleans might not have realized what might happen if they survived a catastrophic flood.

They were left to dehydrate and putrefy. They were abandoned and imprisoned for days without food or water in what was more than once described by those who experienced the ordeal as a modern-day slave ship. Rescuers were actively kept away while those who remained in the city were treated as dangerous insurgents. New Orleanians' guns were confiscated in a house-to-house search, and finally, those remaining in the city were expelled, at gunpoint if necessary.

In a federally organized airlift, those with nowhere to go were dispersed around the country with one-way tickets to destinations not of their choosing. Children affected by the disaster were enrolled in schools in forty-six different states, except for ten thousand or so child evacuees who were not enrolled in school anywhere.

The programs that were supposed to help the evacuees return and rebuild were set up in such a way as to make it as difficult as possible for them to collect the promised aid. People who lived in the Magnolia, St. Bernard, Lafitte, or Calliope projects, saw the homes they had left in a hurry closed up tight--not boarded up, but sealed with lead shields--and bulldozed, as the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives had recommended be done for the whole city.

"It was as if all of us were already pronounced dead," said one Convention Center survivor.

They had been pronounced dead long ago.

© 2009 Ned Sublette

# # #

gyrogeerloose writes "Although there was evidence to suggest that the Japanese navy was up to something in December 1941, that information was scanty and came too late. Today's intelligence agencies have another problem altogether — more information than they can deal with, and computers aren't helping as much as one might expect for reasons that will be familiar to Slashdot readers: computers can crunch numbers faster and more accurately than humans but they're still easily baffled by language as it is commonly used in the real world. Metaphor, slang and simple figures of speech can confuse the best algorithm and, as quoted in the linked article in the San Diego Union-Tribune, 'A system that takes a week to discover a bombing will occur in a day isn't very useful.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The inimitable Ranjit Bhatnagar has been working on this voice-controlled toy piano. In this video three folks at NYC Resistor test out its range by laughing and singing!

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As the year draws to a close, I find myself turning back to 2009 and to the highlights and lowlights of the year. For instance, the dumbest thing I heard anyone say all year: at the Battle of Ideas in London, I sat in on a panel on whether unlimited economic growth was plausible or desirable. On the pro side there was a man who argued:

1. The Bible gives man dominion over all the beasts and land and so forth

2. The world's per-capita GDP works out to about GBP5,000, which means that if we stop growing now and then redistribute things fairly, every human being will have to live on a mere £5 grand a year.

Hardly a day goes by that I am not freshly amazed by how dumb this presentation was. First of all, for a Biblical literalist, this guy was in serious trouble. He was working on a Saturday! He was wearing polycotton blends! He was clean-shaven! Talk about cherry-picking your scripture.

As to 2., man, how innumerate can you get? You don't find out what the average standard of living is by adding up all the world's GDP and dividing by 6.7 billion -- unless you adjust for relative purchasing power (five thousand pounds goes a lot further in Burkina Faso than it does in Knightsbridge) all you get is a totally meaningless number.

I'm sure there were dumber things said this year, but this was the stupidest utterance that took place in my hearing, by a wide margin.

Back in June, we wrote about an odd lawsuit from a bunch of independent music publishers headed by MCS Music America against Microsoft, Yahoo and RealNetworks claiming that all three failed to secure licenses on the compositions. This seems strange, of course. You would assume that big companies like Microsoft, Yahoo and Real would make sure to secure all the necessary licenses for their music download and streaming operations. However, MCS and the others suggested that the three companies only secured the licenses on the recordings, but not the compositions. What appeared to have happened, was that Microsoft, Yahoo and Real licensed the songs from the major record labels, who also own many publishing operations, and in were told that they had received licenses for both the recording and composition. The problem is that not all of those major labels hold the composition rights. In some cases, those rights are still held by independent music publishers -- and there was a fair amount of confusion over who owned what. It was a perfect example of how ridiculous copyright law is today that even in setting up a big music operation from a major company with the major record labels, no one was exactly sure if all the proper rights were secured.

Either way, Microsoft, Yahoo and Real were quick to ask for the lawsuit to be dismissed and Eric Goldman sent over the rather short ruling from last month that does, in fact, dismiss the case stating (surprisingly) that the music publishers failed to show they hold the copyrights they were arguing over. That's rather incredible, seeing as the original lawsuit went on for pages and pages, claiming to hold various licensing rights. But the court wasn't buying it:

Defendants' Motion to Dismiss All Causes of Action of Plaintiff MCS Music America, Inc. ("MCS") is granted on the ground Plaintiff MCS has failed to state a legal claim for copyright infringement. To establish a claim of copyright infringement, two elements must be satisfied: (1) ownership of a valid copyright, and (2) unauthorized copying of the original work. Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Services Co., Inc,. 499 U.S. 340, 111 S.Ct 1282 (1991); Jones v. Blige, 558 F.3d 485 (6th Cir.2009).

MCS has failed to demonstrate ownership of any of the copyrights at issue. Plaintiffs allege MCS is a licensing administrator and an exclusive licensing agent of the copyrights at issue, but do not allege MCS to be an owner of such works. Without demonstrating legal ownership, MCS is not able to plead all of the necessary elements of copyright infringement.

Plaintiffs ask the court to consider the affidavit of Janice Bane with regard to MCS's rights. The court will not consider Ms. Bane's affidavit in deciding this issue. In ruling on a motion to dismiss, a court properly may consider only evidence contained in or asserted in the pleadings. As a general rule, matters outside the pleadings may not be considered in ruling on a motion to dismiss unless the motion is converted to one for summary judgment under Rule 56. Jackson v. City of Columbus, 194 F.3d 737, 745 (6th Cir.1999). Weiner v. Klais & Co., 108 F.3d 86, 88-89 (6th Cir.1997). Furthermore, even if the court were to consider Ms. Bane's affidavit, it does not indicate any ownership on the part of MCS, thus rendering its consideration moot.

Defendants' Motion to Dismiss All Causes of Action of Plaintiff MCS is GRANTED.

On top of that, MCS requested the right to amend the lawsuit, and the court shot them down there as well:

Plaintiffs have moved to amend their complaint a second time. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure state "... a party may amend its pleading only with the opposing party's written consent or the court's leave. The court should freely give leave when justice so requires." Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(a)(2). However. Plaintiffs have not demonstrated their amended complaint would show MCS has ownership of any of the copyrights at issue and would therefore be futile. For that reason, Plaintiff's Motion to Amend Complaint is DENIED.

So much for that, then. Somewhere along the line, it looks like these publishers got some really poor legal advice, as this case didn't last long at all, and to be tossed out so early is pretty bad.

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Woah! - Arduino lovers have a whole lotta hardware to choose from nowadays. From Arduino clones optimized for a variety of different users, to an arsenal of shield attachments specially designed for nearly every type of project. We've got a lot to cover here, so let's get started with the basics -
(Read on for the whole shebang)

Arduino main boards

Arduino Duemilanove($34.99)
The new standard Arduino main board. This latest model auto-switches its power source between USB and DC jack - whichever is available. "Duemilanove" means 2009 in Italian and is named after the year of its release. Specs include -

• Microcontroller - ATmega168
• Operating Voltage - 5V
• Input Voltage - (recommended) 7-12V
• Input Voltage - (limits) 6-20V
• Digital I/O Pins - 14 (of which 6 provide PWM output)
• Analog Input Pins - 6
• DC Current per I/O Pin - 40 mA
• DC Current for 3.3V Pin - 50 mA
• Flash Memory - 16 KB (of which 2 KB used by bootloader)
• SRAM - 1 KB
• EEPROM - 512 bytes
• Clock Speed - 16 MHz

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Arduino Mega ($65)
The Arduino Mega is the latest micro-controller from the Arduino team. The Mega is built around the ATmega1280. It's perfect for anyone looking for more room for code or to be able to control a lot more LEDs, sensors, servos, or motors. It has 54 digital input/output pins (of which 14 can be used as PWM outputs), 16 analog inputs, 4 UARTs. Another great feature is the Arduino Mega is compatible with most shields designed for the Arduino Duemilanove or Diecimila. Arduino is a tool for making computers that can sense and control more of the physical world than your desktop computer. It's an open source physical computing platform based on a simple micro-controller board, and a development environment for writing software for the board.

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Arduino Nano ($49.99)
So tiny you'll want to eat it! Arduino Nano is a surface mount breadboard embedded version with integrated USB. It is a smallest, complete, and breadboard friendly. It has everything that Diecimila has (electrically) with more analog input pins and onboard +5V AREF jumper. Physically, it is missing power jack and power select jumper. Since the Nano is automatically sense and switch to the higher potential source of power, there is no need for the power select jumper. Nano's got the breadboard-ability of the Boarduino and the Mini+USB with smaller footprint than either, so users have more breadboard space.
Features:

• Automatic reset during program download
• Power OK blue LED on the bottom
• Green (TX), red (RX) and orange (L) LED
• +5V to AREF jumper
• Auto sensing/switching power input
• Small mini-B USB for programming and serial monitor
• ICSP header for direct program download
• Power OK blue LED on the bottom
• Standard 0.1" spacing DIP (breadboard friendly)
• Manual reset switch

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Arduino Mini Board ($36.99) & Arduino Mini USB Adapter ($19.99)
The Arduino Mini offers the same power and flexibility of the standard boards, but in a much smaller package. This makes it an ideal choice for projects where space is at a premium. The USB adapter (pictured above) is used to program the Mini from your computer and can be removed from a project was your done wrting and uploading software

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Hardcopy ($23.95)
The Hardcopy is an Arduino clone with a built in prototyping area.
Designed to make a permanent version (or Hardcopy if you will) of your project once you have perfected it on a breadboard, less the expense of embedding and dedicating your original Arduino. Because the prototyping area is integrated with the microprocessor on one board, your project will have fewer boards and wires and be more reliable and robust.

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Small Beer Press is an astoundingly good independent science fiction press run by Gavin Grant and the brilliant short story writer Kelly Link. Kelly has been in Franciscan Children's Hospital with their newborn, Ursula, having moved in after Ursula's early tenure at Ronald McDonald House following her very premature birth last February (she weighed 1 Lb, 9 oz at birth!).

Now, Gavin ("Mr Kelly Link") Grant sez, "Small Beer Press is having a pre-end-of-the-decade sale + big old fundraiser for Franciscan Children's Hospital (where Kelly Link & Gavin's daughter Ursula is being looked after very well -- she is taking a nap right now after a very busy day!). Here are the basics: All our books (even the preorders) are on sale -- and $1 from every book (or ebook, zine, subscription, etc.) goes to Franciscan. And, if items are ordered at full price, we will donate the difference between the full price and the sale price to Franciscan! Finally: check out the baby + World Fantasy Awards pic -- eldritch or cute, you decide!"

ZOMG. My cute gland just ran out of cutenalin. Hey, Gavin! the Federal Cuteness Commission called to say that you're operating a powerful unlicensed cuton emitter and it's interfering with air traffic control systems.

Kelly & Gavin on Mike FM & a sale--all for Franciscan (Thanks, Gavin!)

Lord Duran writes "The Israeli Knesset approved a bill that will require every Israeli citizen to submit a visual scan of their face and a biometric scan of their fingerprints to a national database. I, for one, fail to see how this is anything but evil. TFA mentions the Israeli census was breached — I'd like to point out, for comparison, that it's still freely available on your peer-to-peer file sharing network of choice."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Jan decided to decorate more than the tree this holiday season -

I happened to use white spraypaint for another project when i thought i could make my arduino look like christmas. Still works flawlessly of course. If you wanna do the same, i advise you not to use woodglue to protect the PIN header. It's a PITA to remove from the holes. Use normal tape instead.

I plan on swapping out all of my protoshield LEDs with red & green … huh, seems they're already in the holiday spirit. Oh well, have a closer look at the 'snowy' Freeduino on Flickr

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systembug writes "After 10 years of waiting and some infighting, ECMAScript version 5 is finally out, approved by 19 of the 21 members of the ECMA Technical Committee 39. JSON is in; Intel and IBM dissented. IBM is obviously in disagreement with the decision against IEEE 754r, a floating point format for correct, but slow representation of decimal numbers, despite pleas by Yahoo's Douglas Crockford." (About 754r, Crockford says "It was rejected by ES4 and by ES3.1 — it was one of the few things that we could agree on. We all agreed that the IBM proposal should not go in.")

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

bckspc writes "The Committee to Protect Journalists has published their annual census of journalists in prison. Of the 136 reporters in prison around the world on December 1, "At least 68 bloggers, Web-based reporters, and online editors are imprisoned, constituting half of all journalists now in jail." Print was next with 51 cases. Also, "Freelancers now make up nearly 45 percent of all journalists jailed worldwide, a dramatic recent increase that reflects the evolution of the global news business." China, Iran, Cuba, Eritrea, and Burma were the top 5 jailers of journalists." rmdstudio writes, too, with word that after the last few days' protest there, largely organized online, the government of Iran is considering the death penalty for bloggers and webmasters whose reports offend it.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've covered how various companies in Europe have built up an extremely profitable business by purposely seeding content they have the rights to on file sharing networks, and then sending "pre-settlement" letters demanding money from the holder of any IP address that connects to them, even if the IP address is not accurately indicating who was involved. They're now sending out these letters at a massive rate, and while they're not actually filing lawsuits, it appears that at least one of the firms involved, DigiProtect, is getting a collections agency involved in some cases. That seems pretty nasty. There's no actual debt here, because the person has not agreed to pay up, but by handing it over to a collections agency, the person will now get hounded with demands for payment. It's difficult to see how this is even close to legal.

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On this day in 1765, Eli Whitney, Jr. (Wikipedia) was born in Westborough, Massachusetts. Whitney would go on, most famously, to invent the cotton gin, which revolutionized cotton production in the antebellum South. He eventually became the most famous early American proponent of interchangeable parts, and also invented one of the world's first milling machines. Whitney died January 8, 1825, and is buried with many of his famous descendants in an historic cemetery in New Haven.

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eldavojohn writes "Media Queue holds the rights to patent 7389243 which is simply a patent on the notification system (like e-mail) to users of changes in the status of their DVD rental queues. Of course, they filed suit in a random place against Netflix, Blockbuster and everyone else sending e-mail updates about DVD-by-Mail services. It was later moved to California and was dismissed last week. In related news on the ailing patent system, the USPTO unveiled a new plan to reduce backlog in its system by offering pending patents special examiner status if the holder abandons another co-pending unexamined application."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just look at it.

Banana Splitter® Banana Peeler -- 'Flip the top off a banana and peel it with ease' (Thanks, Bennett!)

bonch writes "In a surprising statement to CNBC, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told reporter Maria Bartiromo, 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.' This will only fuel concerns about Google's behavior as it becomes an ever more powerful gatekeeper of information; though Google says it is aware of these concerns and has taken steps to be transparent to users about the information that is stored."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

You may recall a few years ago all the negative publicity Yahoo got after it came out that its Chinese operations handed over information on certain users that resulted in some Chinese dissidents being arrested. This resulted in some lawsuits filed in the US. However, in one such case, the court has noted that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which protects user data in such cases, doesn't apply outside the US, and since this happened entirely within China, there's not much of a case to be made about it. Either way, Yahoo recognized what a blackeye it got from the PR in these cases, and has settled some of them, and I'm guessing the company is now a lot more aware of the potential backlash in dealing with these kinds of issues.

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Windmil of the future? The latest advancement in kite fighting? Kitesurfing robots? The Festo CyberKite deftly controls the graceful movements of a rather large kite with relative ease. [via BotJunkie]

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A story at the BBC takes a look at the use of private game servers for games that tend not to allow them. While most gamers are happy to let companies like Blizzard and NCSoft administer the servers that host their MMORPGs, others want different rules, a cheaper way to play, or the technical challenge of setting up their own. A South African player called Hendrick put up his own WoW server because the game "wasn't available in the country at the time." A 21-year-old Swede created a server called Epilogue, which "had strict codes of conduct and rules, as well as a high degree of customized content (such as new currency, methods of earning experience, the ability to construct buildings and hire non-player characters, plus 'permanent' player death) unavailable in the retail version of the game." The game companies make an effort to quash these servers when they can, though it's frequently more trouble that it's worth. An NCSoft representative referenced the "growing menace" of IP theft, and a Blizzard spokesperson said,"We also have a responsibility to our players to ensure the integrity and reliability of their World of Warcraft gaming experience and that responsibility compels us to protect our rights."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

p3np8p3r writes "I'm in college and working towards my Bachelors in Computer Science. Last year I passed both my CompTIA A+ and Network+ certifications and now have been offered (via a staffing company) a full-time Internship at a wireless lab of a major laptop manufacturer. The pay is going to be around $8 an hour full-time but that is not my primary motivator. I'm considering this significant decrease in pay from my previous (non-IT) job to be counterbalanced by what valuable knowledge I may gain both in the technical aspects and industry insight while I finish school. This field is all new to me and I don't personally know anyone who has worked in it before who will give me their honest opinions on it. Although I know circumstances differ greatly, in general, what can I expect as an IT Intern? What have been your experiences?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's a rare peek into the celestial kingdom in which the Tetris God decides which shape to send you next.

The Tetris God (via Geekologie)

The world's first commercial spacecraft was officially unveiled on Monday afternoon.

Photos shot for Boing Boing by Alan Radecki, photographer and Mojave aviation and space historian.

The craft will take six tourists at a time to the edge of space. Each seat is $200,000, requires the traveler to pass a strenuous physical, and offers just a few minutes of zero-G flight.

The Mojave desert is home to Virgin Galactic's research and development base. Its commercial spaceport is to be built in New Mexico.

Entrepreneur Richard Branson and engineer Burt Rutan's dream is to kickstart private space exploration. Test flights will begin almost immediately.

Earlier in the day, an ice-sculptor's work reflects similarly cold conditions two hours east of L.A., lashed by heavy rains before the unveiling.

Journalists gathered for the event, bussed out on coaches to what one correspondent described as a "goat rodeo."

Guests were evacuated early from the event due to wind advisory, Radecki said ... "Current winds, 53, gusting to 60!"

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and New Mexico governor Bill Richardson were among the attendees.

The "badminton cock" design allows SpaceShipTwo to re-enter the atmosphere as slower speeds than the Shuttle, producing less heat.

Branson, Rutan and their families will get to enjoy the first official journey into space. There's already a huge list of reservations for the twice-daily flights thereafter.

No one denies that child pornography is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. However, it often seems like the laws related to child pornography are targeted at the wrong thing. That's why we get laws requiring filters, rather than the shut down of whoever is producing the content, and laws against those who end up having any on their hard drive, even as that could make a felon out of someone just because they receive an email. Take, for example (as pointed out by Slashdot), this story of a man who was searching online for regular (legal) pornography, but accidentally downloaded some underage pictures -- which he immediately deleted. Though the FBI officials who eventually searched his hard drive admit that the images had been deleted and could not be accessed, he was still charged with child pornography and is pleading guilty to get a shorter sentence (3.5 years, 10 years probation, and a lifetime on the sex offenders list).

Though this article serves as a warning of why you shouldn't go looking for porn online -- it would seem that the stronger argument is why the laws on possession should change. In cases like this, where the guy was clearly not out there seeking out or collecting such content, it seems ridiculous that he should be charged and feel the need to plead guilty. Anti-child porn efforts should really focus on those who produces and distributes such content. As for those who collect it, I would assume that mental health help would be a more appropriate response than jail time. And, for those who accidentally come across it... it seems fairly ridiculous to charge them as well.

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Tavie sez, "Wendy Pini, creator of Elfquest, is my favorite living artist. I had long been curious about this out-of-print book about her quest to bring Michael Moorcock's "Stormbringer" to the big screen. The artwork was supposed to be phenomenal, but the book was unfindable long before I had even heard of Elfquest. Richard Pini has now made the book available online - in its glorious, lushly illustrated entirety - at Wendy's website for her web graphic novel, Masque of the Red Death. The paintings are incredible."

Law & Chaos - Wendy Pini (Thanks, Tavie!)

The Invision LD 3D-Modeler printer has been discontinued and is being sold off for $5,000 a throw -- it uses Laminated Object Manufacturing to produce low-rez 3D models. It's not going to let you print other printers, AK47s, high-grade pharmaceuticals, picture-perfect edible omelettes, but, as the news story notes, "this is a great system for schools or hobbyists since the cleanup process is entirely physical with no heat or chemical based secondary processing required. At $5,000 you can't do better."

$5000 Printer Available Now! (For a limited time) (Thanks, Rich!)

The Welcome to MAKE bundle is the perfect gift for this holiday season! For a limited time we are offering the Welcome to MAKE bundle at an amazing discount of $48. That's 46% off the price if you purchased these items individually.

The Welcome to MAKE bundle includes:

• A Year subscription to MAKE Magazine $34.95 value
• The Best of MAKE $34.99 value
• A Maker's Notebook $19.99 value

Check out the FREE shipping offer from the Maker Shed.
(orders of $100 or more, Contiguous US only, not to be combined with any other offers) Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Maker Shed Store | Digg this!

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Mel Beckman conjectures on the functionality necessary to make the Google 'smartbook dream' a reality, prioritizing the features any smartphone/netbook hybrid would require to succeed. From multitouch, to SSDs, to dual-boot capabilities, the list goes beyond what early Android-based entrants have to offer but remains within the realm of possibility, especially if Google CEO Eric Schmidt's hints at a future Chrome/Android OS convergence come to pass."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've covered how the Olympics has time and time again abused intellectual property law to try to silence all sorts of reasonable activity, and the upcoming Vancouver Olympics have been no exception. In the latest move, sent in by drewmo (though he forgot the link, and made us go searching...) is that a Vancouver-based musician, Carey Mercer, is pointing out that the Vancouver Olympic Committee is pushing contracts on musicians that include a gag order against saying anything bad at all about the Olympics.

The Olympics always has a "cultural component," a cultural Olympiad, and this year, to quote their puke-in-my-mouth inducing website, they have made a back-patting hullabaloo about including "cutting edge indie rock." And each and every "cutting edge" performer that has agreed to play has signed a contract that includes the above clause. A clause that states, in case you skimmed over it, that these artists must never say anything negative about an entity that will spend 900 million dollars on "security." An entity that has already infuriated anti-poverty and anti-homeless groups who accuse VANOC of not living up to its promise of providing affordable housing.

Most participating artists claim to be unaware of this clause.

Part of Mercer's complaint is that no one seems to be able to determine if the Olympics is a public or private entity, since censorship by a government entity would seem like a big no-no:

No one, including our courts, can figure out if it is a public or private entity. It seems to be public when it needs tax dollars (6 billion), but private whenever it is challenged...

And, sure, you can understand why the Vancouver Olympics might not want musicians it hires to say anything bad about them, but putting a contractual gag clause in there seems to suggest that the organization simply can't take any criticism. Mercer is also concerned about what this does for the musicians who signed these gag orders, often without realizing it:

When artists are not allowed to critique their government, or the governing agency that endows them with grants and funding, then what they are asking for is nothing more than propaganda.

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Electronic Arts announced on Monday that their popular survival-horror game Dead Space is officially getting a sequel. According to the press release, it's being developed for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. There's speculation that Dead Space 2 may include some form of multiplayer, after an EA job opening was spotted on LinkedIn that mentioned multiplayer level design for the franchise.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Japanese police have arrested a Chinese woman whom they claim had her fingerprints removed from the fingertips of each hand and swapped to the other side in order to fool immigration controls. The woman, whom they arrested for unrelated fraud, is said to have have paid US$15,000 for the operation. Japanese police believe that it is a widespread practice.

Skin patches on her thumbs and index fingers were removed and then re-grafted on to the matching digits of the opposite hand.

Japanese newspapers said police had noticed that Ms Lin's fingers had unnatural scars when she was arrested last month for allegedly faking a marriage to a Japanese man.

The apparent ability of illegal migration networks to break through hi-tech controls suggests that other countries who fingerprint visitors could be equally vulnerable - not least the United States, according to BBC Asia analyst Andre Vornic.

'Fake fingerprint' Chinese woman fools Japan controls (via /.)

(Image: Fingerprints, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from kevindooley's photostream)

Gnat sez, "Library of Congress map showing prevalence of Malaria in 1870s USA. Astonishing how dangerous it was--in some places, it accounted for 1/7th of all deaths. People thought it was bad air (literally, 'mal-' 'air'), figured out it was a parasite in the blood in the 1870s, but it wasn't until 1908 that a Cuban doctor made the connection with mosquitoes. Incidentally, if you've ever wondered what the 'ague' is that Shakespeare kept banging on about--it's what the English called malaria. It was widespread in the marshlands during Shakespeare's time."

Statistical atlas of the United States based on the results of the nint (Thanks, Gnat!)

Etsy seller Stil Novo Design makes beautiful furniture out of old wine-barrels. I remember visiting the Bushmill's distillery in N. Ireland and asking what they did with their barrels after they were finishing converting grain to ambrosia, and the tour-guide said, "Oh, a man from town turns them into rubbish bins." I was agog. I wanted to furnish my entire house with them!

Stil Novo Design (via Make)

A bunch of folks have sent in Matthew Lasar's excellent look back at some of the early days of the telegraph system and how it parallels some questions that we face today over things like net neutrality. The basic story is that Western Union worked out a way to gain a monopoly on the telegraph, and then worked out a deal with the Associated Press, whereby all AP papers would use Western Union, and none would support the creation of a competing telegraph company. From all of this, there is even the suggestion that a presidential election was stolen. It's a worthwhile read.

Of course, the parallels are not perfect, and there are lots of other questions to be raised, but there are some good points to think about, when you're dealing with a communications system that is, effectively, a natural monopoly. As the FCC suddenly seems open to the concept of line sharing again, after being down on it for so many years, it's at least worth looking at the history on things like the telegraph, to understand why competition really is a good thing, especially when it comes to the major means of communication.

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A travel blog breaks the story of a poor job of redacting by the TSA: they posted a PDF of airport screening policies, with certain sections blacked out — not realizing that simply laying a black rectangle over the text is hardly sufficient. Cryptome has posted a copy with the redaction removed (ZIP).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Andre writes -

That's right - we're finally coming full circle with the Fritzing project and are soon launching the much-wanted fabrication service that turns your Fritzing sketches into professional printed circuit boards! So in order to kick it off, we thought why not celebrate this as a fritzmas present to the community. We will produce 24 of your Arduino Shields (or other) designs you made with Fritzing. You will receive two copies for free, including free shipping. Deadline for receiving your design is December 9th. Head over to the Fritzing fab page to find out how to participate.

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christian.einfeldt writes "Linux netbooks have captured 32% of the global netbook market, says Jeff Orr, an analyst with consumer computer research firm ABI Research. The largest share of netbook sales is in the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, according to Orr. ABI's latest figures align with a statement by Dell executives in February of this year, to the effect that Linux netbooks comprised about 33% of Dell shipments of Dell Inspiron mini 9s netbooks. These data points cast doubt on claims by Microsoft that Windows XP has captured 98% of the netbook market (a figure Microsoft later revised to 93%). In an interview with DesktopLinux.com, Orr made clear that the 32% Linux netbook market share did not include either user-installed Linux or dual-boot systems, but was confined to just pre-installed Linux shipments."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PrometheeFeu writes "The French Minister of Culture Christine Albanel has just been assigned a mission to prepare the French publishing industry for the digital economy. The phrasing of the mission-letter makes it clear that while developing legal offerings and digitizing books is part of the plan, the focus is on getting the cooperation of publishers to enforce the 3-strike law (Google translation from the original). The language actually talks about inciting publishers to do so which leads me to wonder why the government should incite people to exercise their rights if they don't want to do so...

The letter makes it clear that IP enforcement is seen as the only way to distribute value to authors and distributors (consumers are not mentioned). Here is a choice quote:

"The government cannot accept to see another cultural industry threatened by the pillaging."

The letter also mentions the "damages observed for the music and film industries through the growth of illegal downloads." Obviously, no sources are given for that information. Most amusingly, the letter states that Christine Albanel (who kindly told us that OpenOffice comes with a firewall which would somehow block illegal downloads) should use in this mission her experience in working with the music and film industry. I like many French authors and I sincerely hope that they ignore whatever she says and instead try something which might actually work, but I'm not holding my breath..."

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Nat Torkington says,

Here is a Library of Congress map showing prevalence of Malaria throughout the United States in the 1870s. Astonishing how dangerous it was. In some places, it accounted for one-seventh of all deaths. People thought it was bad air (literally, "mal-" + "air"), figured out it was a parasite in the blood in the 1870s, but it wasn't until 1908 that a Cuban doctor made the connection with mosquitoes.

Incidentally, if you've ever wondered what the "ague" is that Shakespeare kept banging on about--it's what the English called malaria. It was widespread in the marshlands during Shakespeare's time. (via sciblogs)

Feel like you are missing something in your life? It's probably because you don't have your own batsignal. Fortunately, thanks to Philipp Tiefenbacher, you can build your own with these plans to make a batlamp. Designed around a high brightness RGB LED and an Arduino, it's actually a general purpose projector that you can use to program your own lightshow. Now, where did I put that laser cutter? [via hackerspaces soup]

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On the website of sculptor and mathematician George Hart, there are step-by-step instructions for how to craft a Möbius strip from a single bagel. I like his thoughts at the very end of the instruction process:

"It is much more fun to put cream cheese on these bagels than on an ordinary bagel. In additional to the intellectual stimulation, you get more cream cheese, because there is slightly more surface area."

Mathematically Correct Breakfast: How to Slice a Bagel into Two Linked Halves (via Serious Eats NY, thanks Laura)

The Obama administration still has a very mixed record on transparency and openness. Despite promising to be a lot more transparent and open, the federal government has been extremely selective in where it actually is open. So, yes, it's done a decent job with some online projects like Recovery.gov and USASpending.gov, but in other areas, such as on ACTA negotiations the government has resisted openness at pretty much every turn. So, while perhaps it's understandable, it does seem rather ironic that the federal government's workshop on openness is closed to the public. Yes, it's an internal workshop for federal government employees, but it certainly seems to be a symbolic point that openness is something that's talked about more often than done.

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squizzar writes in with news of a 27 year old Chinese woman who was discovered to have had her fingerprints surgically swapped between hands in order to fool Japanese immigration. "It is Japan's first case of alleged biometric fraud, but police believe the practice may be widespread. ... The apparent ability of illegal migration networks to break through hi-tech controls suggests that other countries who fingerprint visitors could be equally vulnerable — not least the United States, according to BBC Asia analyst Andre Vornic." Time for some biometric escalation. Could iris scans be subverted as easily?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Spotted on the corner of 15th and P St., in Washington, DC, and posted on ReadysetDC.

Bike of the Day: 15th + P

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We're doubling up on guestbloggers this week at Boing Boing! As Paul Spinrad continues to spin out excellent posts, we're also now joined by author, historian, photographer, and roving singer-songwriter Ned Sublette.

I first met this Texas native on a subway train in lower Manhattan. I remember that on that afternoon, he was wearing the eleke beads that typically mark someone as an initiate in spiritual traditions of West African origin. We got to talking, we struck up a friendship, and I've been an admirer and avid consumer of his work ever since. I often pull Boing Boing blog post ideas from his excellent (and private) mailing list.

Ned's books include The Year Before the Flood, The World That Made New Orleans, and Cuba and Its Music. His most recent album of recordings is Cowboy Rumba , and a new album, Kiss You Down South, will be out as soon as he finishes recording it (nudge, nudge!). He lives in New York City, and is known to show up from time to time in New Orleans.

Welcome, Ned!

An anonymous reader writes "Moxie Marlinspike, a security researcher well known for his SSL/TLS attacks, today launched a cloud-based WPA cracking service, where for $34 you can test the security of your WPA password. The WPA Cracker Web site states: 'WPA-PSK networks are vulnerable to dictionary attacks, but running a respectable-sized dictionary over a WPA network handshake can take days or weeks. WPA Cracker gives you access to a 400CPU cluster that will run your network capture against a 135 million word dictionary created specifically for WPA passwords. While this job would take over 5 days on a contemporary dual-core PC, on our cluster it takes an average of 20 minutes.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I've been a fan of actor Ron Livingston for a while, so it's disappointing to see him push forward with an obviously dead-in-the-water lawsuit against Wikipedia. Livingston is upset that someone keeps changing his Wikipedia entry to claim that he's gay, when the actor (who recently got married) is pretty sure he's not. Of course, the problem here is that there's nothing that he can reasonably sue Wikipedia for. He's trying "libel, invasion of privacy and for using his name and likeness without his permission." None of these will stand, as all will quickly be dumped due to Section 230 of the CDA -- which you can all read about on Wikipedia. Now, he might have a stronger argument if he actually sued the individual making these changes, rather than Wikipedia itself, but even then, it's difficult to see the lawsuit getting very far.

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MAKE contributing editor Bill Gurstelle got a nice write-up in the Telegraph on the art of living (slightly) dangerously:

Citing various studies, Gurstelle argues that moderate risk taking has various benefits. Canadian researchers found that managers who took risks were more successful while a German study discovered that people who took more risks said they were happier.

Gurstelle believes his books tap into two rich seams in modern society - contempt for the health and safety bullies, and a more general fear of technology. While he describes himself as a liberal and doesn't own a gun, he's with the libertarians on the issue of being allowed to make your own mistakes.

"We live in the age of the lily-livered, where people make terrific efforts to remove all possible risks from their lives," he says.

"It becomes a fairly pallid, sterile experience. You certainly won't be hurt but you won't be creative. And it's especially true for children. Are they going to grow up to be so risk averse that they don't contribute anything?"

America's DIY ballistics king Bill Gurstelle shoots from the hip about health and safety

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