eldavojohn writes "Time Inc., News Corp., Conde Nast, Hearst Corp., and Meredith Corp. are teaming up to create a digital newsstand and somewhat open format that 'can render our content beautifully on those devices that come to market' instead of the gray inked Kindle's energy conscious display. Devices are being made for the new format with the launch coming next year. The format will also target smart phones and tablet computers. Will this pose a threat at all to the Kindle?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gaydar--the supposed ability to identify a person's sexual preference just by looking at them--may be more than just a bad pun. A couple of studies have been done on this recently, as part of broader research into the general ability of humans to very quickly make correct judgments about other humans' skills, personalities, age, etc.Turns out, people asked to guess whether a man is gay or a woman is a lesbian, just by looking at the subject's face, got it right at a rate higher than that which could be explained by mere chance. And the trick worked even when the images were cropped to remove all trace of tip-offs like hair style or fashion accessories.

So far, the studies have been very small and they certainly don't show that gaydar, if it does exist, is foolproof. The guessers did statistically significantly better than chance, but they weren't exactly sexual-orientation sniffing bloodhounds. There's also some open questions about whether the gender or sexual orientation of the guesser makes a difference on the rate of accuracy. What the research does do is add to considerable body of evidence showing that humans are evolutionarily programmed to pay extremely close attention to the facial features of other humans, and it tells us that we still have a lot to learn about what that programming means for ideas like "instinct".

Cognitive Daily: People Identify the Sexual Orientation of Strangers in As Fast as 50 Miliseconds
Miller-McCune: Subjects Correctly Identify Lesbians Solely on Facial Features

Reminded by the incorrectly-colored dumpster, wrongdistance points out how a little tweaking makes for a big difference on the newsstand.

This may be the best/most cynical Tiger Woods scandal t-shirt spotted so far (via Sean Bonner)

Jaewon alerts us to the news that the US Patent Office has agreed to fast track "green tech" patents to get them through the process much faster. This is the opposite of what should be done. One of the biggest problems is that examiners don't have nearly enough time to thoroughly examine a patent to make sure that it's really patentworthy (i.e., that it's both new and non-obvious to those skilled in the art). Speeding up the process seems like a recipe for a lot more bad patents -- which doesn't help the green technology space, it'll cause significant harm. We'll end up with more patent thickets, and a huge waste of money on legal battles, rather than actual innovation.

Yet, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke supported the plan by announcing:

"American competitiveness depends on innovation and innovation depends on creative Americans developing new technology," Locke said in a statement. "Every day an important green tech innovation is hindered from coming to market is another day we harm our planet and another day lost in creating green businesses and green jobs."

This statement makes a bunch of assumptions that simply are not supported by any evidence at all. First, innovation isn't just about new technology, but about successfully bringing the technology to market. Second, over and over again, studies have shown no causal effect between more patents and greater innovation. It's amazing that Locke can claim this as if it's fact when there's no evidence to support it. Third, there is no hindrance in job creation from a slower patent approval process. Companies can still bring their products to market and can still hire and grow whether or not they have the patent. There are plenty of "patent pending" products on the market. The idea that fast tracking green tech patents creates more jobs is pure fantasy. Apparently, when it comes to intellectual property, the policy of our federal government is entirely faith-based.

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detainee063.com: "This is the interrogation log of Mohammed al-Qahtani. It is being published in real time: each entry will appear exactly seven years after it was first recorded. The interrogation took place at Guantanamo Bay."

That is him in the photo above. He is still imprisoned in Guantanamo. The serialized logs are not for the faint of heart. By way of background, al-Qahtani was the first "war on terror detainee" the United States admitted to having tortured. Snip:

Over the course of the fifty days, Al-Qahtani, Detainee 063, is questioned by teams of interrogators working in shifts, typically for twenty hours a day. While individual entries of the log are sometimes brutal and unpleasant to read, what is particularly disturbing about the treatment Al-Qahtani receives is its relentlessness. By publishing the log in real time, this site is intended as a kind of re-enactment - to show how mistreatment which might not appear immediately as terrible as, for example, waterboarding, can nonetheless come to amount to nothing short of torture, how by being prolonged and unceasing it can become unbearable.

More about the project here. Apart from the brutality, it just gets really weird. Some of the entries go, "Played Christina Aguilera music," or,

Control began "birthday party" and placed party hat on detainee. Detainee offered birthday cake - refused. Interrogators and guards sing "God bless America". Detainee became very angry.

The entries are also available through an RSS feed and a Twitter account. To those of you in the US, remember that your tax dollars paid for every word of it. (thanks, Susannah Breslin)

These cute Christmas postcards featuring a tree made out of raw bacon are for sale on Etsy. The creator, Mike Geno, specializes in drawing meat — it makes me kind of sad that this is just a drawing. Can you imagine frying this tree and eating it for breakfast? Yum/barf.

[Etsy via Eat Me Daily]

Porn mogul Larry Flynt took the stand Tuesday for the first day of his federal trademark infringement trial against nephews Jimmy Jr. and Dustin, who have launched their own "Flynt" adult film company. "Inferior products" and "knock-off goods" were among the phrases the elder Flynt used to describe their films. "Your clients are focusing on the boob element, so to speak," he said in court. "I just think that's sort of passé, and guys are moving past that. That's only my opinion."

(Boing Boing guestblogger Ned Sublette is an author, historian, photographer, and singer-songwriter who lives in New York City. His most recent book is "The Year Before The Flood." Photo above: Chano Domínguez, Dec. 3, Jazz Standard. Photos in this post: (c) 2009, Ned Sublette]

In presenting his version of Kind of Blue . . . [pianist Chano] Domínguez came with a quintet format I have not seen before: bass (Mario Rossy), cajón (Israel Piraña Suárez), a wailing flamenco vocal (Blas Córdoba, also on handclaps), and a handclappper (Tomasito) who also contributed bursts of percussive dance on a wooden mini-floor set at the front of the Standard's stage. So there were only two harmonic instruments and a voice, set against a rich, brittle rhythmic conversation.

That's from a review I wrote Friday morning, posted over at allaboutjazz.com, of Thursday night's splendid performance by Chano Domínguez at the Jazz Standard in New York. Now let me back up.

Last year I played the most amazing festival: the Voll-Damm Barcelona International Jazz Festival (Voll-Damm is the sponsor). That was the festival where I spent two days with Bebo and Chucho Valdés...

...and saw their duo concert from the front row. The V-DBIJF had the temerity to book me to play a solo concert in Spanish, and they had a full-house audience for me in spite of my utter obscurity in Spain. I was on the same floor in the hotel as Al Green's band...

...and met Omar Sosa for the first time, about whom more in a forthcoming post.

Begun as a private initiative in the dreary days of Generalísimo Franco, the V-DBIJF runs for seven weeks. This year, their 41st, they did something unprecedented: the closing concert of the Barcelona festival took place in New York City, at the Jazz Standard. Festival director Joan Anton Cararach imaginatively commissioned from Barcelona residents Chano Domínguez and Omar Sosa flamenco and Afro-Cuban re-imaginings, respectively, of Miles Davis's all-time jazz-record phenomenon Kind of Blue (about which, see Ashley Kahn's Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece). We're still waiting to hear the Sosa version, which premiered in Barcelona, but last week Chano Domínguez brought his Iberian bad self to Noo Yawk.

I wrote a review of the concert for All About Jazz, but I was slow with the pictures. Here's a link to the review, but my pictures are right here below. The first photo is Blas Córdoba and Tomasito, and the rest are Chano and Tomasito. And then the guy from the Jazz Standard told me to stop taking pictures

Chano Dominguez online: Myspace, official web site, Wikipedia, Amazon.

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AndGodSed writes "OMG! UBUNTU! Reports the following: 'Malware has been found hidden inside an innocuous 'waterfall' screensaver .deb file made available on popular artwork sharing site Gnome-Look.org. The .deb file installs a script with elevated privileges designed to perform a DDoS attack as well as keep itself updated via downloads. The dodgy screensaver in question has since been removed from gnome-look, and this incident was a very basic, if potentially successful, attempt.'" A similar report at Digitizor.com says that similar malware was also found in a theme called Ninja Black. For those affected, both sites also provide instruction on cleansing your system.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In the Make: Online Toolbox, we focus mainly on tools that fly under the radar of more conventional tool coverage: in-depth tool-making projects, strange or specialty tools unique to a trade or craft that can be useful elsewhere, tools and techniques you may not know about, but once you do, and incorporate them into your workflow, you'll wonder how you ever lived without them. And, in the spirit of the times, we pay close attention to tools that you can get on the cheap, make yourself, or refurbish.

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In our last Toolbox, we looked at "maker sartorial," specifically, the clothing that makers wear that is optimized for the "work" they do (be it vocational or avocational). We got input from a bunch of people (mostly men), and it turns out, there's something of a maker's uniform, at least among these respondents: a collared, button-up shirt, with at least one pocket, a pair of cargo pants (or other extra-pocketed work pants), and a pair of combat (or other heavy-duty) boot. The main pattern to emerge was the insistence on lots of pockets and the durability of the clothing.

This week, we look at what some of these respondents said about what they carry in all those pockets (and over their shoulders, etc) as part of their most close-up and personal toolkit.

Particular About Pens

No surprisingly, makers are very specific about their writing tools. Here's what some of them had to say about their pens.

Andrew Q. Righter, of HacDC and TheQLabs: "I, like most of my friends, are very particular about my pens. Lately, I've been toting around the amazing Sharpie Pen. It is, by far, one of the best pens I've ever used, especially for the money. Oddly enough, I have a bad habit of taking a pen if I see one that I like, especially from public areas. So, the first time I saw the Sharpie Pen was as we were signing our bills for a Famous Dave's lunch run at work. The waiter obviously had a brand new pack, and at that point, I'd never seen one, so I swiped it and added $2-3 to the tip because I felt bad. Anyhoo, I've been using the pen ever since. It writes perfectly in a Moleskine, so they're essentially the perfect maker/hacker pair."

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We've seen the ridiculous pressure that lobbyists and diplomats have been putting on Canada to put in place significantly more draconian copyright law, without any evidence that it's needed and even though it's opposed by the vast majority of Canadian citizens. However, now things are just getting bizarre. A totally separate issue involving Canadian and US trade is that Canada is (reasonably) upset by various "buy American" provisions that are being pushed by various local governments despite the fact that anyone with any economic knowledge at all recognizes that "Buy American" provisions do more harm to American interests. This is an important issue, and there are lots of ways to address it. But it's flat-out ridiculous to believe that the "answer" to the Buy American issue is for Canadians to capitulate to American interests in implementing much more draconian copyright law. And yet, that's exactly what an American lobbyist just told a Canadian Parliamentary gathering recently.

Scotty Greenwood, an American lobbyist with a history of serious conflicts of interest in her dual role as a lobbyist and as an executive director of the Canadian-American Business Council, spoke at the gathering and offered what she believed is a simple solution: Canadian politicians "could solve Buy America tomorrow," if they just agreed to capitulate on copyright, even though the two issues have absolutely nothing to do with one another. Luckily, Canadian copyright expert Howard Knopf was on hand to ask Greenwood how that could possibly make any sense at all. Apparently, the only answer he got was that Canada should implement the copyright law demanded by American lobbyists because it's "in Canada's best interest." Uh huh.

Of course, it's pure fantasy to claim that by implementing draconian copyright law in Canada that most people want, the "Buy American" issue will go away. In most cases, Buy American is not being pushed by the federal government, but by more local politicians who have a more populist position (i.e., protecting the jobs of local workers). They couldn't care any less about copyright in Canada. But, it does show just how low the copyright lobby has stooped to push more draconian copyright laws in Canada, when they're now trying to tie it to a totally different trade issue.

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British video game artist Wayne Peters has a downloadable fold up pattern (PDF) for his 28mm paper model of one of Lovecraft's master baddies from At the Mountains of Madness. [via Propnomicon]

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Pentax has launched a weather resistant 100mm F2.8 Macro lens. The lens, which is designed to work with both digital and film SLRs, features weather-resistant construction to match the company's environmentally-sealed K-7 mid-level DSLR. It also features an aluminium body in the style of the company's 'Limited' prime lenses and offers full-time manual focus override.

An ad campaign for pro-assisted suicide group DignityInDeath.com features a series of park bench plaques telling stories of now-deceased people whose lives, it suggests, may not have been worth prolonging. One plaque is dedicated "to the glory of Kathleen (Kay) Mandell, who at age 32 was stricken by Lou Gehrig's disease that caused her muscles to waste away, one by one, until her throat paralysed and she choked to death while fully conscious."

[via Ads of the World]

Glyn Moody writes "At a recent Open Hardware Camp in London, it became clear that one of the main obstacles to applying open source principles to hardware was licensing. For example, should competing big companies be allowed to use their economies of scale to make and sell cheaper products based on open hardware designs developed by small start-ups without payment? There's also the problem that hacking designs for physical objects like open source cars may have safety implications, which raises questions about liability. So what's the best way to address these issues?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries, because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years." Ray Bradbury, on the library he loves the most, which has just closed -- like many other libraries around the US.

"There's even a life-sized replica of a prostitute's kiosk!" exclaims the narrator in this Reuters video about a new exhibition of sexually explicit art from ancient Rome and Greece: Sex and the Citizens. (thanks, Cyrus)

In Wired Magazine, Noah Shachtman explores the air war in Afghanistan. "It starts with a squad of marines in Helmand province, locked in a 36-hour siege and waiting for 500 pounds of high-explosive relief to fall from the sky," Noah says. "Over the next week or so, I'll dive into details of the U.S. Air Force's largely-hidden role in the struggle for Central Asia. Today, I look at the phrase that's screwing up the air war."

Spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool:

Flickr user nike6 is constructing a modular computer around the Motorola 68000 processor using perfboards, a homebrew header-based interconnect bus, lots of copper wire, and considerable soldering skill. So far, he's got two of the five boards constructed. He is documenting his work in the 68K computer photoset. Excellent work so far!

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Could Rick Warren stop Uganda's anti-gay legislation? Ethan Zuckerman thinks so.

See that mosaiced reddish grayish pinkish thing between the two large magnets? That is Dirk's fingernail and part of his fingertip.

The other photos at the link are not appropriate for the squeamish.

It took 1 1/2 hours of surgery to remove the shattered bones and repair the damage. Medically speaking, he crushed his right index finger distal phalange. The magnets had a 50 cm (20 inch) separation when they decided to fly together.

Dirk's Accident

CWmike writes "AT&T has moved closer to charging special usage fees to heavy data users, including those with iPhones and other smartphones. Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, came close on Wednesday to warning about some kind of use-based pricing while speaking at a UBS conference. 'The first thing we need to do is educate customers about what represents a megabyte of data and...we're improving systems to give them real-time information about their data usage,' he said.'"Longer term, there's got to be some sort of pricing scheme that addresses the [heavy] users.' AT&T has found that only 3% of its smartphone users — primarily iPhone owners — are responsible for 40% of total data usage, largely for video and audio, de la Vega said. Educating that group about how much they are using could change that, as AT&T has found by informing wired Internet customers of such patterns. De la Vega's comments on data use were previewed in a keynote he gave in October at the CTIA, but he went beyond those comments on Wednesday: 'We are going to make sure incentives are in place to reduce or modify [data]uses so they don't crowd out others in the same cell sites.' Focus groups have been formed at AT&T to figure out how to proceed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At Monday's excellent SF Music Tech Summit, there was a really good discussion in the final panel of the day, that crystallized in my mind why it's hogwash when some repeat the refrain that "artists should just be artists" and not worry about business models, connecting with fans or social networking. It's a claim that is made over and over again -- sometimes by musicians themselves. In the past, we've pointed out that this is fine, if artists just want to be artists then they need to do one of two things: either not expect to make much money or partner with someone who can focus on the business model and social networking side of things. Dave Allen, who was on that panel, used his manifesto on why artists needed to stop whining and start taking charge as a kicking off point, and brought up his concept of why all bands needed "a fifth Beatle" to manage that side of their efforts. In many ways, it reminded me of Andrew Dubber's recent manifesto that pointed out that if you wanted to make money as a musician, you had to become a musical entrepreneur.

But, two other comments on the panel made the point even more clear. First was Sebastien Keefe, from the band Family of the Year, who talked about how the band (more his bandmates than himself, actually) did a really good job connecting with fans online, including a special private concert that only Twitter followers found out about, and a cool postcard promotion, where people would pay $5 for a postcard, and the band would send it back to the fans from their tour. When the question came up of artists claiming that they didn't want to spend the time on social networks to connect with fans, he noted first that it wasn't that much time, and second that an artist unwilling to do that was "selling themselves short," in not really building up their audience.

Though, what's really cementing the myth of "artists should just be artists" was Tim Quirk's comment. Quirk, of course, got a lot of publicity recently for revealing how major record label royalty statements are often total works of fiction, using his own royalty statements as an example. On this topic, however, he noted that the people who tell artists that "you should just focus on being an artist" were almost always "feeding them bullshit" in order to gain more control over the artist. That is, it's a line you often hear from record labels or managers who want more control over a musician's business. So all three of those musicians (Allen, Quirk and Keefe) highlighted how the claim that "musicians should just be musicians" isn't just a myth, but it's often used to limit the potential of musicians.

Right after that panel, there was a short (and very sparsely attended) talk given by Stephan Jenkins, of the band Third Eye Blind -- and without realizing it, he put the exclamation point on this particular discussion from the previous panel. While he said he was grateful for his major label experience, he also talked about how being on a major label actually made it harder for the band to really focus on their music and artistic ideals -- because the label started dictating everything that the band should be doing. From that, he felt like the band really got away from the sort of music that it wanted to create, that had helped make the band big in the first place. He talked about how piracy has given the band "a second chance" by letting a new generation of fans discover their original music, and that has resulted in the band's most recent album, which he felt was much more true to the band's musical roots. He noted also that, now that they were out of the major label system, they were making a lot more money, even if they were selling fewer units.

All in all, it really helped solidify the idea that the claim that "artists just need to be artists" and shouldn't be concerned about business models or talking to fans is really just a line used by record labels to try to gain more control over artists, at their own expense. That doesn't mean that artists shouldn't try to find that "5th Beatle," to help them when it becomes necessary, but that they should make sure that whoever that 5th Beatle is, he or she is really aligned with their thinking in where they want to go with their career.

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Flex Your Rights is taking orders for its DVD, 10 Rules for Dealing with the Police. Price is $15. Here's the trailer.

Through extensive collaboration with victims of police abuse, legal experts and law enforcement professionals, we’ve developed a powerful multi-language (English, Spanish & Arabic) resource that provides proven survival strategies for dealing with racial profiling and police abuse.

Topics Include...

• Dealing with a traffic stop
• Dealing with police on the street
• Dealing with police at your door
• How to maintain your cool and protect your rights
• How to avoid common police tricks
• How to file a complaint that gets results

(Flex Your Rights materials are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.)

DVD: 10 Rules for Dealing with the Police

iphonedummy.net sells just one thing: iPhone dummies for $19.95 (free shipping). Here's a video of some guys who superglued an iPhone dummy to the sidewalk in front of the new Wired retail store in NYC.

iPhone dummies for sale

From Ross Sutherland's Eco-esque review of Atari's 1985 arcade game, Gauntlet:

Wizard, as an ironist, you alone receive some sense of subjective freedom. Your outré dress sense deprives your surroundings of a finite degree of cognitive reality. In this manner, the dungeon can never truly hold you.

I love it when people read between the lines of old video games, imagining a backstory and motivation for the likes of Pong or Asteroids. But those early titles are so abstract that a certain kind of humor seems intrinsic to the project. So it's delightful to see someone with the same fetish I have: extrapolating literary pretensions from later games that offer more to work with, but whose hardware nonetheless imposed a ruthless minimalism onto the design.

Of those, Atari's Gauntlet always seemed most pregnant with possibility. The doomed, infinite quest is filled with pathos--if the protagonists are not dead, they are certainly already in hell. Most references, however, lean toward pop culture citation. For example, check out Five Iron Frenzy's song, "Wizard Needs Food Badly," a phrase from the game whose variations have earned a place in broader culture. There is even a Cafepress site devoted to it.)

Here's my contribution to this very tiny genre: Such Bravery, a short story which places Gauntlet as a strange, myth-addled event from the Baltic crusades, itself hazily remembered by Thyra, the 'Valkyrie.' Twenty years on, our aging heroes are uneasily reunited at the old man's funeral, only to find he still has some tricks up his sleeve. Fans may get a kick out of the cute references to the game.

It's such a shame that after Gauntlet II, most of the sequels have been mediocre. An iffy-looking DS remake is apparently complete, but seems to be stuck in a dungeon.

Ch_Omega writes "A mysterious light display appearing over Norway last night (more pictures) has left thousands of residents in the north of the country baffled. Witnesses from Trøndelag to Finnmark compared the amazing display to anything from a Russian rocket to a meteor to a shock wave — although no one appears to have mentioned UFOs yet. The phenomenon began when what appeared to be a blue light seemed to soar up from behind a mountain. It stopped mid-air, then began to circulate. Within seconds a giant spiral had covered the entire sky. Then a green-blue beam of light shot out from its center — lasting for ten to twelve minutes before disappearing completely. The Norwegian Meteorological Institute was flooded with telephone calls after the light storm — which astronomers have said did not appear to have been connected to the aurora, or Northern Lights, so common in that area of the world." The Bad Astronomer makes the case that a malfunctioning rocket spewing fuel is a parsimonious explanation, backed up by witnesses to similar events and a cool simulation (on video). An anonymous reader suggests that this Proton-M Carrier Rocket might be responsible for the display.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New in the Maker Shed, our Make: Electronics toolkit! Do you want to learn to solder? Not sure what tools you need? We took the trouble out of searching for all the right tools for the job. This kit includes everything you need to get started in the wonderful world of kit making! We even included your first kit, the WeeBlinky, and a Maker's Notebook to help you document your next project. Take advantage of our FREE shipping offer too! See below for details.

Features

• (1) 30 Watt adjustable soldering iron
• (1) Deluxe Solder Stand & sponge
• (1) 1/4 lb Spool of rosin core solder .031" (60/40)
• (1) 5ft Solder wick
• (1) Digital Multimeter
• (1) Wire strippers
• (1) Deluxe Wire cutters
• (3) 25ft spools of solid core 22AWG wire
• (1) Deluxe Needlenose pliers
• (1) 5 piece miniature screwdrivers kit
• (1) Desolder pump
• (1) Panavise Jr for holding PCBs

Bonus!

• (1) WeeBlinky Kit - Requires soldering
  
• (1) Maker's Notebook

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)

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The referees are letting these hockey playing bears commit a lot of fouls. Not one was sent to the penalty box.

Dear Joel Tenenbaum: please find new legal representation. And do so quickly. Following Judge Gertner's trashing of Nesson, the Harvard law professor still doesn't seem to think he did anything wrong. Instead, he's blaming Judge Gertner. Seriously. In an interview with Computerworld, he said he's planning to ask for a retrial due to Gertner's errors in the case:

Nesson, however, brushed aside the judge's criticism and maintained that it was she who had gotten it wrong. "I was sorry she did not respond to our fair use defense. She had a considerable amount of trouble rejecting it," he said.

From the rest of the article, it sounds like he wants a do over. He says that he wants to have a new trial where he'll make a brand new argument: that Tenenbaum's use was fair use because when he did the file sharing, there was no legal way to purchase that music digitally. As far as I can tell, that's a misreading of what Gertner said might possibly work as a limited fair use claim, but there's no indication that this is actually true in Tenenbaum's case, and none of that addresses the basic procedural mistakes that Nesson made. It's a shame that Nesson still can't admit that he screwed this up entirely -- despite being told that by plenty of folks who are very sympathetic to his position. At some point, one hopes that Tenenbaum himself will realize this and drop Nesson and find someone who can actually represent his interests.

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Barence writes "Nvidia has announced that 3D Blu-ray movies will begin appearing in 2010. A spokesman confirmed that the Blu-ray Association — to which Nvidia is a contributor — had settled on the 'proper parameters [for] what constitutes a 3D Blu-ray' and claimed the first 3D Blu-ray films would hit the shelves 'towards the end of Summer 2010.' Nvidia will support the standard through its 3D Vision technology, using bit rates of around 60Mbits/second — twice that of a standard movie — although HDMI 1.3 'should have sufficient bandwidth' to ensure smooth playback. New files will be encoded using the MVC-AVC format, which is based on the AVC format currently used by Blu-ray movies.' Update: HotHardware has some additional details, including images of demo hardware.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

coondoggie writes "NASA is looking to reduce the deadly impact of helicopter crashes on their pilots and passengers with what the agency calls a high-tech honeycomb airbag known as a deployable energy absorber. So in order to test out its technology NASA dropped a small helicopter from a height of 35 feet to see whether its deployable energy absorber, made up of an expandable honeycomb cushion, could handle the stress. The test crash hit the ground at about 54MPH at a 33 degree angle, what NASA called a relatively severe helicopter crash."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Radar Nineteen on Babelgum did a really nice video about MakerBot Industries, suitable for even non-technical audiences.

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NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the Boston RIAA case in which the defendant, represented by Charles Nesson of Harvard Law School, admitted liability at his trial, the Court has entered judgment in favor of the RIAA for the monetary award of $625,000 fixed by the jury. However, the Court left open the questions of whether the amount is excessive, and whether attorneys fees and/or sanctions should be awarded, and has scheduled further briefing of those issues. The Court granted the RIAA much, but not all, of the injunctive relief it requested. In an unusual step, the Court issued a 38-page decision (PDF) explaining in some detail the Court's views of the Fair Use defense in the context of cases like this, and indicating that there are some factual scenarios — not applicable in this particular case — in which it might have concluded that the claims were barred by Fair Use. E.g. it declined to rule out the possibility that creation of mp3 files exclusively for space-shifting purposes from audio CDs a defendant had previously purchased might constitute fair use."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's time for our third UPS-sponsored whiteboard video, explaining some of the topics we discuss around here in two minutes or less. As you might remember, the first explained the economics of abundance and the second discussed the innovator's dilemma. This third one is about the difference between invention and innovation, and the process from getting from the first to the second, using one particular product as an example: Once again, these videos were sponsored by UPS, though we had free rein in creating the actual presentation, and it's quite obviously based on topics that we discuss here on a regular basis.

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Josette sez,

Maker Faire Newcastle 2010, the family focused creative craft and science show will return to the city as the headline event of Newcastle ScienceFest where the self-styled Makers will be showing off their weird and wonderful creations.

Maker Faire Newcastle 2010 will feature dancing robots and mechanical curiosities, making this a perfect weekend outing for all the family. Visitors will be able to take part in Power Tool Drag Racing (think belt-sanders meets F1) or take on Rubot II - the world's fastest Rubik's cube solving. There will be family workshops whih will explain how the mathematicians and engineers behind the Bloodhound SSC project plan to build a car capable of 1,000 miles per hour.

The emphasis is on learning about science and technology in a fun way. Visitors will be invited to sign up for workshops to learn how to creat their own projects. A hardware hacking area will teach people how to solder, younger visitors can make 3D glasses to watch a 3D dinosaur moveie, or even make bath bombs for Mother's Day. Visitors will also be treated to a sound and light installation of giant lightbulbs totalling 64,000 watts, highlighting the invention of the lightbulb by Joseph Wilson Swan in Newcastle.

Maker Faire Newcastle will take place at the Centre for Life, and Discovery Museum on March 13th-14th.

Maker Faire, Newcastle - March 13-14, 2010 (Thanks, Josette!)

ericatcw writes "Barnes & Noble, Sony and other e-book vendors may have the manufacturing muscle, but the brains directing the challenge against Amazon.com's Kindle eBook Reader is Adobe Systems. Like Microsoft, Adobe has built a formidable ecosystem of partners to whom it supplies software such as its encryption/DRM-creating Adobe Content Server. Adobe paints Amazon as being like Apple: secretive and playing badly with others. Amazon argues it just ain't so, and takes a jab, along with other critics, at Adobe's alleged open-ness."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Judit from Knowledge Ecology International sez,

The World Blind Union has been for years requesting a new international legal framework that will allow them to produce and share accessible formats of books and other written material.

The World Blind Union World Intellectual Property Organization treaty proposal, formally endorsed by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay is supported by nearly all developing countries and by disabilities and consumer organizations but the position that developed countries, like the European governments and United States, will take next week is still unclear.

The publishers are lobbying against the treaty but there are a lot of authors, writers and journalist that want their books and writing to be read by the millions of people who are blind and have other reading disabilities and that recognize the importance to support this treaty proposal.

We are therefore encouraging authors and writers that support the treaty proposal to sign this letter to WIPO and its Member States

Why is it urgent: Next week the treaty proposal is going to be discussed at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva. This is the website for the WIPO meeting.

I was proud and honored to be asked to sign onto this. KEI is looking for "writers, journalists and authors" -- anyone who produces commercial copyrighted written works to sign on. Please forward this onto writers' organizations, blogs, communities, as well as individual writers of your acquaintance.

Open Letter in Support of WIPO treaty for People who are Blind or have other Disabilities (Thanks, Judit!)

The animated little "doughboy" character in this new music video for "Viens Me Le Dire" by JP Nataf just stole my heart and covered it in glitter. More about the creative here.

The song is available as an MP3 here. (Thanks, Susannah Breslin)

As Mark Wilson of Gizmodo says, "There is so much odd and potentially wrong in regards to this vintage dishwasher ad, I don't even know where to begin."

A 10-Year-Old Can Do It Blindfolded!

Did the transition to digital TV make you nostalgic for the analog recording days of your? Then why not go full-out and create an entirely analog camera using a mess of wires, individual sensors, and light bulbs arranged to make a screen. This is exactly what Gebhard Sengmüller has done with his installation A parallel image. With 2500 photocells forming the sensor, and 2500 light bulbs making the display, it is truly a thing to behold. [via hackaday]

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The first two minutes of this double pendulum video are exciting. But only die-hard double pendulum video fans will want to stick around to watch the remaining seven and a half minutes.

Guestblogger Paul Spinrad is a freelance writer/editor, and is Projects Editor for MAKE magazine. He is the author of The VJ Book and The Re/Search Guide to Bodily Fluids, and was an early contributor to bOING bOING when it was an online zine. He lives in San Francisco. 

I have a living cousin who was an early conceptual and performance artist, and I think his work is wonderful. His given name is Paul Cotton, but now he goes by Adam, or "Adam (The Late Paul Cotton)."

Cotton studied sculpture at UC Berkeley in the 1960's, and for his final thesis project he submitted his own naked body in a 5-piece unpainted canvas business suit, framed (in a sense) by numerous paper pathways a chain of letters leading into the exhibit room from the halls and walkways outside.

Since then, his work has always been about the body and presence, and also laden with puns, mythology and religion, and plays between high and low culture. His communiques are called "Art Link-Letters" for the way they link the reader to art, and link art of the body to the world of letters. His "Zippily Boo-Duh" costume persona has wings on his feet to invoke Hermes, who bridges different worlds: stasis and revolution, the dead past and the eternal present, the Alphabet and the Goddess.

Like many others during the Sixties, Cotton was inspired by Norman O. Brown, whose books called for breaking free of the past and ending repression. But while others merely discussed Brown, my cousin enacted two performances wherein he entered Brown's classroom lectures at UC Santa Cruz. In the traditional sense, he did this uninvited, but in another sense, he was invited by everything that Brown stood for in his writing. You can see Adam's video documentation of his second attempt, "The Second Norman Invasion," here: Part 1, 9:18 (includes long title sequence) / Part 2, 8:51.

My cousin has given much creative thought to his relationship to Norman O. Brown. Indeed, a letter that he wrote to Brown back in 1969 was exhibited earlier this year at the Berkeley Art Museum, in a show drawn from their permanent collection called Galaxy: A Hundred Or So Stars Visible to the Naked Eye" (With a subtitle like that, I would have titled it "Small Star Cluster," but that's just me.)

My cousin sees his work (and therefore himself), as the embodiment of Brown's ideas, and his "Norman Invasion" performances apply multiple metaphors to the relationship between the two, including bride and groom, and Jesus Christ and John the Baptist. But Brown himself, faced with this costumed classroom invader, didn't know my cousin from Adam. Brown did not seem to recognize my cousin as a cosmic bride, an epic fulfillment of Brown's ideas, or even a sweet and thoughtful artist presenting (present-ing) him with the ultimate gift, himself, and thereby inviting him to experience the liberation that he advocated throughout his writing. Instead, Brown just ran out of the classroom.

And so Brown became not N.O. but NO! Brown-- the archetypal father figure rejecting his son, telling him that his time has not yet come. Years later, my cousin attended an appearance by Brown at Cody's Books in Berkeley, and Brown said, "I cannot personally live my vision."

I don't think it's good for people to interrupt classrooms and I certainly understand Brown's reaction. But I also think this is all such a fascinating body of work on many levels, loaded with great attention to detail. It makes me sad that Brown didn't embrace my cousin's offering and know how disappointed my cousin must have felt-- but in terms of good theater, I think it couldn't be any other way. As performance art, it goes deeper and is more daring, more emotionally risky, than any other piece I'm aware of (not that I'm too up on the scene). The whole Norman O. Brown thing is something that my cousin still cares deeply about, decades later, and it strikes me as so human-- sad, beautiful, funny, tragic, hopeful, etc. He isn't just being clever with it, and he doesn't want to move on from it all just for the sake of following what's happening with the art world or retaining public attention. He still wants to talk about these art actions, and rightly so. I don't think the message underneath them is any less relevant now than it was back in the hippie days.

Unrelated to Norman O. Brown, but also interesting, here is a 1971 radio interview with Cotton about his experience being physically beaten at the Esalen Institute for having removed his clothing on the premises.

Also, my cousin's sculpture "Random House Converter/Trance-Former," which consists of a series of frames that invite the viewer to step through, was exhibited last year in Paul McCarthy's "Low Life Slow Life" show at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco. The piece one of his pieces is also slated for inclusion in a Spring 2011 show called "State of Mind," covering California conceptual and performance art from the 60's and 70's, co-organized by the UC Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive and the Orange County Museum of Art. I mention these two things with a sense of advocating for my cousin's continued relevance!

An anonymous Boing Boing reader writes,

Bollywood (I know it is one of your many interests) has a new movie out called 'Paa' - literally means 'father. Starring the First Family (father/son duo) of Bollywood - Amitabh Bachan and Abhishek Bachan. Roles are reversed in this movie. Abhishek (the son in real life) is cast as the father of Auro (played by Amitabh) who is suffering from Progeria. Like Tsimfuckis.

Paa, the film.

We've already been covering Redbox's legal fight with a few movie studios who so hate the idea that Redbox is actually giving people something they want (legally) at a reasonable price (legally), that they want to kill it. The whole thing is so ridiculous that it's difficult to believe there's anyone out there defending the anti-Redbox studios' position (and, in fact, a couple of the other studios, with Paramount in the lead, have realized that it's smarter to partner with Redbox than to try to kill it). Yet, the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation (a non-profit with LA government connections) has put out a report claiming that Redbox kills jobs and harms the economy throughout Los Angeles (thanks to reader Valkor for sending this in). If you want, you can read the full report (pdf) -- but prepare to be amazed as what the report actually says is quite different than the press release headline.

Hidden within the report are claims that the industry will continue to grow nicely for the next decade and that alternative business models will develop that more than compensate for any loss of revenue from reduced rental prices. But that's not what the headline of the press release says. No, it reads:

Study says low-cost DVD rentals could lead to $1 billion, 9,280 jobs lost

But, deep in the actual report? Why, it says the following:

The shift to digital delivery will provide new revenue streams for the industry and new opportunities... Increased availability of all types of digital content and media have changed lifestyles and will continue to contribute to demand for video products. Indeed, SNL Kagan forecasts continuing growth in overall industry revenues as alternative streams compensate for this loss of revenue. In total, SNL Kagan projects an increase in distributor revenues from all sources worldwide from $51.3 billion in 2008 to $67.6 billion in 2017. While the composition of these revenues will clearly change, distributors will continue to experience revenue growth into the next decade.

So how does it get from that to the headline? Well, it assumes that Redbox is decreasing revenue from traditional rental, and seems to assume that these other alternative revenue streams are not influenced by Redbox or other forms of distribution that are more convenient and cheaper and attract a new or different audience -- which seems like a dubious assumption. Another way of looking at this: it's as if the horse and buggy industry put out a report just as automobiles were coming to market that said, yes, the auto industry will be huge and will create millions of new jobs, but because a much smaller number of jobs are lost due to downsizing the carriage market, we can release a report saying that the auto industry is "killing jobs." Logically, that's ridiculous.

On top of that, it makes some odd assumptions throughout the report, continually throwing out the idea that Redbox itself might increase the revenue for the industry, repeatedly suggesting that the industry is mature and if there were a way to get more revenue out of it, it would have already been discovered. Of course, considering that the market has long been dominated by a single player, not prone to innovating, and with close ties to studios that have limited some of how it could act -- that assumption is highly suspect. In fact, the very reason that Redbox has been so popular (and which also explains the rise of Netflix) has been consumer dissatisfaction with the old Blockbuster model, which was designed to squeeze consumers.

To the authors' credit, they do try to be fair on other numbers and assumptions, recognizing that effects go in multiple directions and that there are other issues at play, but the press release headline claiming that Redbox costs the industry a billion dollars and nearly 10,000 jobs, when the actual report claims that revenue is increasing and will continue to do so, just seems hard to swallow. Unfortunately, every single press report covering this study seems to only take the PR headline from the report and repeat it, without anyone appearing to have read the part of the report that says the exact opposite of what the headline claims.

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Two animated GIFs showing how the lips, jaw, and tongue form speech. I didn't know people's tongues were so huge.

X-ray videos of people talking

This book was listed in the Awful Library Books blog. I like the blog, but I think most of the books they list are fabulous (at least the covers are). They should change the name, I think.

What's Wrong With My Snake?

Yuki 7 is an international spy character, created by illustrator Kevin Dart. Here's an illo starring Yuki 7 that he drew for LA Weekly. His blog post includes preliminary sketches.

Yuki 7 illustration for LA Weekly

eldavojohn writes "Metrics can get really strange — especially on the scale of national consumption. Information consumption is one such area that has a lot of strange metrics to offer. A new report from the University of California, San Diego entitled 'How Much Information?' reveals that in 2008 your average American consumed 34 gigabytes per day. These values are entirely estimates of the flows of data delivered to consumers as bytes, words and hours of consumer information. From the executive summary: 'In 2008, Americans consumed information for about 1.3 trillion hours, an average of almost 12 hours per day. Consumption totaled 3.6 zettabytes and 10,845 trillion words, corresponding to 100,500 words and 34 gigabytes for an average person on an average day. A zettabyte is 10 to the 21st power bytes, a million million gigabytes. These estimates are from an analysis of more than 20 different sources of information, from very old (newspapers and books) to very new (portable computer games, satellite radio, and Internet video). Information at work is not included.' Has the flow and importance of information really become this prolific in our daily lives?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This great tutorial on building a wooden keyboard case is just the tip of the iceberg at Matthias Wendell's impressive "woodworking for engineers" site. [via Hack a Day]

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You always suspected school lunch food could kill. Now there's evidence to back up your worst childhood fears. (OK, not worst. There's still no evidence that an evil clown is hiding under your bed. Thank god.) Professor Doug Powell's Barf Blog quotes a USA Today story that draws attention to the shamefully lax food safety standards of our public school lunch system:

McDonald's, Burger King and Costco, for instance, are far more rigorous in checking for bacteria and dangerous pathogens. They test the ground beef they buy five to 10 times more often than the USDA tests beef made for schools during a typical production day. And the limits Jack in the Box and other big retailers set for certain bacteria in their burgers are up to 10 times more stringent than what the USDA sets for school beef...Mansour Samadpour, a Seattle-based food safety consultant and microbiologist says the AMS approach to sampling "is not robust enough to find anything."

USA Today: Fast Food Standards for Meat Top Those for School Lunches

Image courtesy Flickr user chidorian, via CC

French politicians have been quite upset about Google's book scanning project for years. Way back in 2005, government officials announced that Google's book scanning project was a threat to French culture. Why? Because the fear was that Google would just scan English books, and ignore the French. So, the French government mobilized. Or, rather, spoke as if it was going to mobilize and tossed a pile of money at a bunch of organizations with no real mandate to do anything. As such, the project fell apart.

Of course, the French politicians are still upset about the "threat" of Google and its book scanning, but whereas the original complaint was that French books would get ignored, it seems like the current complaint is that French books won't be ignored. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, one of the earliest supporters of kicking people off the internet under a "three strikes" regime -- despite a history of copyright infringement himself -- has spoken out about how France can't let Google take away French heritage:

"We won't let ourselves be stripped of our heritage to the benefit of a big company, no matter how friendly, big or American it is."

I have to admit that I'm really struggling here to understand how Google is "stripping" anyone's "heritage" in making such works more easily accessible by everyone. In the meantime, as we noted a few months back, it appears that the French National Library agrees with us more than the government, since it signed up to have Google scan its books.

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The company behind these unusual and innovative "sport holsters" is named Urban Tool.

Hynee writes "Just in time for Christmas, HubbleSite has released a Hubble Ultra Deep Field redux. The original was in visible light; this version, five years on, is in infrared (1.05, 1.25 and 1.6 um). The observation is in support of the upcoming JWST, which will observe exclusively in infrared, but the newly installed WFC3 does seem to provide some extra resolution over the 2004 visible observations with WFC2.."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chris Rojas cooked up some dazzling interactive eye candy using IR-bot tracking + video projection -

I just finished installing some hardware for SparkFun's robot tracking system. It's sort of a mixed reality system combining home made robots and hacked together control systems, IR tracking and sweet high res projections from above. It uses a modded PS3 eye, an ultra-short throw projector mounted above the ceiling, Community Core Vision and Processing running MSAFluid. The robots can consist of pretty much anything, all that the robots need to be tracked is a simple IR LED pointing upward towards the modded PS3 webcam which now only sees infrared. In this case Tim has attached a small throwy style cell battery, resistor, switch and IR LED together and literally just taped it to his robot.

Read more over at Project Allusion. [via Sparkfun]

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A prominent US lobbyist told Canadian Parliament that the US government would let Canadian companies bid on lucrative infrastructure contracts if Canada changes its copyright laws to meet the demands of big Hollywood studios and record labels.

In extreme cases, Canadian-made pipes were ripped out of the ground this year in California simply because of so-called Buy American polices that are now common among governments at the state and municipal level. Some say the incidents are likely under-reported as Canadian firms fear further headaches in the United States if they complain too loudly.

But Canada could solve the impasse immediately by addressing concerns that Canada is a haven for illegal piracy of copyrighted music, movies and other digital media, a Parliament Hill audience was told yesterday.

"You could solve Buy America tomorrow," said Scotty Greenwood, who is the executive-director of the Washington-based Canadian American Business Council. Ms. Greenwood was speaking not on behalf of the council, but as one of several trade experts invited to speak at a day-long panel on Parliament Hill organized by Liberal MP Scott Brison.

Could copyright reform win Buy American battle? (via Michael Geist)

A crack squad of London cops -- three cars and a riot van -- converged on a famous architectural photographer who was taking a picture of Christopher Wren's 300 year old Christ Church spire. Grant Smith, the photographer, refused to tell a Bank of America security guard what he was doing (he wasn't on B of A property) and so the guard called in the police. When the police arrived, Smith was searched and questioned under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act.

Last week, the Association of Chief Police Officers issued a stern warning to British police officers to stop using Section 44 to harass photographers, saying, "Photographers should be left alone to get on with what they are doing. If an officer is suspicious of them for some reason they can just go up to them and have a chat with them - use old-fashioned policing skills to be frank - rather than using these powers, which we don't want to over-use at all."

Apparently, the message hasn't been received.

City of London police said its response to Smith had been proportionate. "When questioned by officers, the man declined to give an explanation and he was therefore informed that in light of the concerns of security staff and in the absence of an explanation, he would be searched under the Terrorism Act," said a spokesman. "After the man's bag was searched, he explained he was a freelance photographer taking photos of buildings. Once this explanation was received there was no further action."

Police stop church photographer under terrorism powers (Thanks, Yishay!)

(Image: Christ Church Greyfriars, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike photo from Morgaine's photostream)

Wherein there is one drawing for every page of Moby Dick. [Thanks, John!]

Gizmodo got a hands-on with the nearly-complete Joojoo tablet; it's surprisingly good, but the $500 price tag puts it up against real laptops.

Bring yourself and your family out to Eyebeam's Holiday Hackshop this weekend in Chelsea, NYC:

Eyebeam's annual, super-kitschy, fun-for-the-whole-family event is back! For one day and one day only, Eyebeam becomes an all-ages, multi-workshop electronic craft-making fair, with entertainment, decorations and plenty of holiday spirit. The workshops are artist-led, free (save for minimal material costs), and you'll leave with gifts that will far surpass lopsided clay mugs of years past ... All in all: A fun, thrifty, edutainment alternative to the trance- and occasionally rage-inducing department-store crawl.

The workshops all look insanely fun: Bright Bike, Sno Globe-O-Mania, Cardboard DJ, Laser Cut Ornaments, and Card Making! Get there early to reserve your spot. Some have a small materials fee.

Eyebeam Holiday Hackshop
Saturday, December 12 1-6pm
540 W 21st St. New York, NY

More:

Bright bike is super reflective

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by Paul Overton

Since I started my blog a year ago, I have been amazed at how many guys have emailed me to say that they've enjoyed doing crafts for years but thought they were alone in the world. Me? I've been doing crafts since I was a kid. Both my parents are artists and my mom worked in the craft industry, so I always had a brush or a hook or a needle and thread in my hand. My craft-type interests are all over the map, and because of that, so is this guide. It's mostly centered on things I own, know, love, and use for the majority of the crafting work that I do, and since crafting is such a wide category, prepare yourself to travel a considerable distance in the next few paragraphs. Also, while there are some relatively inexpensive items on the list, I'll ask you to bear in mind that "cheap tools aren't good and good tools aren't cheap." The same holds true for tattoos, by the way. Let's get started...

---

Janome TB12 ($199.00)

If you have someone interested in sewing in your house, and you're on the verge of your first machine purchase, I would definitely consider the Janome TB12 Threadbanger (named for those adorable kids over at threadbanger.com). This is a no-frills, 12-stitch machine that is a real workhorse. While it won't do leatherwork, or industrial-type sewing, it'll do most anything else. The motor is super-quiet, the light is good, and there's not a lot of reading the manual that needs to happen before you start laying down some stitches.

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Tragically, over the years, we've been on the receiving end of an unfair share of totally bogus legal threats from angry individuals and companies. In fact, just last week we got two such threats. We've almost never posted any details about the threats, as I prefer to give the threatener (usually someone enraged by something said in the comments, rather than by us directly) the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they wrote the threat in a moment of emotional anger. I hope that when they realize that there is no legal basis for the threat, they'll back down. So far, no one has gone further than sending a threat. Some ignore our responses, some agree that they have no real intention of suing. But it still amazes me how quickly and how frequently people break out the "we'll sue you!" with no legal basis whatsoever. Luckily, in our case, we're pretty sure when we're in the clear, and (this is important) we have relationships with smart lawyers who do an excellent job representing us when we receive such threats. Not everyone is so lucky, and no matter how "safe" you are, being on the receiving end of a legal threat is never fun, especially if you are a small business or just an individual.

davebarnes alerts us to a story of just such a situation involving an anonymous blogger in Oregon, who had heard about some "embarrassing" videos involving some local TV anchors. In looking for the videos, the blogger discovered the YouTube account in question had been closed, and sent out a Twitter message asking if anyone had seen the videos before the account was closed. In response, the blogger received a legal threat from the news director of the TV station demanding the removal of the Twitter message (which simply asked if anyone had seen the video and linked to a shuttered YouTube account).

There was absolutely no legal basis for the threat, but the blogger admitted:

Her legal threat told me she was unpredictable, and she was the only one in the conversation with the resources to go to court. It didn't matter that I had done nothing wrong; I would have no way to deal with a lawsuit, frivolous or not, while still finding time to operate my website and work at my paying job.

So, even though the blogger knew the threat was frivolous, he was still in the position of worrying about whether or not it would still be brought to court. That's a huge problem. Even worse is that the news director of the TV station broke out the ridiculous threat in the first place -- especially stunning that a professional reporter would make such a threat. In followup emails, the news director tried to suggest that the lawsuit would have been against the original poster of the video, but that's not what the original letter said:

The "kointastic behind the scenes video" lifted by one of your followers from YouTube, was stolen. That is the property of KOIN Local 6. Kindly remove that posting and link so that we don't have to pursue legal action.

That certainly implies that the "legal action" would be against the blogger for posting the Twitter message. We live in a litigious age, obviously. But pulling out the big guns of threatening legal action on no legitimate basis is becoming way too common. Unfortunately, the reason why it's so common is that it's quite scary to receive a legal threat (even one with no basis), and many peole quickly cave and give in. Hopefully, as more people are educated concerning their own rights, they'll push back -- but I don't see that happening any time soon.

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If my Twitter stream and Xbox Live friends list is any indication of wider gaming trends, most everyone seems to be riding out the temporary lull in big name holiday releases before next week's launch of Spirit Tracks (the DS return of The Legend of Zelda) by occupying themselves with Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed II, or, in my own case, digging even further into Ubi's back catalog via the war-torn savanna of Far Cry 2. But there's one game in particular out this week that's slipped under far, far too many radars and deserves your undivided attention.

Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes [Capy, DS]

There's obviously something magical being sprinkled in Toronto's water, as local indie Capybara Games has found themselves rapidly moving from hit to hit. Just over a month after the release of their previously featured and gorgeously remade PS3 puzzler Critter Crunch, the studio quietly teases Heartbeat, a sparse but stylish IGF-entered upcoming rhythm game for the Wii, and a collaboration with rustic-pixel illustrator Superbrothers and musician Jim Guthrie (half of would-be indie darling Human Highway, and probably best recognized as the man behind the nation's now infamous 'Hands in my Pocket' CapitalOne commercial) on Sword & Sworcery, a cryptic but already stunning iPhone audiovisual 'EP'.

And then this happened: the studio unleashes Clash of Heroes (top), a side-story spinoff of the Might & Magic RPG series that takes the very basic match-3 mindset of Critter Crunch and turns it into one of most satisfying and addictive strategy-puzzlers on the DS.

Like Puzzle Quest -- Infinite Interactive's similarly dangerously time-devouring puzzler -- before it, Clash overlays its fantasy RPG tale with battles that play out via color-matching vertical lines of troops to create, fuse and link attacks launched against your enemies, and doing the same horizontally to put together defensive lines to guard against theirs.

Its ruleset is so intricately devised and delicately balanced that it'd take an article in itself to explain them fully, but for all its richness and complexity, it's a system that takes only minutes of practice to mentally snap together, and all your remaining hours of the day to happily master. If you have any proclivity toward brainy puzzling, do not hesitate to pick this up: it's got all the trappings of being one of the handheld's underdog classics.

Continuity [Ragtime Games, web]

Elsewhere, the week's free web game gathering the most attention comes from Ragtime Games -- a Swedish team of students from Chalmers University of Technology and Gothenburg University -- with Continuity, their entry into the Student section of the Indie Games Fest.

The screenshot above tells you everything you need to know about the game, though maybe not at first glance. In essence, it's a lo-fi platformer that only asks that you pick up a single key to unlock each level's exit door, but split and laid out across a deck of cards that have to be shuffled like a classic slide-puzzle to match the entrance and exit out of each section. As smart as it is simple, it's a winning concept begging to be fleshed out further for a commercial release.

Hook Champ [Rocketcat, iPhone]

And finally, you might recognize Hook Champ from its initial recommendation over a month ago, but this week saw the release of a key update to the game that makes it worth noting all over again: a feature that lets you challenge your friends with your best cavern-crawling and -looting runs by racing against their ghost (a mechanic you might recall from games like Mario Kart).

The update also adds a number of new challenge levels, items, achievements and a new unlockable player character and comes at a new discounted price to celebrate the update launch -- don't miss this one now if you skipped past it the last time.

Just posted! Our in-depth review of Sony's mid-range SLR, the Alpha DSLR-A550. The A550 is part of a new range that sits between the A200/A300 and the high end A700, and offers an interesting combination of features (including in-camera automatic HDR, 7 fps continuous shooting and Sony's excellent live view system) whilst retaining the Alpha line's emphasis on friendly ease of use. Find out how we got on with the Alpha 550 after the link...

toruonu writes "Yesterday evening the Large Hadron Collider at CERN for the first time accelerated protons in both directions of the ring to 1.18 TeV. Even though the 1 TeV barrier per beam was first broken a week ago, this marks the first time that the beam was in the machine in both directions at the same time allowing possibly for collisions at a center of mass energy of 2.36 TeV. Although the test lasted mere minutes, it was enough to have detectors record the very first events at 2.36 TeV. LHC passes Tevatron (the particle collider at Fermilab that operates at 1.96 TeV) and becomes the highest energy particle collider in the world (so far it was effectively just the highest energy storage ring...)"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's a reason why new kits from 4ms, Eric Archer, and Wooster Audio all bear the 'Andromeda Space Rocker'moniker - they're all compatible. The aptly named "IR Sync" network allows each device can generate an send out it's own clock tempo, or follow another's lead via an onboard infrared sensor. A fleet of Andromeda hardware was assembled for networked jamming experiment, a recent party, Mr. Archer explains -

Dann Green and I created an interactive music installation for the Smirnoff "Be There" party in Austin. Each station has an Autonomous Bassline synth (4mspedals.com) and three Andromeda MK analog drum machines (ericarcher.net). All together it forms a 12-track analog drum machine and four 8-bit synths, with almost every parameter controlled by light sensors and dozens of people clicking every button, turning every knob, and flipping all the switches they could find! Meanwhile Dann and I took turns trying to balance the constantly changing mix, and doing our best to explain how to use it (over and over and over). Good fun.

Very cool to see kit designers developing a common standard for inter-kit communication - in addition to upping the fun factor for customers, it promotes each other's products. Should be interesting to see how this idea grows/develops over time.

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After last year's Spore DRM fiasco, EA and its CEO John Riccitiello seem to have learned that the stick approach to dealing with pirates backfired badly, and it was time to try out the carrot. It started, earlier this year with Riccitiello talking about how they were trying to view pirated software as a really good demo product, with the impetus then being on them to convert those users into paying customers. Later, they started actively embracing the claim that their pirated software could lead to additional sales of in-game content and offerings. The latest, as sent in by william, again has Riccitiello in an interview saying that he now sees "pirates" as a new marketplace, again with the emphasis being on how it's EA's responsibility to give those users something to buy. He still says that he wants people to buy the legit versions of the game, and he thinks it's very wrong to make an unauthorized copy, but he says that reality dictates that they should embrace those users, rather than attack them, and look for ways to make money off of them:

"There's a sizable pirate market and a sizable second sale market and we want to try to generate revenue in that marketplace."

Furthermore, he notes that this approach seems a lot more reasonable than the music industry's approach of just trying to punish people:

He said the music industry erred in "demonizing" its consumers rather than reacting to them. He believes that EA has an obligation to make it enticing for people to play games legitimately. And he hopes that services such as EA Sports' community hub or the BioWare social site that hooks into Dragon Age will make it so alluring that it will be "increasingly less likely that people will pirate because there is so much value on the other side of the door."

None of this necessarily addresses some of EA's past sins relating to aggressive use of DRM, but it does suggest that Riccitiello (or at least his savvy PR staff) have recognized that giving people a reason to buy is a better way forward than trying to attack those who use unauthorized copies of the games.

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twailgum writes "Twenty-two stories underground in Iron Mountain's Western Pennsylvania facility, "you'll find Room 48, an experiment in data center energy efficiency. Open for just six months, the room is used by Iron Mountain to discover the best way to use geothermal conditions and engineering designs to establish the perfect environment for electronic documents. Room 48 is also being used to devise a geothermal-based environment that can be tapped to create efficient, low-cost data centers.""

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Julian Dibbell sez, "I am following in the footsteps of Clive Thompson and Stevens Levy and Johnson as guest editor of the next volume of 'The Best of Technology Writing,' the annual collection published by Yale University Press. So it is now officially my job to be desperately on the prowl for the most excellent pieces of tech journalism published in 2009, and by published, I mean whatever the hell it is we mean by published just now. Online essays? Blog posts? World of Warcraft forum rants? I'll take 'em. I should tell you, I guess, that the selection is officially limited to pieces of 5000 words or less, and that I am especially eager for nominations in the traditionally underrepresented non-digital categories (green tech! bio tech! astro tech!), but who am I kidding? Right now I am just plain slutty for great tech writing of whatever type or provenance. Did you write it? I want it. Did your BFF/spouse/probation officer write it? I want it. Did I write it? Awkward, but OK, let's talk."

This is a fantastic series, BTW. Buy the whole set and keep 'em by the toilet for a series of short and thought-provoking reads.

The Best of Technology Writing Nominations (Thanks, Julian!)

Man, this is awesome: This clock is actually an LED screen looping a video of the designer manually redrawing the minute hand every minute, in real time, for an hour. I guess the hour hand is probably moved digitally. Would be kinda scary if he actually stood there and redrew the hands manually every minute for a full 12 hours. I don't know much about the designer; just that the video was filmed "at Design Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach 2009" and posted to YouTube by A3Network. Feel free to give a shout in the comments if you've got more info. [via Neatorama]

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DeviceGuru writes "OpenBoxeeBox.com is reporting that D-Link's new DM-380 Boxee Box, demonstrated last night in New York at Boxee's Boxee Beta unveiling, runs Linux but does not yet stream Netflix video-on-demand titles. However, according to an unnamed Boxee insider, "the goal is to have the device support Netflix." The DM-380 features ports for HDMI, optical digital and analog audio, dual USB, and wired Ethernet, plus it has an SD card slot and built in WiFi. Photos and screenshots are at OpenBoxeeBox, and additional details are on D-Link's website."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DxO Labs has updated its DxO Optics Pro raw converter to version 6.1 for Windows. New features include support for the Nikon D3000 and Canon Powershot G11 and EOS 7D, plus a full screen display mode. The software is available for immediate download from the company's website.

coondoggie notes that the Federal Trade Commission said it was going after three outfits that allegedly made robocalls to sell worthless credit-card interest-rate reduction programs for large up-front fees (as much as $1,495). And reader Cwix tips us that today Google filed a lawsuit against Pacific WebWorks and other unnamed defendants for allegedly using the company's name and logo to promote fraudulent work-at-home money-making schemes. "Kate Lister, author of Undress for Success — The Naked Truth about Making Money at Home, estimates that more than 95% of Google hits on the words 'work at home' are scams, link to scams, or other dead ends."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rose M. Welch alerts us to the news that game developer Rebellion has decided not to resubmit an edited version of its game Aliens vs. Predator after it was rejected by the Australian Classification Board for being too violent. The company stated that it agrees the game is not suitable for children:

"We agree strongly that our game is not suitable for game players who are not adults... it is bloody and frightening, that was our intent."

But Australia apparently doesn't have an option for such "mature" content, and Rebellion seems to recognize how ridiculous that is:

"We will not be releasing a sanitized or cut down version for territories where adults are not considered by their governments to be able to make their own entertainment choices."

Hopefully, things like this will make Australia reconsider its censorship of such content.

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There have been a few acoustic amplifiers designed for the iPhone. The iVictrola from maker Matt Richmond has to be the coolest so far. The functional sculpture's simplistic design consists of a carved block of wood and an old Victrola horn that embodies both modern and old-timey charm. [via iPhoneSavior]

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There have been a few acoustic amplifiers designed for the iPhone. The iVictrola from maker Matt Richmond has to be the coolest so far. The functional sculpture's simplistic design consists of a carved block of wood and an old Victrola horn that embodies both modern and old-timey charm. [via iPhoneSavior]

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John Riccitiello, the CEO of Electronic Arts, made some revealing comments in an interview with Kotaku about how the company's attitudes are shifting with regard to software piracy. Quoting: "Some of the people buying this DLC are not people who bought the game in a new shrink-wrapped box. That could be seen as a dark cloud, a mass of gamers who play a game without contributing a penny to EA. But around that cloud Riccitiello identified a silver lining: 'There's a sizable pirate market and a sizable second sale market and we want to try to generate revenue in that marketplace,' he said, pointing to DLC as a way to do it. The EA boss would prefer people bought their games, of course. 'I don't think anybody should pirate anything,' he said. 'I believe in the artistry of the people who build [the games industry.] I profoundly believe that. And when you steal from us, you steal from them. Having said that, there's a lot of people who do.' So encourage those pirates to pay for something, he figures. Riccitiello explained that EA's download services aren't perfect at distinguishing between used copies of games and pirated copies. As a result, he suggested, EA sells DLC to both communities of gamers. And that's how a pirate can turn into a paying customer."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last year, we wrote about a case brought by a woman named Julie Riggs against MySpace. The complaint itself is somewhat of an amusing read ("At this point Plaintiff was literally seething with anger to the point that she was now consumed by it"). The main issue was that Riggs had created a website that tried to determine which celebrity profiles on MySpace were real and which were fake. She was upset (among other things) because (1) there were fake profiles on MySpace (2) MySpace later did something similar itself and (3) MySpace deleted her profile. After we wrote about the case, we received an angry email from Ms. Riggs telling us we "missed the point" and that MySpace "stole" her idea -- and that we needed to get our story straight. She never explains how coming up with the same idea is illegal, of course. Also, my favorite: "What can you expect from site such as yours though." Indeed.

Unfortunately, it appears that the district court also "missed the point" and did not get the story straight, because as Eric Goldman points out, it has dismissed the lawsuit. However, in this case, it may actually be true that the court missed the point. As Goldman notes in his discussion of the ruling, the court seems a bit confused about how Section 230 of the CDA works, and may have dismissed parts of the case for rather confused reasons. Riggs has appealed, so hopefully the Appeals Court fixes the problems (but still dismisses it). However, again as Goldman notes, this is taking place in the notoriously nutty Ninth Circuit, which often has a problem with reading Section 230 the way everyone else reads Section 230. Hopefully, they get this one right.

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I made a series of reliquaries a while back that housed small LCD screens. They explore the idea of what a modern-day relic might be. The idea is that 'privacy' will be cherished in the future. Currently, the reliquaries scroll my Twitter feed and Flickr photos. The idea is to make you think about your own privacy in a wired and digital world. It's an ever-evolving piece, and what it displays will most likely change once I finish it.

The reliquaries are completely hand-made, from copper sheet. All the rivets, hinges, and locks were carefully crafted over several weeks. I really enjoy metalsmithing and hope to do a lot more in the future. Maybe I'll do some how-to's here on MAKE!

There has been a lot of excitement around the Chumby Guts Kit in the Maker Shed. I had a kit sitting around in my studio, and it was completely naked! That just wouldn't do, so I decided to use one of my reliquaries as the enclosure for it.

One of my favorite parts of this piece is the locking mechanism. I always try to add a little secret detail in my work for people to discover. In this case, it's a little cutout in the latch.

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hduff writes "While lithium-ion batteries offer better performance than lead-acid or ni-cad batteries, the supply of lithium is limited and the batteries can pose problems. Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute are building a better battery with easily obtainable sand and air."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just look at it.

Banana Bag

Just look at it.

Advanced Ripening Technologies

Yep, that's right, we have crickets Cricuts! No, not those chirpy little insects! These are CNC machines for crafters. The Maker Shed carries the original Cricut Machine, the portable Cricut Create, and the larger Cricut Expression. All of these machines allow you to cut paper, or other materials, without a computer. Check out the full line of Cricut machines in the Maker Shed.

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)

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ajs writes "World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion was staggered into 4 phases. The fourth and final phase, patch 3.3, was released on Tuesday. This patch is significant in that it will be the first introduction of one of the most anticipated new features in the game since PvP arenas: the cross-realm random dungeon, as well as the release of new end-game dungeons for 5, 10 and 25-player groups. The patch notes have been posted, and so has a trailer. The ultimate fight against the expansion's antagonist, the Lich King a.k.a. Arthas, will be gated as each of the four wings of the final dungeon are opened in turn — a process that may take several months. The next major patch after 3.3 (presumably 4.0) will be the release of Cataclysm, the next expansion."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Back in May, when a court shot down yet another of porn publisher Perfect 10's lawsuits against web search engines, we wondered if the publisher would finally realize that Google is not liable for what its image search engine finds. Yet, the company doesn't seem interested in giving up. It's claiming that Google abused the discovery process and failed to hand over important materials, including its "DMCA log." At issue is the fact that some people out there had used unauthorized images from Perfect 10 on their own websites, and Google's image search found them. Perfect 10 first tried to claim Google itself was guilty of copyright infringement for displaying those images, but eventually the courts realized that displaying a thumbnail of an image from another website in a search result is not, nor should it be, considered copyright infringement.

Of course, this particular statement is pretty amusing:

"Google appears to have the view that it is above the law," says Perfect 10 President, Dr. Norm Zada.

That's a funny comment for someone who's been losing pretty much every lawsuit. It seems that the courts have thought all along that Google was very much within the letter and spirit of the law.

In this case, Perfect 10 is now trying to stretch what the DMCA requires of a recipient of a DMCA notice, saying:

"Under the DMCA, a search engine such as Google may receive limited immunity from monetary damages for copyright infringement if it complies with the requirements of the DMCA," Zada says. "The search engine must act expeditiously to remove or disable access to infringing material upon receiving notice of infringement from the copyright owner, and it must adopt a procedure so that copyright holders will not have to provide the search engine with notices about the same infringing material or the same infringers over and over."

The first part is true. The latter part is not true. However, it's the latter part that Perfect 10 seems to be relying on, demanding its "DMCA log" which is apparently "a spreadsheet-type document summarizing DMCA notices received, the identity of the notifying party and the accused infringer, and the actions (if any) taken in response." Considering Google has a pretty long history of quickly responding to DMCA complaints, it's difficult to believe that it would somehow not adhere to the DMCA in this case. Once again, it seems likely that Perfect 10 is going to end up on the losing side of a court battle. If only it actually put this much effort into actually building a business.

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Conchobair was one of several users letting us know that Myspace has snapped up free music streaming site imeem. Visitors to the imeem site are being sent to a MySpace redirect page, which states that they are "working to migrate your imeem playlist to MySpace Music." Currently there is no way to access imeem music or playlists or to make use of imeem apps on Android or iPhone. The AP reports that the deal was done for less than $1M — not bad for 16M subscribers — noting that the music startup was running out of cash. PC Mag notes: "Last week it was announced that Apple had purchased Lala, and now MySpace snaps up imeem. Are Pandora and Rhapsody next?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The German government has allocated a secret budget to fund call-centers to help Windows users whose PCs are infected with malware. Microsoft's support costs are thus being borne at taxpayer expense.

I can understand why a government would want to create anti-malware programs. After all, malware's costs could easily exceed the cost of this program (think of the social cost of identity theft).

But the state could intervene in other ways. For example, it could establish penalties for software vendors whose users have their identities stolen, where those vendors don't offer this kind of service, forcing companies to internalize the cost of the security vulnerabilities they're responsible for.

Yes, it's not clean-cut (who's responsible for the recent SSL bug -- the OS vendors? The free software project?) and how it would apply to a free software project like GNU/Linux is unclear. But surely there's a more equitable solution than simply offloading the expense of cleaning up software vendors' messes on the taxpayer.

This approach raises a number of concerns. First, it leaves the software manufacturers out of the equation. Therefore, there will be little incentive to write secure code, as the cost of additional support will be passed (at least partly) to the government. Second, it also discourages the users from switching to more secure products. Both aspects can be interpreted as a direct subsidy for Microsoft. The timing of the initiative could also not be better: last week Microsoft's Internet Explorer, the attack vector number one, lost its leadership in Germany to rival Firefox. Additionally, the plan establishes questionable practices for IT security. Malware infections are seen as something inevitable, which is definitely not the case.

Microsoft to Get Malware Bailout in Germany (via /.)

(Image: Screenshot Test, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from yahnyinlondon's photostream)

An anonymous reader writes "So far, there are over 35 pages of people posting about why EA released Pandemic Studios' final game, Saboteur, to first the EU on December 4th and then, after knowing full well it did not work properly, to the Americas on December 8th. They have been promising to work on a patch that is apparently now in the QA stage of testing. It is not a small bug; rather, if you have an ATI video card and either Windows 7 or Windows Vista, the majority (90%) of users have the game crash after the title screen. Since the marketshare for ATI is nearly equal to that of Nvidia, and the ATI logo is adorning the front page of the Saboteur website, it seems like quite a large mistake to release the game in its current state."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earlier this year, the FTC started going after those annoying and misleading car warranty robocallers, and I've noticed that -- for the most part -- I've stopped receiving such calls. Instead, I've been getting lots of robocalls about credit card "interest rate reduction" programs. So, it's nice to see the FTC is cracking down on those as well (noting, in case you didn't know, that most of those offers are total scams). Now we'll see what sort of robocallers show up next. Still, it does feel like the FTC is starting to respond to these types of things much more quickly, which is a good thing.

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Johnny Mnemonic writes "My company has the opportunity to contribute to a children's museum in our area. We are a technology company, so I'd like the exhibit to be computer/networking related, and to raise the awareness and understanding of how the Internet, networking, and computers work. However, children's museums cater to a pretty young age group, 3-8 years old, so the the exhibit needs to be highly interactive, durable, tactile, and yet instructive of the concepts. Google fails to turn up any turn-key options, and, although the concepts are computer related, a computer-based exhibit tends to be too fragile and susceptible to withstand the rigors of 250 preschoolers/day. How would you design a display that meets these requirements and is still fun and educational?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The latest issue of R.U. Sirius' posthuman magazine, h+, is ready for downloading.

The Winter 2009 Issue of h+ Magazine features The Ray Kurzweil Interview, CAPRICA: Birth of the Cylons, DIY Transhumanism, The Chinese Singularity, and more.

I'm excited to read the article about self tracking. h+ Winter 2009

I saw this image on reddit, I really hope we're not at the point where more and more people are just going to buy new printers each time they run out of ink...

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Rachel Maddow tears "Coming Out Straight" author Richard Cohen a new one. Cohen's work is cited as inspirational by authorities in Uganda who propose killing gay people. "You have blood on your hands," she says. Can I get an amen? Related: Rick Warren, silent enabler.

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.

If you haven't noticed, we're starting an ongoing series of cases here to develop interesting, engaging and useful discussions for our new sub-site, IT Innovations. We're looking for insights that might help IT managers stay informed and keep their operations competitive.

For this case, we're looking for engaging content and experts to be featured who can help educate IT decision makers on the management of mission-critical applications in datacenters.

The topics for this case will focus on datacenter management services and solutions. We're looking for at least 300 words in the form of a blog post that can serve as a discussion starter, and we'd also like to encourage commenting on the submitted insights. Appropriate topics for these discussions include:

• How do you effectively communicate datacenter priorities to non-technical managers?
• What datacenter management services can you not live without? How do you justify the costs?
• How do you assess datacenter priorities? Do you think there's a better way?
• How often do you review your datacenter management tools and compare them to alternative solutions?

These topics are not exhaustive, and you do not need to address all of these suggested conversations. We welcome additional proposals for alternative subjects, and if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

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