garg0yle writes "One of the questions about the formation of our planet is: where did the atmosphere come from? One theory is that the oxygen, nitrogen, and other gases were part of the coalescing ball, and 'seeped out' during the final stages of the planet's formation. However, a new article at Wired says isotopic analysis of krypton and xenon indicates that they (and the rest of our atmosphere) may be of extraterrestrial origin, either arriving via comets or being swept up from gas clouds."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's been a lot of talk -- mostly negative -- about Facebook's new privacy settings that try to push users (in somewhat confusing ways) towards revealing a lot more info about themselves. There is a reasonable fear that this will have serious unintended consequences -- especially since Facebook was originally designed and used mainly for more private communications between people who knew each other. Opening that up -- especially if you don't quite realize all you're exposing -- could be problematic. Kashmir Hill discovered, however, that Facebook founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg is eating this new Facebook openness dog food by making most of his profile wide open. This is a massive change from before, when he was extremely private with his Facebook profile. While there was some question of whether or not Zuckerberg did this on purpose, he has clarified it with a statement on his Facebook profile noting:

For those wondering, I set most of my content to be open so people could see it. I set some of my content to be more private, but I didn't see a need to limit visibility of pics with my friends, family or my teddy bear :)

While I have mixed feelings (well, mostly apathy) towards the whole open/closed question for Facebook, at the very least it's a good thing that the company's CEO and the person most identified with the company does appear to be embracing where the company believes it needs to go. It certainly would raise a lot more questions if he had gone the other way. What may be most interesting -- though not being a "friend" of Zuckerberg, I'll never know -- is if anyone notices if he begins to change the way he uses the site because of this.

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Cigar Box Nation has an album of holiday music available as a free download.

Cigar Box Nation offers our own gift of music to you. This album is free for everyone this Christmas...just go ahead and download. We've compiled almost one hour of holiday music played on cigar box guitars, ukuleles, dulcimers and more. Please spread the word (and holiday cheer)! May the world ring with the awesome sounds of cigar box guitars this Christmas.

If you have trouble downloading the album, try this alternate download link. A huge thanks to CBNation member, Thomas Boatwright for the awesome cover artwork!

Cigar box guitar Christmas album

This entry represents the 100,000th story posted on Slashdot. Technically this is a bit late since we're missing the first few months of stories from the DB, but there are now 100k items in the story database and I thought that milestone was worthy of sharing with the universe. We've come a long way in the last 12 years, and while the site isn't always exactly what I want it to be, I'm very proud of the work done by our thousands of submitters and to the editors our readers have "affectionately" referred to as "The Slashdot Janitors" for so many years. Special grats to timothy who is just short of his 17,000th story and is far and away the most prolific person here. The hall of fame has a few other bits of trivia.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The youth from AS220's Broad Street Studio program have been making (and selling) some very cool things in the Providence Fab Lab at AS220 Labs:

Kafumba is a member of AS220's Broad Street Studio youth program, which offers arts and technology workshops to at-risk and under-served youth at AS220's building in downtown Providence and inside Rhode Island's juvenile prison.

This holiday season, Kafumba and about 30 other youth, are taking a product design class at AS220 Labs, taught by AS220 Labs staff and a designer from the Providence-based medical device product development firm Ximedica. The young people have been making and selling handcrafted merchandise in AS220's Fab Lab -- a suite of personal fabrication equipment and software created at MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms. They include a laser cutter, milling machine, and a vinyl cutter.

...

Kafumba, a freshman at Community College of Rhode Island, is picking up his ESL credits there and plans to transfer to a four-year art school next year. He is working in AS220's Fab Lab to improve his college portfolio.

This work is being done on a shoestring budget. The young people at AS220 Labs have accomplished all this in the Fab Lab with a $500 supply budget that is quickly dwindling.

Youth making handcrafted holiday merch in AS220 Labs

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Apparently, Apple is trying to patent anti-tamper tape. The patent application, for a "tamper resistant label for detecting device openings," describes some adhesive tape that could be placed inside devices, which would get torn or damaged if someone opened the device. It seems like there's a ton of prior art here. In fact, e-voting machines have used an anti-tamper tape for ages that seems quite like what's described in the claims. Second, it seems pretty ridiculous that Apple is going this far to try to remove the ability of legal purchasers to tinker with devices they own. Yes, I recognize the reasoning (opening the device voids the warranty and they want to know if the warranty has been voided). But, even so, it's quite an anti-consumer position to take.

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I wouldn't go so far as to say I "like" this incredibly involved theme bike featured at Super Street Bike (gratuitous T&A warning), but it definitely has a high OMG factor. [via Geekologie]

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ogaraf writes "Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that health-insurance industry group 'Get Health Reform Right' paid Facebook users with virtual currency to be used in Facebook games in exchange for lobbying their Congressional Rep. 'Instead of asking the gamers to try a product the way Netflix would, "Get Health Reform Right" requires gamers to take a survey, which, upon completion, automatically sends the following email to their Congressional Rep: "I am concerned a new government plan could cause me to lose the employer coverage I have today. More government bureaucracy will only create more problems, not solve the ones we have."'" Relatedly, Trailrunner7 illustrates growing concern over realistic spammer profiles in social networking sites and their potential to wreak havoc, especially if these two methods were combined. "Many spammers now have large staffs of people working on nothing but building out completely fake personas for non-existent users on social networking sites and blog networks. The spammers use these personas to create accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Blogspot and other sites that have high levels of user interaction."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wikileaks has published a copy of the UK media gag order that makes it a crime to publish real or Photoshopped images of "Eldrick Tont (Tiger) Woods... naked, or any naked parts of Claimant's body or of him involved in any sexual activity." So all you would-be UK slash-artists dreaming of hot Tiger-on-Klingon homo love tableaus in space can forget it. Right now. Forget it this instant, I say. Update: actually, the sweeping gag order covers pretty much any and all reporting about Woods' personal life.

The NYT Magazine's "Year in Ideas" issue is a fantastic collection of short, intriguing proposals, problems, and possibilities.

Zombie-Attack Science

Working with a professor and two other graduate students, Munz built a mathematical model of a city of one million residents, in which an outbreak occurs when a single zombie arrives in town. He based the speed of zombie infection on the general rules you see in George Romero movies: after getting bitten, people turn into zombies in 24 hours and sometimes don't realize what's happening to them until they change.

When he ran the model on a computer, the results were bleak. "After 7 to 10 days, everyone was dead or undead," he says. He tried several counterattacks. Quarantining the zombies didn't work; it only bought a few extra days of survival for humanity. Even creating a "cure" for zombification led to a grim result. It was possible to save 10 to 15 percent of the population, but everyone else was a zombie. (The cure in his model wasn't permanent; the cured could be rebitten and rezombified.)

There was only one winning solution: fighting back quickly and fiercely.

New York Times ninth annual "Year in Ideas" issue (Thanks, Daniel!)

The incomporable Jason Santa Maria has officially launched his own studio, Mighty. Congrats!

Parliment Design has one of the most beautiful studio interiors I’ve seen. With lots of detailed photos about the process of creating it. (via)

Art in my coffee gets a fresh new design by Megan Fisher (co-curated by Meagan and Jina Bolton). Foamy awesomeness, indeed.

idsgn’s holiday gift guide suggests some pretty neat things, including our own Ampersandwich tee.

adeelarshad82 writes "About two months ago Nokia sued Apple for infringing Nokia patents in its iPhone. The 10 patents in the lawsuit, filed in the US state of Delaware, relate to technologies fundamental for devices using GSM, UMTS and/or local area network (LAN) standards. The patents cover wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption and are infringed by all Apple iPhone models shipped since the iPhone was introduced in 2007. In the latest development to the case, Apple said Friday that it had filed its own suit against Nokia, countering Nokia's claims of patent infringement with its own."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The amazing Wolfram|Alpha app for iPhone is on sale for $20 (normally $50) for the rest of the year.

With its simple interface the Wolfram|Alpha App lets you instantly compute answers to questions across thousands of domains—from finance and food, to math and medicine, to stocks and spacecraft, to wordplay and weather...

There has been a ton of publicity about the young woman who was jailed and facing felony charges, because she caught snippets of the film New Moon while filming parts of her sister's birthday party. The outrage over this has been loud and widespread -- causing backlash against the movie theater and the movie studio that put out the movie. Even the director of the movie was complaining about the arrest and prosecution. Realizing that this was a bad situation all around, it looks like prosecutors have come to their senses and dropped the charges against the young woman, though we still have the same ridiculous law in place that made this situation possible. Shouldn't we also be looking to change that right about now?

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Each year, students in Cornell's ECE 5760 class are tasked to build something with an FPGA, and they always produce some cool projects. This year's projects are no different. Here are some of my favorites:

Chuck Yang and Jasper Schneider built a Face tracking + Perspective projection. Their system implements a face detection algorithm to determine the position and orientation of a user, and uses this information to change the perspective of a 3d display.

Chris McNally and Joe Kerekes designed the velocity-sensitive KSD Piano, which uses the Karplus Strong model to generate piano tones. They don't appear to have an embeddable video of the project, however you can download one here.

James Du and Peter Greczner designed a video production system with green-screen capability. It uses the chroma key technique to replace the background of a video with a different one.

Check out the course website for the rest of the projects. Great show!

Related:

• 2008 ECE576 Final projects
• 2007 ECE576 Final projects
2006 ECE576 Final projects

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The hypercreative pixel pushers eBoy have published their latest poster, a collaboration with Amnesty international for the organization's Poverty is Modern campaign. eBoy's Amnesty Poster

My pal David Katznelson is co-founder of Idelsohn Society, a non-profit dedicated to the musicology of great old Jewish music. Indeed, it was named after Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, a musicologist who also wrote the classic tune "Hava Nagila." The Society reissues incredibly strange, offbeat, "space age," and fantastic vintage Jewish albums by the likes of Irving Fields, Gershon Kingsley, and The Barry Sisters. I have all of the releases and every one is absolutely fantastic. I can't recommend them enough. Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah, and in celebration David and his gang put together what is now my favorite Hanukkah compilation ever. Hit play below and head over to the Idelsohn Society to buy some CDs in support of the organization!



From the Idelsohn Society:

In honor of the holiday season, we are proud to offer this little mix of music culled from our various albums, archives and projects. There's plenty of choice old-school tracks mixed in with new school Idelsohn exclusives like the re-mix of the Yemenite Trio by Soulico's DJ Sabbo. Songs from Lionel Hampton and Marlena Shaw are just a taste of what's to come on our next release forthcoming in 2010, Black Sabbath, an homage to the musical history of Blacks and Jews. Of course, there's also a couple of classic Christmas anthems courtesy of that other tradition's most beloved holiday crooners, Barbra and Neil.

Track list:
"The Problem"- Ray Brenner & Barry E. Blitzer
"White Christmas"-Barbra Streisand
"Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel"- Ella Jenkins
"Hava Nagila"- Lionel Hampton
"Mizrachi on the Drums (Sabbo Remix)"/"Seeing Israel"- The Yemenite Trio Vs. George Jessel
"Kale Kale"- Avram Grobard
"Holiday Mambo"- Machito & His Afro-Cubans
"They're Serving the Fish"- Benny Bell & The Brownsville Klezmers
"Blue"/"Santa Claus"- King Midas Sound vs. Ray Brenner & Barry E. Blitzer
"Where Can I Go?"- Marlena Shaw
"The Jewish Experience (MIS Remix)"/ "In The Beginning"- Gershon Kingsley vs. Charlton Heston
"Songs My Mother Loved"- Milton Berle
"That Old Black Magic"- Johnny Mathis
"Loco"- Don Tosti
"Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas"- Neil Diamond
"Hanukkah Dance"-Woody Guthrie

Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation

Here is your Friday soundtrack, people. Alex Ringis of Synthtube says,

I was in Melbourne for Game Connect Asia Pacific (GCAP) 09, and I found this busker standing outside Flinders Street Station in Melbourne. He was playing the hit 90's track "What Is Love" on bass guitar, Pianica Melodica, with the assistance of a loop pedal. What is remarkable (evidently) is that he did the entire thing wearing a chicken suit. The real action in this video starts at around 1:20, when he gets DOWN with the improv action on the Pianica.

Holy wow, this rooster can play! Synthtube link, and Vimeo link.

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that Florida's Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee has found in a recent opinion that judges and lawyers can no longer be Facebook friends. The committee says that when judges 'friend' lawyers who may appear before them, it creates the appearance of a conflict of interest, since it 'reasonably conveys to others the impression that these lawyer "friends" are in a special position to influence the judge.' Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics expert at New York University, says the Florida rule goes too far. 'In my view, they are being hypersensitive because in the case of a truly close friendship between a judge and a lawyer involved in a case, the other side can simply seek to disqualify the judge. Judges do not "drop out of society when they become judges," Gillers says. "The people who were their friends before they went on the bench remained their friends, and many of them were lawyers." Still, legal sycophants can take heart: lawyers can declare themselves Facebook "fans" of judges, the committee says, "as long as the judge or committee controlling the site cannot accept or reject the lawyer's listing of himself or herself on the site."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In brass and stainless steel. From Mark Ho of Zoho International Artforms. Thank you, Mark, for inspiring us all. [via The Automata / Automaton Blog]

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We've been scratching our heads at the various claims from the movie industry that piracy is destroying the industry -- especially as the trends over the past few years have been significantly more movies being made and significantly more money being made at the box office. And, once again, reports are coming out that 2009 will be another record year at the box office. And it's even more impressive, considering that the country has been in a pretty bleak recession the whole year. You would think that such things, including greater than 10% unemployment would get people to hold back on increasingly expensive nights out at the movies, but people are still going and still paying. So, again, we have to ask where is this evidence that piracy is destroying Hollywood? Or is the same "evidence" like the study we recently saw that came with the headline that Redbox was going to take away revenue, while the actual study said the opposite?

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beernutmark writes "I have two science-loving kids ages 7 and 9. My youngest knew Neil deGrasse Tyson's name at age 4. With the holidays coming up, I am looking to get them some quality science related tools. Two items on the list are a quality Microscope and/or a real rock-hounding kit. I am looking for any other gift suggestions for this year or future years (or even for younger kids for other readers) and hints on good sources."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the University of Tokyo, led by electrical engineering professor Takao Someya, have created a new kind of low-cost, plastic, flash memory storage device. Although not as dense or stable as its silicon cousin, the plastic flash memory is useful because of its low cost, simple manufacturing process, and potential use in e-paper or other flexible devices. To demonstrate the memory, Someya's group integrated a 676-memory-cell device with a rubber pressure sensor. The flexible sensor-memory device, which is less than 700 micrometers thick, can record pressure patterns and retain them for up to a day."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MIT has launched a new $5 million, 5-year project to build intelligent machines. To do it, the scientists are revisiting the fifty year history of the Artificial Intelligence field, including the shortfalls that led to the stigmas surrounding it, to find the threads that are still worth exploring. The star-studded roster of researchers includes AI pioneer Marvin Minsky, synthetic neurobiologist Ed Boyden, Neil "Things That Think" Gershenfeld, and David Dalrymple, who started grad school at MIT when he was just 14-years-old. Minsky is even proposing a new Turing test for machine intelligence: can the computer read, understand, and explain a children's book. More details after the jump.

From MIT News:

Gershenfeld says he and his fellow MMP members “want to go back and fix what’s broken in the foundations of information technology.” He says that there are three specific areas — having to do with the mind, memory, and the body — where AI research has become stuck, and each of these will be addressed in specific ways by the new project...

One of the projects being developed by the group is a form of assistive technology they call a brain co-processor. This system, also referred to as a cognitive assistive system, would initially be aimed at people suffering from cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. The concept is that it would monitor people’s activities and brain functions, determine when they needed help, and provide exactly the right bit of helpful information — for example, the name of a person who just entered the room, and information about when the patient last saw that person — at just the right time.

The same kind of system, members of the group suggest, could also find applications for people without any disability, as a form of brain augmentation — a way to enhance their own abilities, for example by making everything from personal databases of information to all the resources of the internet instantly available just when it’s needed. The idea is to make the device as non-invasive and unobtrusive as possible — perhaps something people would simply slip on like a pair of headphones.

"Rethinking artificial intelligence"

It's not uncommon for people unfamiliar with patents, copyrights and trademarks to confuse the three -- and we see it all too often in the press. However, you would think that lawyers would be a bit more careful. Copycense points out a story about how famed boxing announcer Michael Buffer is suing a local radio station for using his trademarked phrase "Let's Get Ready to Rumble" without paying him. The reporter shifts back and forth between copyright and trademark as if they're the same thing:

Buffer alleges XHNZ 107.5 used his copyrighted catch phrase "Let's get ready to rumble" without his permission.

The phrase is everywhere, from boxing to hockey and even video games and auto racing. And if you're using it without permission, you'd better be careful because it's trademarked.

Now, hopefully this is just an innocent mistake by the reporter who assumes (incorrectly) that trademarks and copyrights are the same thing, but even Buffer's own lawyer seems confused about it:

"It could be fairly substantial," [Buffer's El Paso-based attorney Mark] Walker said. "Copyright laws are well-known and it's important for people to know and understand what they are and seek advice if they have any questions about it."

Of course, if they're seeking advice about copyright laws, it shouldn't be over a trademarked phrase. Buffer insists that Walker is "a great lawyer" who "knows exactly what to do," and perhaps that's true, but it seems like he should get the basics of copyright and trademark law straight. Last year, we wrote up a quick explanation of the difference, and the new site Core Copyright, recently had its own, much more detailed explanation on the difference as well.

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Rachel @ CRAFT points us to Syuzi Pakhchyan's illuminated snowflake ornament tutorial which uses a simple circuit with a battery and magnetic jewelry clasp to power a single LED in the center.

In the Maker Shed:

Fashioning Technology

Ready to take your craft projects to the next level? With "smart" materials, unorthodox assembly techniques, and the right tools, you can create accessories, housewares, and toys that light up, make sounds, and more.

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A thief ripped off a man's collection of more than two thousand Ecstasy tablets. (Stock photo for illustration purposes only.) The 46-year-old, who lives near Amsterdam, Netherlands, contacted the police because he's afraid that someone might take some of the pills which he claims could be poisonous. From the Edmonton Sun:

A report in De Volkskrant daily Thursday said the man claimed he was not a drug dealer or user.

"I've tried it before but didn't like it," the report quoted him saying. "My passion for collecting comes from the varied collection of colours, shapes and logos that are printed on the pills."

According to a police statement, the man gathered the pills over a 20 year period and carefully stored them in coin collecting folders.

Ecstasy pill collection allegedly stolen (via Dose Nation)

I've always gotten a kick out of Biz Markie. He reminds me of a cartoon character. That's why he's such a great fit on Yo Gabba Gabba! where he does the "Biz's Beat Of The Day" segments! I was delighted when my pal Gabe Adiv got Biz to star in a commercial for his start-up TuneUp Media, the service I've posted about before that cleans up digital music libraries. Apparently, Biz is a big fan of TuneUp and DJ'd at their launch party, so he was game to act endearingly ridiculous in the commercial. Co-starring is Andy Milonakis who used to have a show on MTV. Gabe said he met Andy at a card table in Vegas a couple years ago and they hit it off, so Gabe called him last minute to see if he would be in the commercial too. I love the way it came out.

itwbennett writes "Not normally 'one to enjoy a casual read of a lawsuit,' blogger Peter Smith admits to finding the suit Michael Arrington is filing against Fusion Garage over the JooJoo (nee CrunchPad) fascinating. 'Skip to page 4, starting with item 11,' says Smith. 'At this point I don't know what to think, Every time I get close to pretty much accepting Arrington's story at face value, he pulls something that makes me stop and reexamine his arguments.' For example, says Smith, in one bullet point in Arrington's latest salvo, he calls out the press, saying 'it is irresponsible for press to link to the pre-sale site.' 'This attempt to directly sway the press away from Fusion Garage really spikes my suspicion meter' says Smith. 'After all, Arrington is the press. If I started writing screeds advising him on what he should or should not say about a product, what would he think?'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jie Qi's Electronic Popables feature some interesting uses for flexible circuitry in a pop-up book context -

Electronic Popables is an interactive pop-up book that sparkles, sings, and moves. The book integrates traditional pop-up mechanisms with thin, flexible, paper-based electronics and the result is a book that looks and functions much like an ordinary pop-up with the added element of dynamic interactivity. Electronic Popables was built by Jie Qi, with assistance from Leah Buechley and Tshen Chew.

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eldavojohn writes "On Google's official blog, they claim a 'new technology prototype that enables online, global-scale observation and measurement of changes in the earth's forests.' Ars has more details on what Google unveiled at Copenhagen. If you have Google Earth installed, you can find a demonstration here. Many organizations and government agencies are on board with this initiative to put deforestation before the eyes of the public. If only satellite data of North America existed before the logging industry swept in!" It's interesting to contemplate the implications for intelligence gathering of Google's automated tools to compare satellite photos.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

(Boing Boing guestblogger Ned Sublette is a writer, historian, photographer, and singer-songwriter based in New York.)

This week and next I'm presenting excerpts from my new book, The Year Before The Flood (Lawrence Hill Books). One of Amazon's categories for it is "21st-century history," which I like.

It's a memoir of the last year New Orleans was whole, 2004-05, the way I saw it when my wife Constance and I went to live there for ten months. (We returned to New York in May 2005, though I came back to New Orleans for a visit three weeks before the city went underwater as of August 29.) It's not that deadly publishing category, the "Katrina book." (For that matter, I don't call what happened to New Orleans "Katrina." It wasn't a vengeful goddess that took the city out, it was a social and infrastructural failure.) The book is about the music, from Fats Domino to Dr. John to the Nevilles to world-class local bands like - I don't want to mention just one or everyone'll be mad at me, and there are so many -- to Lil' Wayne, but there's a lot of death in it, too, because murder and music were both in the air, all year long.

It's got multiple narrative threads, but one of the ideas it proposes is that it's a mistake to ignore hiphop when we talk about New Orleans music, just as it's a mistake to talk about New Orleans hiphop as if the rest of New Orleans music didn't exist. This excerpt covers our getting to town.

---

I had never bought a car before, nor had I driven anything but an occasional rental in over twenty years, but we were going to need a car to get around. In Long Island City I signed a commitment to make seventy-two monthly payments on a Saturn SL2 (four years old, forty-four thousand miles). Not that I had previously known what a Saturn was. Nor did I quite realize that in effect you have to buy a car twice, the second time in payments to the insurance racket. I was going to receive all of ten monthly paychecks from Tulane, but I figured I'd sell the car at year's end.

I spent an unbelievable number of hours putting stuff in boxes, padding the boxes out with bubble wrap, taping them shut, numbering them, keeping an inventory of what they were, and stacking them up. I shipped more than half my CDs, all the books I might need to refer to in a year of writing and researching, all my negatives and slides, and a lot of other things I might as well have left at home.

We drove in our newly acquired Saturn from Manhattan to New Orleans, spending two nights en route. It was a good car, but I really screwed up by not noticing that it had no radio antenna. It could pick up FM signals in town OK, but once we got out in the country, we could go for miles at a stretch without hearing anything at all. To me, a car is a radio on wheels. Highway driving without radio? Unthinkable. A car radio is your best way of understanding what you're driving through.

Alas, my Saturn was radio-impaired. I would put it on "scan," which sent it stepping through the frequencies until it locked in on a signal. Often it would be silent for twenty minutes or more until, passing a town, it found something. Suddenly out of nowhere a loud voice would snap on, startling us with the proclamation that Jesus had our backs as we waged spiritual warfare in the crusade against secular humanism. I left it on as a kind of early warning system that we were near a town.

Coming into Birmingham, the radio locked into a welcome funky-music signal. As I blearily followed the directions to the historic-Tutwiler-Hotel-where-Tallulah-Bankhead-had-once-stayed-now-owned-by-Hampton-Inns, I heard for the first time the song that would mark our year in New Orleans. I could tell from the way the DJ hit it that it was the new jam in power rotation. It expressed the inner torment of a man trying to decide whether to obey the no-hands rule in a lap-dance club:

Unngh! I like it like that

She workin' that back

I don't know how to act

Slow motion for me, slow motion for me...

Every aspect of the vocalist's diction had a musical function. That, back, and act rhymed, with act snapping on the upbeat. I don't was one word. The words "I like it like that" recalled the 1961 record of that title by New Orleans R&B genius and fuckup Chris Kenner, later a big hit for the Dave Clark Five. Its Ls were juicy both-sides-of-your tongue laminal American Ls, not tip-of-your-tongue frontal British Ls, and the vocalist milked them for all they were worth. The Ms outlined a subrhythm all their own. There was a funky Latinesque guitar loop behind it; the producer, I later found out, was Danny Kartel (Daniel Castillo), a guitar-playing Honduran-Nicaraguan kid in New Orleans with an appropriately hip-hop capitalist nom du disque. It was scientifically calculated to move at the same velocity as a slow-grinding stripper's big ass. It sparkled.

I know a great radio record when I hear one. "Slow Motion" was the new release by New Orleans's Juvenile, but that part I just quoted--which was the whole appeal of the record--was by Soulja Slim, who had been murdered in New Orleans ten months previously and didn't get to see his hit happen.

Unngh, I like it like that. Our temporary new home was coming into focus, via a dead man's horniness.

The next morning, the last leg of our drive was through 150 miles of thunderstorms. I drove most of it at eighty miles an hour. I had told myself I wouldn't drive that fast, but everyone else was going at autobahn speed, even in the rain. Like religion, politics, and music, driving in the United States has become more belligerent in recent years. Despite the increased probability of carnage if you crash at a higher speed, it's easier to flow with the traffic than to have Hummers and semis whipping around you constantly, hurling blinding sheets of water onto your windshield, while a suicide-jockey motorcyclist darts around between you. A small truck passes with FEAR THIS painted on its back, and a verse citation from Revelation. A giant chemical tank roars past with the cautionary MOLTEN SULFUR painted on its side. Isn't that the stuff that spews out of volcanoes?

I-10 runs mostly through forest from Jacksonville to San Antonio, but to get in and out of New Orleans you have to cross water. Coming in from the east, we drove on a thin ribbon of concrete set atop thousands of pilings, a viaduct called the Twin Span that bridges a five-mile segment of the 630 square miles of Lake Pontchartrain. It didn't rise way high above the lake but sat right on the water, giving you the dreamlike sensation of driving on the surface of the lake. I don't know if there's a psychological term for the fear of being trapped on preposterous structures, but the only thing I can compare the feeling to is when I was working temp on one of the higher floors of the World Trade Center on a windy day, when the building swayed and the water sloshed in the toilets. Once in a while a vehicle will go out of control on the Twin Span and careen off the lane through the barrier, sinking horribly down into Lake Pontchartrain and drowning the occupants.

As we crossed the lake there was sunshine and blue August sky all around, but directly overhead a tiny squall was shooting lightning and pounding hard rain down on us, making for highly localized weather drama. I had forgotten that the radio was scanning, but suddenly, blam! It locked in on a frequency, making us jump with the sudden blast of sound. Welcoming us to our new temporary hometown as we drove through our personal mini-storm was the musical smirk of B. Gizzle:

I want it, you got it

Don't make me have to go in your pockets

It went on:

It's game time, and I'm ready to play

Gimme my remote and my remote is my K, I spray with it...

My K. Meaning, my AK-47.

It seemed to say: welcome to New Orleans, Ned and Constance. Keep your hands where I can see them.

---

[Photo: Twin Span, facing out of town. Courtesy Constance Ash.]

This short video advertising Kellogg's Raisin Bran Crunch shows a reformed alien sitting at the breakfast table, engaged in a rambling monologue about how he has metamorphosed from a scary flesh-eating monster into a pilates-practicing, go-with-the-flow type of guy that you might want to sit down and have a bowl of cereal with.

[via AdFreak]

CNN tours a pretty amazing tunnel between the US and Mexico used to smuggle drugs. The entrance on one side is in the bathroom of a warehouse. The entire floor of the bathroom is on a hydraulic lift to bring people up and down.

Here's another remote-control robot built around a cooler, but for a completely different purpose. This Cooler Bot, accredited to the Creators at Hyde Park Middle School (!), was built using parts from the Vex Robotics and Pitsco Design System parts. It's job is to deliver cool refreshments to those in need. Build instructions are not available, however they do have a bill of materials one could use as a starting point. Excellent job!

[Thanks, Jacob!]

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Earlier this year, we wrote about a lawsuit in North Carolina, where the judge friended one of the lawyers, and read and exchanged messages about the case with the lawyer on Facebook. That, obviously, seemed a bit extreme -- but what about just the plain old act of "friending" between a judge and a lawyer. Down in Florida, they've decided that's simply not allowed at all:

Whether a judge may add lawyers who may appear before the judge as "friends" on a social networking site, and permit such lawyers to add the judge as their "friend."

ANSWER: No.

That doesn't leave much room for ambiguity, does it? But, as Venkat Balasubramani notes, this is somewhat ridiculous. Judges and lawyers often have social relationships beyond the court, and pretending those don't exist just on Facebook seems pretty artificial.

My question to the advisory committee is whether this means that it's now inappropriate for a judge to have lunch with a lawyer friend, or engage in email banter with lawyer friends? Is attending the same party now off limits? I assume these actions would still be viewed as appropriate, given that lawyers and judges interact socially (and publicly) all the time. What's so special about Facebook friendship?

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Theosis sends word that an astronomer at the University of Rochester and his colleagues have made the surprise discovery that Alcor, one of the brightest stars in the Big Dipper, is actually two stars; and it is apparently gravitationally bound to the four-star Mizar system, making the whole group a sextuplet. This would make the Mizar-Alcor sextuplet the second-nearest such system known. The discovery is especially surprising because Alcor is one of the most studied stars in the sky. The Mizar-Alcor system has been involved in many "firsts" in the history of astronomy: "Benedetto Castelli, Galileo's protege and collaborator, first observed with a telescope that Mizar was not a single star in 1617, and Galileo observed it a week after hearing about this from Castelli, and noted it in his notebooks... Those two stars, called Mizar A and Mizar B, together with Alcor, in 1857 became the first binary stars ever photographed through a telescope. In 1890, Mizar A was discovered to itself be a binary, being the first binary to be discovered using spectroscopy. In 1908, spectroscopy revealed that Mizar B was also a pair of stars, making the group the first-known quintuple star system."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's one creative way to help kids overcome irrational fears, like the fear of being eaten alive by a dinosaur: make them sleep in between a pair of giant dinosaur jaws every night. A Jupiter, Florida couple made this, presumably for their kid. The lower jaw has a storage drawer hinged onto it.

3Murphys via Gizmodiva

Hemant Mehta, "The Friendly Atheist", is also a math teacher. This is what he found on one of the tests he was grading this week. The ol' Elephant Excuse. Pretty crafty. So how does a responsible educator of young minds respond to such a stunt? The answer is after the jump ...

If you're going to throw a Hail Mary Pachyderm on your final exam, you damn well best get your artwork correct.

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers have discovered a promising method to regrow damaged nerves in adults. Brain and spinal-cord injuries typically leave people with permanent impairment because the injured nerve fibers (axons) cannot regrow. A study from Harvard and Carleton University, published in the December 10 issue of the journal Neuron, shows that axons can regenerate vigorously in a mouse model when a gene that suppresses natural growth factors is deleted. Here is the journal article (subscription required to view more than the abstract)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TechCrunch has filed its lawsuit against Fusion Garage over the CrunchPad/Joojoo web tablet. After planning together to make the gadget, the two companies parted ways under acrimonious circumstances. I am not a lawyer, and nor do I play one on the internet. That said, the lawsuit contains at least one jawdropping allegation that makes Fusion Garage look supremely, hand-wringingly, cacklingly evil.

Namely, that it registered the "Joojoo" domain some time before the parting of ways, but strung TechCrunch's Mike Arrington along for at least a month afterwards--until three days before the planned launch. In the meantime, Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan claimed in emails that he was relaying stuff as it came, under pressure from shadowy investors.

It's a one-sided story, of course, and the story is of Singapore-based Fusion Garage spotting Arrington's public call for a cheap web tablet, then bilking TechCrunch for money and marketing right up to the point of the completed tablet's public unveiling.

Here's some choice cuts:

When Defendant met TechCrunch in September 2008, it claimed to have developed a browser-based operating system, just like the one TechCrunch was seeking for its CrunchPad project. In fact, it had developed no such thing, and the demo product it showed to TechCrunch was little more than an off-the-shelf browser and some HTML --something TechCrunch did not realize until nearly a year later. Moreover, Defendant had not even been working on a browser-based operating system.

...

When TechCrunch executives visited the Taiwan headquarters of Pegatron, the company preparing to manufacture the CrunchPad, TC learned that the Defendant had been falsely representing to TC the costs of the product's components ...

...

During the fall of 2009, Pegatron terminated its relationship with Defenant because of Defendant's failure to pay its debts. ... Nevertheless, after that date, Defendant ... concealed the loss of the most critical supplier.

...

Defendant had substantial financial difficulties and was relying on loans at exorbitant rates from unorthodox loan sources.

My bias: I think it likely that Arrington got taken advantage of by scoundrels and my sympathies are with his admirable vision of a cheap, hacker-friendly (if not entirely open-source) tablet computer. That said, the allegedly-concealed components bill would have always denied it mainstream appeal: a 3G modem, and hence the option to consumers of a carrier subsidy, would have shaved a lot of pain off that $500 tag.

The communications attached as evidence, if at all accurate, allay suspicions that TC wanted to escape the venture after it became clear the CrunchPad would be a poor commercial prospect.

Another interesting point: the lawsuit alleges that Fusion Garage was not planning to make a tablet before its collaboration with TechCrunch. This, if true, hurts one common and reasonable defense of Fusion Garage: that everyone is making tablets and its hookup with TechCrunch merely added a marketing and branding imprimatur to its own. It worked on the third prototype and final product, and had no involvement in the earliest versions of the tablet, according to the lawsuit.

A proposed merger, to which Rathakrishnan agreed in principle, would have given Fusion Garage a 35% share (it wanted 40%) of the resulting company.

Often mentioned is the value of Arrington's "original concept" or "entire concept," as publicly proposed at TechCrunch. As appealing as the design is, it's hardly imbued with novelty by core feature descriptions such as "an iphone-like touch screen". Got a patent on that?

TC exhorts the court to consider the tablet project a partnership under California law, and hence subject to statues on shared property. But, alas, the lawsuit offers no contracts in evidence.

The lawsuit does, however, find it salient to remind the court that Time Magazine declared Mr. Arrington one of the world's 100 most influential people last year. Hey, at least he got something in writing!

Lawsuit [DocStoc-gimped PDF]

So Hollywood is all concerned that Redbox DVD rentals at $1 per day are going to do serious damage to the Hollywood economy -- except, of course, that the actually numbers say exactly the opposite. Still, if they're all freaked out (and some are in court) over $1/day rentals, you'd have to imagine they're not particularly pleased about rentals that could be even cheaper. Rose M. Welch points us to the news of a new DVD rental kiosk operation, called Big Box DVD, which is moving forward with a business model of charging a whopping 6 cents per hour for a new release (4 cents per hour for an older release). For folks willing to just rent the video, take it home, watch it and return it, that can be quite cheap. Of course, if you keep it for a full 24 hours, it'll be a bit over a dollar. How long until we hear about how much damage this is doing to Hollywood?

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An anonymous reader writes "Not only is DRBD to be included in the Linux 2.6.33 kernel, but so is the Nouveau driver. The Nouveau driver is the free software driver that was created by clean-room reverse engineering NVIDIA's binary Linux driver. It has been in development for several years with 2D, 3D, and video support. The DRM component is set to enter the Linux 2.6.33 kernel as a staging driver. This is coming as a surprise move after yesterday Linus began ranting over Red Hat not upstreaming Nouveau and then Red Hat attributing this delay to microcode issues. The microcode issue is temporarily worked around by removing it from the driver itself and using the kernel's firmware loader to insert this potentially copyrighted work instead."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Holmes Wilson from the Free Software Foundation writes, "We're at a crucial moment in the fight against DRM. This year--thanks to the strength of the movement you've built and been a part of--we defeated DRM on music. But DRM on books, games, and other digital media is a bigger threat than ever. Meanwhile the Free Software Foundation, the organization behind Defective by Design, is engaged in a broader battle: fighting for our rights to control the technology we use by promoting free software. The FSF is a member-supported nonprofit. Please consider donating or becoming a member today. FSF membership is $10 a month or $5 a month for students.

Join the FSF!

She's not packing heat, but she does have a camera hidden in her (apparently attractive) breast. Researchers at the University of California, Davis built a robotic version of a female sage grouse in order to get a bird's-eye view of courtship rituals. They're hoping to learn more about the evolution of sexual selection, and what the sage grouse do to survive in a shrinking habitat. Bonus: The video features Miles O'Brien. Yeah, Miles O'Brien!

Watch the video at NSF.gov Science Nation: Bird Courtship

In England, the police are allowed to give "policing powers" to private individuals. The private security guards in a shopping mall (called "The Mall") in Norwich now have police powers. These civilian security guards can now "issue on-the-spot fines, give lawful orders and check normally confidential police records."

Until now the powers have generally been used by security firms covering special events or by local authority staff such as housing officers. This will be the first time they have been used as part of routine patrols...

Paul Allen, chairman of Norwich magistrates, has referred the matter to the national Magistrates Association. Yesterday he said: "We have expressed concern in the past that unaccountable civilians have been given the power to act as judge and jury in issuing fixed penalty notices.

Mall security staff will get police powers in Norwich (Thanks, Gill!)

(Image: TheMall.co.uk)

If you haven't heard about They Might Be Giants' new album "Here Comes Science," here's your chance. They'll play a benefit concert at the New York Hall of Science this Sunday:

Queens, N.Y. — After months of traveling the country on a national tour, 2009 Grammy Winners They Might Be Giants will play two benefit concerts at the New York Hall of Science on December 13. The two shows, at 1 and 3:15 pm, will feature TMBG’s newest songs from their latest children’s album “Here Comes Science,” which examines a wide array of scientific ideas. Proceeds from the $35 concert tickets will be donated to NYSCI.

“They Might Be Giants is a great band that appeals to every generation and we’re excited to share their smart and funny music with our audiences,” said NYSCI Director and Chief Content Officer Eric Siegel who has a special connection to the project. Siegel was employed by They Might Be Giants to fact check the songs and videos on “Here Comes Science.”

“The list of songs demonstrates the premise of the recording, that science is real” said Siegel. "Here comes Science" includes: ‘Science Is Real,’ ‘Meet The Elements,’ ‘I Am A Paleontologist,’ ‘The Bloodmobile,’ ‘Electric Car,’ ‘My Brother The Ape’ ‘What Is A Shooting Star?,’ ‘How Many Planets?,’ ‘Why Does The Sun Shine?,’ ‘Why Does The Sun Really Shine?,’ ‘Roy G. Biv,’ ‘Put It To The Test; Photosynthesis,’ ‘Cells,’ ‘Speed And Velocity,’ ‘Computer Assisted Design,’ ‘Solid Liquid Gas,’ ‘Here Comes Science,’ and ‘The Ballad Of Davy Crockett (In Outer Space).’

They Might Be Giants
December 13; 1 & 3:15 pm
New York Hall of Science
Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens

More:

TMBG's "Electric Car"

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The Morning News's gallery of ghostmalls, accompaniment to an interview with photographer Brian Ulrich, is haunting and lovely. So much hubris. So many vinyl plants. These are the ruined temples of consumerism: "How can an economy sustain a lifestyle based on exponential growth and the leisure and wealth to support it? It's not rocket science to expect these kind of illusions to fail. What's strange is how ingrained the brands and spaces are to us that so many were not only surprised to see major retailers and malls sink but were saddened. Many of these ideas were set in motion decades ago."

Ghosts of Shopping Past (via Beyond the Beyond)

On Wired's Gadget Lab, a gallery of sculptures made from dead hard-drives made by sysadmin Miguel Rivera, including this wonderful junkbot.

Old Hard Drives Get Sculpted Into Cars, Bikes, Robots

KentuckyFC writes "According to quantum mechanics, a vacuum will be filled with electromagnetic waves leaping in and out of existence. It turns out that these waves can have various measurable effects, such as the Casimir-Polder force, which was first measured accurately in 1997. Just how to exploit this force is still not clear. Now, however, a researcher at an Israeli government lab suggests how it could be possible to generate propulsion using the quantum vacuum. The basic idea is that pushing on the electromagnetic fields in the vacuum should generate an equal and opposite force. The suggestion is that this can be done using nanoparticles that interact with the vacuum's electric and magnetic fields, generating the well-known Lorentz force. In most cases, the sum of Lorentz forces adds up to zero. But today's breakthrough is the discovery of various ways to break this symmetry and so use the quantum vacuum to generate a force. The simplest of these is simply to rotate the particles. So the blueprint for a quantum propulsion machine described in the paper is an array of addressable nanoparticles that can be rotated in the required way. Although such a machine will need a source of energy, it generates propulsion without any change in mass. As the research puts it with magesterial understatement, this might have practical implications."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael Geist writes, "The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is generating growing concern as many people learn about the secret copyright treaty for the first time. I've create a visual timeline to trace its emergence that includes links to the leaked documents, official government statements, and NGO letters and work in the area."

The ACTA Timeline

Here's an inspiring video of Mohammed Makokha, a master bike mechanic in Nairobi who has designed and built a bunch of custom tools for repairing bikes.

Video of home made bicycle repair tools and gadgets in Nairobi

Hugh from EFF sez, "Randall 'XKCD' Munroe, the world's greatest web comic artist, has done a special shirt that you can get when you give a gift to EFF! For a limited time you can get a shirt or a hoody, and get it with or without the new xkcd book."

Support EFF with a Year-End Donation! (Thanks, Hugh!)

Welcome to the seventh serialized installment of J.C. Hutchins' human cloning thriller 7th Son: Descent. If this is your first exposure to our free serialization of 7th Son, you can easily catch up by experiencing the story via links found at J.C.'s About 7th Son page. You can also dive in right away, thanks to...

THE STORY SO FAR: The story shifted to Houston, where billionaire oil tycoon A.U. Rookman conducted a videoconference with a John Alpha. Michael, John, Dr. Mike and the 7th Son soldiers reached Los Angeles. After a tense ride through the streets of West Hollywood, the team arrived at Folie a Deux. At the 7th Son facility, Father Thomas, Jack and Jay learned more about Kilroy2.0’s world. A powerful benefactor helped Kilroy in a time of need.

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

JC Hutchins's sf novel 7TH SON serial, Part 8

Konservendose built this sweet little square wave synth using a cardboard enclosure and chewing gum wrapper touch contacts -

The LEDs are synched with the beat. the harder you press on the touchpads, the less resistance your fingers have. this way you can control the beat (left side) or make queer noises (right side).

[via Califaudio] Read more | Permalink | Comments | Digg this!

A couple of folk sent in this story of Ryan Sohmer, author of the popular web comic Least I Could Do, where he complains about others "stealing" his content in iPhone apps. But, this isn't the usual case of a content creator lashing out about "stealing." Sohmer has built up a nice model in giving away his comics for free, and we even wrote about his anger earlier this year at the Writers Guild of Canada for trying to force ISPs to pay a "tax" to writers. On the whole, his views are quite progressive on business models and free content. But what he's upset about here is that some others are taking his comics and putting them in fee-based iPhone apps, and thus "profiting" off his content, without his permission:

As a general rule, I'm fairly lenient with individuals using our content for personal use. You want to throw up a comic on your blog, use our avatars or wallpapers, that's fine. That's actually what they're there for and truth be told, we appreciate you spreading the word.

Where I draw the line, however, is an individual lifting our entire comic archives, putting them in an iPhone app, charging 99 cents for it and putting their own advertising banners on each comic. Profiting off of our hard work without so much as a link back to this site. No justifying that, that's ripping us off, plain and simple.

The sad reality of it, is that things appear to be getting worse. Almost every day, I receive a couple of e-mails telling me about a new app or aggregator that's featuring Least I Could Do or Looking For Group.

Alex Winston, who was the first to send this in, asked what we thought Sohmer should do in such a situation, and wondered how those who are open to sharing their works should deal with cases where others profit from those works. We've actually discussed something similar recently, but to more directly address the question, I tend to think that the answer is to simply supply a similar offering yourself -- and make it clear which ones are the official versions. Even if you're giving away your content for free, if people want to pay for it, why not offer them a way to do so? And, if you make it quite clear which is the official version and which is not, most people will go for the official version, because they want to support the artist.

And, if you're still offering your works for free, and yet others are making money off of some sort of "aggregation," well, at some point you have to admit that perhaps it's the aggregation they're paying for, rather than the content itself, since they could have received the content for free. I recognize that it can seem upsetting at first if it looks like someone is "making money off of my content," but rather than worry too much about it (since it's not going to go away), the answer is to focus on doing whatever it is you can do to make sure that people know of ways to support you directly, and then it's up to them. If someone else is somehow offering something better, then perhaps look into ways to improve what you offer as well. But, in the end, worrying about what other people do will only get you so far. Focus on what you can do.

An alternative option is that if someone is really doing something that is better with your content, you could approach them, and ask them for a reasonable cut of the revenue, noting that in exchange, you'd promote their app to your fans, as well. That would likely increase the number of buyers, and everyone comes away happy.

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80 years ago today, the first ever science fiction fan group, the Scienceers, met for the first time at organization president Warren Fitzgerald's apartment in Harlem (Fitzgerald, the first-ever big name fan, was black). Happy 80th, fandom!

Our thanks to Rob Hansen, author of the formidable history of British fandom Then, for reminding us of this anniversary. Says Rob, "I've always been fascinated that the first president of that first US fan group--indeed, the world's first fan group--was a black guy, Warren Fitzgerald, and that they held their early meetings at his home in Harlem. I'm amazed this doesn't seem to be widely known." Rob also points out that Fitzgerald was one of the founders of the American Rocket Society.

All that aside, it would be nice to establish December 11 as the official anniversary date of the formation of SF fandom. And certainly it's a more pleasant thing to associate with December 11 than the assassination of Byzantine emperor Nikephoros II in 969, the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936, or the arrest of Bernard Madoff in 2008. Go, fandom, may you always be creative, unconventional, and neurodiverse.

Happy 80th anniversary, SF fandom

Yishay sez, "The good people of the Open Knowledge Foundation have just released a prototype of their visualisation tool for UK gov spending. This on the same week that the government announced radical plans for opening their data. Open data needs to be seen, not just done."

I'm loving this: you can click on any of those dots (on the actual web-page) to see what it represents. The slider moves you back and forth year-to-year. It's an amazing way of visualizing public spending.

Where Does My Money Go? (Thanks, Yishay!)

eldavojohn writes "You may recall the TSA demonstrating how tech-savvy it is by releasing a document with redactions intact. Now three Republican lawmakers are asking what's being done to prosecute those hosting the document (e.g. Cryptome and Wikileaks). In a letter to the DHS (PDF), Charles Dent (R-PA), Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), and Peter T. King (R-NY) asked, 'How has [sic] the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration addressed the repeated reposting of this security manual to other websites, and what legal action, if any, can be taken to compel its removal?' And they asked if the DHS is 'considering issuing new regulations pursuant to its authority in Section 114 of Title 49, United States Code, and are criminal penalties necessary or desirable to ensure such information is not reposted in the future?' King is the representative who announcing a probe into Wikileaks after the half million 9/11 pager messages were released."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

eldavojohn writes "You may recall the TSA demonstrating how tech-savvy it is by releasing a document with redactions intact. Now three Republican lawmakers are asking what's being done to prosecute those hosting the document (e.g. Cryptome and Wikileaks). In a letter to the DHS (PDF), Charles Dent (R-PA), Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), and Peter T. King (R-NY) asked, 'How has [sic] the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration addressed the repeated reposting of this security manual to other websites, and what legal action, if any, can be taken to compel its removal?' And they asked if the DHS is 'considering issuing new regulations pursuant to its authority in Section 114 of Title 49, United States Code, and are criminal penalties necessary or desirable to ensure such information is not reposted in the future?' King is the representative who announcing a probe into Wikileaks after the half million 9/11 pager messages were released."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

England's West Midlands counter-terrorism unit is putting nursery schools on notice to check out their four-year-olds to make sure that they're not being "brainwashed" into "Islamic extremism."

Arun Kundnani, of the Institute of Race Relations, contacted the officer and said he was told that officers had visited nursery schools. Mr Kundnani added: "He did seem to think it was standard. He said it wasn't just him or his unit that was doing it. He said the indicators were they [children] might draw pictures of bombs and say things like 'all Christians are bad' or that they believe in an Islamic state. It seems that nursery teachers in the West Midlands area are being asked to look out for radicalisation. He also said that targeting young children was important because they would be left aware of what was inappropriate to say at school. He felt that it was necessary to cover nurseries as well as primary and secondary schools. He said it was a precaution and that he wasn't expecting to come back with a list."

Now, I'm no fan of parents instilling racial intolerance in their kids, but if "All Christians are bad" is the gold standard for telling whether a kid is being "radicalised," then I quake for all the Jewish kids I grew up with hearing things like "A shikker is a goy" (gentiles are drunks). I'm likewise pretty certain that there are many Christian kids being brought up on messages like "Jews are all cheap" and "Muslims are all terrorists."

Terror police to monitor nurseries for Islamic radicalisation (Thanks, Marilyn!)

(Image: Nursery School, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Editor B's photostream)

laxl writes "Linux vendor Red Hat has open sourced the Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environment (SPICE) virtual desktop protocol it acquired last year with Qumranet, which used SPICE for its own commercial desktop-virtualization product, called SolidIce. SPICE can be used to deploy virtual desktops from a server out to remote computers, such as desktop PCs and thin-client devices. It is similar to other rendering protocols used for remote desktop management such as Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol or Citrix's Independent Computing Architecture. SPICE supports rendering virtual instances of Windows XP and Windows 7, as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. According to Red Hat, SPICE has advantages over other protocols in that it can dynamically customize desktop instances to fit specific operating environments. According to the article, most of the SPICE code is available under the GNU GPLv2, though parts are also licensed under LGPL- and BSD-styled licenses."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

laxl writes "Linux vendor Red Hat has open sourced the Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environment (SPICE) virtual desktop protocol it acquired last year with Qumranet, which used SPICE for its own commercial desktop-virtualization product, called SolidIce. SPICE can be used to deploy virtual desktops from a server out to remote computers, such as desktop PCs and thin-client devices. It is similar to other rendering protocols used for remote desktop management such as Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol or Citrix's Independent Computing Architecture. SPICE supports rendering virtual instances of Windows XP and Windows 7, as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. According to Red Hat, SPICE has advantages over other protocols in that it can dynamically customize desktop instances to fit specific operating environments. According to the article, most of the SPICE code is available under the GNU GPLv2, though parts are also licensed under LGPL- and BSD-styled licenses."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's no secret that many book publishers are somewhat uncomfortable with the ebook market, fearing that it will cannibalize the existing book market, with lower expected prices or (gasp!) piracy. Still, you would think they would know better than to repeat the mistakes of other industries. Copycense alerts us to the news that some ebook publishers are copying the movie studios with their obsession with windowed releases and are delaying the release of ebooks by as much as four months after the release of the hardcover book. Amazon's response to the news sums up why this is a huge mistake:

"Authors get the most publicity at launch and need to strike while the iron is hot. If readers can't get their preferred format at that moment, they may buy a different book or just not buy a book at all."

Or they might just get an unauthorized digital copy. Hard to understand businesses that think it's reasonable to not offer customers what they want (especially when they're willing to pay for it).

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Just posted! Our in-depth review of the Nikon D3000, which replaces the popular D60 as Nikon's latest entry-level DSLR. A new guide mode and revamped AF system make the D3000 a compelling upgrade for D60 and D40X users, but the lack of a Live View function will not go unnoticed in the feature-hungry entry-level sector. Does the D3000 have what it takes to become king of the beginners' DSLRs? Click to read our in-depth 27 page review.

GMGruman writes "George Orwell would be proud of AT&T, as Bill Snyder explains in this blog post, for its new ads saying it supports Net neutrality when in fact it is working actively to scuttle proposed FCC rules that would clearly ban discriminatory practices against different types of data, such as video streaming or VoIP. It's also trying to get government subsidies to build a substandard broadband network for the under-served areas of the US If it and its carrier partners win, 'Internet freedom' will mean freedom for carriers to be the 21st century's robber barons."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In October I wrote a post looking for a home for books written by my great-uncle Arno Schmidt. The books were left to us by his sister, my grandomother, who was keeping them for him in the US.

Turns out most American universities with a German Studies department already have complete sets of his writing.

However, Timm Menke of Portland State University posted an enthusiastic comment under my post. We exchanged emails, talked on the phone and we quickly decided that they would provide the best home for his work in the US.

Yesterday the books arrived in Portland. If anyone is looking for a good collection of Arno Schmidt's work in the US, selected by the author, you should look to Portland State University.

I've spent the week in NY on business and family stuff, having a nice time, but I didn't bring warm-enough clothes.

We're definitely in transition here, I now write for a lot of places, and Scripting News has become very quiet.

Pointers to all my writing can be found on protoblogger.com.

Andorin writes "Asa Dotzler, Mozilla's director of community development, has published a brief blog post in which he recommends that Firefox users move from using Google as their main search engine to Bing, citing privacy issues. Disregarding the existence of alternative search engines such as Ask and Yahoo, Dotzler asserts that Bing's privacy policy is better than Google's. Dotzler explains the recommendation with a quote from Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google: 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines — including Google — do retain this information for some time...' Ars Technica also covers the story."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Shine an alien or any other design on a wall with this $5 LED projector.
Thanks go to Brian McNamara for the original article in MAKE, Volume 16.
To download The Alien Projector video click here and subscribe in iTunes.
Check out the complete Alien Projector article in MAKE, Volume 16 and you
can see that in our Digital Edition.

Here is the link for the Alien Projector template

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Shine an alien or any other design on a wall with this $5 LED projector.
Thanks go to Brian McNamara for the original article in MAKE, Volume 16.
View the PDF of this project. and then subscribe to MAKE Magazine for other great projects
you can do over the weekend.

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It was rumored recently that some politicians were going to investigate Wikileaks for some leaked documents that were posted there. The details weren't clear, and I was hoping something was lost in the translation, and they meant that the politicians would be investigating the leaks not the site Wikileaks for posting it. No such luck apparently. Three Congressional Reps have apparently asked Homeland Security what can be done about sites that post leaked documents, including not just Wikileaks, but Cryptome as well. In the letter to Homeland Security, they basically suggest that if needed, they'll put forth legislation that would make reposting such content illegal, which could create one hell of a First Amendment legal battle at some point. Either way, these politicians are focused on the wrong things. The problems aren't these sites, which are just service providers for the information. The problems are the leaks of info themselves.

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MojoKid writes "From October to December, the advertising departments of a thousand companies exhort children to beg, cajole, and guilt-trip their parents for all manner of inappropriate digital entertainment. As supposedly informed gatekeepers, we sadly earthbound Santas are reduced to scouring the back pages of gaming review sites and magazines, trying to evaluate whether the tot at home is ready for Big Bird's Egg Hunt or Bayonetta. Luckily, The New York Times is here to help. In a recent article provokingly titled 'Ten Games to Cross off Your Child's Gift List,' the NYT names its list of big bads — the video games so foul, so gruesome, so perverse that we'd recommend you buy them immediately — for yourself. Alternatively, if you need gift ideas for the surly, pale teenager in your home whose body contains more plastic then your average d20, this is the newspaper clipping to stuff in your pocket. In other words, if you need a list like this to understand what games to not stuff little Johnny's stocking with this holiday season, you've got larger issues you should concern yourself with. We'd suggest picking up an auto-shotty and taking a few rounds against the horde — it's a wonderful stress relief and you're probably going to need it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Inventor Adam Kay sent me one of his flat-pack "Cinch Seat" kids' booster chairs to play with. The Cinch Seat comes as four pieces of composite wood-board with a white, hard-wearing eggshell veneer, laser-cut so that all four pieces can be quickly slotted together to form a secure and very pretty booster-chair. A set of nylon straps threaded through the seat board keep the kid safe and also securely affix the seat to a regular chair. It's very quick to assemble and disassemble the seat, and the extremely clever design lets the chair sit at one of two different heights, depending on how you put it together. It's altogether one of the handsomest and cleverest baby-gadgets I've tried.

That said, I have a few caveats. At £57.50, I think it's pricey, especially given the use-case for this as a portable chair you can keep in the car or under the stroller for those times you're out and about at a restaurant or relative's place. I can see paying a small premium to have a really beautiful piece of furniture for home use, but I don't see shelling out to ensure that my kid's chair doesn't clash with the restaurant's decor for the hour we're having lunch there. The composite wood is extremely sturdy and lovely besides, but it's heavy, especially relative to equally hard-wearing (and much cheaper) plastics. Again, the weight isn't a big deal if this is meant to be a permanent home seat, but as a portable seat, every gram counts. Finally, the first-time assembly, during which all the straps have to be threaded through various slots on the seat, is fiddly and confusing. You only have to do this once, but at nearly £60, I'd expect the thing to come ready for use.

Conceptually, the Cinch Seat is fantastic, and I love the idea of making kids' furniture and gadgets out of simple materials with an eye for good design. If price is no object, the Cinch Seat is a great idea -- if I were running an upscale restaurant, I'd certainly consider buying a couple of them.

Cinch Seat (Thanks, Adam!)

Update: Adam adds, "I know it's expensive for a portable booster so I'm happy for you to offer a discount to your readers if anyone orders one before christmas day. I'll reduce it to £50. They just have to let me know they saw it on your site."

Olympus UK has been doing something we found quite interesting. How do you promote a new class of camera to a mainstream audience without confusing them with talk of mirrors and sensor sizes? Its solution appears to be to not talk about cameras at all - instead it's got Kevin Spacey to talk about pictures and memories.

JohnnyBGod writes "Lotus claim to have invented a new, more efficient engine design. The two-stroke, flex-fuel engine can achieve, according to the surprisingly technical press release, 'approximately 10% better [fuel consumption] than current spray-guided direct injection, spark ignition engines.' The engine has a sliding puck arrangement to control its compression ratio, and has direct injection and a wet sump, to eliminate fuel leakage to the exhaust and the need to mix oil with the fuel, two common problems with two-stroke engines. Lotus engineering have released a video explaining the engine's operation."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earlier this year, we noted that the Dutch Usenet community FTD was suing BREIN, the local "anti-piracy" group, for suggesting that FTD was a criminal operation. As the case moves forward, FTD is pointing out that as a Usenet group, all that it enables is discussions and doesn't see how discussions -- even if about file sharing -- should be infringing themselves. In response, BREIN still insists that a Usenet provider can, in fact, be a criminal organization, and asked the court to fine FTD $70,000 per day if it doesn't get people to stop talking about file sharing. But, no, copyright doesn't conflict with free speech at all... right?

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Last month, I blogged about a group of Mad Max superfan cosplayers who hied themselves out to the desert in a variety of amazing vehicles (including a flying one-person chopper!) and costumes and spent the weekend playing at apocalypse. The event's organizer, DJ Wolfie, has put together a (mildly NSFW) video of highlights from the weekend.

Road Warrior Weekend Dj Wolfie

notthatwillsmith writes "If you're a fan of Left 4 Dead and you've ever wanted to build a zombie-filled map of your hometown, office or grocery store, Maximum PC just posted a how-to that shows you how to convert photos of real-world locations into ready-to-play L4D 1 or 2 maps. It's everything you need to know in order to kill zombies with your friends — in the comfort of your own backyard."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Stray Sock Sewing book gives you inspiration for ways to repurpose your unpaired, old, or just plain ugly socks. The book includes a gallery of the author's inspirational creations, a section on stitches and techniques needed for sock sewing, and detailed instructions on 8 different projects you can make from socks.

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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Julian Sanchez has a fantastic post noting what a difficult job it must be to be in charge of figuring out what to "redact" in government documents that are being released to the public -- because redacting certain information may actually reveal a lot more than if that same info had been left readable. As an example of this, Sanchez goes through some of the redactions found in the recently released documents from various service providers in how they comply with law enforcement requests for info. He walks through some of the documents, and actually has his attention called to one redacted passage in a template for requesting info. What caught his eye is that the redacted section was the statutory definition of basic subscriber info that could be requested by law. In other words, there's nothing secretive at all -- and, in fact, he notes that other similar documents include identical information that has not been redacted at all.

If the information had not been redacted, he would have skimmed over it without thinking. But the fact that a government official thought that the statutory definition needed to be redacted, actually called a lot more attention to questioning why that passage had been blacked out. From there, Sanchez does some educated and reasonable speculation, to suggest that government officials may be collecting cell tower info, rather than GPS info, requiring a lower standard to request -- because they can easily get enough info from that to determine where a person is, even without the specificity of the GPS info. It's no secret, of course, that you can triangulate location via tower info, if you have info on multiple towers -- but, Sanchez points out that there are likely ways to get pretty close even with single tower info, and that can be requested at a much lower standard by pretending that you're not trying to pinpoint exact location, and not even asking for the triangulated location info.

It is all speculation, of course, but it's fascinating that what sent him down this path in the first place was the simple decision by a redactor to redact basic information that is obviously already public. Sanchez surmised that the really salient piece of info is the fact that information can be requested while a call is in progress, rather than after it's done, which is what is used to determine a more precise location, if the subject is moving (and switching towers):

Now, did this possibility first cross my mind when I looked at these documents? No, not really--but thinking about this stuff breeds paranoia, and so a lot of possibilities cross my mind. The pattern of redactions above make me a good deal more confident that this is probably a popular method of getting moderately detailed location info on the "cheap" in terms of legal process. In the criminal context, anyway--for intel, who knows. They make it explicit in some of these documents that the Justice Department's legal position is that they can get realtime full-GPS with a mere "relevance" court order, but they go ahead and apply for that kind of tracking under stricter rules because they don't want to risk suppression. Probably they're less worried about that when they're operating under FISA pen/trap orders. But if this is right, they may be pulling a bit of a fast one on judges here. Because a lot of these applications to judges--and certainly the Justice Department's legal briefs in the cases where courts have been reluctant to approve tracking on such a loose standard--imply that this cell site/sector data, why, it's so rough and approximate that it vaguely counts as tracking at all. Certainly, at any rate, it's not so precise as to invade any sort of privacy interest. Except that for a target in steady motion, it begins to seem as though they can probably get a substantially more precise fix.

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Simon sez, "David Cox at the UK National Physical Laboratory has created this snowman, which is ~20µm high."

The snowman was made from two tin beads used to calibrate electron microscope astigmatism. The eyes and smile were milled using a focused ion beam, and the nose, which is under 1 µm wide (or 0.001 mm), is ion beam deposited platinum.

A nanomanipulation system was used to assemble the parts 'by hand' and platinum deposition was used to weld all elements together. The snowman is mounted on a silicon cantilever from an atomic force microscope whose sharp tip 'feels' surfaces creating topographic surveys at almost atomic scales.

Christmas 2009 : Educate + Explore : National Physical Laboratory (Thanks, Simon!)

alphadogg writes "Microsoft Thursday announced a broadening of its licensing program around its exFAT file system, which is designed to handle large multimedia files. Microsoft hopes companies making devices such as cameras and smartphones will adopt the Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT) technology to support the sharing of audio and video files. The technology is available on Windows 7, Vista SP1, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Embedded CE."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "The open source FPS Blood Frontier has now made their beta2 release. From the article: 'After many months of development, and massive amounts of input from the public, we are proud to present you with the new release of Blood Frontier, v0.85 (Beta 2). This new version totally redefines and improves the game in many ways, creating a whole new style that makes it almost nothing like its predecessor.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

French activist Jérémie Zimmerman sez,

A worldwide coalition of Non-Governmental Organizations, consumers unions and online service providers associations publish an open letter to the European institutions regarding the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) currently under negotiation. They call on the European Parliament and the EU negotiators to oppose any provision into the multilateral agreement that would undermine the fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens in Europe and across the world.

By December 17th, 2009, European negotiators will submit their position regarding the proposal put forward by the U.S Trade Representative for the Internet chapter of the ACTA. It is now time for the European Union to firmly oppose the dangerous measures secretly being negotiated. They cover not only "three strikes" schemes, but also include Internet service providers liability that would result in Internet filtering, and dispositions undermining interoperability and usability of digitial music and films.

The first signatories of the open letter include: Consumers International (world federation of 220 consumer groups in 115 countries), EDRi (27 European civil rights and privacy NGOs), the Free Software Foundation v(FSF), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), ASIC (French trade association for web2.0 companies), and civil liberties organizations from all around Europe (9 Member States so far...). The letter is open for signature by other organizations.

ACTA: A Global Threat to Freedoms (Open Letter) (Thanks, Jérémie!)

eBay seller Treasure Cast makes pewter coat-buttons cast from the guts of old mechanical watches, a lovely idea.

SteamPunk Buttons - FIVE Steampunk Watch Buttons 1066 (Thanks, Liz!)

A couple weeks ago, I blogged a Bloomberg column by Alice Schroeder that alleged that Goldman Sachs bankers were buying handguns to protect themselves from peasant uprisings. The Wall Street Journal has investigated the claim, and they think it's bogus:

New York police spokesman Paul J. Browne says that their records show only four Goldman employees have applied for gun permits in recent years -- and the last application was made in 2003. That application, by the firm's head of security for a "carry permit", was granted. The only other employee granted a NYPD carry permit" is a building security guard. It was issued prior to 2003, said a police spokesman. Those applying for a permit must list their employer.

Two Goldman employees have residential permits, allowing them to have guns in their homes. The last of these permits was issued in 2001, Browne said. One of the permits was issued to a trader and the other was given to a graphic designer.

"We haven't seen a surge of applications of any kind for Goldman Sachs employees," said Browne.

Are Goldman Sachs Bankers Really Carrying Guns? (Thanks, Waldo!)

As I mentioned, we've recently been threatened with a number of lawsuits. One of them is a threat from the UK -- despite the fact that we are not UK-based and have no UK presence or business operations. The concern, as with most legal threats against us, was due to a comment someone made, making fun of someone who, despite haven spoken critically of others, does not appear to like being spoken about critically. The comments in question are certainly not libelous in the US, but with UK defamation law being significantly more draconian, the upset person insists that the comments are, in fact, libel and that a lawsuit is the only proper response. I still think that, even under UK libel law, it would be a stretch to find these comments libelous and a lawsuit in the UK against us would be meaningless, but we requested that the lawsuit threat be removed, and the person not only refused, but suggested the plan was to move forward. When we suggested that such a lawsuit would certainly publicize both the ridiculousness of UK libel laws and how this particular person responded to a random anonymous comment from someone on a blog page, we were told that we were being "bullies" for mentioning that such a lawsuit might look bad for the person. I find it odd that someone who threatens to sue us would then call us a bully for suggesting why such a lawsuit might backfire. Isn't the bullying in threatening a lawsuit?

And, thus, we are left with serious consequences. We've discussed how these sorts of ridiculous libel cases in the UK are creating serious chilling effects for lots of people, and more and more folks are coming forward to point out that the UK really needs to change its laws. The latest is UK comic Dara O'Briain who is sounding the alarm against this "ridiculous system" which almost everyone has recognized is creating "libel tourism."

"The libel laws which were initially set up to protect the reputation of individuals at a time when companies weren't the entities they are now are being used by companies to essentially quash dissent and to destroy criticism.

"That's a major problem. Companies can basically bully people out of saying bad things about their products and services."

The good news is that these comments came at the launch of a campaign to reform the UK's defamation laws to fix its backwards system, which is based on a different time. Hopefully the campaign moves forward quickly -- and with any luck, the threatened lawsuit against us does not become an exhibit they can use in how ridiculous these laws have become.

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Ch_Omega writes "According to this article over at BarentsObserver, the giant spiral seen on the sky over Norway Wednesday morning local time has been confirmed to be the result of a failed Russian missile launch. Russia now confirms that '...the missile was launched from submerged position in the White Sea by the nuclear submarine Dmitri Donskoy. Studies of the telemetric data from the launch show that the two first stages of the missile functioned as they should, and that a technical malfunctioning occurred during the third stage.' There is also an article on this at The Daily Mail."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An epic bromance. "It became a very brotherly relationship. There was a feeling that Blackwater eventually became an extension of the agency." —Former top CIA officer, on revelations that the private security firm now known as "Xe" had deeper ties to America's spy agency than previously known. Services included clandestine raids and secret transport of detainees.

Amazing gallery of cans turned to cars!

Meet Sandy Sanderson from New Zealand. Needing something to keep himself occupied after breaking his wrist in a motorcycle accident, he started building amazing model cars from discarded aluminum cans.

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Reader harbingerofdoom sends in the news that video game developer Capcom has commissioned the creation of a "very limited run" of real motorcycles based on the chopper in the game Resident Evil. As harbinger notes with his submission, this is quite a "reason to buy," in that he'd gladly pay $25,000 for a copy of Resident Evil if it came with one of these...

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More spawn behaving badly! Walt Disney's grandson busted for gun possession. You can't own guns in California if you are a felon, and reports say he is a felon (though no reports have specified what flavor).

Police report that Alfonso Frank Frazetta (above) was caught red handed stealing 90 of his famous father's paintings. They said he and an accomplice had broken into the Frank Frazetta museum in rural Pennsylvania and were loading the paintings, worth $20 million, into a trailer.

Alfonso, 52, told the police his father had instructed him to "enter the museum by any means necessary to move all the paintings to a storage facility." But Frazetta, who is 81 and was in Florida at the time of the alleged theft said he did not give his son permission to remove the paintings from the museum. (Thanks, Antinous!)

Tons of snowboards are made in giant factories abroad by people who never snowboard. There are some fine exceptions, though, like my all-time favorite, Lib Technologies, based in Washington, and Signal Snowboards in California. Both offer boards handmade in the United States by snowboarders. Transworld Snowboarding is posting a 2-part series of videos featuring Signal owner/founder Dave Lee taking you on a tour of the factory and showing how they hand-make their snowboards. Check out Part 1:

Wanna take it to the next level and transform an existing snowboard into a backcountry splitboard? Check out Damien Scogin's DIY in MAKE Volume 20 and get your build on.

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Michael Scott points us to an interesting essay on piracy in the ebook space, written by Mike Shatzkin. He talks about setting up the program for the upcoming Digital Book World event, where he didn't even think that "piracy" was a topic worth discussing -- but various publishers told him that it's a big issue to them. Unfortunately, it seems that the reason it's a big issue is not because they're learning to use such things to their advantage, but because they have taken the exact wrong lessons from the music industry and have decided they need technological measures to "fight" piracy. Good luck with that.

Shatzkin, however, lays out a much more reasonable approach, picking up on what O'Reilly does with its books: no DRM, but give people a real reason to buy (there's that concept again). In this case, it's regular updates to any book you buy. So, rather than thinking about it as buying the content of the book, you can think about it as paying for a regular update on a particular topic. It becomes an ongoing service, which provides a scarce good, rather than a single transaction for content. As such, "piracy" becomes less and less of an issue, because the content you get may be quite out of date, and give you reason to pay up for real to make sure you are regularly up-to-date.

But, of course, O'Reilly publishes (wonderful and useful) technology books, where there's an obvious advantage to keeping current and up-to-date for readers of those books. The question is whether or not similar things can be done for other types of books, and Shatzkin has some ideas that are intriguing. First he quotes Tim O'Reilly in suggesting that piracy might really only impact large well-known authors who don't need the "marketing" aspect of free books (as opposed to less well-known authors, for whom "obscurity is a bigger threat than piracy"). But, then he notes that perhaps those big name authors can create a "service" of sorts that competes nicely with unauthorized file sharing as well:

But those authors are also the ones who have the biggest personal followings. They are the most capable of adding material: notes about what they're working on, correspondence with fans or critics, even observations about other people's books, that would add some value for many of the readers of their stories. In fact, a regular "update to my readers" from a top-flight author that is available only in their ebooks, or to purchasers of their ebooks, would be an attraction to many and could serve as a constant reminder that downloading their books from illegitimate sources is cheating them.

It's an interesting idea, and I like the proactive thinking on ways to compete by allowing something that isn't really possible in the paper book format. Though, I'm not sure if this method works precisely. After all, we already have the example of Paulo Coehlo, one of the best-selling authors of all time, who purposely "pirated" his own book and saw his sales increase tremendously. On top of that, he is already doing many of the things that Shatzkin suggests, but for free on his own website -- and it's working wonders. It's building up a much more loyal following for Coelho, and is allowing him to run interesting experiments like having his fans make a movie out of one of his books. All of this has only opened up more opportunities for Coelho to make money by both building his overall audience while also making his fans ever more loyal and ever more interested in supporting him.

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An Anonymous Reader writes "The long-time Linux kernel module for block replication over TCP, DRBD, has been accepted as part of the main Linux kernel. Amid much fanfare and some slight controversy, Linus has pulled the DRBD source into the 2.6.33 tree, expected to release February, 2010. DRBD has existed as open source and available in major distros for 10 years, but lived outside the main kernel tree in the hands of LINBIT, based in Vienna. Being accepted into the main kernel tree means better cooperation and wider user accessibility to HA data replication."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MAKE subscriber and prolific robot-builder Steve Norris writes in to share his latest creation, the CoolerBot. Unlike most of the telepresence devices we see, this one is designed to be used outdoors, and sports solar panels to help keep it charged up. Steve claims that it's primary purpose is wildlife photography, but from the looks of that rabbit I think it might be more fun to drive it around and startle them.

I like the use of readily obtainable building materials such as PVC pipe and a cooler, and the camouflage finishing work. Now I wish I had a backyard to drive it around in!

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What a wild few weeks for open source hardware and for small businesses, check out this report from Inuit... It's called the "Intuit Future of Small Business Report - Hobbypreneurs". They outline the maker movement and talk about many maker companies...

Today’s passion-driven hobbyists are tomorrow’s entrepreneurs – otherwise known as hobbypreneurs, who successfully combine their passion for a particular hobby or craft with pragmatic business smarts to create new revenue streams for themselves and their families. Intuit today released the latest findings from the Intuit Future of Small Business Report series, written by Emergent Research, that focus on the “Maker” movement and the reasons that hobbypreneurs mean business. The report includes perspectives and data from a recent Maker Faire, where hobbyists identified their motives and reasons for starting their own small business.

Here's a direct link to the PDF.

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This one came out about a month ago, and I'd been ignoring writing about it because it was too frustrating (even though we wrote about the case earlier). But people keep submitting it, so we might as well dig in. This particular case involves Bridgeport Music, a company that claims to own a bunch of composition copyrights, including (most importantly) those of many songs by funk legend George Clinton -- though, Clinton himself claims that the guy behind Bridgeport forged signatures to get the copyrights, and Clinton himself doesn't have a problem with hip hop artists sampling his music. However, Bridgeport has filed hundreds of lawsuits over these copyrights, and while it has lost or settled a bunch of cases, it has had a few stunning and confusing victories that seem to ignore the concept of fair use in music.

This particular case involved a song by the band Public Appearance, called "D.O.G. in Me" that apparently samples a part of Clinton's track "Atomic Dog" and uses the phrase "bow wow wow yippee yo, yippee yay" near a rhythmic repetition of the word "dog." Now, for the most part, the two songs are incredibly different, and at most you could consider the latter one to be an homage to the first -- most likely creating more interest in the original song. However, a jury (with limited instructions in the matter of fair use) ruled for Bridgeport. And while we found it amusing that Universal Music suddenly is concerned about fair use and how high the penalties for copyright infringement are when they're suddenly on the other side in Bridgeport cases, we were happy to see Universal Music appeal the ruling.

Unfortunately, however, the same 6th Circuit that gave Bridgeport its earlier ridiculous win has done so again in this case, with a rather bizarre interpretation of the four factors of fair use. To be honest, I can't see how any of the four factors used in judging fair use would go against Universal or Public Appearance. It used a tiny part of the song, and even if it was an important part of the song, it hardly harms the market for the song. Furthermore, the claim that the use of the word "dog" is part of the infringement is absolutely ridiculous, not the least of which is because Bridgeport only owns the copyright on the composition, not the recording -- and the sheet music for the song doesn't even include the rhythmic use of the word "dog."

Unfortunately, this is yet another dreadful ruling that basically eliminates fair use rights when it comes to music sampling.

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