Hackajar writes "Have you ever caught yourself running for the volume control when a TV commercial comes on? Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA) has, and is submitting legislation that would require TV commercials in the US to stay at volume levels similar to the programming they are associated with. From the article: 'Right now, the government doesn't have much say in the volume of TV ads. It's been getting complaints ever since televisions began proliferating in the 1950s. But the FCC concluded in 1984 there was no fair way to write regulations controlling the "apparent loudness" of commercials.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've posted previously about new drugs on the horizon that could enable bad memories to be selectively "erased." Now, researchers at New York University have developed a non-invasive method to take the pain out of fearful memories. The scientists determined that fear memories can be reactivated and updated with "safe" information. Later, those memories can be recalled without a fear response. The team reported their results in the new issue of the journal Nature. From NYU:

The experiment was conducted over three days: the memory was formed in the first day, rewritten on the second day, and tested for fear on the third day. However, to examine how enduring this effect is, a portion of the participants was tested again about a year later. Even after this period of time, the fear memory did not return in those subjects who had extinction during the reconsolidation window. These results suggest that the old fear memory was changed from its original form and that this change persists over time...

"Our research suggests that during the lifetime of a memory there are windows of opportunity where it becomes susceptible to be permanently changed," said (post-doctoral fellow Daniela) Schiller. "By understanding the dynamics of memory we might, in the long run, open new avenues of treatment for disorders that involve abnormal emotional memories."

"NYU Researchers Develop Non-Invasive Technique to Rewrite Fear Memories"

Amsterdam-based painter Femke Hiemstra has a new show of paintings at Seattle's Roq La Rue Gallery. Seen above, "Death Of A Ghost." The show, titled "Bonjour, Dachshund!," is hanging alongside work by Junko Mizuno. From Roq La Rue:

Femke Hiemstra’s meticulously tight, jewel like mixed media paintings and exquisitely rendered black and white drawings are homes to a dark fairytale land where inanimate objects come to life and frolic with animal neighbors. Lollipops become ship captains, strawberries become giant wrestlers, and vegetables become Halloween gods with lantern eyes. Femke occasionally uses typography in her work, using words from various languages and letters in her paintings to further enhance the narrative while still retaining a playful sense of mystery, or as a visual device to frame in the scenery, as if you were looking at her world through a secret window. She also uses found objects to paint on, such as boxes and wrappers, to create imaginary products with magical properties.

Femke Hiemstra and Junko Mizuno at Roq La Rue

One of the major reasons why Blu-ray is still struggling to catch on (despite winning the long drawn out victory over competing format HD-DVD) is that you're extremely limited in what you can do with Blu-ray content. In an era when people are used to being able to move content and time- and place-shift it at will, Blu-ray is quite limiting. This has become a growing concern to those in Hollywood who thought Blu-ray was going to be its savior. Unfortunately, the response is being equally bungled by Hollywood. The key concept is the idea of "managed copies," which (in theory) will let users make limited DRM'd copies for time- and place-shifting.

Of course, that assumes that the offering actually works. And right now it's nearly impossible to tell. Jerry Leichter alerts us to a story of one small studio that's trying to implement "managed copy" offerings and is finding it to be nearly impossible. The instructions on how to do it are not at all clear, and the studio is not getting much in the way of help from those behind the standard. Furthermore, there's simply no way to test to see if they're doing it right, since there's no equipment that can handle managed copies yet. And this is from a studio, Scenic Labs, that believes DRM is pointless and "piracy is going to happen." So why is it even bothering? It basically has no choice. If you're creating commercial Blu-ray discs, this is the only option you get: it must include this poorly documented DRM if you want to offer a copyable version.

Of course, there is one alternative. As the head of the studio notes, if they screwed up the process, they have no interest in remastering the discs, so they'll just ask buyers to send a cameraphone photo of the purchased DVD, and they'll send them a digital file over the internet.

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Flickr user arms22 came up with this little "hack" to add at-a-glance color-coding to the resistor chart in his Maker's Notebook. You could also just do neater colored squares, or outline the boxes for each color name, so you wouldn't have to color in the entire row.

arms22's photostream

More:
Maker's Notebook homepage

In the Maker Shed:


Pick up The Maker's Notebook ($19.99) for all your big ideas, diagrams, patterns, etc. Exclusive to the Maker Shed: Sticker sheets and a band closure to customize your book.

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Warning: This video contains footage of an octopus hiding under a coconut shell that it has carried around just in case it needed to hide from something. Watching this footage may contradict your previous assumptions about animal tool use, and may be too adorable for some viewers.

National Geographic: Octopuses Carry Coconut Shells as Instant Shelters

TaggartAleslayer writes with this excerpt from the NYTimes: "The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether a police department violated the constitutional privacy rights of an employee when it inspected personal text messages sent and received on a government pager. The case opens 'a new frontier in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,' according to a three-judge panel of an appeals court that ruled in favor of the employee, a police sergeant on the Ontario, Calif., SWAT team. ... Members of the department's SWAT team were given pagers and told they were responsible for charges in excess of 25,000 characters a month. Under an informal policy adopted by a police lieutenant, those who paid the excess charges themselves would not have their messages inspected. The lieutenant eventually changed his mind and ordered transcripts of messages sent and received by Sgt. Jeff Quon. In one month in 2002, only 57 of more than 456 of those messages were related to official business. According to the trial judge, many of the messages 'were, to say the least, sexually explicit in nature.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I am informed that exactly four years has passed since the brilliant Kottke wrote: 'Google search for "i don't read kottke" versus a search for "i don't read boing boing". Nottke** wins, 39 to 37! Sit on it, Cory!' Well, it would now appear that Kottke is the one who must be seated!

Over the years we've certainly grown a lot, and so, we have lots of new readers and we get a ton of stories submitted -- which is great -- but I wanted to run a quick post reminding people that the best way to submit a story is to use the story submission page. This makes it easy to track, manage and format story submissions. It is, by far, the best way to submit a story. Also, when submitting a story, please make sure to include a title (preferably a descriptive one). It also helps to give a brief description of the story and why you think it's interesting -- or, if you're ambitious, feel free to write a thorough analysis yourself. Submissions with no title, or just links often get ignored in the pile. If something is particularly urgent, alerting us via a message directed at our Twitter account can work as well, but there's a lot of noise there, and sometimes stories get lost, so use the submission page as well. We're thrilled that so many people want to help out and participate in the community here, so thanks to our fans for all those great story submissions. These days, we get probably three times as many good story submissions as we can write up, so we apologize if we don't cover everything sent in, but the quality of story submissions has grown quite a bit in the last few years, and it helps keep this site dynamic and interesting -- so thanks to everyone for pitching in.

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eldavojohn writes "The Software Freedom Law Center has filed a lawsuit accusing fourteen companies, including Best Buy, Samsung and Westinghouse, of violating the GPL in nearly 20 separate products. This is similar to earlier BusyBox GPL suits. The commercial uses of BusyBox must be much more prolific than anyone could have imagined. Having dealt with hundreds of compliance problems and finding an average of one violation per day, the SFLC recommends one thing: be responsive to their requests (they try to settle things in private first) lest you find one of these (PDF) in your inbox."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

They should start using it in their own products.

For example, Google Maps has the ability to generate a link to the map you're viewing, suitable for sharing with others. But the URL is a monster mess. Why not make it short?

I first suggested this in November 2007.

Also: It's about time Twitter put the fork in URL shorteners for good and transported links as metadata of the tweet, as they do for geo data, the post time, etc. Why are they sacrificing the stability of the web to keep bit.ly alive. I still don't get it.

An "Advent wreath" is a horizontal wreath, traditionally with four candles which are lit successively to mark each of the four weeks of Advent in the liturgical calendar of some western-tradition Christian churches. Alexander Weber has produced an elegant little electronic version that uses 4 LEDs, a coin cell, a coin cell holder, a paperclip, and an 8-bit microcontroller chip. It is light-responsive, and uses one of the LEDs in "reverse" mode as a photodiode to detect darkness. The LEDs flicker, and the number of LEDs lit at any point is cycled by briefly cutting the power. Awesome design.

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likuidkewl writes "Two super-earths, 5 and 7.5 times the size of our home, were found to be orbiting 61 Virginis a mere 28 light years away. 'These detections indicate that low-mass planets are quite common around nearby stars. The discovery of potentially habitable nearby worlds may be just a few years away,' said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC. Among hundreds of our nearest stellar neighbors, 61 Vir stands out as being the most nearly similar to the Sun in terms of age, mass, and other essential properties."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Swinz built a rather convincing elevator-style control panel just for the heck of it -

I've recently completed a device that I've been idly threatening to make for years. This is a device that has no purpose other than entertainment, and it's fairly limited in that regard too. It was fun building it, and it was a great arduino and electronics learning project for me.

Still, it could be a great prop for a short film. More infos on his project blog.

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mr_sifter writes "PC gamers love to obsess over whether PC gaming is dying, but bit-tech thinks it's time to look at the other side and examine if console gaming is really as secure as publishers would have us believe. All three console manufacturers suffered from the recession — this year, Sony announced its first net loss in 14 years; a stunning ¥989.9bn, which includes record losses of ¥58.5bn in its gaming sector. Microsoft also announced its first loss since it went public in 1986 in the second quarter of this financial year, with a $31 million US loss coming straight from the Entertainment and Devices division, which is responsible for the Xbox 360. Not even Nintendo has escaped the financial plague either, with sales of the Wii dropping by 67 percent in the US, 60 percent in Japan and 47 percent in the rest of the world. In addition to reduced profitability, casual games and the rise of the iPhone further suggest the current model is not invulnerable."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

T Campbell sez, "The last word in Marvel/Disney satirical mashups. 50+ characters attempt corporate synergy, with hilarious results."

"Epic Misney" by T Campbell and John Waltrip (Thanks, T!)

Wonderful article by Natalie Downe on using CSS3 transitions and transforms. Excellent and appropriate examples.

Great interview with the multi-talented Scott Hansen, aka ISO50. Several things resonated with me here, including: “I am not sure that I understood what graphic design was at the time, but looking back I think I was practicing it early on”. I think the same thing happened early on for me as well. I was always aware of branding, graphic design, etc. Just never applied myself to it until later in life (and really, because of the web).

Laura Lundquist, 98, was indicted on a murder charge for allegedly suffocating and killing her nursing home roommate, Elizabeth Barrow, age 100. Lundquist, who apparently has dementia, was angry because Barrow was "taking over the room." From The Telegraph:

She is believed to be the oldest murder defendant in the history of Massachusetts but might never go to trial because of her mental health issues...

Miss Barrow's son, Scott Barrow, has said Lundquist complained to nursing home officials about the number of visitors his mother received. He also has said Lundquist had made "threatening" and "harassing" remarks to her.

The two women had been room-mates for about a year. Scott Barrow has said he asked nursing home officials to separate the women, but they assured him the two were getting along.

In a statement, the nursing home said the room-mates acted like sisters, walked and ate lunch together daily and said, "Goodnight, I love you," to each other every night.

"Woman, 98, accused of killing 100-year-old room-mate" (via Fortean Times)

The Big Picture’s annual roundup for the year. Part 1 of 3. Naturually, there are some incredible captures.

Spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool:

This curious wire bending rig, built by Dorkbot Bristol members David Henshall and John Honniball, was reportedly seen designing unique snow flakes to the delight of visitors at the unCraftivism art show this past weekend. Utilizing a simple DC gearmotor and servo, the machine appears to be an experiment in generative manipulated wire forming:

Machine Craft Experiment: Generative Manipulated Wire Forming to make unique snow flakes

Machine processes are commonly additive or subtractive, while manipulating materials is more commonly associated with hand crafts such as weaving or basket making.

This experiment is intended to explore the boundaries between open source methods of working using the Arduino platform, machine production and craft.

The software generates unique shapes each time it makes an object, this is formed by bending the wire to produce a decorative object. The intention is to suggest that machine made objects can acquire a sense of producing machine craft rather than machine production.

I think that it is a great use of simple physical parts to fabricate complex shapes. In a mechanically similar but conceptually different direction, does anyone want to make one that bends line charts for a real-time, physical display?

[Photo by David Henshall]

Update: Video added, thanks Richard and Anonymous!

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Gina Chen has written up a fascinating column on her reaction to Nielsen's decision to give up on Editor & Publisher, where she makes a point that I think many people may agree with implicitly, without even realizing it. And, it's a point that any publication that is thinking about putting up a paywall needs to consider. It's that, these days, with the wealth of information available online, subscribing to one publications almost feels like you're limiting yourself. Obviously, that's not directly true. You still have access to those others, but the act of making such a commitment to a single source does have a mental notation suggesting that you need to spend time with that source, at the expense of others:

The truth is, for me, not subscribing -- either in print or online -- has little to do with money. It's about commitment. And I think that's the problem many news organizations are facing as they try to bring their products online.

In the old days, I paid for E&P because if I didn't, I'd have no idea what was going on in the industry. I wasn't paying for news; I was paying for the chance to be in the know in my field.

Things changed with the web. Now, if I choose one magazine to subscribe to out of myriad sources, it feels like I'm limiting my options in a way. I don't want to commit to one publication, one source, one newspaper, one magazine. Why? Because the publication has become less important than the news itself. I want to be free to surf, reading dozens of different newspapers, blogs or magazines that I may visit just once or twice. I enjoy the synchronicity of happening upon a publication I have never heard of and will probably never visit again.

This is, in many ways, related to the concept that rather than finding news, for more and more people, the news finds them. Committing to a single publication, or a small group of publications does feel limiting. Now, some people will obviously disagree, but the more familiar you become with reading multiple sources on the web, the less and less it feels sensible to pay for a limited subset of them. And, even if you don't find that to be true for yourself, the fact is that more and more people do feel that way -- and for anyone trying to build a business model based on getting subscribers, they may find that to be quite difficult for this very reason. It's asking for commitment to a single source in an age where sources are abundant. That commitment is costly not just in money (which might not be very costly) but in the mental commitment needed. For a very large number of people, that commitment is way too costly, no matter what the monetary price.

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Here's NajMeTender playing ukulele version of "Pokerface." She says, "In my head I'm constantly thinking that the song is called Pokéface and honestly it'd be much better if it was." (Thanks, Gever!)

Dinotopia artist James Gurney posted this video about a "change blindness" experiment. 75% of the participants didn't notice that the experimenter who bent under a counter was replaced by a different person. Says Gurney: "Here's proof that most of the time we look but don't see." I think Matisse said something to the effect that he didn't really see things unless he was painting them.

A quick housekeeping note: We have improved the biography field in your profile, which now permits biographies to be longer than 30 words or so. We have also taken the liberty of accidentally wiping your old bios. Sorry about that. No, profile pictures do not yet work. Shut up.

Trailrunner7 writes "It's been about seven months since Obama announced his plan to hire a cybersecurity coordinator, and the job is still vacant. Several prominent security experts have turned the position down, and in an interview on Threatpost, Purdue professor Gene Spafford says that the position is pointless. 'It won't have any statutory authority. It won't have any budgetary authority. That does not give it much authority of any kind. So when I hear that there are supposedly people who have been interviewed for this cyber coordinator job and didn't take it, I'm not surprised. It's not a winning position. I'm not at all surprised by the fact that it's empty. That position is a blame-taking position,' Spafford said."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael Gruber's The Forgery of Venus combines art history, criminal mischief, and the sleaziness of the contemporary art gallery business to deliver a terrifically fun thriller-esque novel.

The main character, Chaz Wilmot, is an extremely talented but frustrated and depressed magazine illustrator. For no special reason, he volunteers as a human guinea pig in a medical research study to test the effects of Salvia divinorum, a powerful, short-duration psychedelic drug that causes him to imagine he's living the life of Velásquez, the famous 17th century Spanish painter. These episodes cause all sorts of problems in his real life, and when he wakes up one morning in a strange apartment and discovers that he is actually a successful gallery artist, he flips out and lands in a mental ward.

When he's released (and learns that he's back to being the hack illustrator he started out as) Wilmot is eager to clear his head by taking on a lucrative commission to restore the fresco on the ceiling of an Italian mobster's palazzo. Here, he meets a sleazy German art dealer who specializes in paintings plundered by the Nazis in World War II. The dealer gives him an offer he can't refuse: to forge an "undiscovered" Velásquez painting. When he accepts, the strange events that have been happening to him intensify, and he finds himself wonder whether he's completely crazy or if powerful characters behind the curtain are pulling strings.

This is the kind of book that could easily become ludicrous and boring if it had been written by an author less talented than Gruber. His richly developed characters and engaging prose keep the story crisp and believable. The ending is satisfying, too, which is important to me. As soon as I finished the The Forgery of Venus I got started on another one of his novels, The Book of Air and Shadows, which is great so far, as well.

The Forgery of Venus, by Michael Gruber

This short BBC video explains how Ukichiro Nakaya, a mid-20th century scientist in Hokkaido, Japan, created the first artificial snowflake in his lab. It was 1933, and he did it by building a chamber with adjustable temperature, air pressure, and humidity that could mimic the weather condition in clouds that produce snow.

[via Neatorama]

Some people in Verona, Italy are up in arms about a nativity scene at their local courthouse in which Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are depicted as dark-skinned people. Interestingly, it was chief public prosecutor Mario Giulio Schinaia's idea to do this based on historical evidence that baby Jesus was in fact likely to have had darker skin.

Verona has strong links to the Northern League party, a political entity allied with PM Silvio Burlusconi that is strongly anti-immigration — the League is in the midst of a two-month initiative, called White Christmas, in which they hope to "ferret out foreigners without proper permits in Coccaglio, a small League-led town east of Milan". They've also advocated for separate buses and trains for immigrants, banning new mosques, and getting rid of all Chinese and kebab restaurants in the towns where they have the most influence.

Image via howieluvzus' Flickr

Remember the "chicken man" cover of the cheesy 90s anthem What is Love which was blogged here last week? We now know his name: James Bowers, from the Melbourne-based group, "Dudes With Trowels." More at Synthtube.

bhagwad writes "The Delhi High Court has found Microsoft guilty of using money and influence to make it expensive to defend against piracy cases. According to the judge, 'When the constitution of India provides equality before law, this equality has to be all pervasive and cannot be allowed to be diluted because of money power or lobbying power.' Furthermore, the judge said that Microsoft had to deposit a certain amount of money beforehand, and, if they lost the case, the money would go to the defendants for their legal and travel expenses. For icing on the cake, the court also appointed a commissioner to probe the matter further and ordered Microsoft to pay the costs. In an age where muscled corporations harass the ordinary person through expensive litigation, it's highly pleasurable to see them rapped for it by a judge."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We're delighted to offer an HP Envy 15 laptop, priced $1,800 and up in stores, to one talented reader. The Envy 15 (about which you can read more at HP's website) has a 15.6" LED-backlit 1920x1080 display, 6GB of RAM, 500GB hard drive, an Intel Core i7 processor and an ATI Mobility 4830 video card with 1GB of dedicated RAM. It comes with Windows 7 Pro 64-bit installed. There are more pics here. So, what do you have to do to win it? Re-write a scene from one classic book in the incongruous literary style of another. Winner to be announced this friday, so get cracking. (Only registered commenters are eligible, obviously.)

Another crazy cut-up video creation from Joe Sabia. "Featuring over 100 countries in 100 Movies with YouTube subtitles." Tip: you have to click the little "CC" (closed captioned) button in the embedded player to see the subtitles.

Playing card constructions

By George Hart

At The Math Museum, we think it's important to challenge oneself with mind-expanding tasks. Here are two rather challenging constructions which look simple, but may stymie you for hours. When you're done, you'll have something unique to show your friends. The ball at left is made of thirty cards; the one on the right uses sixty. Two decks of cards, a pencil, and a pair of scissors are all that's necessary. Because of the tricky interlocking pattern, they hold together without tape or glue. If you want to polish your maker skills, try slicing up two decks of cards using these templates, then just slide them together.

Detailed directions and mathematical background are available here. Francesco de Comite has taken this idea and gone wild with it, rendering many other possible patterns here. Most have not yet been built, so you can be the first to make them! [Editor's note: If you do, post them to the MAKE Flickr pool and post the link below!]

More:
Math Monday: Mathematically-correct breakfast

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Yet again, we're learning how when the Olympics come to town, your free speech rights apparently disappear. Rob Hyndman sends over the news that a Vancouver art gallery was ordered to remove a mural, because it was viewed as being anti-Olympics. The Olympics, of course, comes to Vancouver in a few months. The mural in question showed five rings, in the usual Olympic pattern, with four of the rings showing a frown face, and the fifth showing a smiley. The mural was hanging outside of the gallery, so the city claims the order to take it down came due to local graffiti laws -- though the gallery says in 10 years, this is the first mural it had to take down. In fact, when the landlord was told to remove the graffiti, he called the city back to ask what graffiti since he didn't see any and assumed the mural was fine, given the history of murals hung there. And, of course, there's already concern over a special law -- passed just for the Olympics -- that gives law enforcement the right to remove signage that they don't like.

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Prostitution has long been legal in some parts of Nevada. But, until recently, that freedom only applied to sex workers who had the right parts themselves: Language in health codes required all prostitutes to have regular cervical exams, effectively making male prostitution illegal. Last Friday, that changed. Nevada brothels can now employ both men and women. (Via Salon.com's Broadsheet.)

Luke has no name writes "Yesterday we discussed MySQL founder Monty Widenius's objections to the acquisition of MySQL by Oracle. Today, Oracle released a statement to address some of these issues. Among their commitments, Oracle says they intend to continue releasing MySQL under the GPL, allow vendors to produce 'any-license' third-party engines, maintain the Reference Manual, invest millions into the product, and create a 'customer advisory board.' The pledges are still not enough for some, however."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apparently it's Soft Circuit Monday here at MAKE (coindidentally), so here's another one: the LED kimono is by composer and performance artist Miya Masaoka and has 444 LEDs on the kimono sleeve which display animations. [via Fashioning Technology]

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We've already discussed the research on the UK music industry that shows both that live revenue is more than making up the decline in recorded revenue and that musicians themselves are making more revenue than ever before. Some people have suggested that this is a UK-only phenomenon, but a worldwide study found the same thing as well. And, now it looks like the same is being found in Sweden as well -- home of The Pirate Bay, which we keep being told is destroying the industry. Swedish indie record label owner Martin sends in the news on data from the Swedish music industry, which looks quite similar to the UK data. First, it shows that while there was a tiny dip in overall revenue, it's back up to being close to it's high, mostly because of a big growth in live music:
Chart by Daniel Johansson

Basically, recorded revenues dropped. Collections stayed about the same, but live grew. More importantly, though, is the second chart, which shows the revenue for actual musicians. And that's going in one direction: up.
Chart by Daniel Johansson

And yet, The Pirate Bay is destroying the ability to make music, right? Funny that the numbers don't seem to support that at all. Basically, these charts are showing the same thing that those other studies have shown. More music is being created. There is greater "discovery" of new music. There are greater revenue opportunities for musicians, and the only part of the business that appears to be suffering is the part that involves selling plastic discs. Yes, that sucks if your business was based on selling plastic discs, but for those who can adapt and adjust, there is more money than ever before to be made. That sorta goes against the claims that "piracy" is somehow destroying the industry, doesn't it?

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blackbearnh writes "As previously reported on Slashdot, PayPal recently released a series of new APIs that allow developers to embed PayPal into their web sites and applications without requiring the user to go to the PayPal web site to complete the transaction. To encourage developers to use these new APIs, PayPal is offering two prizes totaling $150,000 for interesting new applications. The entry deadline to register ideas is December 16th, and O'Reilly has an interview with the director of the PayPal Developer Network that covers the details of the contest. In it, Naveed Anwar talks about why PayPal is throwing money at developers. 'When Facebook opened up their platform, it allowed people to work in that particular environment, in the Facebook environment. When the iPhone opened up their platform, they allowed people to work in their environment which was build the applications on the iPhone. When PayPal was looking at opening up its platform, we are not limited by one particular area. We go into the enterprises. We go into social networking. We go into all the places where payment as a solution is needed. And if we can actually reduce that barrier of entry — because at the end of the day, when anyone is building out a business and anyone is building out an application, they're looking at ways of monetizing it.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael Bay himself would have been proud of this customized boy racer I spotted last night, here in Guatemala. I counted a dozen Transformers logos pasted all over this cheesy masterpiece! The piece de resistance has gotta be that additional tiny Decepticon decal on the fake intake. Truly a thing of lowbrow beauty, que no? More iPhone snaps after the jump.

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swsuehr writes "The Book of Xen: A Practical Guide for the System Administrator provides an excellent resource for learning about Xen virtualization. I frequently need to create test environments for examples that appear in various books and magazine articles (in the interest of full disclosure, I've never written for the publisher of this book). In the days before virtualization that meant finding and piecing together hardware. Like many readers, I've been using virtualization in one form or another for several years, including Xen. This book would've saved hours searching around the web looking for tidbits of information and sifting through what works and doesn't work in setting up Xen environments. The authors have done the sifting for me within the ~250 pages of the book. But far beyond, the authors also convey their experience with Xen using walkthroughs, tips, and recommendations for Xen in the real world." Read on for the rest of Steve's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's a fun looking project by Eli Skipp of Pumping Station One. Taking a departure from the permanency of traditional soft circuit crafting, she designed this customizable fabric light bright. To set up a display, you simply stick pre-bent LEDs where you want them, and they light up! The positive connection comes from the conductive thread strips on the front, and the ground gets connected to a conductive fabric strip on the back. The design just makes a static display for now, however with a bit of tweaking, it would be possible to support animations as well.

[photo by Anne Petersen]

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A book called Crazy Wacky Theme Restaurants: Japan landed in my mailbox a couple of months ago. It's a beautifully-designed volume full of photos and essays chronicling author La Carmina's journey into the world of fetish restaurants in Japan. Carmina, who is from Vancouver, has a Gothic-Lolita Japanese fashion blog, and when she goes out, she wears Japanese street style-inspired attire.  She writes about Japan because she is "fascinated" by the culture.  "I can't pinpoint exactly what it is," she tells me over the phone from her book tour. "There's something very fresh and westernized about Japanese design. It's a certain sensibility." 

Carmina's not the only one who feels this way — obsession with Japanese culture is everywhere. I didn't realize just how big it was until I became an intern at Wired four years ago. On my first day there, an editor asked me to write textbook graffiti in kanji for the September issue's Japanese School Girl Watch section. 

The simple fact that I'm Japanese quickly became one of my greatest advantages as an aspiring writer. I started paying attention to my motherland as a repository of story ideas. I looked at things differently when I went back home, honed my story-finding skills, and launched my own blog, TokyoMango. I got major Japan-related assignments from magazines, consulting gigs from print and radio outlets, and a book deal. It was really strange for me, because all I thought I was doing was telling people about the place I came from. One thing was clear: Weird Japan sells. It's an almost guaranteed success for book publishers and major traffic bait for blogs.

But writing about my own country's quirks has its downside. I strive to tell each story objectively without condescension or sensationalism, but every time I write an article about, say, the engineer who has a body pillow girlfriend or the grad student who married a Nintendo DS character, I get hundreds of racially-charged comments from readers, long ranting responses from defenders of Japanese culture, and dozens of emails from people at big media outlets who want to find out more about these "strange" phenomena.

Why do so many love to gawk at this mysterious, foreign "other" that is Japanese culture? There are plenty of strange things going on in the US too, but when it happens in Japan, it's suddenly incomprehensible, despicable, awesome, and crazy. This fascination doesn't just end with angry commenters, either. Over the last couple of decades, it has spawned a huge industry of magazines, blogs, and products themed around Japanese culture marketed to Westerners by Westerners who are also obsessed with Japanese culture.

My friend Joi Ito and I talk about this a lot. He, like me, is Japanese and was brought up with both American and Japanese influences. This question resonates not only with the work that we do, but with our personal identities. While we do our fair share of sitting around analyzing Japanese culture, it's also deeply personal to us when someone criticizes our country or our opinions of it.

One big reason for the global obsession may be that Japanese culture is like an altered, offbeat version of American culture. The Japanese schoolgirl uniform "sailor fuku" is adapted from American sailor uniforms, for example, and the whole maid cafe phenomenon takes its origins from French maids. Everyone can relate to anime at least a little bit, because all of us grew up with some cartoon influence in our lives.

"Americans in particular like Japanese culture because it is eerily close to their own -- with just a few tweaks," W. David Marx, CNNGo's Tokyo city editor and an American living in Japan, says over email.

"Japan often feels like a hyperextended high-tech version of 1950s America — frozen gender roles, mass culture incapable of controversy or antisocial sentiments, an entertainment world run by the mob. Japan is basically the Jetsons. We don't have to take it seriously, but we are entertained."

Japan also has one of the biggest consumer markets outside of the US, and it's a relatively safe place to fetishize.

"A lot of the sick stuff is on the surface, but it's not threatening," Ito says. "Nobody will beat you up. You can't fetishize about the Muslim Brotherhood; that would be dangerous."

Overriding all this Japanalysis, though, is the fact that none of this is meant to be taken seriously. One important premise of Japanese popular culture is the commitment to have fun and not take offense. Japanese humor works on many different levels and its nuances can be hard to explain to people who didn't grow up with it.

If you're one of those people who watched our wedding video between the man and his DS girlfriend and said things like: "He's such a loser" "He takes it too seriously LOL" and "God help this poor soul" — not to mention the racist comments about Japs and nukes and one-inch dicks — you just don't get it. You're not in on the joke. You're the one taking it too seriously, and you might be imposing your own biases and hang-ups on someone else's situation.

Being majime (too serious) is not cool in Japan; likewise it is important for voyeurs of Japanese culture to recognize that most everything pop-culture-y that is exported to the West comes at us with a wink. If you're all up in arms about it, then maybe the joke is on you.

On the outside, guys like Sal9000 (the guy who married his DS girlfriend) and Nisan (the guy with the body pillow girlfriend) may seem "weird" or "crazy." But they've really just found creative ways to toy with amorphous concepts like love and romance that complement their own unique lives.

Same with the venues in Carmina's fetish restaurant guide. Make what you will of getting drunk in a fake church or being chased out of an Alcatrez-themed restaurant by masked crazies, but it's most important to remember that it's all in good fun. The way I see it, Japanese popular culture is like abstract art. Both involve many components that can be interpreted in many ways. If you ask the artist what it means, he might say, "What do you think it means?" And whatever meaning you attach to it is more a reflection of who you are than the composition of the art itself.

As Camina writes in her book: "you can moan 'this is stoopid'... or you can work with it. Roll with it."

I think we'd all understand Japan a little better if we made a commitment to roll with it.

Rooting @ nookDevs... Neat, it has the Android operating system is on a microSD card, cell connection, eink and battery - could be fun to hack :)

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David Byrne today unveils a new music project: a song cycle about the life and loves of Imelda Marcos. Here Lies Love. The project is a collaboration with Fatboy Slim, and features artists including Santigold, Florence Welch (Florence + The Machine), Sia, St. Vincent, Natalie Merchant, Tori Amos, Cyndi Lauper, and others.

We've seen it over and over again in the press. They love to assume that the number of patents being filed is a proxy for innovation. There's just one (large) problem with that. Multiple studies have shown no connection between patents and innovation. But, don't tell that to the reporters at CNN who are fretting about how the "recession" has taken its latest victim: US Innovation. This is ridiculous on so many levels that even patent system defenders are disagreeing with CNN. First, CNN bases this on a minuscule 2.3% decline in patent filings, despite a massive growth in patent filings over the past fifteen years.

But, more importantly, there is no indication whatsoever that this means anything in terms of US innovation. No one at CNN seemed to think it was even worth trying to actually back up that claim with any evidence whatsoever. If innovation were really declining in the US, you would think there would be some sort of tangible evidence of it, but CNN and reporter David Goldman never bother to even look for it. Tragically, USPTO boss David Kappos -- who should know better -- perpetuates the myth that the two are directly connected. In commenting on the decline in patent applications, he notes:

"That's unfortunate because [patent filings] are a reflection of innovation," said David Kappos, director of the Patent Office. "Innovation creates so many jobs and so much opportunity for our country. It is absolutely key to our long-term success in the global economy."

But, of course, there is no indication that this tiny drop in applications is reflective of anything at all when it comes to innovation. It could be a whole variety of factors, from firms recognizing what a waste it is to patent certain things, to companies deciding not to waste money on patents during a recession, to the various court rulings that have finally put a tiny pushback on what is considered "patentable." But none of that suggests any limit on US innovation or ingenuity. And, it's even more ridiculous to claim, as Kappos appears to do in that quote, that this drop in patent applications could represent a decrease in jobs and opportunity. That statement is even more laughable, since Kappos must know that the number of jobs created is not even remotely related to the number of patents granted or held (just ask some patent hoarding firms that hold many patents but employ just one or two people). What a shame that Kappos would repeat such myths. As boss of the PTO, perhaps he feels it's his mission to overstate the importance of the organization, but his claims should have at least some basis in reality.

But, of course, a good explanation for why this is happening is explained (though, not by the CNN reporter who appears to miss it entirely) later in the article: the USPTO is entirely funded by patent application fees. Thus, it has every incentive to get more people to file, and to play up the prestige and value of a patent, even when the evidence is to the contrary. So, now it appears that CNN becomes the PR arm of the Patent Office, rather than actually looking to find out what's going on.

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coondoggie writes "After a three day delay, NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer this morning blasted into space courtesy of a Delta II rocket and will soon begin bathing the cosmos with infrared light, picking up the glow of hundreds of millions of objects and producing millions of images. The space agency says the WISE spacecraft will circle Earth over the poles, scanning the entire sky one-and-a-half times in nine months. The idea behind the spacecraft is to uncover objects never seen before, including the coolest stars, the universe's most luminous galaxies and some of the darkest near-Earth asteroids and comets."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A farmer in Taiwan has found a way to keep water cleaner by training his pigs to poo in small litter boxes. From Treehugger.com:

The litter boxes have wire mesh so the urine seeps through, and the fecal matter is vacuumed by a special machine so the area is kept waste-free. The farmer has realized a 50% savings in water use. But possibly even more importantly, the success of his efforts has not only helped him avoid fines for pollution by environmental authorities, but the authorities are encouraging other farmers to follow his lead and start training their own piglets.

The farmer, Chang Chung-tou, has been doing this for six years now. The video above is not of one of Chang's pigs, but it's pretty amazing.

I've just finished reading Carl Malamud's remarkable pamphlet, By the People, the transcript of an address he gave to the Government 2.0 Summit in Washington, D.C., on September 10, 2009. Carl is the beloved "rogue librarian" who has done so much to liberate tax-funded government works, from movies to court rulings to the text of laws themselves, putting these public domain works on the Internet where they belong.

By the People is an inspirational and education piece on the history of the US Government Printing Office and the radical ethic that said that the governments documents belonged to the citizens who footed the bill for their production. Today, with the Internet making it more possible than ever for all of us to inspect the workings of our governments and benefit from their creations, that ethic is more important (and more endangered) than ever.

Text of By the People

Buy the pamphlet from Lulu

A New Jersey man finally returned the Spanish-English dictionary he borrowed from the Jersey City Public Library in 1955 (using someone else's card!). He took advantage of a late-books amnesty to avoid a $1,750 late fine: "'No one remembers anyone bringing back a book this late,' said Assistant Library Director Sonja Araujo. She added the library may put it on display as part of an effort to encourage more people to return books under the amnesty program."

Man returns Jersey City library book 54 years late, forgiven under 'library amnesty' (Thanks, Michael!)

(Thumbnail image: NJ.com)

I have written before about Thingiverse user fdavies' ongoing project to produce a 3D-printer that requires no precision-ground shafting or bearings using printable hinged actuators based on the Sarrus linkage (Wikipedia). Why would you want to do that? Well, because precision shafting and bearings are currently beyond the abilities of most 3D printers, and if you can build the printer itself using printable substitutes for them, then you're that much closer to a truly self-replicating home fab system. His latest effort has produced a working two-axis system that he hopes to outfit with an extruder in the near future. Keep it up, man!

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garg0yle writes "A team has managed to open the Barnes and Noble Nook e-reader, gaining full access to the operating system. From the article: 'The Nook is now a computer running a full Android operating system, with a built-in, free cellular connection to the internet. It also has a battery that lasts days, not hours.' They are documenting their progress on the Nook Devs wiki."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A special Blip Festival edition of NYC's Handmade Music this Wednesday -

Babycastles teams up with Handmade Music Night for the inaugural opening of a permanent indie games arcade in Brooklyn. 915 Wyckoff Street, L to Halsey or M to Myrtle / Wyckoff. (map below) This opening celebrates Adam Atomic’s Canabalt (NYC), Ivan Safrin’s Owl Country (NYC), Tristan Perich’s KillJet (NYC), and Kyle Purver’s Jottobots (NY), which will be playable all night and throughout December. Cardboard lectures by the game developers! High Score Chalkboard Dress by Lara Grant! Chiptunes performance and workshop by little-scale (AU)! Show up extra early for a secret chipmusic toy soldering workshop by the Loud Objects. Part of an official Blip Festival Pre-Party – 10% discount on Blip Festival tickets available, and a group hug ride to the Tank afterwards!

Free, Wednesday, December 16th
6:00PM – 8:30PM 915 Wyckoff Street
L to Halsey or M to Myrtle / Wyckoff

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Glenn Fleishman's "The Killer App of 1900" draws striking parallels between the present-day debate over the necessity of Internet access and the early 20th century debate over the necessity of electricity. In the early days of electrification, electricity was a luxury, providing lights to a few people who chose electric over gas. The idea that electricity was a necessity (let alone a right) was widely held to be absurd. But because of the many applications for electric power, electrification quickly grew to be central in most Americans' lives, and many electrification projects were ultimately taken on by governments, from the local to the national (FDR's Rural Electrification Act).

Undoubtedly, you see where I've been going with all this. Broadband in 2009 is electricity in 1900. We may think we know all the means to which high-speed Internet access may be put, but we clearly do not: YouTube and Twitter prove that new things are constantly on the way and will emerge as bandwidth and access continues to increase.

Like electricity, the notion of whether broadband is an inherent right and necessity of every citizen is up for grabs in the US. Sweden and Finland have already answered the question: It's a birthright. Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and many European countries aren't far behind in having created the right regulatory and market conditions to bring better and affordable broadband to a greater percentage of its citizens than in the US.

In Seattle, we'll see how Mayor-Elect McGinn proceeds with a broadband plan cooked up under his predecessor (where it languished) that would let anyone in Seattle ask for and receive a fiber-optic hookup for Internet, TV, and voice at competitive rates to today's slower and funkier cable and DSL services. (As I said in today's Morning Fizz, I'm encouraged that McGinn has kept Nickels' technology guy, Bill Schrier (the guy who came up with the plan), on board.)

The Killer App of 1900 (via /.)

(Image: File:TVA water supply Wilder.gif, Wikimedia Commons)

Friendly holiday reminder, people: The local arboretum is NOT your personal Christmas tree chopping ground.

Last Wednesday, somebody entered the University of Washington's Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle and walked out with a rare south Asian conifer, called a Keteleeria, worth more than $10,000. It's genetic material is likely irreplaceable, Arboretum officials said, because it came from a part of China that's seen rapid development and lost much of its native plant life. As the tree was between 7 and 8 ft. tall and 3 in. at the base, officials believe it was chopped down to serve as a Christmas tree. Ironically, it was also a spindly, Charlie Brown-looking thing and wouldn't even be as attractive as the plentiful Douglas Firs usually used for such decoration. Meanwhile, species preservation suffers.

"We feel as if Christmas has been stolen from us," says David Zuckerman, horticulture supervisor for UW Botanic Gardens.

University Press Release

Pictured: The Keteleeria tree in happier times, photographed by the UW Botanic Gardens.

We always hear the record labels and politicians screaming bloody murder over the concept that musicians aren't being paid "what they're owed" due to piracy -- but when there's a situation where musicians might actually not be getting paid what they're owed? Silence. A few weeks back, MySpace "bought" Imeem in a fire sale. But, the details of the deal suggest they didn't actually buy the company, but "certain assets," which means they get to ignore the liabilities. Guess what those liabilities include? You got it: paying artists what they're owed. Now, as the Wired article notes, there's nothing technically wrong with MySpace acquiring just the assets, but it is notable that it's the musicians left without getting paid what they're actually owed (not some theoretical concept like what they might be "owed" due to unauthorized file sharing). And, yet, we don't seem to hear any politicians or record labels screaming about this. Funny, since they keep insisting that they're really just interested in helping artists...

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Gareth Pugh, an English fashion designer, made this OLED armor dress using fabric layered with "flexible" OLEDs. Seems like we've got a ways to go with this one, and that OLEDs might have better applications on harder wearables like motorcycle Daft Punk helmets. [via Fashioning Technology]

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An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist, a leading critic of the ACTA secret copyright treaty, has produced a new interactive timeline that traces its development. The timeline includes links to leaked documents, videos, and public interest group letters that should increasing concern with a deal that could lead to a global three-strikes and you're out policy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ginger coons writes in about the Open Colour Standard, "an effort to create a new colour standard to help free/open source graphics programs bridge the gap between screen and print."

It's like Pantone's spot colour standard [ed: a widely used proprietary system for describing "spot" colors -- that is, colors that need special inks to print. Pantone distributes both the inks and books of color swatches. Designers pick colors out of the book and the printer loads the extra ink into her apparatus at print time], but not necessarily in opposition to it. Just different.

opencolour.org is the official site, currently in the form of a wiki hosting discussion about how an Open Colour Standard can/should be created. Here is a great big backgrounder, explaining and documenting the first stages of an original, not tied to an ink manufacturer, colour standard that F/LOSS graphics users can call their own.

And here's a piece explaining the rationale and history behind an Open Colour Standard. Seems straightforward, but is proving to be surprisingly controversial. Looks like a lot of people really do see creating a new colour standard as futile, useless and hopelessly quixotic.

From the article: "What we have, then, is a venerable, widely supported, but largely inflexible and very expensive de facto standard. It has a huge impact on both print and digital media, not to mention the clothes you wear, the color you paint your living room, even the specific shades used to define healthy dirt or high-grade orange juice. It is, in short, a bloated monopoly eating up more and more of the color market... If [Open Colour Standard] works, this effort could open up spot color, make open-source software more viable for pre-press, and maybe even inspire a little kitchen table chemistry. Most importantly, it would take the cross-platform treatment of color out of the hands of a private company and put it where it belongs, with users."

Open Color Standard (Thanks, Ginger!)

(Image: untitled photo, licensed Creative Commons Attribution, from iboy_daniel's photostream)

Well, after several weeks of nearly daily gift guides here on MAKE, we can't imagine you haven't found more than enough ideas for fun, creative, productive, smart, and just plain cool stuff to gift your friends and love ones this year.

But wait, there's more! We asked OUR friends and loved ones in the extended MAKE family what THEY wanted for Christmas. Here's some of what they lust after (gift-givers take note).

And, as the title to the guide implies, this is a DIY gift guide. What's on YOUR list? Tell us in the Comments.

Bose SoundDock ($360, Bose)
I really like riding my horse to music. It helps keep me energized and it's really neat when your horse gets in the groove, too! The Bose system is really loud, so you can hear it from across the arena, and I'm able to plug in my old school iPhone to play songs, which is great because most devices aren't compatible with the original iPhone and the only other MP3 player I own is a first-genl iPod Mini. I really hope Santa sees this! -- Katie Dougherty Kunde, Maker Media's Account Manager

---

Joey Roth Ceramic Speakers ($495, Joey Roth)
I'm suddenly lusting after these. -- Dan Woods, Assoc. Publisher & G.M., Maker Retail

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Here's a great chance to brighten up your hours and minutes for 2010 - Tokyoflash is giving BB readers the chance to win the watch of their choice. To get one, you must do two things. • First, give a donation to any charity. $50 is a good amount, but give what you can. • Second, answer the following question: "what's the name of the holiday celebrated in Japan from January 1st?" and email your answer to BB at tokyoflash.com. Three winners will be selected at random on Friday.

dasButcher writes "One of the biggest obstacles to fighting hackers and cyber-criminals is that many operate in the safe harbors of their home countries, insulated from prosecution by authorities in foreign countries where their targets reside. As Larry Walsh writes in his blog, several security vendors and a growing number of countries are now beginning to consider the creation of a global police force that would have trans-border jurisdiction to investigate and arrest suspected hackers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In case you haven't been paying attention, there's yet to be a good reason put forth for using DRM that I can remember. We've seen over and over again how DRM seems to interfere with legitimate actions, but does nothing at all to slow down "pirates." Slashdot points to a rather scary situations for those who used Microsoft Office 2003 to DRM certain documents for their own use. Apparently, a screwup on the part of Microsoft (oops) means that many people got locked out of their own documents. Basically, Microsoft let a certificate expire, and that's made life difficult for lots and lots of people. So what good is DRM again?

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xchg writes "It's still not called the 'Google Phone,' but the Nexus One — to be made by HTC — is as close as I think we're going to get. The WSJ cites sources familiar with Google's plans and says that Google has designed this handset and plans to sell it directly to consumers, unlocked."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

xchg writes "It's still not called the "Google Phone", but the Nexus One — to be made by HTC — is as close as I think we're going to get. The WSJ cites sources familiar with Google's plans and says that Google has designed this handset and plans to sell it directly to consumers, unlocked."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jeff's "Princess and the Pea" alarm clock takes a cue from a classic fairy tale to provide a not-so-subtle wake-up call -

No ordinary alarm clock: the Princess and the Pea Alarm Clock ("PPAC") leaves no room for snoozing, inflating a green "pea" between the mattress and box spring, making it impossible to stay in bed. In the tin can, a homemade Arduino-compatible board with clock and memory chips handles the alarm clock functions, and a power block under the night stand provides power and relays driving the sprinkler valve or other alarming alarm functions.

Looks rather effective - can't wait for the travel version! See more on Jeff's Arduino Blog.

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Neil sent me this link to a cool trick for holding round-head screws while you cut the threads shorter. Cut a thin slit in a correspondingly-threaded nut, through one of the points. A rotary tool with an abrasive disk is probably a good tool for this. Then you can thread the screw in and grip the nut across the flats with pliers or a vise. Compression across the width of the slit will hold the screw firmly in place, and you can use the flat side of the nut to guide the saw.

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newscloud writes "Tech writer Glenn Fleishman compares the arguments against affordable, high speed, broadband Internet access in each home to arguments made against providing for common access to electricity in 1900 e.g. "...electric light is not a necessity for every member of the community. It Is not the business of any one to see that I use electricity, or gas, or oil in my house, or even that I use any form of artificial light at all." Says Fleishman, "Electricity should go to people who had money, not hooked up willy-nilly to everyone...Like electricity, the notion of whether broadband is an inherent right and necessity of every citizen is up for grabs in the US. Sweden and Finland have already answered the question: It’s a birthright" "

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ian Manheimer writes to tell of Measy, his simple web-app hooked up to a database of gadgets. It asks you a few questions, then tells you which product is best for you. It's useful and attractive, but tends toward stating the obvious about, say, the best $200 cellphones. Coming soon: Measier.com, a site which comprises of the words "Just get an iPhone."

A member of the Dáil Éireann (Irish parliament) makes his NSFW opinions clear on a colleague.

The latest in the saga of the young woman, Samantha Tumpach, who was arrested and jailed for two nights because her attempt to film some of her sister's birthday party at the movies happened to catch a few snippets of the film New Moon, is that Tumpach is now considering suing the theater, even though the charges against her have been dropped. Unfortunately, thanks to the draconian anti-camera laws pushed by the MPAA to punish people for these sorts of things, she might not get very far with such a lawsuit. As Copycense points out, the Illinois law in question basically lets the theater do exactly what it did, even if the circumstances are ridiculous. So, any lawsuit is unlikely to last, though it should lead us to questioning why legislators around the globe have passed similar laws at the behest of the movie industry. There are already perfectly good copyright laws to be used against anyone actually filming a movie for "piracy" purposes. These anti-camcorder laws go above and beyond that, and lead to ridiculous scenarios like this one.

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mauriceh writes "Since Monday Dec. 7, the Microsoft eOpen license website has been mostly 'Down for Maintenance.' When we do not see this message, we still do not see most of the normal functionality. As this is Microsoft's main channel for managing and installing licenses for products such as Server, and for open license products for business, this makes the company effectively 'closed for business!' Attempts to connect to https://eopen.microsoft.com/ are redirected (after a bad certificate warning) to https://www.microsoft.com/licensing/servicecenter/sitemaintenance.html. For those who wish to activate Microsoft Business Solutions software need to obtain Software Registration keys, and these also can not be obtained, as the site http://www.microsoft.com/BusinessSolutions/MBSRegistration does not resolve; instead one gets a Microsoft Search page. Telephone calls to their support numbers for the licensing program yield either busy signals, or a message saying one should 'call back later.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As a rule, humans are very picky about their music. I don't mean stylistic choices. Whether you like country, western, or both is up to you. I'm talking about something more basic than that.

A tone is a sound, like a note before it gets a specific name, and a scale is a collection of tones grouped in ascending or descending order. We are able to hear a huge number of tones and, theoretically, there's billions of ways to group them, but humans tend to focus on a very small number of scales, usually made up of either five or seven tones. The same scales are used over and over, throughout most of Western music and much of human music as a whole, said Dale Purves, Ph.D., professor of neurobiology at Duke University and director of the Duke-NUS Neuroscience Program in Singapore. In fact, even styles of music that sound completely different--say classical Chinese music vs. Western folk music--use the same scale, he said. They just use it differently.

So why are we so drawn to certain tones and certain groups of tones? Purves' team thinks they have an answer--an explanation that links what humans like with who they are, biologically.

The key, Purves said, lies in our evolutionary history.

"Any perceptual quality you have is there for some biological reason. They evolved because they provide useful information to us," he said. "So if you take a microphone out in nature and ask what the tonal sounds are in our environmental niche that we would have evolved to appreciate, the tonal sounds you record are nearly all animal vocalizations. And the ones that count the most are the vocalizations of other humans."

The sounds humans make matter most, he said, because that's where we get information about our competitors and our potential mates--the things we need to know to be successful creatures. We developed an ear for the tones common in human vocalizations, the same way a sommelier might develop a taste for fine wines. Those are the tones we find most appealing and thus, the ones we made into our musical art.

The basics of this idea are nothing new. It is, after all, pretty obvious that there's a connection between human voices and human music. But, when people have looked for links between musical scales and the natural changes in the pitch and rhythm of speech, they haven't been able to turn up any solid evidence of a causal relationship. Purves, along with Kamraan Gill, Ph.D., approached this in a different way, looking instead at similarities between scales and the spectrum of--or frequencies in--speech. Here, they hit paydirt. In fact, Purves and Gill found that you can correctly predict which scales are the most popular by how similar they are to the spectrum of human vocalizations. A great example of how this plays out: Rock 'n Roll

"Rock is especially popular because it emphasizes the musical intervals whose frequency relationships are those we hear in the human speech ," Purves said. "That's one of the reasons people like it so much."

Read Dr. Purves and Dr. Gill's paper at the journal PLoS ONE.

Image courtesy Flickr user shankar, shiv, via CC.

It's been out less than a week and the Barnes & Noble Nook eBook reader has already been rooted. Interestingly enough, it would seem that the eBook reader's default custom Android system is installed on a MicroSD card. Upon gaining root access applications such as the terminal emulator have been successfully run on the e-ink display. For a detailed teardown check out the nookdevs wiki. [via AndroidandMe]

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(Video link.) I'm in Guatemala for a while, and was out on the streets of la Antigua during the big nighttime celebrations for La Virgen de Guadalupe Day this weekend. Above and after the jump, more photos (shot on iPhone).

How do they celebrate this beloved Catholic/indigenous hybrid deity? A mezcla of circus, ceremony, and "get your picture taken with Santa" kiddie portrait dioramas (featuring altars for la Virgen instead of that fat, bearded gringo). What better way to honor a New World goddess than with food, flowers, chickens, ponies, crazy-dancing — and lots of homemade explosives.

Here's a related post by Guatemalan blogger Kara Andrade about observations of the same festival in the town of Chiquimula (more about the crazy bombas here). And Antigua-based photog Rudy Girón has a photo-essay here.

Using a cold cathode tube artist Dana Maltby paints colorful, surreal images full of undulating trails and kaleidoscopic detail. Learn to build your own cold cathode setup with this quick tutorial. [via diyphotography]

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For many years, in the US, there were claims that Comcast was doing traffic shaping on its network, slowing down or even blocking certain types of traffic. Despite increasingly sophisticated evidence, Comcast always denied it, until the Associated Press finally presented proof. Comcast still tried to dance around on definitions, but finally came clean. In response it got a wrist slap from the FCC (which it's fighting in court), but it has become a lot more transparent in its traffic shaping/filtering practices. There just isn't any logical reason why any ISP should be less than forthcoming about these issues.

Slashdot points us to the news that a new study of Israeli ISPs shows that, despite denying it, many are traffic shaping P2P traffic, often using deep packet inspection. Apparently, Israel's Communications Ministry is already looking into this and determining if it requires any action on its part. It makes you wonder why ISPs think it makes sense not to explain what they're doing to customers.

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adeelarshad82 writes "Pavel Valkovich of Sherman Oaks, CA has pleaded guilty to solicitation of murder, admitting that he attempted to hire hit-men to kill witnesses working with Federal authorities in their investigation of Valkovich's ID theft activities and subsequent crimes. According to the Justice Department: '...Valkovich and others had stolen personal identifying information and used that information to transfer funds from victims' bank accounts to PayPal accounts.'"

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Tahaya Buchanan, an American fugitive who'd been on the run for more than two years, dodging a national arrest warrant for insurance fraud, has spent her years underground gainfully employed by the Department of Homeland Security.

Buchanan had been indicted in New Jersey for insurance fraud in 2007, and a warrant for her arrest was issued that December and was posted to the National Crime Information Center in January 2008. New Jersey prosecutor Michael Morris said they believed Buchanan had been working for Homeland Security in New Jersey in 2007, and might have been transferred to the department's immigration office in Georgia at some point during the investigation.

That's where authorities lost track of her.

"We found it surprising [and] alarming," Morris said, "that an employee of the Department of Homeland Security is a fraudster, and we do not understand how she could have remained employed there with an open criminal warrant for her arrest remaining on the interstate system without being discovered."

Fugitive Located Inside Homeland Security Department Office

We've discussed in the past how many large companies now view patent accumulation as something of a nuclear stockpiling technique. That is, if you accumulate enough patents, other large companies won't sue you for patent infringement, because you'll just sue them right back for infringing on your patents. As ridiculous (and obviously against the basis of the very patent system) as this is, it has certainly limited some patent lawsuits between large tech companies. But every so often, a nuclear battle breaks out. Earlier this year, Nokia, jealous over the success of the iPhone, sued Apple. Apple, of course, has bragged about all those patents it holds on the iPhone... so... the obvious next step has occurred, and Apple is lobbing back charges of patent infringement against Nokia. In the end, the two sides will probably work out some sort of settlement, but the whole process is a huge waste of time and resources. Wouldn't we all be better off if they just focused on competing in the marketplace by creating better products?

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The Knit kit from the Maker Shed is the perfect accessory for the knitter on the go. It's equipped with seven of the most essential knitting accessories needed to accompany a set of needles and yarn in your project bag. The front contains a durable locking row counter and a smooth retracting 5ft. tape measure. The left side has a fully removable crochet hook for picking up that dropped stitch or weaving in an end, and the right side has a folding in-and-out thread cutter in the event your scissors are not available. The back compartment of The Knit Kit nicely houses sturdy, TSA Compliant, collapsible scissors as well as point protectors and three different sized stitch markers.

We have extended our FREE shipping offer until the end of today! (Midnight Pacific). Take advantage of this great deal, and do a little holiday shopping form the comfort of your home. Use coupon code ELVES at checkout.

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I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A Microsoft Office 2003 bug is locking people out of their own files, specifically those protected with Microsoft's Rights Management Service. Microsoft has a TechNet bulletin on the issue with a fix. It looks like they screwed up and let a certificate expire. There's no information on when the replacement certificate will expire, though, or what will happen when it does."

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Brian sez, "Back in June, Boing Boing posted when I first made the digital versions of the WWIII Posters. Now three of them are on sale on my site (listed), with 25% of the proceeds going towards the EFF!"

WWIII Propaganda Poster (Thanks Brian!)

I'm thrilled at the success of Kickstarter and Spot.Us, which partly fulfill a longtime dream scheme of mine. These sites are primary sources of great stuff, and you should check them out if you aren't already familiar with them. The idea behind both is to help people raise funds for ideas that they want to pursue; Kickstarter is designed for any personal projects, and Spot.Us supports journalism.

Donors can get a little something in return through these sites if the projects they fund come to fruition, like a signed copy of a book that's produced (Kickstarter), or reimbursement in credit if a news organization buys the story (Spot.Us). But what if a crowdfunding site could offer donors a piece of the action, not just some thank-you goodies? That's what I would want, and I don't think I'm alone. I want investors for my schemes, not patrons, and if people support me to do something that flies, it would only please me to give them a cut.

Technically, launching something like this wouldn't be too difficult. The Spot.Us code, written in Ruby, is public domain and already uses an accounting system with a Paypal merchant account. The Spot.Us interface is close to what an investment-enabled version would need, and the main tough technical piece would be to add a digital signature scheme for the contracts. I met with Spot.Us founder David Cohn a few weeks ago, and he estimated that once the details about the user experience were all figured out, an appropriately-modified adaptation of the Spot.Us code could be up and running in a few months.

But then I started talking about the scheme with lawyers, including Boingboing counsel Rob Rader, who has been extremely helpful. The legal terminology for my notion, it turns out, is "patronage-plus ex ante crowdfunding," at least in a recent article by Tim Kappel in the Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review The short answer is, such a site would probably be illegal under U.S. federal securities law. "Securities" are defined as any investment whose return is dependent upon the effort of others. It's a one paragraph definition, very broad, hard to get around, and there's no de minimis dollar cutoff below which the regulations stop. A lemonade stand venture could be subject to SEC regulation.

Securities regulations don't apply if the investors are genuinely active in the day-to-day management of the venture-- but it isn't enough to just give them access to a project wiki and consider their suggestions; you must demonstrate that they are all critical to the venture's success. So much for that loophole.

Another possibility is the SEC's "Private Placement Exemption" under Regulation D, which allows unregulated investments if the number of investors is limited. Specifically, you can sell shares to at most 35 regular individuals (and an unlimited number of accredited investors, i.e. various institutions, plus people who have a net worth exceeding $1 million, an annual income over $200K, or a personal trust exceeding $5 million).

But Regulation D also prohibits any "general solicitation or general advertising" to let people know about the venture. The only published announcements of such investments are the cryptic "tombstone ads" that you sometimes see in the print versions of the Wall Street Journal or New York Times business section. These ads, which AFAIK have never been published online-only (although this might be possible) must be very limited in their disclosure. It might be OK to say "Paul Spinrad offers shares in a graphic novel based on the life of Elliot Smith" but that's about it. The announcement can't include anything that makes Kickstarter and Spot.Us so fun to browse through-- no details of the project, no wish lists, no video clips of people saying, "I'm so excited about this project-- it's got great indie film potential-- all I need is 4 months time and a round-trip ticket to Portland!"

Another possible loophole is to keep offerings entirely intra-state, in which case the SEC lets a state's "blue sky" laws and regulatory apparatus control them. But this would just mean swapping the California Department of Corporations (for example) for the SEC, with similarly expensive legal and registration costs, and similar restrictions on disclosure. It doesn't make sense to have to spend $50,000 to be able to legally raise $5000. Attorney Jay Parkhill gets into some of these same issues in his 2007 blog post,"The World Isn't Ready For Crowdsourced Securities Offerings." 

Yet another approach, which no lawyer could ever condone, is to make the whole thing run under a honor system. This was the premise behind my 2003 website, Premises, Premises, which now lies on the vast dustheap of failed website experiments. Under this scenario, offerers would set their payback terms as a promise, but would be unfettered legally from just keeping all the money they might make using others' investments. The only "teeth" would be that everyone would know what they did, with an electronic trail to prove it, and would presumably consider them assholes until they made amends. Community reputation based enforcement has succeeded in resolving disputes outside of legal channels in the past. But such a system is unsuitable for serious investment.

So my question now is, how can we make this legal? I want to pursue this. For example, how does one go about changing securities law to establish a de minimis exception for total offerings-- say, less than $10,000 and individual investment less than $100. This is chump change for the SEC, and they shouldn't waste their time worrying about activities at that level. Aren't there other laws that protect naive investors from being cheated out of their last $100?

If I can Kickstart up the funding for some lawyer-time to draft a such a bill, who in Congress might sponsor it? The legislation would help artsy types and grassroots ventures, while also lifting financial regulations and oversight-- so it sounds like a candidate for bipartisan support! It's a stimulus bill, it's an investment in American ingenuity, it's "new thinking," it helps the little guy! Meanwhile, I can try to talk to people at the SEC-- I'm happy to just call their listed phone number and see if I can explain my way in to someone who might actually help, but does anyone in boingboing-land know someone who works at the SEC, who might be interested in this?

If you want updates on this quest, please email me! I don't want to include my email address here, but it's pretty easy to find.

 

Steve Silberman sends us "A major AP expose of how Monsanto uses secret licensing agreements for its genetically manipulated crops to squeeze smaller seed companies, lock out competition, and keep food prices high.".

Monsanto's methods are spelled out in a series of confidential commercial licensing agreements obtained by the AP. The contracts, as long as 30 pages, include basic terms for the selling of engineered crops resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, along with shorter supplementary agreements that address new Monsanto traits or other contract amendments...

For example, one contract provision bans independent companies from breeding plants that contain both Monsanto's genes and the genes of any of its competitors, unless Monsanto gives prior written permission -- giving Monsanto the ability to effectively lock out competitors from inserting their patented traits into the vast share of U.S. crops that already contain Monsanto's genes...

"We now believe that Monsanto has control over as much as 90 percent of (seed genetics). This level of control is almost unbelievable," said Neil Harl, agricultural economist at Iowa State University who has studied the seed industry for decades. "The upshot of that is that it's tightening Monsanto's control, and makes it possible for them to increase their prices long term. And we've seen this happening the last five years, and the end is not in sight."

AP INVESTIGATION: Monsanto seed biz role revealed (Thanks, Steve!)

(Image: Monsanto == Satan, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from illustir's photostream)

Castewar sez, "A clever chap named Joel turned a batch of holiday cookie treats into a yummy celebration of all things spagehetti-y and monstery. Drool."

Flying Spaghetti Monster holiday treats! (Thanks, Castewar!)

Lenore, of Evil Mad Scientist Labs, has a brief piece on their site about holiday decorating using vintage electronic components. I've always been as fascinated by the aesthetics of electronics parts as I am by their functionally. They do make great jewelry, junkbot art, wine charms, charm-charms... and (who'd a thunk it?) Christmas tree ornaments.

Deck the halls with fine components

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Fuzzzy writes "For a long time, people have suspected that Israeli ISPs are blocking or delaying P2P traffic. However, no hard evidence was provided, and the ISPs denied any interference. Today Ynetnews published a report on comprehensive research that for the first time proves those suspicions. Using Glasnost and Switzerland, an Internet attorney / blogger found evidence of deep packet inspection and deliberate delays. From the article: 'Since 2007 Ynet has received complaints according to which Israeli ISPs block P2P traffic. Those were brought to the media and were dismissed by the ISPs. Our findings were that there is direct and deliberate interference in P2P traffic by at least two out of the three major ISPs and that this interference exists by both P2P caching and P2P blocking.'"

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Here are some of my favorite posts from CRAFT recently:

Arduino Cake

Lighted Wedding Dress

Indexed Magnets by Jessica Hagy in the Maker Shed

How-To: Mistle-TIE Fighter
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Mark Mawson takes lots of cool pictures, but I am particularly charmed by the simple beauty of this floaty paint in water series. [via Neatorama]

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fredboboss sends news about Mozilla's email client Thunderbird 3, whose release we noted last week. "Thunderbird 3 contains code from the French military, which decided the open source product was more secure than Microsoft's rival Outlook. The French government is beginning to move to other open source software, including Linux instead of Windows and OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office. Thunderbird 3 used some of the code from TrustedBird, a generalized and co-branded version of Thunderbird with security extensions built by the French military."

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kamikazearun sends in a TorrentFreak analysis that begins "Claims by the MPAA that illegal downloads are killing the industry and causing billions in losses are once again being shredded. In 2009, the leading Hollywood studios made more films and generated more revenue than ever before, and for the first time in history the domestic box office grosses will surpass $10 billion. ... [N]either the ever-increasing piracy rates nor the global recession could prevent Hollywood having its best year ever in 2009. With an estimated $10.6 billion in consumer spending at the US and Canadian box office, the movie industry will break the 2008 record by nearly a billion dollars."

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