With France gearing up to dump another billion dollars at its own anti-Google book scanning project, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that a French court has ruled that Google's book scanning project violates copyright law. It's also fining Google 10,000 euros per day until it removes the books in question. Better solution: just block people from French IPs from accessing Google Books.

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qpeter writes "Hungarian Parliament has made the use of open standards mandatory by law in the intercommunication between public administration offices, public utility companies, citizens and voluntarily joining private companies, conducted via the central governmental system. The Open Standards Alliance initiating the amendment aims to promote the spread of monopoly-free markets that foster the development of interchangeable and interoperable products generated by open standards, and, consequently, broad competition markets, regardless of whether the IT systems of interconnecting organizations and individuals use open or closed source software. In the near future, in spite of EU tendencies the Alliance seeks to make its approach – interoperability based on publicly defined open standards – the EU norm under the Hungarian presidency of the European Union in 2011. To that end, it will promote public collaboration – possibly between every interested party, civil and political organization in the European Union. What do you think: what would be the best way to cooperate?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There have been lots of complaints about Peter Mandelson's "Digital Economy Bill" in the UK, which, beyond pushing a three strikes policy on the UK, would also grant Mandelson (or whomever he or future Business Secretaries deputize) the power to automatically change copyright law at will with no oversight. Scary enough, but it gets worse. As everyone's been focused on these clauses, they may have missed another scary one. Brian points out that another section, Section 124H, would also grant the Secretary of State the power to silently block access to any websites he dislikes. Yes, it would allow the Secretary of State to create a no-visit list that ISPs would have to block. And there would be no oversight (again). Oh, and it's not just websites. The order could be used for something like "block all BitTorrent" traffic. Seems like a bit much, doesn't it?

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MojoKid writes "Atom-based netbooks have come a long way since they were first introduced. 7 and 8-inch netbooks are no longer the norm, and availability of 12-inch netbooks is on the rise. The newest member of the Asus Eee PC lineup is the Eee PC 1201N, and it really stands out in the crowd of netbook in terms of specifications. The machine features a 12.1" HD display, new dual-core Atom 330 CPU, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium, an HDMI output and NVIDIA's Ion chipset with integrated GPU. HotHardware was able to demo the system's ability to handle more advanced benchmarks, thanks in part to the Ion GPU. It's also the first netbook they tested that could actually play older 3D titles respectably. You won't get Crysis running but lighter duty titles can be played back nicely if you tone the details down and lower the resolution. The 1201N also played back 720p and 1080p content without stuttering, and the dual-core CPU allowed enough headroom to multitask while videos were playing."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There have been many rumors floating around surrounding a possible buyout of Yelp by Google, but it appears that at least a few details have escaped painting this as a much more serious possibility. Pointing the needle to something north of $500 million, the acquisition would mean a substantial step into localized business for Google. "Google has been showing greater interest in the local business market in the United States. It has expanded its profile pages for local businesses, which include location and hours, maps and reviews from other Web sites. In June, Google gave local businesses the ability to manage what people see on their profile pages, similar to what Yelp does. Google has been reaching out to local businesses with simpler ways to advertise on the search engine. It is also distributing stickers that businesses post in their windows and passers-by can scan with cellphones to get coupons or information about the business. The deal between Google and Yelp could still unravel, one person said, particularly if another acquirer comes forward now that details have leaked."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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

I had an interesting experience recently with customer service, that seemed worth expanding a bit into a post. On Thursday morning, I noticed that rather than the 200 or so Twitter updates I would see in my regular Twitter client, Tweetdeck, there were only about 15 messages. Something seemed wrong. I checked Twitter (to see if it was down), but it seemed to be showing all of the "missing" messages. I did a search, and lots of others were complaining about missing messages in Tweetdeck as well. I checked Tweetdeck's website and Twitter feed, and neither said anything about problems, so I put up a message on Twitter noting the problems, and wondering if I should check out Seesmic, a Tweetdeck competitor I had tested a long time ago.

Here's where things got interesting. There was no response at all from Tweetdeck, but within a few minutes, I actually received a reply from Seesmic. There were two things that struck me as quite interesting about the reply:

1. I had directed my original comment at Tweetdeck, but it was the competitor Seesmic that was first to reply. Think about that from a competitive standpoint, and how that changes the way competition can work. In the past, if I had a complaint about one company, it would be more difficult for a competitor to swoop in and offer an alternative. But, with Twitter, it's easy.
2. The part that's more impressive. Seesmic didn't slam Tweetdeck, or push me to move to its own product. Instead, it pointed out that the real problem might not have been with Tweetdeck, but with Twitter. In other words, it defended its competitor, and did a better job explaining the problem to me than Tweetdeck itself did.

That second point is, in some ways, mindblowing. And, even though the "problem" may not have been Tweetdeck's at all, I'm now trying out Seesmic much more seriously, because of the way they handled this "customer service issue," even though it was on someone else's product.

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I beg your pardon for missing my post yesterday. I was struggling to get the first Postmamboism T-shirt manufactured, celebrating the publication of "Principles of Postmamboism." Looks like I'll have 'em sometime between Monday and Wednesday. The graphic that accompanied that article -- "Abre kuta güiri mambo" (open up your ears and listen to the important matter") -- is going to be the T-shirt image, only printed in red on black instead of black on white. Damn, I haven't made a T-shirt since the last Muñequitos tour.

Today's post is pictures, specifically from New Orleans, and more specifically from my book The Year Before The Flood. To my delight and astonishment, my publisher (Lawrence Hill Books) gave me a 16-page color glossy insert for my photos, along with the black-and-whites sprinkled through the text. Most of them were taken during the almost-year we lived in New Orleans, which is the slice of time the book is about: from August 2004 to May 2005. Here are a few of the pix, though I do think they look better bigger, on paper:

Above, Aldo "Michael" Andrews, of the Bayou Steppers Social Aid and Pleasure Club, in front of the entrance to the Mother-in-Law Lounge in Tremé as their anniversary parade drew to a close on January 16, 2005. Moments after this picture was taken, the police turned on their sirens and ordered the area cleared.

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Outdoor opening pageant of the Pussyfooters' Ball, in front of the Country Club in the Bywater, October 30, 2004. (Velvia 50 ASA, bulb setting, if you're old enough to remember film.)

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Alfred Growe, trombonist of Stooges Brass Band, outside Juicey's Lounge in the Irish Channel, during a rest stop on the Prince of Wales Social Aid and Pleasure Club (established in 1928, the second oldest club still marching in New Orleans) anniversary parade, October 17, 2004.

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Three great New Orleans drummers: Earl Palmer, Zigaboo Modeliste, Smokey Johnson, assembled for a Tipitina's Foundation event, January 15, 2005.

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A texture of live oak branches.

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To subscribe to my e-mail list, send an e-mail with "subscribe" in the subject heading to ned dot sublette at gmail dot com.

In perhaps one of the finest displays of technological excess in automotive communications gear, one "enthusiast" has managed to cram over $25,000 worth of gear into a $500 car. The car is rigged for just about every conceivable communications band including FM, UHF, VHF, HF, and WTF. What other amazing displays of technological excess have others seen? "The equipment seems to cover an amazing array of technologies, many of which seem to be redundant. For instance, just how many handheld 144 MHz radios do you need? It seems like the owner of the Ham Car is capable of listening to every police/fire/ems/military channel in the world. Simultaneously. There's a laptop and we assume there's some form of cellular or satellite communication setup for that, too."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ask MAKE is a weekly column where we answer reader questions, like yours. Write them in to mattm@makezine.comor drop us a line on Twitter. We can't wait to tackle your conundrums!

Bjorn writes in:

I'm wondering if you could help me out with resistors. I'm a computer science guy and am very new to electronics. Most of my resistor usage in my experimentation has been because I read about situations when I should use them online and just used a specific resistor because it was recommended. Obviously this only gets me so far. How do you go about determining what level of resistance you need and when you should or need to use resistors? I didn't know I was supposed to be hooking up LEDs to my Arduinos with resistors until I started burning out LEDs and read somewhere what type of resistor someone recommended. I know it has to do with the Arduino running at 5V and most LEDs being lower voltage, but how do you know what voltage an LED is if it's not labeled? And more importantly (like my question above), even if you know what voltage and LED is how are you supposed to figure out what kind of resistor to use?

Sure thing! This question actually comes up quite a bit, and it's a good thing to understand.

Putting a resistor in series with an LED limits the amount of current that can flow through it, preventing it from blowing up. It's nice to be able to figure out an exact resistance to use, but if you aren't too worried about your light being a bit dim, you can always just stick in a largish resistor, and you will get some light. For instance, if I am making a prototype circuit and just want an indicator light that I can control from an Arduino, I'll grab a 220 ohm resistor and put it in series with the first LED I can find. It's probably fine for a quickie circuit, but if you are soldering up a project that you intend to keep around, it's probably a better idea to actually calculate the correct amount of resistance to use.

So, how do you do it? Well, for a single LED, you can use the LED circuit equation:

Unfortunately, this only helps if you know the forward voltage and current rating of your diode. So, how can one figure those out? You can make an estimate abut the forward voltage of the diode based on it's color, because the wavelength of the color and the forward voltage are roughly inversely proportional to one another. Some typical forward voltages are: Red:1.8V, Green: 2V, Blue: 3.4V. Once you have an estimate, you can measure the forward voltage of your LED by hooking it up with the suggested resistor value, and measuring the voltage across it. Then, if you were way off, you can re-calculate the resistance with the actual voltage to get a better result.

Once you know the forward voltage drop, you can choose a current value based on how bright you want the LED to be, as long as it is lower than the current rating of the device. Unfortunately, it's a little bit harder to figure out the current rating, because most LEDs will continue to operate at higher than the recommended amount. If they are, though, their lifetime will be much shorter, and they won't be as efficient at producing light. If you don't have the specifications for your LED, 20ma is probably a safe maximum.

If you don't feel like solving all of that by hand, or have a more complicated design involving multiple LEDs, you could also use an online LED calculator. This one looks nice, because it will also tell you how to hook up multilple LEDs.

Ok, enough calculations. This is what can happen if you don't connect the LED up properly:

Boom! Engineers sometimes call these 'unauthorized thermal events'

Related:

• Wallet-size LED resistance calculator!
• MAKE Presents: The LED
• LED throwie analysis

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We'd love to get an explanation from NBC Universal General Counsel Rick Cotton on the following story. Cotton, of course, is the very, very, very strong defender of copyrights for NBC Universal. He was, of course, the main source for the propaganda "oh no piracy is killing the movie business" segment on 60 Minutes, and as we all know, he's been quite concerned about the poor, poor (yet, heavily subsidized) corn farmers hurt by "piracy." He's come out as a supporter of having ISPs spy on users to block the transmission of copyright works (which should be useful once Comcast takes over). And, finally he's also been involved in NBC's attempt to make it more difficult for anyone to watch the Olympics online, even though the evidence showed that the people who watched Olympics content online were more likely to then watch it on TV (ads and all) as well.

So, with all that, you'd have to imagine that if he found out about a company associated with the Olympics copied someone's blog post without first getting their permission, he'd be pretty upset. But what if that company was NBC Universal? Reader JC points us to the news that NBC Universal's Olympics website has been caught copying a blog post and then when alerted to it, rather than removing the content, it just removed the writer's name. It looks like the attention this story has received has resulted in NBC Universal putting her name back on the story, but the story remains on the site. I'm assuming there must be more to this whole situation. According to the link above, the original site, Tourism Vancouver, says this is "an ongoing issue with the NBC Olympic site, and [it] has been battling them for some time over it." Surely, NBC Universal, as such a strong defender of copyright, wouldn't be in the business of copying others' content without permission? Even if it believed it had the right to use her content, removing her name after being alerted to the issue appears really sketchy. Perhaps there's an explanation that involves helping out those poor corn farmers?

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Matt Haughey, who recently live-tweeted a personal emergency of his own, writes in defense of a mother who tweeted the drowning death of her son, as it was happening.

I know writer and editor Kristen Philipkoski as a former colleague from Wired, and was delighted when she pinged from the recent Art | Basel fair in Miami with an offer to send Boing Boing short dispatches about what she saw there. I'll be posting a few of them over the coming days. Here is her first:

Video is the Paint
Kristen Philipkoski

In a video installation built by the creative Brooklyn duo Sweatshoppe, an LED roller paints video onto any wall. It looks like magic. Using a programming language called Max/MSP, Blake Shaw wrote software that makes projected video visible when it comes in contact with the LED lights in the roller. Shaw and his partner Bruno Levy let attendees at the Scope Art Show in Miami try out their system by painting an enormous video of a woman licking away at a popsicle.

In the video above: watch the technology in action, you won't believe it's not special effects.

After the jump, a photo of Kristen trying it out herself.

There is no fold. Viva la scroll!

I hate camera straps. But LumaLoop looks like it could be the savior of my camera-carrying woes.

The ABCs of Branding is a sweet poster that’s “…foil stamped and embossed to create an alphabet composed of letters from many of the more famous (and some infamous) logos of all time”.

I also saw photos of an amazing art installation made entirely of large quantities of salt.

On his trip to Antarctica, Alek O. Komarnitsky took these wide-angle shots of Adelie Penguins walking by a Boing Boing logo he set down in the snow.

Wide-angle shots of Adelie Penguins walking by BoingBoing sign in Antarctica

adeelarshad82 writes "A Paris court on Friday found Google guilty of violating copyright by digitizing books and putting extracts online, following a legal challenge by major French publishers. The court found against Google after the La Martiniere group, which controls the highbrow Editions du Seuil publishing house, argued that publishers and authors were losing out in the latest stage of the digital revolution."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thom Yorke showed up at the Copenhagen climate talks, and Grist TV recorded a video Q&A with the musician and activist best known as the frontman of Radiohead. Among the issues that concern him: all the NGOs were kicked out of the center where the gathering is being held. Oh, also: here's Eugene Mirman.

mrharrysan was the first of a few to send in this story of a restaurant in Tucson, Arizona, that just lost a lawsuit and must pay almost $49,000 for 14 BMI songs that were played at a karaoke night held at the restaurant. It was a default judgment, as the restaurant owners apparently did not respond to the lawsuit and failed to show up. The owners claim they responded to the lawsuit, but there appears to be no evidence of that (the court never received a response). Based on this, the owners clearly deserve their share of responsibility in what appears to be a decision to ignore this. The claim that:

"We answered the complaint, but they (BMI) wanted us to do ridiculous stuff. Our attorney said to take it to court and see where it goes."

also doesn't make much sense. If their attorney said to take it to court, they (perhaps... just a suggestion) should have showed up in court. They now claim they'll appeal, but not showing up for the original case was a huge mistake. Separately, they claim that the karaoke night was run by a third party contractor that was "properly licensed" with BMI and ASCAP, but I'm pretty sure that is incorrect. If I remember correctly, it's the venue that needs the license, not anyone doing the entertaining.

That said, there's still plenty of ridiculousness to go around on the BMI side. BMI has been bullying anyone hosting karaoke nights for a while now, so it's got the process down. However, $49,000 for 14 songs seems ridiculous -- and anyone with any sense of reality would admit that. Not BMI. It's spokesperson, Jerry Bailey indicated to the reporter covering the story that the restaurant was lucky BMI didn't push for $30,000 per song, since it could ask for that much.

And, of course, BMI could admit that the $49,000 for 14 songs is ridiculous and agree to let the restaurant pay a smaller, but reasonable sum, and move on, but it's not doing that either. Instead, Bailey highlights how its shakedown specialists are good at collecting on these judgments:

"It's definitely about the money as well as the judgment," Bailey said. "We will take appropriate steps to secure the judgment. This is not new to us. We are experienced in this area. Our attorneys know what to do."

Yes, the shakedown business is a good one, and BMI has lots of experience in it.

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theodp writes "A newly disclosed Microsoft patent application — Avatar Individualized by Physical Characteristic — takes aim at fat people, proposing to generate fat avatars in gaming environments for individuals whose health records indicate they're overweight, limiting their game play, and even banning them. From the patent application: 'An undesirable body weight could be reflected in an overweight or underweight appearance for the avatar. Only requisite health levels are allowed to compete in a certain competition level. A dedicated gamer could exercise for a period of time until his health indicator gadget shows a sufficiently high health/health credit in order to allow reentering the avatar environment.' Linking one's gaming avatar to one's physique, explains Microsoft, will produce healthy and virtuous behaviors in individuals. Microsoft also proposes shaping gaming experiences by using 'psychological and demographic information such as education level, geographic location, age, sex, intelligence quotient, socioeconomic class, occupation, marital/relationship status, religious belief, political affiliation, etc.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's Sophie Madeleine playing "I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm" on the uke. She's got a new 4-track album out and will be playing in New York for the first time in January 2010.

Thanks to all who joined our live 3D printing webcast where we used my MakerBot CupCake CNC machine to print out Sean Ragan's animal pentominoes puzzle pieces! Over 250 of you stopped by over the course of the hour, and it was so fun chatting with you! We'd like to do more live events in the future, including a maker show-and-tell type of meeting, but online. If you missed the webcast, you can watch it in the Ustream archive. If you have suggestions for live events you'd like to see Make: Online produce, please post 'em up in the comments!

More:

CupCake CNC build, part 5: Pulley & enclosure finishing

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Alex Ringis write in to share the video embedded above, and says,

These kids wrote and recorded a beautiful "Agnostic" Xmas Carol, and it's for a good cause, too. For every goat you buy with WorldVision, they'll give you a free pair of MP3s, both of this song and another, upcoming release. The track is very "Broadway", and I am in love with this girls' voice. I'm going over to WorldVision right now to buy a goat, so I can get this beautiful track.

Pomplamoose - Always in the Season (YouTube)

The "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign at the entrance to the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland has been stolen. Says a Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum rep, the thief "must have been a person who had a knowledge of our security system because all the area is closed at night and patrolled and there is a system of cameras."

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that a recent announcement, and subsequent inactivation of all copies of DECAF, has announced that the DECAF project was nothing more than a "stunt to raise awareness for security and the need for better forensic tools." Originally DECAF was billed as a tool to stop Microsoft's forensic tool "COFEE" and was covered here earlier this week. In addition to their message of security the authors somehow manage to interject a discussion about religion so who knows what the real goal was.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Important educational video that documents the rise of Om Nom Nom and its meaning in culture. Includes early footage of Cookie Monster in a training video for IBM.

I watched it with my cat, Red, and he seemed enthralled. Of course, he also chases his own tail.

Rocketboom Institute for Internet Studies: More "Know Your Meme" videos

(Guest-essay by Jasmina Tešanovi?, video here.)

Silvio Berlusconi, the controversial Prime Minister of Italy, suffered a severe physical attack in Milan this past week. The man who attacked him with the plaster model of the Duomo cathedral, at the site of the same Duomo cathedral, is said to have a history of mental illness. He was immediately arrested and found to have also possessed a vial of pepper-gas.

Berlusconi's face was bleeding, his teeth were broken, and his lips torn when he stood up from his car to wave with a desperate face at his confused audience. He was immediately taken to the hospital.

The day after, his first question was: why do they hate me so much? The scandal-prone prime minister has been the center of sexual, political, and mafia-linked scandals over the past year. Only a week ago, a big worldwide demonstration was held to demand that he resign from power, and set Italy free from his dubious ways of ruling, which involve corruption, underage girls, prostitutes, and attacks on freedom of press and the civil rights of both citizens and immigrants.

The president of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano, declared immediately that the spiral of violence must end at once. Other Italian political officials condemned the physical attack, but some did mention the personal responsibility of the premier: whoever hits will be hit in return.

One hour after Berlusconi was hit in the face, a Facebook protest page was opened and 1,000 signatures appeared. In a couple of hours that number grew to 50,000 people who were pleased to see the head of state assaulted. Some were asking for the attacker to be declared a saint. Other websites representing opposite opinions but just as impassioned, appeared very quickly. The authorities are considering closing some violent websites.

This is a very dangerous turn of events. Milan and Italy remember the 'years of lead' in the 1970s, when extra-parliamentary terrorist left and right groups were tormenting the city, causing the death of innocent civilians and massive political confusion. The spiral of violence ended in the kidnapping and execution of the politician Aldo Moro. Until this day some dark acts of those years have not been resolved, the witnesses have been eliminated, the political pressures clashing.

What will come next? The government can use this episode for repressing public demonstrations and other political freedoms. The security issues are on top of the national agenda.

Was this episode the random case of a lunatic, or a calculated step in the escalation of hate and violence in Italy? Berlusconi denounces partisan polarization and bitterness, yet he provokes it. As prime minister, he has the first responsibility for this sorry state of affairs.

The president Napolitano claims that opposite parties should not accuse each other, but that each side should take its part of responsibility and try to bring peace.

Medical reports say that Berlusconi will need to stay in the hospital to heal his jaw, but that his blustering sense of humor is undamaged.

It is Italy that seems hurt, sorrowful and trembling, from top to bottom, and justly so. Everybody wants to go back to normality, in a normal democratic state, but that normality was not lost this week in any single wild attack.

Italian political stability and dignity have declined over the course of many years, slowly and painfully. To restore civic health and a sense of pride in their public affairs, many Italians will have to take action.

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Jasmina Tešanovi? is an author, filmmaker, and wandering thinker who shares her thoughts with BoingBoing from time to time. Email: politicalidiot at yahoo dot com. Her blog is here.

Previous essays by Jasmina Tešanovi? on BoingBoing:

• Report from anti-Berlusconi demonstration in Rome

• On Marina Abramovic, a "grandmother of performance art"

• The Murder of Natalya Estemirova.


• Less Than Human

• Earthquake in Italy

• 10 years after NATO bombings of Serbia

• Made in Catalunya / Lou and Laurie

• Dragan Dabic Defeats Radovan Karadzic

• Who was Dragan David Dabic?

• My neighbor Radovan Karadzic

• The Day After / Kosovo

• State of Emergency

• Kosovo

• Christmas in Serbia

• Neonazism in Serbia

• Korea - South, not North.

• "I heard they are making a movie on her life."

• Serbia and the Flames

• Return to Srebenica

• Sagmeister in Belgrade

• What About the Russians?

• Milan Martic sentenced in Hague

• Mothers of Mass Graves

• Hope for Serbia

• Stelarc in Ritopek

• Sarajevo Mon Amour

• MBOs

• Killing Journalists

• Where Did Our History Go?

• Serbia Not Guilty of Genocide

• Carnival of Ruritania

• "Good Morning, Fascist Serbia!"

• Faking Bombings

• Dispatch from Amsterdam

• Where are your Americans now?

• Anna Politkovskaya Silenced

• Slaughter in the Monastery

• Mermaid's Trail

• A Burial in Srebenica

• Report from a concert by a Serbian war criminal

• To Hague, to Hague

• Preachers and Fascists, Out of My Panties

• Floods and Bombs

• Scorpions Trial, April 13

• The Muslim Women

• Belgrade: New Normality

• Serbia: An Underworld Journey

• Scorpions Trial, Day Three: March 15, 2006

• Scorpions Trial, Day Two: March 14, 2006

• Scorpions Trial, Day One: March 13, 2006

• The Long Goodbye

• Milosevic Arrives in Belgrade

• Slobodan Milosevic Died

• Milosevic Funeral

Peter writes in to alert us to the latest example of copyright madness. It seems that over in Scotland, an amateur football (soccer, to us Americans) club, Buckie Thistle, would get a small group of about 500 fans attending each game, and one of them, a 16-year-old kid named David Smith would sit in the back of the stands and film the action. He would then post 10-minute clips to YouTube so those who missed the games could catch up. It built up a small, but decent, following. And that's when the trouble began. The league's secretary claims that Smith is violating the league's copyright and has issued him a £5,000 fine:

"I was made aware that edited footage of games involving Buckie Thistle was being shown on YouTube without the prior approval of the league. Over the last three months, attempts were made to establish who was responsible, but I was advised that the person's name was unknown.

"On meeting Mr Smith at Deveronvale, I asked him if he had permission to video this game, as it was the copyright of the league and no permission had been sought nor given. After brief discussion, he was advised by me that he may have to pay for the royalties for all videos taken and the sum could amount to £5,000."

Now, there are all sorts of issues here, so let's go through them one by one:

1. The secretary of an amateur sporting league has no authority to issue any kind of fine, let alone a £5,000 one.
2. As the article details, the league secretary is very confused if he thinks that the action on the field is copyright to the league. As a media lawyer notes in the article:

   THIS is not a question of copyright. The SFA does not own copyright on a football game. Copyright only applies to something such as a book, film, play etc that has been created as an act of labour by an individual or group of individuals. Men running around chasing a ball is not something that has been created.

3. If there is any copyright here, it should be owned by David Smith. Again, as noted in the article:

   The irony is that David Smith owns the copyright to his own piece of film; he has put the effort into filming and editing it and when he puts it on YouTube, he is tacitly allowing people to watch it and even download it on to their computer. But if those individuals then attempted to sell it for commercial gain then he would be well within his rights to stop them as they would be breaching his copyright.

4. This isn't a question of competing with broadcasting rights. No one else is filming the games. It's just the kid. Doing it as a labor of love to help promote the team he loves.
5. The club itself is thrilled with Smith filming the games, and is upset that the league is trying to fine him.

The whole thing is yet another example of what happens when people hear about copyright and "ownership" all the time and assume that it gives them control over all sorts of things it does not.

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The Atari Punk Console kit is a simple and fun sound generator that would make the perfect stocking stuffer for anyone that likes beeps, blips, and boops. The original circuit was developed by Forrest M. Mims III, and was coined the 'Atari Punk Console' by Kaustic Machines due to the similarity of the sounds it makes to an Atari 2600. Please note: An enclosure is not included, but you could use almost anything! Still not sure what to use, a Make project tin would make a perfect enclosure.

Maker Shed holiday shipping deadlines!
Need something shipped in time for Christmas? Here is what you need to know!

Orders placed by Saturday December 19th, Midnight (Pacific) ---> SHIP 2-DAY
Orders placed by Monday December 21st, Midnight (Pacific) ---> SHIP OVERNIGHT

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Bernie Madoff, 71, seems to be doing well in North Carolina's Butner Federal Correctional Complex. He plays games like chess and bocce ball, and works in the kitchen as a pot and pan scrubber.

The most interesting bit in this Wall Street Journal article is about K.C. White, a talented artist who was recently released on a bank robbery charge, but was in prison when Madoff started serving time. He drew Madoff's portrait in prison.

Mr. Madoff struck up a conversation [with White], saying: "You're the guy who does all the pictures around here," Mr. White recalls.

According to Mr. White, Mr. Madoff chatted about the fraud's aftermath, claiming he "carried" employees at Bernard L. Madoff Securities LLC for more than two decades, yet wound up with an astronomical prison sentence. "I guess he felt they turned their back on him," Mr. White says.

Still, Mr. Madoff seemed proud, walking around the prison with his head held high. "He carried on like he'd been doing time for years," Mr. White says.

Mr. Madoff asked Mr. White to paint his portrait, so the bank robber drew a fast sketch in the prison paint shop where Mr. Madoff worked at the time, according to Mr. White.

Mr. Madoff told Mr. White he didn't want to be depicted in his prison khakis, Mr. White says, so he drew him in a suit and tie.

In this highly entertaining video interview with White on Philly.com, White said Madoff is unremorseful for his crimes:

"I call [the portrait] 'F--- My Victims,' because Bernie is not very remorseful. He told me, 'I made them millions of dollars. I'm doing 150 years. F--- my victims.'"

Madoff's attorney, Ira Sorkin, doubts that Madoff would ever utter such words. Says Sorkin: "At all times, he expressed deep and sincere remorse, both publicly and privately, for everyone who he put through" the Ponzi scheme that ballooned into the largest investment fraud - victims lost billions of dollars - ever committed by a single person.

Bernie Madoff, the $19 Billion Con, Makes New Friends Behind Bars

Small white dots placed on some of the squares of a checkerboard-like grid make it looked warped. (Via Fogonazos)

Mike sends us, "Photo of supermarket shelf tag advertising boneless ham as 'Delicious for Chanukah.'"

Yes, yes, I know. Some wag at the supermarket moved the "Delicious for Chanukah" sign over by the ham. But imagine what a breakthrough it would be if, through some GM miracle, a Kosher ham could be made, and then served at Channukah, perhaps with latkes (you could use the applesauce for both!). Imagine.

Unusual Chanukah suggestion (Thanks, Mike!)

Looking at a slice of the watermelon daikon, you'd almost think it should taste like a real juicy watermelon. Of course, it doesn't — it tastes like an ordinary radish, except a little bit sweeter and more peppery. Some believe it's an heirloom variety of daikon, the long white Asian radish.

Daikon is high in fiber and low in fat, so it's great for weight loss; somewhat ironically, the term daikon ashi is used in Japan to refer to women who have thick legs. Daikon literally means big root. The origins of radish can be traced back to ancient Roman and Asian civilizations, though it's believed to have existed way back into the annals of undocumented history.

Watermelon daikon tends to get rubbery after a week, so if you want to preserve the pretty pink veggie, try this simple pickle recipe.

Pickled watermelon daikon

Slice a couple of radishes and a small onion. Put them in a jar. In a bowl, mix 1/2 cup of rice vinegar, 1/8 cup of sugar, and 1.5 tsp of salt. Pour the sugar-vinegar mixture over the radishes, then cover and refrigerate for one day.

Image via sleepyneko's Flickr

If you're not into pickles, you can eat the watermelon daikon by cutting it into thin slices and sprinkling salt on it. Or you can put it in a salad, which is what I did for dinner last night.

Image via kthread's Flickr

Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes "Google finds itself inserting a disclaimer once again above some offensive search results. But the disclaimer still leads many to believe (incorrectly) that Google doesn't tamper with search results even in cases of 'harmful' or 'offensive' material. We know that Google has in fact de-listed some pages at the request of offended parties. What is their real policy on the issue?" Read on for Bennet's essay.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ever take a photograph, and realize after the fact that you focused on a tree in the background instead of your subject's face? Wish you could go back and fix it? Well, unfortunately you can't if you used a regular camera, however if you had a plenoptic camera it would be no problem. Instead of capturing a flat, 2D array of pixels, a plenoptic camera uses an array of microlenses to capture 4D lightfield data. This data can then be processed to create a final image that is focused on any part of the scene.

Daniel Reetz and Matti Kariluoma wanted to experiment with light field photography, but you can't really buy one of these cameras, so they built one themselves. Instead of using a single camera and microles array, however, they decided to use rapid prototyping equipment and a bunch of point&shoot Canon cameras loaded with the SDM firmware, and the result is the Large Light Field Camera Array. Plans aren't available yet, however they are pledging to release the whole thing as an open source/hardware project. Looks great, guys! [via teamdroid]

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We've talked in the past about how pretty much any government database eventually gets abused by someone looking for info about someone beyond the scope of what the database is for, and now Michael Scott points us to news of how the executive director of the Arizona Republican Party, Bruce Mecum, has been accused of using the party's voter database to stalk a female grad student. This isn't a "government" database, as it's just the political party's database. But, the database is used like a marketing database to better target messages. Or stalking opportunities, which apparently seriously creeped out some people. The response from the party's treasurer wasn't exactly reassuring:

"He used Voter Vault. The The Republican National Committee owns Voter Vault....It's a private list. We own the list. We can do what we want with the list, quite frankly."

Including stalking? This isn't a "Republican" thing either. I'm sure some Democrats misuse their databases as well, so hopefully the comments can avoid blindly supporting or hating on this or that political party. The key point here is that it's yet another example of a database that's supposed to be used for one purpose, being used for stalking instead.

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joabj writes "While MySQL the subject of much high-profile wrangling between the EU and Oracle (and MySQL creator himself), the MySQL developers have been quietly moving the widely-used database software forward. The new beta version of MySQL, the first publicly available, features such improvements as near-asynchronous replication and more options for partitioning. A new release model has been enacted as well, bequeathing this version the title of 'MySQL Server 5.5.0-m2.' Downloads here."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Tennessee investigators say a 4-year-old boy was found roaming his neighborhood in the night, drinking beer and wearing a little girl's dress taken from under a neighbor's Christmas tree."

Knowzy writes "After five years behind a paywall, McDonalds plans to stop charging for its Wi-Fi in mid-January in the US. According to the Dallas Morning News, you aren't even required to make a purchase — 'free is free,' a spokesman said. It's also been widely reported that they won't impose time limits on your surfing. With around 20,000 free hotspots between McDonald's and Starbucks (who went free[ish] earlier this year), anyone still charging for Wi-Fi is going to look foolish, if not downright greedy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Artist Marshall Astor created this working Rubik's cube in cast bronze. There's tons of detail on the creation process at his personal website. [via Neatorama]

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Shocker: Advertising health claims are often misleading. In this case, it looks like most of the products that tout near-perfect germ-killing abilities are getting those results in trials that aren't exactly designed to mimic real-world conditions. When a University of Ottawa microbiologist ran a more realistic demonstration for Canadian schoolchildren, he turned up VERY different results.

Three popular sanitizers killed between 46% and 60% of microbes on the students' hands, far short of 99.99%. Bugs that aren't killed by sanitizers aren't necessarily more dangerous than those that are. But the more that remain, the greater the chance of infection, doctors say.

The ad writers also benefit from regulations that allow them to claim 99.9% effectiveness without actually killing 99.9% of all germs, all the time. Instead, representative samples can stand in, and there's room for do-overs in the lab, if the first test doesn't work.

Wall Street Journal: Kills 99.9% of Germs—Sometimes

Image courtesy Flickr user If you dream it..., via CC

Dinotopia creator James Gurney just posted his 1000th entry on his art blog, Gurney Journey, and to celebrate, he posted a list of his most popular blog entries.

One of them is about his trip to the North Carolina Zoo in 2008, where he drew portraits of the great apes there.

Excerpt:

We got there early in the day when the gorillas were just waking up.

I remembered something I learned in my primate social behavior class. I approached the glass with a submissive posture, looking down at the ground and backing up with my hand out.

The gorilla loved it. He had never seen a human act like a polite ape before. He came right up to the glass and posed for me while I did this half-hour portrait from just two feet away. It was like sketching someone on a subway. I tried to just glance at him discreetly out of the corner of my eye.

James Gurney's Gorilla Portraits

MBCook writes "Despite claims earlier in the year that the iPhone was hated by Japanese consumers (later disproved), the iPhone has been doing well in the land of the rising sun and the evidence is in. Apple has taken 46% of the Japanese smartphone market, cutting in half the once 27% market share of the previous lead, Advance Sharp W-Zero3 (Japanese site). The article includes a large chart of the market share of Japanese smartphones over the last 3 years."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jaunted has compiled a very useful report and printable chart on which airlines offer in-flight WiFi, on what routes, and at what price.

Have you seen the rad pentominoes animal puzzle that Make: Online Contributing Writer Sean Ragan made using OpenSCAD? Check out his tutorial for this open solid 3D modeling software and then join us on Ustream at 1pm EST (10am PST) where we'll be printing the puzzle pieces in a live webcast. Sean and I will be in the chat window answering questions and taking music requests (anything you want as long as it's Daft Punk). Please join us!

Live 3D printing with MAKE and MakerBot
Friday, December 18 1-2pm EST
Becky's Ustream channel

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According to a series of blog posts and YouTube videos making the rounds, a group of Korean ESL students are learning English by re-enacting scenes from the movie Gladiator (Thanks Jason!).

According to a series of blog posts and YouTube videos making the rounds, a group of Korean ESL students are learning English by re-enacting scenes from the movie Gladiator (Thanks Jason!).

Furry Objects is a series by Danish artist Magnhild Disington that mixes scraps of fur with cell phones and flash drives. [via Core77]

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As we've noted in the past, there really is no such thing as an anonymized dataset. There are almost always ways to reconnect at least some of the data to individuals. Now, when it comes to movie rental data, that's especially problematic, due to the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), 18 USC 2710, a special law that was passed after Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork ran into some trouble when his movie rental lists were made public. Last year, Blockbuster and Facebook ran into some trouble over this law, due to Facebook's disastrous "Beacon" offering, that often displayed your Blockbuster rentals. But, what about the famous Netflix prize? After all, that was based on a big "anonymous" set of data. Back in September, we noted that there was some serious concern about privacy associated with that data... and that meant it was only a matter of time until the lawsuit was filed.

Apparently the same lawyer who brought the lawsuit over the Facebook/Blockbuster Beacon snafu has sued Netflix over its contest. It is, of course, a class action lawsuit, filed initially on behalf of an "in-the-closet lesbian mother" who claims that her video rental info was included in the anonymous data, and that it could be used to "out" her. While I agree that the data likely wasn't very anonymous, this lawsuit does seem like something of a stretch, in the typical class action format of a lawyer reaching pretty far in hopes of getting a big payout. I do have concerns about Netflix releasing a big dataset, but this lawsuit is just a pure moneygrab.

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Megan from NotMartha.org has created these tiny adorable gingerbread houses designed to perch on the rim of your hot chocolate mug, and she thoughtfully provided a downloadable pattern for making your own.

a tiny gingerbread house that perches on the rim of your mug (via A Whole Lotta Nothing)

Megan from NotMartha.org has created these tiny adorable gingerbread houses designed to perch on the rim of your hot chocolate mug, and she thoughtfully provided a downloadable pattern for making your own.

a tiny gingerbread house that perches on the rim of your mug (via A Whole Lotta Nothing)

It's the holiday season, maybe that's why it took a full day for the discussion to get underway about Tumblr's implementation of the Twitter API. But it is rolling now, and going in an interesting direction.

Fred Wilson, who is a Twitter board member and a major investor in Tumblr, wrote a post on his blog asking for a discussion among his readers, who tend to view the tech world from an investor's perspective.

It's great that APIs finally have become an issue for financial people. They're also important for media people because they open doors in the news business as well. In this week's Rebooting The News, Jay asked me to explain what it means for WordPress to implement the Twitter API. The podcast was recorded before we knew that Tumblr was working on matching WordPress. If you're confused by all this michegas, listening to the podcast might help.

On October 17 I wrote The Internet Abhors a Funnel. In a sense all these new implementations of the Twitter API tend to lessen the importance of teh Funnel. And in addition to strengthening the position of WordPress and Tumblr, it also strengthens Google and Microsoft, because their search engines can become more complete than Twitter's, by making deals with the new players for access to their firehoses.

Stowe Boyd asks this question from another point of view. How do you follow someone on Tumblr from Twitter and vice versa? I have two answers for that: 1. That further strengthens the position of centralizers, Google and Microsoft. 2. That's what Realtime RSS is for, the concept behind rssCloud and PubSubHubBub. 3. Twitter can and probably still should position itself as the Network Solutions of this space, as I outlined in my 2007 piece that broke Twitter down into its components.

An anonymous reader writes "The draft intellectual property text of the EU - Canada Trade Agreement has leaked, with news that the EU is demanding that Canada fundamentally alter copyright, patent, and trademark law. The laundry list of demands includes copyright term extension, WIPO ratification, DMCA-style legislation, resale rights, new enforcement provisions, and following patent, trademark, and design law treaties. The net result is that when combined with the ACTA requirements, Canadian copyright law may cease to be Canadian." Reader TheTurtlesMoves stresses the "first sale doctirne" aspect of the Canada - EU negotiations. Once an artist sells a creative work, should she get a cut of any future resales of that same work? The EU says yes at least for some types of works, and it wants Canada to see things its way. "Europe's Directive 2001/84/EC says that the right covers only 'works of graphic or plastic art such as pictures, collages, paintings, drawings, engravings, prints, lithographs, sculptures, tapestries, ceramics, glassware and photographs, provided they are made by the artist himself or are copies considered to be original works of art.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The AAAS's ScienceInsider confidently reports that NASA is in line to receive $1 billion more next year. Reader coop0030 sends this quote: "President Barack Obama will ask Congress next year to fund a new heavy-lift launcher to take humans to the Moon, asteroids, and the moons of Mars... The president chose the new direction for the US human space flight program Wednesday at a White House meeting with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, according to officials familiar with the discussion. NASA would receive an additional $1 billion in 2011 both to get the new launcher on track and to bolster the agency's fleet of robotic Earth-monitoring spacecraft."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Don't mess with a fake CEO. That's the lesson of the week. At the beginning of the week, "Fake Steve Jobs" (aka Dan Lyons) got a lot of attention for his rather funny fake phone call with AT&T boss Randall Stephenson where he tells him to fix his wireless network that has been receiving so many complaints from iPhone users. As that post got more and more attention, FSJ came back with another satirical idea: Operation Chokehold. The idea is that at noon Pacific time today (Friday, the 18th) iPhone users around the country should turn on the most data intensive apps they have and run them for an hour, to signal their displeasure with the problems with AT&T's network.

Remember, this is a fake online persona who has blogged outrageous satire for years.

But AT&T apparently took it seriously, calling it irresponsible and pointless. And then, the FCC got into the game, again calling it irresponsible and warning of public safety concerns. Of course, all this has done is draw a lot more attention to the whole thing.

But even more interesting? It got people to actually look at the details of AT&T's operations, and its "woe is me" position on its wireless network. Except... well, the numbers tell a story AT&T doesn't want you to hear. Specifically, they keep making more and more in the way of money, but they're spending less and less on investment in its wireless network. While there's obviously a lot more that goes into those sorts of numbers, the numbers don't make AT&T's claims sound particularly convincing. While we agree that creating a denial of service attack is not a good idea, AT&T's response to all of this has only sunk the company in deeper. It's making a ton of money, and its network sucks... and despite claims of fixing it, they've been spending less and less on the network. It seems like that's a lot more irresponsible than worrying about a random fake CEO.

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Don't mess with a fake CEO. That's the lesson of the week. At the beginning of the week, "Fake Steve Jobs" (aka Dan Lyons) got a lot of attention for his rather funny fake phone call with AT&T boss Randall Stephenson where he tells him to fix his wireless network that has been receiving so many complaints from iPhone users. As that post got more and more attention, FSJ came back with another satirical idea: Operation Chokehold. The idea is that at noon Pacific time today (Friday, the 18th) iPhone users around the country should turn on the most data intensive apps they have and run them for an hour, to signal their displeasure with the problems with AT&T's network.

Remember, this is a fake online persona who has blogged outrageous satire for years.

But AT&T apparently took it seriously, calling it irresponsible and pointless. And then, the FCC got into the game, again calling it irresponsible and warning of public safety concerns. Of course, all this has done is draw a lot more attention to the whole thing.

But even more interesting? It got people to actually look at the details of AT&T's operations, and its "woe is me" position on its wireless network. Except... well, the numbers tell a story AT&T doesn't want you to hear. Specifically, they keep making more and more in the way of money, but they're spending less and less on investment in its wireless network. While there's obviously a lot more that goes into those sorts of numbers, the numbers don't make AT&T's claims sound particularly convincing. While we agree that creating a denial of service attack is not a good idea, AT&T's response to all of this has only sunk the company in deeper. It's making a ton of money, and its network sucks... and despite claims of fixing it, they've been spending less and less on the network. It seems like that's a lot more irresponsible than worrying about a random fake CEO.

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This striking "Vertebrae" necklace was a Temple University student project by Molly Epstein, at the School of Art.

Molly Epstein "Vertebrae" SLS 33% Glass-Filled Nylon (via Street Anatomy)

We've discussed the Netflix Prize numerous times as the contest ran, including the news two years ago that the anonymity of the dataset had been broken. Now reader azoblue sends in this excerpt from Wired: "An in-the-closet lesbian mother is suing Netflix for privacy invasion, alleging the movie rental company made it possible for her to be outed when it disclosed insufficiently anonymous information about nearly half-a-million customers as part of its $1 million contest to improve its recommendation system. ... The lead attorney on the new suit, Joseph Malley, recently reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with Facebook over its failed Beacon program, which drew fire in part for sharing users’ Blockbuster rentals with their friends. ... If a data set reveals a person's ZIP code, birthdate and gender, there's an 87 percent chance that the person can be uniquely identified." The suit turns on the question of whether Netflix should have known that their dataset's anonymity could be broken, two years before researchers demonstrated that.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Seems the noise jam got a bit out of hand when sonic experimentalist Aj "Gannon" Pyatak recorded the above demonstration of his very circuit-bent amalgamation - the Toy Volcano. In fact, that turned out to be the most awesomest project vid I've ever seen ... and trust, I have seen many. no, really. [via GetLoFi]

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I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the excitement surrounding Clifford Wolf's new freeware OpenSCAD program. OpenSCAD uses a cool keep-it-super-simple approach to 3D modeling, eliminating the resource-hungry what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editing environment favored by most 3D modeling packages, and replacing it with a text-based scripting environment in which models are programmed, instead of sculpted. Basically, you write a script describing your model's shape and then compile it to produce the actual model, which is then rendered onscreen and can be exported to STL format for 3D printing or other purposes.

OpenSCAD has two powerful features to facilitate this programming processes. The first is support for so-called "constructive solid geometry" (CSG) modeling, in which complex forms are built up as intersections, unions, and differences of simple primary shapes like boxes, cylinders, cones, and ellipsoids. If you've ever used the ray-tracing program POV-Ray before, this idea will be familiar to you.

The second, less-well-publicized (but perhaps equally powerful) feature of OpenSCAD is "DXF extrusion," in which OpenSCAD will import a 2D drawing in AutoCAD's popular drawing exchange format (DXF) and "extrude" it into the third dimension. OpenSCAD has support for linear extrusion, in which the resulting part has straight vertical sides, and also rotating extrusion, which results in a part with helical sides. Since a large number of models for rapid prototyping are simple extruded profiles, I expect this feature to see a lot of use.

In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to use OpenSCAD to produce a simple 3D model by extruding a part profile produced in normal drawing software. I use Adobe Illustrator CS3 because I have access to it and am familiar with its interface, but the popular freeware drawing program InkScape will read and write DXF files natively, and there's no reason why it couldn't serve just as well if you prefer it. There are a number of other free and low-cost programs that will export DXF files. OpenSCAD's developer mentions QCAD, which is available from its developer RibbonSoft for €24.

The part I'm making is one of 12 solid pentomino puzzle pieces based on the animals of the Chinese zodiac--in this case, the rabbit or "Z" pentomino. The designs are based on those of Japanese schoolteacher Sabu Oguro as published on p. 40 of Jerry Slocum and Jack Botermans' 1986 book Puzzles Old & New: How to Make and Solve Them, an image of which is reproduced at the top of this article. My original DXF files and the extruded 3D STL files are freely available for download at Thingiverse. This morning at 10 AM PST, Becky Stern will be streaming live video of her MakerBot CupCake CNC machine printing parts from this set, and she and I will be on-hand to chat about the printing process and the models themselves. Becky printed and photographed all the real-world models shown in this article.

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During two seminars at Stanford and Fermilab on Thursday, researchers described signals for two events detected deep in an old iron mine in Minnesota that might mark the first detection of dark matter — or not. The presenters said the chances that the signals they detected were caused by something other than "neutralino" dark matter particles was 23 percent. "One source indicates that we'd need less than 10 total detections within the CDMS' range in order to have a high degree of confidence in the results." The NY Times describes the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search methodology: "The cryogenic experiment is nearly half a mile underground in an old iron mine in Soudan, Minn., to shield it from cosmic rays. It consists of a stack of germanium and silicon detectors, cooled to one-hundredth of a degree Kelvin. When a particle hits one of the detectors, it produces an electrical charge and deposits a small bit of energy in the form of heat, each of which are independently measured. By comparing the amounts of charge and heat left behind, the collaboration’s physicists can tell so-called wimps from more mundane particles like neutrons, which are expected to flood the underground chamber from radioactivity in the rocks around it." Here are the research team's summary notes of the latest results (PDF).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you thought secrecy over ACTA was bad enough, apparently Canada and the EU are involved in equally secret negotiations on a separate treaty that has additional copyright implications that are just as bad, if not worse than what ACTA would require. As with ACTA, the details have just leaked, and they're pretty ridiculous. From Michael Geist's link above:

• Copyright term extension.  The current term of copyright law in Canada is life of the author plus 50 years.  This is consistent with the term requirements under the Berne Convention.  The EU is demanding that Canada add an additional 20 years by making the term life plus 70 years.
• WIPO ratification. The EU is demanding that Canada respect the rights and obligations under the WIPO Internet treaties.  The EU only formally ratified those treaties this week.
• Anti-circumvention provisions. The EU is demanding that Canada implement anti-circumvention provisions that include a ban on the distribution of circumvention devices.  There is no such requirement in the WIPO Internet treaties.
• ISP Liability provisions.  The EU is demanding statutory provisions on ISP liability where they act as mere conduits, cache content, or host content.  ISPs would qualify for a statutory safe harbour in appropriate circumstances.  There is no three-strikes and you're out language (which presumably originates with the U.S.).
• Enforcement provisions.  The EU is demanding that Canada establish a host of new enforcement provisions including measures to preserve evidence, ordering alleged infringers to disclose information on a wide range of issue, mandate disclosure of banking information in commercial infringement cases, allow for injunctive relief, and destruction of goods.  There is also a full section on new border measures requirements.
• Resale rights.  The EU is demanding that Canada implement a new resale right that would provide artists with a royalty based on any resales of their works (subsequent to the first sale).
• Making available or distribution rights.  The EU is demanding that Canada implement a distribution or making available right to copyright owners.

Some of these are repeats from ACTA, but the others are pretty bad as well. Copyright term extension is just pointless, and it's amazing that anyone still thinks it makes sense. The purpose of copyright is to create incentives to create. You can't retroactively do that. It's a farce. Copyright term extension is effectively a welfare program for content creators. If that's what people want, then fine, but it should be discussed in those terms. It has nothing to do with copyright.

Resale rights are another huge problem. We were just discussing how Australia just added these. They're officially to "help" up-and-coming artists, but they do the opposite. They basically give fewer reasons for buyers to purchase art from up-and-coming artists (knowing that selling them for profit will be that much more difficult) and really only help the well-established artists who can easily make more money by creating new art and selling it at much higher prices. It, again, is a welfare system designed mainly to give more money to successful artists at the expense of up-and-coming artists.

But the bigger issue here, as pointed out by Geist, is that between both of these treaty negotiations, you're left wondering how come no one will let Canada create their own copyright laws? These treaties aren't about "harmonization" (the buzz word you hear), but about having global copyright law in a position where a single change in one country forces pretty much every other country to ratchet the levels up (and, yes, they do always go up).

Allowing countries to set their own copyright laws and policies is important. Because we've never had an evidence based copyright, and because there's growing evidence that draconian copyright laws can harm creative output, it would seem like a better solution would be to let different countries experiment with different copyright laws (or none at all...) to see what happens and what works best. Forcing all countries to align under identical copyright laws, entirely at the behest of a single industry, with provisions to regularly ratchet things up with no real review of the evidence seems immensely problematic.

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Yesterday, news broke that insurgents used a $25 application available online to hack into US military drone video feeds, and view, copy, and potentially distribute their contents. Hmmmm... Unauthorized copying of audio and video material? Some on Twitter have suggested that we might just send the MPAA or RIAA after them -- then, for sure we'll at last find Bin Laden. But Wired Danger Room's Noah Shachtman says,

Tapping into drones' video feeds was just the start. The U.S. military's primary system for bringing overhead surveillance down to soldiers and Marines on the ground is also vulnerable to electronic interception, multiple military sources tell Danger Room. That means militants have the ability to see through the eyes of all kinds of combat aircraft -- from traditional fighters and bombers to unmanned spy planes. The problem is in the process of being addressed. But for now, an enormous security breach is even larger than previously thought.

Here's the Danger Room article.

Nick Ramage's 'Fingers' exude a certain type of surrealist creepiness … all the while, tapping away out of what seems to be sheer boredom. Makes for an odd sort of tension, no? Those with an extra $730 around can purchase their own from the limited edition over @ Laikingland [via Adafruit]

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cyclocommuter writes with this snippet from The Register's assessment of whether Microsoft's .NET framework has been a success: "If the goal of .NET was to see off Java, it was at least partially successful. Java did not die, but enterprise Java became mired in complexity, making .NET an easy sell as a more productive alternative. C# has steadily grown in popularity, and is now the first choice for most Windows development. ASP.NET has been a popular business web framework. The common language runtime has proved robust and flexible. ... Job trend figures here show steadily increasing demand for C#, which is now mentioned in around 32 per cent of UK IT programming vacancies, ahead of Java at 26 per cent."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pringles-can lens extender produces dazzling ultra close-ups for peanuts.
Thanks go to Haje Jan Kamps for the original article in MAKE, Volume 06.
To download The Macro Photography On a Budget video click here and subscribe in iTunes.
Check out the complete Macro Photography On a Budget article in MAKE, Volume 06 and you
can see that in our Digital Edition.

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Pringles-can lens extender produces dazzling ultra close-ups for peanuts.
Thanks go to Haje Jan Kamps for the original article in MAKE, Volume 06.
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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A feature at Gamasutra examines one of the foundations of many MMORPGs — the idea that class roles within such a game fall into three basic categories: tank, healer, and damage dealer. The article evaluates the pros and cons of such an arrangement and takes a look at some alternatives. "Eliminating specialized roles means that we do away with boxing a class into a single role. Without Tanks, each class would have features that would help them participate in and survive many different encounters like heavy armor, strong avoidance, or some class or magical abilities that allow them to disengage from direct combat. Without specialized DPS, all classes should be able to do damage in order to defeat enemies. Some classes might specialize in damage type, like area of effect (AoE) damage; others might be able to exploit enemy weaknesses, and some might just be good at swinging a sharpened bit of metal in the right direction at a rapid rate. This design isn't just about having each class able to fill any trinity role. MMO combat would feel more dynamic in this system. Every player would have to react to combat events and defend against attacks."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Australia's aviation authority has announced a return to sanity, allowing nail files, umbrellas and metal cutlery on its planes, saying that it will focus instead on "real risks."

The changes will see passengers again allowed to carry some sharp implements, such as nail files and clippers, umbrellas, crochet and knitting needles on board aircraft from July next year.

Metal cutlery will return to return to cabin meals and airport restaurants following Government recognition that security arrangements must be targeted at 'real risks'.

The best secondary customs screening I ever had was in Brisbane. We got off the plane and were directed to secondary. I told the customs guard that Alice was pregnant and he practically ran to get her a chair and a glass of water while we waited. Shortly thereafter, two customs agents came over and asked us a few simple questions ("where are you staying, why are you here?") in a friendly tone and then told us we were done. I thought they were just passing the time of day before the screening -- they were so incredibly nice, the way Canadians are meant to be (except when you cross a border, where they turn into total bastards in the name of ensuring that you don't cheat the government out of its national sales tax).

Carry-on restrictions to be relaxed (via Schneier)

(Image: TSA Screener with Checkpoint Friendly Laptop Case, a Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike image from Mobile Edge Laptop Cases' photostream)

cram writes in to let us know of a filmmaker/post production guy in Uruguay who spent a grand total of $500 to make a 5 minute "robots attack the world" movie that he put on YouTube, and, in response, has now been given tens of millions of dollars by a Hollywood production company to do something more significant: There are a few things that are a bit unclear from the story, which alternates at points between dollars and pounds, so you may question the validity of the details. However, watching the video is quite compelling, yet again. We've seen other top amateur films with amazing special effects made on the cheap, and this is another one to add to the pile. Hollywood keeps insisting that it needs to produce $200 million movies, and studio insiders, who like to hang out in our comments and dismiss amateur special effects as being worthless, will -- of course -- mock this as being nothing special. And, sure, you can definitely see that the quality of the $500 effort is not the same as a big budget Hollywood film. But it's not that far off. And what can be done today for $500 couldn't even have been matched by Hollywood's bigshots a decade ago. Just think what an amateur and $500 will do a decade from now? And then explain, again, why we're going to "need" to produce $200 million special effect bonanza movies again?

In the meantime, congrats to this guy, who turned $500 into a chance to play around with a lot more (though, not $200 million). It's difficult to turn that sort of opportunity down, though it would have been even cooler to see what he could have done on a smaller budget as well.

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The Copenhagan Wheel recently demonstrated at the Copenhagan Conference on Climate Change is a clever device that can store energy every time you apply the breaks and then reapply it in the form of motor assist as you ascend a hill on your bicycle. Developed by MIT researchers, the Copenhagan Wheel also acquires speed, distance, and direction data from an array of sensors inside the device and transmits it via Bluetooth to the cyclists mobile. [via geekygadgets]

Over the past few years we have seen a kind of biking renaissance, which started in Copenhagen and has spread from Paris to Barcelona to Montreal," says Carlo Ratti, director of the MIT SENSEable City Laboratory and the Copenhagen Wheel project. "It's sort of like 'Biking 2.0? -- whereby cheap electronics allow us to augment bikes and convert them into a more flexible, on-demand system.

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After my review last November of John Clute's outstanding collection of Robert E Howard's short fiction, Dark Horse was kind enough to send me all seven collected volumes of their superb Conan graphic novel series.

The series ran from 2004-2008, cycling through an assortment of writers and artists who've taken Howard's work and paid it great justice indeed. Cary Nord, who illustrated the first three books, set a high standard for the art, devoting himself to a Frazetta-esque attention to anatomy, blood, and action. The writers, meanwhile blended Howard's own storylines with original material that serve to connect one adventure to the next (there wasn't much continuity in Howard's original Conan saga, which ran more like a series of discrete adventures, each intended to stand alone).

As I've noted before, I have enormous affection for Conan; these stories are the origin node of the modern network of heroic fantasy, the original strong brew that has been diluted for a million mighty-come-lately adventures. Howard's muscular prose, his romanticization of "uncivilized" life ruled by passion and honor, and his faultless pacing (when in doubt, insert an epic battle with an army of the undead, a pack of thieves, a gang of ice-giants, or, if necessary, a dalliance with a hot-blooded swordswoman that ends with the two fighting back to back against a pack of lions or similar) make each Conan adventure a perfect, blood-pounding escape.

The comics form is especially kind to Conan. The artists are able to do the heavy lifting of setting the scene and depicting the action, whittling away Howard's prose to the unselfconsciously heroic dialog: blood oaths, curses, seductive grunts, defiant yells.

I devoured all seven volumes in three days, reading one at the office and one before bed every night, waking up my wife to show her particularly gore-spattered panels (she's the illustrator in the family and enjoys this stuff as much as I do). It was just wonderful returning to Conan's world, to the heroic lands I'd lived in in my imagination as a boy.

An anonymous reader writes "The Italian government has proposed introducing new restrictions on the Internet after a Facebook fan page for the man who allegedly attacked Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Sunday drew almost 100,000 users in under 48 hours. However, the planned clampdown on Internet hate speech sparked a heated debate over censorship and freedom of expression, leading Interior Minister Roberto Maroni to execute a partial U-turn."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just posted! Our in-depth review of the Leica X1. Back in September Leica surprised everyone with the announcement of its entirely home-grown large-sensor compact, which combines a fixed 35mm-equivalent lens with an APS-C sensor. Featuring a pared-down design with traditional analogue-style control dials on its top plate for shutter speed and aperture, the X1 certainly looks desirable on paper, but at an asking price around $2000, can it live up to the inevitable high expectations? We've had our hands on a production X1 for the past couple of months - click through to find out what we thought of it.

It's almost a year since we launched the Challenges system on dpreview.com and we've been constantly impressed with the quality of submissions and the imagination of the challenge hosts. To showcase this talent and imagination, we're running a 'Challenge of Challenges,' to find the dpreview.com Picture of the Year. All previous challenge-winning images have been automatically entered and voting starts immediately so, if you've been as impressed as we have, make sure you show it by helping to choose 2009's best challenge-winning image.

Earlier this month, we discussed news that Sega's new Aliens vs. Predator video game had been refused classification in Australia, effectively banning it. After a scathing response from the developer saying they wouldn't censor the game, and later news that the classification scheme may be updated to include an R18+ rating, it now seems that the Classification Board has seen fit to give the game a green light after all. Sega's Darren Macbeth told Kotaku, "We are particularly proud that the game will be released in its original entirety, with no content altered or removed whatsoever. This is a big win for Australian gamers. We applaud the Classification Review Board on making a decision that clearly considers the context of the game, and is in line with the modern expectations of reasonable Australians."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's obvious been a lot of talk about James Cameron's new epic movie Avatar. One of the interesting things about the movie is that, yet again, it's showing why Hollywood probably isn't in as much trouble due to "piracy" as studio bosses keep insisting. Avatar is designed to be the type of movie you absolutely want to go see in the theater, with amazing special effects, and an incredible 3D setup, like none you've ever seen before, and certainly one that you can't replicate at your house, no matter how cool your home theater system might be. And yet... it seems that they've still decided to lock the movie up with DRM, and rather than helping things, that DRM is fouling stuff up. Some theaters in Germany have discovered that the DRM is preventing them from showing the film in some theaters. So, here they are, with a movie that, by its very nature, is resistant to any problem from "piracy" (if anything, pirated copies might make people more interested in seeing the amazing effects), and they still try to DRM it up, and all that does is make it harder to see the special effects. So, what good does DRM do again?

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Adobe has launched Photoshop Camera Raw 5.6, Lightroom 2.6 and DNG Converter 5.6 for immediate download. Release candidates of all three had already been available from the Adobe's Labs site. The updates fix minor issues and provide additional Raw support for 20 more DSLRs, including the Canon EOS 7D and Nikon D3S, with additional DNG support for the Leica M9 and Ricoh GXR.

Bridging the gap between the "real world" and your computer, the Advanced Arduino Starter Kit from the Maker Shed takes you further into the world of physical computing. We've included all sorts of cool electronic parts this time, along with our best selling Making Things Talk book by Tom Igoe. You'll experience what the tens of thousands of engineers, designers, artists and hobbyists already know about this awesome and educational prototyping platform.

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino

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mantis2009 writes "When it comes to stopping a cataclysmic Earth vs. asteroid event, social science and international political leaders have more difficult questions yet unanswered than physicists do, according to report delivered at this week's American Geophysical Union meeting. Wired has a discussion of an analysis authored by former astronaut Rusty Schweickart, who worries that the international community is nowhere near ready to begin the complex and inevitably controversial task of deflecting an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Among the questions to be answered is whether to modify the Partial Test Ban Treaty to allow nuclear weapons in outer space. Another possibility to avoid the destruction of civilization would require the international community to choose an area on the globe where an asteroid might be 'aimed.' Who would decide which nations get placed in the asteroid's crosshairs?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

mantis2009 writes "When it comes to stopping a cataclysmic Earth vs. asteroid event, social science and international political leaders have more difficult questions yet unanswered than physicists do, according to report delivered at this week's American Geophysical Union meeting. Wired has a discussion of an analysis authored by former astronaut Rusty Schweickart, who worries that the international community is nowhere near ready to begin the complex and inevitably controversial task of deflecting an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Among the questions to be answered is whether to modify the Partial Test Ban Treaty to allow nuclear weapons in outer space. Another possibility to avoid the destruction of civilization would require the international community to choose an area on the globe where an asteroid might be 'aimed.' Who would decide which nations get placed in the asteroid's crosshairs?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ape Lad sez, "I somehow ended up reading about spite houses (homes built specifically to piss off a neighbor) this evening, which I had never heard of before. Flickr has several when you search the tags, including the sad story behind this house in Connecticut."

Spite house (Thanks, Ape Lad)

(Image: File:AlamedaSpiteHouse.jpg, Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike, Wikimedia Commons)

Lucas123 writes "The Blu-ray Disc Association announced today that it has finalized the specification for Blu-ray 3-D discs. The market for 3-D, which includes 3-D enabled televisions, is expected to be $15.8 billion by 2015. Blu-ray 3-D will create a full 1080p resolution image for both eyes using MPEG4-MVC format. Even though two hi-def images are produced, the overhead is typically only 50% compared to equivalent 2D content. The spec also allows PS3 game consoles to play Blu-ray 3-D content. 'The specification also incorporates enhanced graphic features for 3D. These features provide a new experience for users, enabling navigation using 3D graphic menus and displaying 3D subtitles positioned in 3D video.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We got a great response to our recent article looking through the lessons learned from the MIT team's quick victory in DARPA's "find the red balloons" challenge. JP Werlin pointed out one additional interesting point however: despite this being a task involving searching, finding and aggregating information, Google search was useless for this particular project:

Google didn't matter because Google is a file cabinet of the past. Yes, we know that supposedly this week Google Real Time Search is launching and it will be the next great thing. We also know there are Google Alerts that help us stay current. But there was no real time search or alert that helped us on Saturday, December 5, 2009. Now Google documents were great (we used Spreadsheets) and Google Maps with Street View was indispensable. But Google's main function, it reason for being, was 100% irrelevant. Google is great for looking at yesterday. In its current form, Google is a complete failure for looking at today. And when I mean today I do not mean today's Wall Street Journal or Techcrunch as arguably those are both looking at history as well. I am talking about what is happening right now, this moment. And do you want to know the best place to find out what is happening right now? Twitter Search.

Perhaps that changes (as noted) with Google's real time search offering, but it is notable. Google positions itself as wanting to be the place where you can find any relevant information, but that information is backwards looking.

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Darren sez, "A terrific montage of those 'can you clean that up a little' moments in film and TV. You know the trope: when back at the lab, some nerdy technician spouts technical gobbledygook and uses some fancy version of Photoshop to improbably improve the quality of some grainy security footage."

My favorite one of these -- I think it was in Enemy of the State? -- was two supercops looking at a satellite image of a terrorist standing on the roof of a building, and one says to the other, "can you rotate the picture so we can see his face?" I was waiting for the other guy to say something like, "sure, I'll just rewrite the fundamental laws of the universe so that cameras from overhead satellites can see around corners," but no, he did it. As the lady said of Meg Ryan, "I'll have what he's having."

Let's Enhance

Male bedbugs will schtup anything, and when they do, their stabby little penises can do great damage to one another. Female bedbugs have some "down there" armor that absorbs the punishing blows of the bedbug's love-spear, but males lack this protection. A pheromone discovered by a Swedish researcher can cause male bedbugs to kill each other with their penises through uncontrolled shagging:

According to lead researcher Camilla Ryne, bedbugs are notoriously undiscerning about who they mount, and are accustomed to stab their penis straight into another male's abdomen...

Males with blocked glands were mounted as often as other males, but for longer and suffered more wounds.

"This is the first time I've seen an alarm pheromone used as a sexual one," New Scientist quoted Ryne as saying.

New discovery may help deal with bedbug infestation (Thanks, Steve)

(Image: 98221_hires.jpg, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from liz.novack's photostream)

During a discussion of Charlie Stross's epic tale of Windows installation, a Making Light reader called Ajay worked up this killer formal structure of "the well-established genre, the tale of godawful Windows-installation woes":

I. Exordium. The narrator introduces himself, establishes his experience in computing (ethos) and exhorts the listeners to gather round.

II. Prolegomenon. Customarily, the hardware spec of the machine is outlined here.

III. Praeinstallatio. The narrator describes his initial attempt to install Windows.

IV. Contrainstallatio. The installation goes wrong.

V. Descendo. The narrator describes his increasingly desperate attempts to get things to go right.

VI. Depilatio. The narrator is reduced to despair and frustration.

VII. Inertio. The narrator sinks into a horrified stupor as his machine gurgles and clunks to itself for anything up to three days.

VIII. Peroratio. The narrator rises into fury as he describes how long and painful an experience the install was;

which may be followed by

IX. Aptenodytes forsteri, the narrator switches to Linux.

Chkdsk red in tooth and claw

(Image: Frustration!, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from basykes' photostream)

CWmike writes "After an 11-month legal face-off, Microsoft and European antitrust officials signed off yesterday on the ballot screen concept that will give Windows users a chance to download rivals' browsers. But now that the battle's over and the ink has dried, it's time to look closely. Some FAQ examples: What's Microsoft promised? How will it work? How many browsers will be on the ballot? Who decides which browsers? Who will see it?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Naty sez, "As a longtime member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), I've often had cause to be annoyed by their approach to copyright (the ACM exists to support the computing community, not to make money, and they seem to have forgotten that). I've just written a blog post about their latest bit of asshattery - they are trying to convince the US government not to expand the successful NIH open access requirement to other government funding bodies, all in the name of protecting the revenue from their digital library."

The ACM has no legitimate needs or interests other than those of its members! How would U.S. voters react to a Senator claiming that a given piece of legislation (say, one reducing restrictions on campaign financing) "strikes a fundamental balance between the needs of the Senate and those of the United States of America"? ACM has lost its way, profoundly and tragically.

As much as Mr. Rous would like to think otherwise, ACM's publishing program is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. ACM arguing that an open repository of papers would be harmful because it "undermines the unique value" of ACM's closed repository is like the Salvation Army arguing that a food stamp program is harmful because it "undermines the unique value" of their soup kitchens.

One data-point: I wrote a short story for Communications of the ACM that they were supposed to put on their website for free more than a year ago, and they still haven't figured out how to do this; they say that their website back-end makes it impossible to flag articles as open access.

US Gov Requests Feedback on Open Access - ACM Gets it Wrong (Again)

Carsten sez, "My friend, artist Camilla Brodersen created a wonderful, freely-redistributable rehash of an old Danish tourist poster, highlighting the new situation after the new police powers, as demonstrated in the heavy-handed clampdown on protesters at the recent climate change summit in Copenhagen. My friend Amila juxtaposed the mashup with the original poster on her English-language blog, creating a chilling and all too realistic contrast."

Copenhagen before and after (Thanks, Carsten)

Here's a nice little game-theory exercise:

You are in a game show with nineteen other players. You don't know the other players, you can't see them, and you can't communicate with them. The game you are in is called 'Greed!', and is straightforward to explain. You are asked to write down a whole dollar amount in the range $1 - $1,000,000 on a piece of paper. You will be paid the amount you asked for if it is deemed to be 'non-greedy'. Whether your request is indeed 'non-greedy' will be decided once all twenty request have been received by the host of the show. Your requested amount will be labeled 'non-greedy' if no other player has asked for less, and at least one player has asked for more.

How do you play?

Game Theory - The Art Of Acting Rational (Thanks, Dad!)

(Image: Money!, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from yomanimus' photostream)

While here in the US, we're still fighting over a federal shield law that will let journalists protect their sources, Michael Scott points us to the news that the European Court of Human Rights recently ruled that the media can protect anonymous sources.

The Court reiterates that freedom of expression constitutes one of the essential foundations of a democratic society and that, in that context, the safeguards guaranteed to the press are particularly important. Furthermore, protection of journalistic sources is one of the basic conditions for press freedom. Without such protection, sources may be deterred from assisting the press in informing the public on matters of public interest. As a result, the vital "public watchdog" role of the press may be undermined and the ability of the press to provide accurate and reliable reporting may be adversely affected. Having regard to the importance of the protection of journalistic sources for press freedom in a democratic society and the potentially chilling effect that an order for disclosure of a source has on the exercise of that freedom, such a measure cannot be compatible with Article 10 unless it is justified by an overriding requirement in the public interest.

This is definitely a good thing, and a bit surprising, since Europe has, in the past, often been a bit less protective of the right to speak anonymously.

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Twenty years ago today, the first full-length episode of The Simpsons -- known as The "Christmas Special" -- aired on television. This episode was originally intended to be show number 8, but ended up being first after a series of production glitches and switches. You can find streamable copies around the internets.

I've been traveling in rural, indigenous communities in Central America this week. I was reminded of the awesome happy-power and transcultural reach of the Simpsons in a conversation last night with an 8-year-old K'iche Maya kid. He lives in a highland village. His family is too poor to own a TV, but we got to talking, and he volunteered out of the blue his love for the show. He knows exactly who his favorite character is, too: "Omero" (Homer). He's a shy, quiet, serious boy, but lights right up when he's talking about the Simpsons. Pretty cool to think that a show could delight so many around the world, for so many years.

A special holiday shout-out to David Silverman, a personal friend who also happens to have been the director of that very first episode (and, of course, many others, and that movie). David, I hope you're having a more relaxed December than you did in 1989.

Drone hacking? Really? With off the shelf software?

Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations. Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber -- available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet -- to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.

SkyGrabber is software that's usually used to download movies from satellites. It appears you can just hook it up to a satellite dish for for its "connection" and you're off. Instead of downloading the latest Vampire movie, you could get video feeds from the drones. Wild.

In the MakerShed

ArduPilot is a full-featured autopilot based on the Arduino open-source hardware platform. It uses infrared (thermopile) sensors for stabilization and GPS for navigation. Requires a GPS module and an infrared XY sensor (not included). The autopilot handles both stabilization and navigation, eliminating the need for a separate stabilization system. It also supports a "fly-by-wire" mode that can stabilize an aircraft when flying manually under RC control, making it easier and safer to fly.

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We've noticed plenty of sports leagues really fighting against the internet, and assuming it's a "problem" or a "challenge" that needs to be stopped, rather than a great tool that needs to be embraced. A prime example of this is the way the Premier League has gone on the attack against online video, even as it refuses to offer many customers any other way to watch the matches. It looks like Formula 1 racing is taking a very different approach. Paul Rodriguez alerts us to an article about how Formula 1 is looking to really embrace the internet and avoid the mistakes that others have made in the past. At first, I was a bit nervous, because the article mentions that Formula 1 wants to "follow the example of the music industry..." in embracing the internet (it's news to me that the music industry has actually embraced the internet), but further down in the article, it does appear that they realize what's really happening:

"It doesn't make sense to try to charge people for something that they will figure out how to get for free. F1 will be available on the internet and you need to be prepared for that. The challenge is not in deciding what you give away for free but in deciding what sort of value you're going to provide on top of that -- elements that people are actually willing to pay for."

Bingo. It's exactly what we've been saying about so many industries, but too many of them focus on the core content and assume it must be sold. Instead, Formula 1 seems to realize that the core content is going to be free, so you need to focus on providing additional scarce value on top of that which is worth paying for.

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The Bad Astronomer writes "NASA's Cassini spacecraft took an image of Saturn's giant moon Titan earlier this year that serendipitously provides proof of liquid (probably methane) on its surface. The picture shows a glint of reflected sunlight off of a monster lake called Kraken Mare (larger than the Caspian Sea!). Scientists have been getting better and better evidence of liquid methane on Titan, but this is the first direct proof."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Our latest book, Make: Electronics, has been selling like hot cakes (do hot cakes really sell that well, BTW?), so much so that the conveyor belts were empty for awhile and our mechanical maker elves had nothing to box up and ship. The engines of commerce are once again in motion and there's still time to get the book for the holidays, even with free shipping (until midnight tonight PST, for orders of $175 or higher).

We thought you might also like to see a complete list of experiments/projects in the book. There are 35 in all:

Experiment 1: Taste the Power!
Experiment 2: Let's Abuse a Battery!
Experiment 3: Your First Circuit
Experiment 4: Varying the Voltage
Experiment 5: Let's Make a Battery
Experiment 6: Very Simple Switching
Experiment 7: Relay-Driven LEDs
Experiment 8: A Relay Oscillator
Experiment 9: Time and Capacitors
Experiment 10: Transistor Switching
Experiment 11: A Modular Project
Experiment 12: Joining Two Wires Together
Experiment 13: Broil an LED
Experiment 14: A Pulsing Glow
Experiment 15: Intrusion Alarm Revisited
Experiment 16: Emitting a Pulse
Experiment 17: Set Your Tone
Experiment 18: Reaction Timer
Experiment 19: Learning Logic
Experiment 20: A Powerful Combination
Experiment 21: Race to Place
Experiment 22: Flipping and Bouncing
Experiment 23: Nice Dice
Experiment 24: Intrusion Alarm Completed
Experiment 24: Magnetism
Experiment 25: Tabletop Power Generation
Experiment 26: Loudspeaker Destruction
Experiment 27: Making a Coil React
Experiment 28: Filtering Frequencies
Experiment 29: Fuzz
Experiment 30: One Radio, No Solder, No Power
Experiment 31: A Little Robot Cart
Experiment 32: Moving in Steps
Experiment 33: Hardware Meets Software
Experiment 34: Checking the Real World
Experiment 35: The Lock, Revisited

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Electronics
Our Price: $34.99
Want to learn the fundamentals of electronics in a fun and experiential way? Start working on some excellent projects as soon as you crack open this unique, hands-on book. Build the circuits first, then learn the theory behind them! With Make: Electronics, you'll learn all of the basic components and important principles through a series of "learn by discovery" experiments. And you don't need to know a thing about electricity to get started.

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Here's an update on the arrest of Frank Frazetta's son, who was charged with swiping at least $20 million of his father's paintings last week. The story has a few twists and turns, as you might imagine in a case in which an adult child has been accused of ripping off his own parent.

The details are fuzzy, but it sounds like Frazetta's adult children are fighting over the art created by their father, who is 81 years old and has dementia. Three of his children apparently want to sell the paintings (one painting recently went for $1 million, and it wasn't even one of Frazetta's most famous works) while Frank Jr. apparently doesn't want to sell them off, and that's why he broke into the family museum to take the paintings.

Heidi MacDonald of The Beat adds this important bit:

The REAL bombshell, however, comes from a notary who says that Frank Frazetta Sr. came to her nine days before the aborted heist and asked her to notarize a power of attorney removing control of the art from Bill, Heidi and Holly and giving it to Frank Jr! “He was in the right frame of mind,” said the notary.

Frazetta Heist update: Notary drops bombshell

This five-piece farmer's market stand comes together easily without any tools and provides vendors plenty of space to sell local goodies. It's by Jonathan Bancroft Colon and it aptly named the Bancroft Market Stand. [via Core77]

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Reader Eileen writes in to alert us that the NCAA -- known for its overly restrictive views at times -- is trying to bully the owner of the discussion website NCAAbbs.com into handing over its domain names. The NCAA is, not surprisingly, complaining that any domain name that includes NCAA automatically should belong to the NCAA. Of course, it's not so simple. While the NCAA does have a trademark on its name, that doesn't mean it gets automatic control over any site that uses NCAA in its domain name. The NCAAbbs site is clearly not associated with the NCAA and is pretty clearly just a fan discussion site. The owner of the site says that he's planning to fight the demand, and hopefully he can succeed. While the domain dispute process can be a bit arbitrary, the courts have often realized that a trademark holder does not get full control over every domain that mentions them. Hopefully, that will be the case here as well. Of course, the one area where it's pretty clear that you can keep such a domain name is in cases of "sucks sites." So perhaps if the NCAA wins this, the owner can simple relocate to NCAAreallysucks.com.

More to the point, however, you have to wonder what the NCAA thinks it's doing here. You have a site that has been set up to promote the NCAA and all of the various sports teams within the NCAA. This is an incredibly useful promotional tool that the NCAA should be celebrating and helping rather than attacking. Why do so many organizations think it's smart to threaten, attack or sue their biggest fans?

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New York magazine breaks down the menu at Balthazar, with help from author William Poundstone, to show you how tricks of typography make a difference in what you choose to eat (and pay for).

Columns Are Killers According to Brandon O'Dell, one of the consultants Poundstone quotes in Priceless, it's a big mistake to list prices in a straight column. "Customers will go down and choose from the cheapest items," he says. At least the Balthazar menu doesn't use leader dots to connect the dish to the price; that draws the diner's gaze right to the numbers. Consultant Gregg Rapp tells clients to "omit dollar signs, decimal points, and cents?...?It's not that customers can't check prices, but most will follow whatever subtle cues are provided."

New York Magazine: Menu Mind Games

Can a world without newspapers survive? Sure, says The Economist. What matters is the availability and quality of the news, not the medium that delivers it.