eldavojohn writes "Wikileaks has been pretty successful on a global scale — from ACTA documents to East Anglian e-mails, it is the definitive place to find suppressed documents. But some are saying that now Wikileaks should begin focusing on a local level. From the article: 'The organization has applied for a $532,000 two-year grant from the Knight Foundation to expand the use of its secure, anonymous submission system by local newspapers. The foundation's News Challenge will give as much as $5 million this year to projects that use digital technology to transform community news. WikiLeaks proposes using the grant to encourage local newspapers to include a link to WikiLeaks' secure, anonymous servers so that readers can submit documents on local issues or scandals. The newspapers would have first crack at the material, and after a period of time — perhaps two weeks, [German Wikileaks spokesman Daniel] Schmitt said — the documents would be made public on the main WikiLeaks page.' Anyone reading this who works for a community news source and would like to host sensitive documents with no risk: here is your solution."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Back in May the "lifetime achievement" award winner (many times over) in vaporware, Duke Nukem Forever, officially went onto the permanent vaporware list as developer 3D Realms shut down. So what happened? How could one video game be under development for a dozen years, and despite promos from over a decade ago, still never come out? Clive Thompson, over at Wired, tried to piece together an autopsy of Duke Nukem Forever.

As with just about anything Thompson writes, it's a great read, with some interesting lessons. While the crux of the story is that 3D Realms boss, George Broussard, had the earlier success stuck on his brain, it seems like there are a few other things to be learned. There is definitely this undercurrent of "this game must be perfect before it can be released" that runs through the whole story. And, in fact, that probably only got worse with time. Every year the game wasn't released, the more it would have to "prove" to eventually live up to its reputation. But even more interesting is the constant changing of game engines. Basically (according to the story) Broussard kept focusing on why the game had to be the absolute best, and so every time a new (better) gaming engine came out, he wanted to use that, and dump all the development done on earlier engines. In some ways it's a story that shows why just copying what other people do isn't enough. By the time 3D Realms "caught up" with others (often by licensing their technology), someone else had already jumped ahead and gone further -- leading 3D Realms to pull back and jump on board the next platform... leading to the same situation yet again.

The simple fact was that no one was ever going to be that far ahead of the game any more, and so there are times where you just release what you have and iterate. But 3D Realms put itself in the impossible position of both needing to be leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else, while at the same time relying on the technology of others they hoped to leapfrog. That's a recipe for disaster. You can use others' technologies if you want to be incrementally better, and to then continue to improve. But you're simply not going to be so far ahead of the game that no one is ever going to catch you. And it appears that 3D Realms never got past that contradiction.

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alphadogg writes "US authorities are investigating the theft of an estimated tens of millions of dollars from Citibank by criminals using Russian software tailored for the attack, according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required to access that link — CNET's coverage here). The security breach at the major US bank was detected mid-year based on traffic from Internet addresses formerly used by the Russian Business Network gang, the WSJ reported today, citing unnamed government sources. The Russian Business Network is a well-known group linked to malicious software, hacking, child pornography, and spam. The FBI is probing the case, the report said. It was not known whether the money had been recovered and a Citibank representative said the company denied any system breach or losses, according to the report."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bloom boxes are fuel cells that create electricity using a variety of energy sources. Powered by natural gas, they could produce cleaner power for Western homes. Running on plant waste, they could bring grid-less power to developing countries. And they could also be used as storage/backup for solar and wind generation.

Saturday Morning Science Experiment will not be seen this week (or next), while I'm on vacation, traveling in Costa Rica. Instead, I offer you this montage of photos from Arenal, a Costa Rican volcano that ranks as one of the most active volcanoes in the world. By the time you read this, I'll be somewhere around Arenal's base, hiking through the jungle and trying to get some good pictures for BB.

Have a happy New Year!

When will they learn? Slashdot points us to the story of Congressional Rep. Alan Grayson from Florida. Like most any elected official, there are people who oppose him and are trying to convince people to support his opponents. That's part of the ballgame that you play as a politician. In Grayson's case, one of his critics is a woman named Angie Langley, who set up a website called MyCongressmanIsNuts.com, which is a parody of Grayson's own CongressmanWithGuts.com (not linking to either, as I don't wish to link to any political sites). Again, this shouldn't be a surprise. Now, it turns out that Langley is not actually a constituent in Grayson's district, but lives nearby. That is a bit misleading, but hardly a major issue.

Until, that is, Grayson turned it into one by sending a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder (pdf) asking for an investigation of Langley and the eventual jailing of her for five years over falsely representing herself as a constituent:

These matters were brought to Ms. Langley's personal attention through complaint to the FEC weeks ago, but she and the Committee continue to solicit contributions fraudulently, and have stubbornly refused to return the contributions that they already have, received. Therefore, Ms. Langley and the Committee should be fined, and Ms. Langley imprisoned for five years.

Again, there is an issue with falsely soliciting political contributions, but the thing is, she wasn't getting much attention for her campaign, and the issue of where she lives is really quite minor. There are always people who oppose elected officials. But sending this letter and requesting five years in jail for Langley suddenly made this a national story -- and guess who that's helping? It's certainly not Grayson. But I understand that Langley has suddenly found a lot more willing donors to her campaign. Wouldn't Grayson have been better off just focusing on his "guts" and not why someone outside his district thinks he's "nuts"?

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rtobyr writes "I work for a state government agency. That means we can't donate money, because it's a 'gift of public funds.' I had the idea to put up a Web page stating that we 'use the following free software to save tax dollars,' as a way to help spread the word about open source software, but management calls this an 'endorsement.' A mirror server is a no-go as well. I'm certainly not a talented enough programmer to help with development. I've donated $10 here and there out of my own pocket, but I'm hoping you Slashdotters have some creative ideas about how my organization could give something back to the teams that create free software we benefit so much from."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I've posted before about my friend Greg Fleischut, a hypertalented young musician whose crossgenre passion spans bluegrass, freak folk, jazz, and alt.rock. Greg, now 18, is in college studying guitar. Here he is playing a tune by Klezmer clarinetist and mandolinist Andy Statman. Greg translated Statman's tune for the guitar. I find his seemingly-effortless shredding to be quite inspirational. Greg's indie rock band, The Audiophiles, are celebrating the release of their new EP, "Fairytales and Other Tales," with a gig on January 2 at San Francisco's Bottom Of The Hill.

A commenter on our recent DIY panoramic film camera post pointed out that the same site, Fun Science Gallery, also hosts this awesome tutorial on building a simple single-lens microscope based on the very earliest microscope technology. [Thanks, George!]

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Reading an End-of-the-Decade baby name round-up, I ran across this:

The last few years have shown a dramatic increase in the influence of everything from blockbuster movies to celebrity babies on naming trends ... Marley, from the film "Marley & Me," is gaining numbers for both sexes.

"[Parents] may not be able to send their kid to Harvard or buy him or her a celebrity lifestyle, but names are free and can give a piece of that cachet," Murray said.

No Harvard for you, kid. But we named you after a dog. So there's that.

NBC: Emma, Aiden are top baby names of the decade

sgunhouse writes to let us know that, following a leaked internal build over the weekend, Opera Software has now released their official 10.5 pre-alpha. There are no Linux versions yet. And an anonymous reader adds, "Opera's 10.5 pre-alpha includes the Carakan JavaScript Engine. Benchmarks now show that Opera is competitive with Chrome, beating it in Sunspider and other tests. Safari, Firefox, and IE are all behind. This is still pre-alpha, so further speed gains should be expected."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Another example of how the patent system is being used to hinder, rather than help, innovation. While we're no fans of Microsoft's view on patents these days, that doesn't mean we approve of ridiculous lawsuits against the company either. The one that got all the attention this year was a tiny Canadian startup, i4i, that claimed a patent (5,787,449) on editing an XML document, and then sued Microsoft and won (in Texas, of course). Not only did the company win, but the court ruled that Microsoft owed $98 per copy of Microsoft Word for this minor feature. On top of that, the court issued an injunction saying Microsoft could no longer sell Microsoft Word with this feature. Given the MercExchange ruling that said that injunctions don't always make sense in patent cases, it was hard to defend such an injunction as being necessary.

But... never let common sense get in the way of how the judicial system works when it comes to patents. The appeals court (CAFC) has now upheld the lower court ruling, requiring Microsoft to pay the $290 million and bars further sales of any copy of Microsoft Word with this feature as of January 11th. Microsoft's response is that it will simply remove this "little-used" feature. So this feature is rarely used, and yet it's worth $98 per copy of Word sold? How does that make sense?

Meanwhile, the tiny Canadian company is thrilled. It just made hundreds of millions of dollars for stating the obvious. And, rather than encouraging innovation, it's forcing a company to remove features. How is that innovative? How does that do anything at all to "promote the progress"? While some Canadian law professors might like to make up facts as to why these types of rulings make sense, I'm still at a loss as to how progress has been promoted here.

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To be honest, I'm not really sure what is going on here, but it looks fun. Arne Hendriks and Bas van Abel have collaborated to create the Instructables Restaurant, an eatery where everything inside it- including food, furniture and entertainment- have been constructed from designs available for free on Instructables. They are still in the trial phase of the project, so they don't have a permanent location, but their inaugural event appears to have gone quite well.

Of course, if you would like to make your own, there is an Instructable for that.

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Esther Schindler writes "According to this article at IT Expert Voice, Windows 7 and IPv6: Useful at Last?, we've had so many predictions that this will be 'the year of IPv6' that most of us have stopped listening. But the network protocol may have new life breathed into it because IPv6 is a requirement for DirectAccess. DirectAccess, a feature in Windows 7, makes remote access a lot easier — and it doesn't require a VPN. (Lisa Vaas interviews security experts and network admins to find out what they think of that idea.) The two articles examine the advantages and disadvantages of DirectAccess, with particular attention to the possibility that Microsoft's sponsorship may give IPv6 the deployment push it has lacked."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We were recently discussing the Discovery Channel series, Dirty Jobs on an internal Maker Media email. We all admire Mike Rowe's dedication to rolling up his sleeves and getting down to work and the happiness that can be found in working with you hands, even if the process is filthy. I've been a Dirty Jobs fan for a while, and an article in Fast Company about Mike Rowe back in February 2008 really solidified my admiration for the man. He also gave an insightful Ted Talk back in March of 2009 that is well worth watching. I've watched Mike make marbles, deliver a calf, and grease the parts of the crawler that delivers the space shuttle to the launch pad. It's great, great fun. If you haven't watched Dirty Jobs before, today is a great day to jump in on the fun. Discovery is airing a day-long marathon of the show right now. Enjoy!

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Vinnie alerts us to a story out of Chicago, where two of the larger regional supermarket chains, Jewel and Dominick's, recently put out ads congratulating Michael Jordan for all of his accomplishments (at the time of his induction into the NBA Hall of Fame). But, according to Jordan and his lawyer these newspaper ads celebrating Jordan's accomplishments were actually trademark infringement. Now, it is true that there are certain publicity rights when it comes to celebrities and "endorsements," but it's hard to see how a congratulatory message from local Chicago grocers would be seen by any moron in a hurry as an "endorsement" (no matter how good his outside jumper might be). I guess the solution is just to stop recognizing Jordan's achievements altogether.

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Cytalk and other readers tipped us to Microsoft's loss in a US appeals court, in a patent case brought by Canadian company i4i. Microsoft must now pay $290M and either stop selling Word (and probably Office) by January 11, or somehow work around the patent by that date. A Seattle PI blog reports that Redmond has a few options left: "In a statement, Microsoft said it was working hard to comply with the injunction. The company also said it is considering further legal options, including possible requests for a new hearing or a writ of certiorari from the US Supreme Court."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A desperate Boston mom called 911 late Saturday night because she couldn't get her 14-year old son to stop playing video games. A police spokesman said the call "was a little unusual, but by no means is it surprising."

Hugh Pickens writes "Steve Lohr writes in the NY Times that the country needs more 'cool' nerds — professionals with hybrid careers that combine computing with other fields like medicine, art, or journalism. Not enough young people are embracing computing, often because they are leery of being branded nerds. Educators and technologists say that two things need to change: the image of computing work, and computer science education in high schools. Today, introductory courses in computer science are too often focused merely on teaching students to use software like word processing and spreadsheet programs, says Janice C. Cuny, a program director at the National Science Foundation adding that the Advanced Placement curriculum concentrates too narrowly on programming. 'We're not showing and teaching kids the magic of computing,' Cuny says. The NSF is working to change this by developing a new introductory high school course in computer science and seeking to overhaul Advanced Placement courses as well. The NSF hopes to train 10,000 high school teachers in the modernized courses by 2015. Knowledge of computer science and computer programming is becoming a necessary skill for many professions, not only science and technology but also increasingly for marketing, advertising, journalism and the creative arts. 'We need to gain an understanding in the population that education in computer science is both extraordinarily important and extraordinarily interesting,' says Alfred Spector, vice president for research and special initiatives at Google. 'The fear is that if you pursue computer science, you will be stuck in a basement, writing code. That is absolutely not the reality.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've heard so many stories of copyfraud that many of us have been wondering why there aren't greater penalties for making bogus copyright claims. It appears at least someone over in the UK is asking the same question. We already noted how Lord Lucas, a technology aware member of the House of Lords who can program and has run some digital businesses, was speaking out against Peter Mandelson's Digital Economy Bill, noting that the entertainment industry is to blame for not adapting.

Now, via Michael Scott, we learn that Lord Lucas has introduced an addition to the Digital Economy Bill adding remedies against those who bring "groundless" copyright claims:

"169A. Remedy for groundless threats of infringement proceedings

(1) Where a person threatens another person with proceedings for infringement of copyright, a person aggrieved by the threats may bring an action against him claiming--
(a) a declaration to the effect that the threats are unjustifiable;
(b) an injunction against the continuance of the threats;
(c) damages in respect of any loss which he has sustained by the threats.
(2) If the claimant proves that the threats were made and that he is a person aggrieved by them, he is entitled to the relief claimed unless the defendant shows that the acts in respect of which proceedings were threatened did constitute, or if done would have constituted, an infringement of the copyright concerned.
(3) Mere notification that work is protected by copyright does not constitute a threat of proceedings for the purposes of this section.
(4) A copyright infringement report within the meaning of section 124A(3) of the Communications Act 2003, if notified to a subscriber under section 124A(4) of the Communications Act 2003, does constitute a threat of proceedings for the purposes of this section."

While it would be nice to see those who are falsely accused of copyright infringement have at least some stronger legal rights, it seems unlikely that this gets anywhere.

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A couple of weeks ago, I ran across yet another news story about how young people no longer date—they just have friends with benefits—and how those hookups are liable to lead to emotional and psychological damage.

But recent research suggests that picture may be wrong. Published in the December issue of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, the new research was based on surveys answered by a diverse group of more than 1300 Minnesotans in their late teens and early 20s. Not only were the majority of these people having sex within a relationship, but whether they were or not had no bearing on their mental health. The casual-sex havers were every bit as happy and healthy as the kids who were only doing it with a committed partner.

So who's right? To find out, I turned to a couple of experts in teen sex and sex education. At the heart of this apparent discrepancy, they told me, are big differences between the way scientists study sexual behavior and the way that information gets presented to the general public.

For instance, let's go back to that question of casual sex. An older paper that found 78% of young people had at least fooled around with a stranger or acquaintance during their college years. So it was surprising when the Minnesota study turned up just 8% of respondents who's last partner was a casual acquaintance, and another 12% who were in a relationship, but not an exclusive one.

That's a big difference, but the reason behind it should be instantly apparent to any current or former teenager. At least, any who have been to a slumber party. It's as simple as the difference between of-the-moment gossip and a game of "Have You Ever". The Minnesota survey asked people to categorize their most recent sex partner. The earlier study asked whether they'd ever, at any time, got all up on someone they didn't know very well.

Both are legitimate questions. The problem is that they're often reported by the media as being the same question. And neither "Have you ever?" nor "What are you doing right now?" is really a great stand-in for the far more important, "What do you normally do?"

"I think people stereotype teenagers sometimes," said John Santelli, M.D., a pediatrician and adolescent health specialist who chairs the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. "I don't think hookup situations are the norm for young people. Serial monogamy is very common among youth. The 20% in this study who weren't in committed relationships, I'd be willing to bet that many were between relationships, or in the process of forming one."

Far more thorny is the question of whether casual sex, or any sex outside marriage, is emotionally harmful. That basic idea is stated as a fact in federally funded abstinence education programs, Dr. Santelli told me. But most scientists don't think it's so clear-cut. Dr. Santelli, as well as adolescent sexuality researcher Douglas Kirby, Ph.D., told me that teen sex and mental health are more of a chicken/egg conundrum—and which came first depends a lot on how old you are.

Correlations between sex and poor mental health do turn up for very young teenagers—people younger than, say, 14—Dr. Santelli and Kirby told me. But you can't separate that from the fact that sex at that age, particularly for girls, is more likely to be coerced—and being pressured or forced into sex you really didn't want to have can cause mental health problems on its own. Dr. Santelli also pointed out that children who have been abused at home are more likely to start having sex early. Again, you can't look at any depression or addiction those kids have later and say that early sex was the clear cause.

Kirby said the same holds true for slightly older teens—people who were younger than 17 when they started having sex.

"Young people who are risk takers, more non-conventional, or challenging of social norms, they're more likely to have sex between the ages of 14 and 17. They're also more likely to smoke cigarettes, try alcohol, use drugs, be less attached to school, drop out, etc.," Kirby said. "Again, it's not the case that sex leads to all those things. It's that these people who are less connected to family and school are engaging in a wide variety of risk-taking behaviors and sex is just a part of that."

The median age for when Americans lose their virginity is 17. After that, Dr. Santelli and Kirby told me, studies show there's no longer any real correlation between poor mental health and sex. Whether you have it or not, your psychology isn't effected. The Minnesota study backs that up, they said, and goes one step further by showing that who you have sex with doesn't really matter, either.

Again, the problem is that media seldom make distinctions between situations that represent cause-and-effect and those that are simply correlated.

The result is that we, as a society, aren't addressing the things older teenagers and young adults really need to know, Dr. Santelli said. Americans start having sex at 17 and get married around 27, he said, but abstinence-based programs are presented as though getting married right out of high school is still the norm.

"We aren't providing realistic social models to young people. We need a healthy cohabitation program in America. And healthy relationship education," Dr. Santelli said. "We just say how wonderful marriage is. Abstinence programs are aimed toward getting you married at 20, not supporting you and helping you make healthy and smart choices as a single 20-something. We don't really support long-term, non-married monogamy. Which is a pretty good choice for many young people."

Casual Sex and Psychological Health Among Young Adults: Is Having "Friends With Benefits" Emotionally Damaging? By Marla E. Eisenberg et al in Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health

Image courtesy Flickr user [rom], via CC

Moritz Waldemeyer made these fuzzy LED and laser Gibson Les Pauls for OKGO, which I think might notch them a smidgen above Daft Punk in total wearable volts. [via Fashioning Technology]

More:

OKGO LED jackets

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A man in Beaumaris, Australia provided scientists with the oldest sample of air from the southern hemisphere. John Allport, 76, gave a scuba tank that he had filled in 1968 to researchers from the CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research labs. From Nature:

The air archive maintained by CSIRO started in 1978, and contains samples of clean air from a station at Cape Grim, Tasmania. It’s the oldest such archive in the world. Now with Allport’s tank, last used in 1970, the record has been extended further.

The air contained traces of propellants, refrigerants and emissions form aluminium smelters. Paul Fraser, who leads CSIRO’s greenhouse gas research team says that the scuba tank is going to be really useful: “If tanks were filled in a clean coastal environment their usefulness in measuring greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and chloro-flurocarbons (CFCs) is much broader,” he says.

"Old air discovered"

A villager in Yunnan, China was sentenced to 12 years in jail and fined $70k for killing and eating what may have been the last wild Indochinese tiger in China. He claims it was in self-defense; four other villagers who also ate the tiger's meat were sentenced to 3-4 years, too, for "covering up and concealing criminal gains."

[via Kotoripiyopiyo (Japanese) via TokyoMango]

Over at Cryptomundo, Loren Coleman presents his picks for "The Top 10 Cryptozoology Stories of 2009." Several bits previously featured on BB made the cut, including the eating of a near-extinct bird, baby coelacanths, and alligators in the sewers. Others were new to me: an African Pygmy Hippo killed in Australia, the rediscovery of a species of crow and turtle thought to be extinct, and the quest for black panthers in Europe.

vvaduva writes "Florida Rep. Alan Grayson wants to see one of his critics go directly to jail, all over her use of the word 'my' on her blog. In a four-page letter sent to [US Attorney General Eric] Holder, Grayson accuses blogger Angie Langley of lying to federal elections officials and requests that she be fined and imprisoned for five years. Her lie, according to Grayson, is that she claims to be one of his constituents. Langley, Grayson says, is misrepresenting herself by using the term 'my' in the Web site's name."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Dyche Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas has this almost hidden little room in the basement where you can go in, close a curtain, flip on a blacklight and watch as a collection of seemingly ordinary rocks light up with a fluorescent glow. This series of images, taken by photographer Louise Murray, reminds me of how much I like that room at the Dyche. Only, instead of rocks, Murray snaps photos of coral, fish and other sea creatures, using a portable blue light.

Fluorescent colours are produced by cells responding to certain wavelengths of light hitting them - causing the cell to emit its own light on a different wavelength, which creates a different colour. Traffic cones and highlighter pens are just two everyday examples of fluorescing objects that humans can detect without any equipment. Above ground people can usually pick up other fluorescing objects using ultra violet lights.

The Telegraph: Slideshow—The hidden fluorescent colours of the oceans
(Via Maria Popova)

Like having a real Christmas tree, but hate having to crawl underneath it to keep it watered? Well, Andrew King has a pretty good solution. He set up a small tank of water next to the tree, then ran a hose over to it to make an xmas tree siphon. Nice and easy, and you end up with more space under the tree for presents. I think I would make mine to look like a giant water tower, to match the train that we have running under there.

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eBay oddity scout Michael-Anne Rauback spotted these curious "Victorian" brass mechanical pocket watches in the form of a bicycle and "Mr. Book."

Sometimes you just shake your head and wonder. It's truly amazing that people don't realize what will happen when they send out ridiculous legal nastygrams. Take, for example, the situation from a few months back where the company Ralph Lauren got itself into a lot more hot water by sending a bogus DMCA takedown, rather than just 'fessing up to the fact that it photoshopped a model's image (badly). But in sending the DMCA takedown, Ralph Lauren called a hell of a lot more attention to a situation that most people would have forgotten otherwise.

Apparently Demi Moore and her lawyers missed that whole story. Back in November some folks noticed what appeared to be a photoshopping of Demi Moore's left hip on the cover of W magazine. There was some debate over it, but either way, people moved on and it was forgotten. Not so fast! While there was some discussion about it -- and Moore herself chimed in on Twitter to claim that the photo was not altered -- she's now had her lawyers threaten at least two publications over the original story. Their claim is that the posts are defamatory. Even if there was no retouching of the photo, it's hard to see what is possibly "defamatory" in the story. Digital retouching happens all the time, and claiming that a photo was retouched, if anything, would implicate the photographers or graphic artists at W, not Moore. There's simply nothing even close to defamatory in regards to Moore herself.

Either way, the really bizarre part is why sic the legal dogs on this? Any lawyer should know that this has zero chance of actually working and a very high likelihood of simply calling a lot more attention to the question of whether or not the image was altered. And, in fact, the guy who apparently first noticed the supposed retouching -- and a recipient of the legal nastygram -- has responded by presenting some pretty compelling evidence that the image was, in fact, retouched. At the same time, he also reiterates that even if this is true, there's nothing wrong with that and certainly nothing defamatory about it. So what was the purpose of the legal nastygram?

And, in the end, what makes Demi Moore look worse? The fact that some a cover shoot photo of her may have been slightly altered... or the fact that lawyers on her behalf sent out ridiculous legal nastygrams against those discussing this story?

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This clever foldaway table from Ivy Design reminded me of a similar idea in James Hennesey and Victor Papanek's classic 70s DIY furniture book Nomadic Furniture. Would be an easy remake. [via DVICE]

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itwbennett writes "Hundreds of Operating Systems were released during the past decade, finding their way into microdevices, watches, refrigerators, mobile phones, cars, motorcycles, jets, even the International Space Station. Some worked; some even worked well. Others, sadly, didn't. And some were just ahead of their time. Blogger Tom Henderson takes a look back at the best and worst OSes of the decade. Among the worst? Vista, as you'd suspect, along with WinME. But what about GNU Hurd? And some of the best? Solaris/OpenSolaris 10, Mac OS X, and newcomer Google Android."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cardboard Brian* and I met at a ski shop in Colorado. He was hanging out by the front door, smiling indiscriminately at passersby. I instantly fell for his charming, goofy, lopsided grin. The shop employee said he wasn't for sale, but he let me take him home anyway.

I was drawn to Cardboard Brian because he slightly resembles my real life boyfriend — they have the exact same hairstyle and cartoon-like facial features. But shortly after I brought him back to my hotel room, I began to feel like Cardboard Brian was taking on a life of his own. While Real Brian sat at his computer chatting away on AIM with his buddies, Cardboard Brian sat next to me on the couch and we watched The Wedding Planner together, both of us with smiles on our faces. I was genuinely enjoying his company.

This past Saturday, my real boyfriend was in Pacifica all day with a surf buddy, so I decided to take Cardboard Brian out with me instead. I placed him upright on my passenger seat and off we went. My first stop was the neighborhood yarn store — I needed to get some materials for a hat I'm making for my friend's newborn. I walked into the shop, holding Cardboard Brian gingerly by the head, and spent a good half hour looking at all the beautiful textures and colors of yarn. Baby blue merino or apaca-wool blend? Knit or crochet? I found myself asking Cardboard Brian simple questions that came to mind. Maybe I'm making it up, but I feel like he advised me to crochet in baby blue merino, so I went with that.

We made a quick stop at the bank. As I stood in the teller line, a couple of guys stared at Cardboard Brian, whom I had tucked neatly underneath my armpit. Cardboard Brian just stared right back and stuck his tongue out at them.

I often drive around town with my dog Ruby in the passenger seat. Since she's always staring at me, I talk to her about the weather, my itinerary for the day, the next story I'm working on.... just day-to-day chatter that passes through my busy head. Talking to Cardboard Brian was similar to that; he's much less reactive than Ruby is, but at the end of the day, both entail talking to an activity partner that can't really talk back. Is it as engaging as talking to a real human? Not exactly. But in a way, it's more satisfying because I can let all my social barriers go — I don't have to worry about whether I'm being boring or rude. It's refreshing.

It was a beautiful afternoon, so Cardboard Brian and I decided to take the dogs to the beach. Let me rephrase: I decided we should take the dogs to the beach. Cardboard Brian just smiled agreeably. We walked idly down the shoreline, hand on head, listening to the waves break and smiling at the dogs as they galloped from one washed up chunk of seaweed to the next. We stayed like this until Real Brian showed up and asked me what I was doing carrying Cardboard Brian around at the beach. "You weren't around, so I brought him instead," I told him. We took a few pictures together — me and Cardboard Brian, Real Brian and Cardboard Brian — and left as the sun began to set.

Of course, there's a downside to having a cardboard boyfriend. Cardboard Brian doesn't like to eat — I'm a food-lover at heart, so I find it hard to relate to his apathy for the culinary arts. He doesn't have a job and probably never will, which is a big turnoff. Since we can't procreate, it's hard to imagine starting a family and spending the rest of my life with him. (Well, maybe I can spend the rest of my life with him, but I have a feeling he'd end up in the closet.) He also takes up a surprising amount of room on the bed, even though he's only 18 inches in diameter. And he's not cuddly. Also, I'd never say this to his face, but he's a bit bland. Even though he kept pretty good company for a piece of paper, I have to admit I was a little bored.

After spending an entire day with a cardboard surrogate boyfriend, I decided to retire him to the office wall as decoration. As relaxing as it was to hang out with Cardboard Brian for a day, I think I'll stick with the Real, Complicated Brian and the joys and challenges he brings... at least for now.

*Cardboard Brian is actually the mascot of a snowboarding brand called Neff.

Some audiophiles apparently think graphite resistors "sound better" than metal oxide or wound wire resistors. Whether that's science or just myth, I don't claim to know, but making one's own resistors is pretty cool either way. Troels Gravesen's tutorial shows you how. [via Hack a Day]

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Barence writes "Security firm Trend Micro has accused Microsoft of giving malware writers a helping hand by advising users not to scan certain files on their PC because 'they are not at risk of infection.' Trend Micro warns that by making such information available, Microsoft is effectively creating a hit list for malware writers. 'Following the recommendations does not pose a significant threat as of now, but it has a very big potential of being one,' the company's researcher, David Sancho, writes on theTrend Micro blog."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wired's Clive Thompson on why Duke Nukem Forever absorbed 12 years of development time before its inevitable cancelation: because creator George Broussard forever obsessed over incorporating the latest graphical technology, generating an endless treadmill of upgrades.

During the late 1700s and early 1800s, the mail was delivered in and around London up to six times a day. Snail mail was almost Twitteresque, argues O'Reilly Radar's Sarah Milstein. "People today often assume that email, Twitter and other relatively instant communication media have created a slew of brand new communication behaviors. The Jane Austen show at the Morgan suggests just the opposite: our human patterns are surprisingly consistent, and technology evolves to meet us." (Via Tim Maly)

Tim K alerts us to the news that phone maker HTC has sent a cease & desist nastygram to the developers of an Android widget that certainly had a similar look and feel to HTC's own Sense UI. Except, many people claim that this newer widget, from LevelUp Studios, was actually better. LevelUp apparently has no interest in fighting this, and are ditching the widget, but it seems that they could have a decent argument here. The bigger question, though, is why HTC is bothering? I'm actually a big HTC fan. My last two mobile phones have both been from HTC, and I had been expecting my next one to be from HTC as well. But this sort of bullying for no good reason makes me wonder why I'd want to support a company like that. Honestly, what was HTC "losing" by letting this widget be created? This seems like bullying just for the sake of bullying.

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This video helps explain how researchers keep track of whether or not California is meeting standards set by AB-32—the 2006 law that mandates a 25% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Scientists monitor emissions round-the-clock via towers in San Francisco and Walnut Grove, California.

Using meteorological data and computer models, the scientists trace the journey of gases collected at the towers back to the areas where the gases originated. They then estimate how much greenhouse gas comes from broad sectors of central California, even from areas that are many miles upwind of the tower. Their probability-based calculations often match existing inventories of greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists have a good handle on the major greenhouse gas culprits in a region -- such as the methane emitted by a landfill or livestock feed lot -- thanks to models that utilize economic data and other information that indicate a facility's day-to-day operations, pollution and all.

But to get a closer view, researchers recently took their measurement instruments on a flight over Sacramento and the Bay area.

bizwriter writes "The high tech industry has been waiting for a Supreme Court decision in the Bilski case to decide fundamental questions, like when you can patent software. But there's a new test from the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (PDF) that just became precedential, meaning that it offers new grounds on which the US Patent and Trademark Office can deny patents on machines that use mathematical algorithms."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rachel @ CRAFT writes:

If you've received any of the snow from the big winter storm of 2009 this last week, why not try something a little different than the everyday snowman? Paul Overton of Dude Craft and Noah Scalin of Skull A Day may have had their collaboration plans thwarted by the weather, but their resulting alternative project was fantastic.

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An anonymous reader writes "BBC reports that Dr. Aaron Davis of the Royal Botanical Gardens claims 'almost three-quarters of the world's wild coffee species are threatened, as a result of habitat loss and climate change. "Conserving the genetic diversity within this genus has implications for the sustainability of our daily cup, particularly as coffee plantations are highly susceptible to climate change.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Well, here's an interesting lawsuit. Apparently, Rolling Stone magazine decided it wanted to try selling t-shirts of some of its covers. Considering the market for t-shirts, that might not be a bad idea (especially when compared to the market for magazines these days). Obviously, the magazine and its publisher Wenner Media own the copyright on their own covers, so there shouldn't be any problem, right? Not so fast. Since the covers usually include musicians, and those musicians have vast merchandising businesses themselves, some of the companies who handle the merchandising for some top artists have sued, claiming that they have exclusive licensing deals to sell products with those musicians. Rolling Stone is arguing both that it has a First Amendment right to do this, and a fair use defense to any intellectual property claim. I'm reminded of a recent case involving magazine covers, where the use of those magazine covers in a book (by someone else) was deemed fair use, though the details are obviously quite different. Still, it probably won't surprise many people that I tend to think Rolling Stone should prevail here. The key aspect of what they're selling is that the designs are Rolling Stone covers -- not specifically which band is on the cover.

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From the MAKE Flickr Pool

Vinmarshall posted this pic of his "bomb-proof" camera blast shield - and despite some limited flammability, the tough enclosure seems to live up to its name -

Check out the full how-to on PopSci.

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I'm about to leave the office for the last time this year and head off on holidays. I've got one more blog-post queued up -- a review of a kids' book that'll go live tomorrow morning -- and that's all you'll hear from me until Jan 11. I'm not going to be taking in email while I'm away. If you send me a message, you'll get an autoresponder telling you to try again after Jan 11, something that I picked up from danah boyd. It's the best answer I've found to resolving the problem of coming back from a nice, relaxing vacation to find 20,000 emails waiting for you. So this is me, signing off.

Thanks for an outstanding 2009, filled with many weird turns, delights shared, pains commiserated over, victories and defeats. I'm off to spend a couple wonderful weeks with my family, and to leave Boing Boing in the hands of my kick-ass co-editors. I'll see you next year.

I'm sure it'll be a doozy.

(Image: Lonely Hammock, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike image from *Micky's photostream)

Robotech_Master writes "CherryPal, which Slashdot last covered back in 2008, has released a $99 netbook, the Africa, aimed at the developing world but (unlike the OLPC) available for sale to the consumer. But unlike most netbooks, the Africa is not actually made to a set design. Instead, it uses a hacker-like approach similar to the way home PC builders build their cheap beige boxes. CherryPal purchases odd lots of whatever components are available most inexpensively, builds netbooks out of them, and calls them Africas. The resulting machines will at least meet and may exceed the minimum specs given on CherryPal's website, and may be built around an ARM, MIPS, or X86-based CPU depending on what parts CherryPal has on hand at the time. The device ships with 'at least' Windows CE or CherryPal's custom 'Green Maraschino' Debian-based Linux distro."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Origamiwolf crafted this huggable chip using measurements from the OP07 datasheet -

The various traced out parts are then scaled to the desired size, and borders then added for the seams. The chip is padded out with a rectangular foam block, and folded-up strips of aluminium foil are used to strengthen the legs.
The next natural improvement would be to actually embed a real OP-07 within, and have conductive threads sewn into the various legs.

Very sweet. Read more on the Wolf's Junkyard blog.

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My latest Guardian column, "The BBC's digital rights plans will wreak havoc on open source software," describes how the BBC's plan to add DRM to its high-def broadcasts will exclude free/open source software from use in digital television applications, slowing down innovation, raising costs, and harming the public interest. The BBC's regulator, Ofcom, will soon hold a second consultation on the Beeb's plan to add DRM to high-def broadcasts, and I'm urging them to get the BBC to answer for this consequence of the DRM plan.

The entire DTLA system relies on the keys necessary to authenticate devices and unscramble video being kept secret, and on the rules governing the use of keys being inviolable. To that end, the DTLA "Compliance and Robustness Agreement" (presented as "Annex C" to the DTLA agreement) has a number of requirements aimed at ensuring that every DTLA-approved device is armoured against user modification. Keys must be hidden. Steps must be taken to ensure that the code running on the device isn't modified. Failure to take adequate protection against user modification will result in DTLA approval being withheld or revoked.

This is where the conflict with free/open source software arises.

Free/open source software, such as the GNU/Linux operating system that runs many set-top boxes, is created cooperatively among many programmers (thousands, in some cases). Unlike proprietary software, such as the Windows operating system or the iPhone's operating system, free software authors publish their code and allow any other programmer to examine it, make improvements to it, and publish those improvements. This has proven to be a powerful means of quickly building profitable new businesses and devices, from the TomTomGo GPSes to Google's Android phones to the Humax Freeview box you can buy tonight at Argos for around £130.

Because it can be adapted by anyone, free software is an incredible source of innovative new ideas. Because it can be used without charge, it has allowed unparalleled competition, dramatically lowering the cost of entering electronics markets. In short, free software is good for business, it's good for the public, it's good for progress, and it's good for competition.

But free software is bad for DTLA compliance.

The BBC's digital rights plans will wreak havoc on open source software

(Image: JERKS!, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from ebmorse's photostream)

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

THE STORY SO FAR: In California, Michael, Dr. Mike and John and the 7th Son soldiers invaded the night club -- and found themselves in a trap, staring at John Alpha himself. Kilroy2.0, Jack and Jay slipped into the CDC's secure intranet, searching for NEPTH-charge victims. In Russia, the Devlins began their first -- and final -- mission together. Father Thomas finally met Hugh Sheridan ... and the true nature of Project 7th Son was unveiled.

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

Read Part Nine

Read Part Ten

Rick Bentley writes with more on the story behind the meltdown of Duke Nukem Forever, the game that will now live on only as a cautionary tale: "Although the shutdown was previously reported on Slashdot, this new Wired article goes in-depth behind the scenes to paint a picture of a mushroom cloud-sized implosion. Developers spending a decade in a career holding pattern for below market salary with 'profit sharing' incentives, no real project deadlines, a motion capture room apparently used to capture the motion of strippers (the new game was to take place in a strip club, owned by Duke, that gets attacked by aliens), and countless crestfallen fans. *Sniff*, I would have played that game."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's nearly impossible to keep track of the recording industry's efforts to extend copyright around the globe, using its usual "leapfrog" means of claiming that copyright lengths need to be "harmonized," and thus ratcheted up and up and up on a rotating basis. Apparently, while everyone was focused on places like Europe and Japan, the industry has successfully been able to get Argentina to extend the length of copyright on performances from 50 years to 70 years. Amusingly, all those quoted in favor of it, make bizarre claims that retroactively extending copyrights on content already created 50 years ago will somehow promote the creation of new music.

And, of course, as this news comes out, it's worth pointing out that a commenter last week reminded us of economist Rufus Pollock's paper from June of this year, which tried to calculate the optimal length of copyright and found that it is likely in the 10 to 15 year range. So why are governments moving progressively further away from that rate based on nothing other than demands from the record labels who know that lengthier copyrights are nothing more than a monopoly rent for them? What's truly amazing is that pretty much the entire history of the copyright debate has been based on claims without any evidence that "more" must be "better." But these days, we have plenty of evidence that shows that's not true. So why do politicians keep extending copyright?

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The Washington Post and everybody else is reporting that on Tuesday President Obama will name Howard A. Schmidt as cyber-security czar. Schmidt was an advisor to President Bush on cyber-security matters. The Post rehearses the reasons why the Obama administration has had difficulty in finding someone for the post, and notes that the turf battles did not start in this administration: "Schmidt was chosen after a long process in which dozens of people were sounded out. Many declined the post, largely out of concern that the job conferred much responsibility with little true authority, some of them said. Meanwhile, the cybersecurity chief at the National Security Council, Christopher Painter, has served as the de facto coordinator, trying to push ahead the 60-day cyberspace policy review plan unveiled by Obama in May. That plan's formulation was led by Melissa Hathaway, who resigned in frustration in August after delays in naming a cyber-coordinator. She had been a contender for the position... Schmidt served as special adviser for cyberspace security from 2001 to 2003 and shepherded the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, a plan that then was largely ignored. He left that job also frustrated, colleagues said."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Properboy of goes green with this build of everyone's favorite stepped tone generator circuit -

Here is yet another properboy a.p.c. build, although I have done many with light controlled resistors, this is a first attempt at a solar powered synth.The plan was to create a small drone-unit that I could leave in my window. I wanted this little box to power up every morning and going to sleep at night.

More details over at GetLoFi

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Adding a capacitive touchscreen to your Linux netbook just took a huge leap forward. Developers at ENAC Interactive Computing Lab in France recently published a video showing multitouch support on a standard PC running Fedora. [via liliputing]

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Chad Orzel's How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is an absolutely delightful book on many axes: first, its subject matter, quantum physics, is arguably the most mind-bending scientific subject we have; second, the device of the book -- a quantum physicist, Orzel, explains quantum physics to Emmy, his cheeky German shepherd -- is a hoot, and has the singular advantage of making the mind-bending a little less traumatic when the going gets tough (quantum physics has a certain irreducible complexity that precludes an easy understanding of its implications); finally, third, it is extremely well-written, combining a scientist's rigor and accuracy with a natural raconteur's storytelling skill.

I find quantum physics very difficult to hold in my head. I can understand it while it's being explained, and sometimes for a day or two longer, but then it fizzles away (I find calculus to be of similar character). However, the essentials I've grasped have always come embedded in stories -- first in Greg Egan's magnificent debut novel Quarantine and now in How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. The going isn't always smooth or easy, but for me, it has never been less hard!

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog (official site)

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog (Amazon)

After getting hammered publicly for having e-voting machines that didn't work well and had serious security problems, Diebold tried sell off its e-voting division for years with no luck. It then tried to change its name to Premier, hoping people wouldn't realize it was Diebold. In the end, Diebold finally found a buyer in ES&S, the other large player in the market. Between them they own 70% of the US market, apparently. And that's leading to some concern. The Justice Department is apparently looking into the deal to see if it should be unwound, out of fear that ES&S will jack up prices.

Honestly, I don't see what the value is in unwinding the deal. Then you'll have two awful e-voting companies with terrible track records with security and accuracy, rather than one. Instead, why aren't we focusing on requiring truly open solutions so that we actually verify that an e-voting system is both secure and accurate?

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When I say the Twitter API may be an open standard, I mean something different than when Jonathan Rosenberg says Google likes open standards.

I mean it's open in that anyone can implement it now.

A smart developer can implement the Twitter API in a matter of weeks.

Rosenberg means that the process of defining the standard is open. He would start a process to define a standard that in two or three years a team of 20 programmers could implement in another two or three years. Those are the kind of results that his version of "open" delivers.

In an ideal world I prefer defacto standards that are ratified by unanimous consent by standards bodies. The deliberative process yields bad results for several reasons:

1. The defacto standard doesn't just shrivel up and die, despite the best efforts of the latecomers to force it to. Twitter isn't going to shut off its API and kill its developer base because a working group formed.

2. You end up with two ways of doing something, and two ways are worse than one, no matter how much better the new way is. As Anil Dash says, the Twitter API is now, for all practical purposes, finished.

3. The new way is never better because the deliberative process yields a design by committee. SOAP failed to be a source of interop for just this reason. The working group had hundreds of members and pleasing even some of them meant creating a spec that was so vague and rambling as to be pointless as a standard. It provided almost no interop. (BTW, I am an author of the first version of SOAP, so I got to watch the deconstruction of a standard by a working group from the inside.)

Dare Obasanjo of Microsoft asks us to look at the process by which RSS begat Atom as a cautionary tale. He says the designers of Atom had "no choice" but to be totally incompatible with RSS, but that's not true. They could have started with RSS, and only deviated where absolutely necessary. I urged them to do this. That they renamed almost every element tells you that they had other goals than fixing supposed problems with RSS.

All this talk about open standards processes is surfacing now because WordPress and Tumblr implemented the Twitter API, thereby putting the "defacto" ball in play. The BigCo's don't like it because, like WordPress and Tumblr, they're late to the game and don't want to play on the same field as the little companies. They want to force Twitter into a standards process, I assume. It's something Twitter might consider, but they should be cautious.

Microsoft welcomed the W3C to the standards process when Netscape threatened the dominance of the Windows desktop in the mid-90s. The W3C gave them a greater-than-equal voice to Netscape, even though they had nowhere near Netscape's market presence in the dawning market of the web.

In 2009, Google is just beginning to be a presence in realtime. It's fairly thrilling to see realtime search results show up in Google searches. They should keep going but hold back some of their power to let the little companies have a chance to do what they do better -- drive innovation. If Google does what Microsoft did, and unleashes all their destructive power, they will destroy the market. And we will be left with a scorched battlefield instead of the growth that's promised by the blossoming prototype of the news system of the future that I believe Twitter is.

I've said all along, as I said with Netscape in 1994 -- Twitter desperately needs competition to toughen them up and make them more responsive to market opportunities. To give them a sense of urgency they lack. But what they and we don't need is Google and other big companies to stall the market in the name of being open. Their process is open only if you're a BigCo, and shuts out exactly the people we want in there. The gutsy bright-eyed young entrepreneurial minds at rising stars like WordPress and Tumblr. They are ready for a standard now, not someday in the future, after a huge working group is finished with it. Not two years after that when everyone has forgotten the Open Microblogging Intitiative or whatever it ends up being called. They're ready now, and so is the market.

So Google, Microsoft, Facebook, et al should step back and consider how they can help now, and not throw obstacles in the path of a surging market.

My argument to Microsoft 15 years ago was that they would get the lion's share of any growth that is achieved by the upstarts, so it worked against their interests to slow them down. That still is true today, but there are new players who own a large share of the future, no matter what. Don't screw it up.

harrymcc writes "The last ten years have been an amazing era for tech — and full of amazingly dumb moments. I rounded up scads of them. I suspect you'll be able to figure out which company is most frequently represented, but Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Sony, and many others are all present and accounted for, too."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For quite some time we've been covering how the MPAA has been pushing to get the FCC to allow them to use "Selectable Output Control" (SOC) to stop you from being able to record certain movies. In theory, the Hollywood studios claim that this will let them put movies out on video-on-demand offerings earlier than they do now. In actuality, there's nothing stopping them from putting these VoD offerings out now (and some do already). The studios' claim that this is needed to stop "piracy" of these movies also makes little sense, since even the studios admit that all of their movies are quickly available through unauthorized means around the time they're released in the theaters (i.e., well before they would be available on TV).

The real issue, of course, is that Hollywood wants more control over your TV and what you can do with it. But when people suggest this, the MPAA and the studios scoff and say that's ridiculous. They just want this one tiny exemption and nothing else. Except, that's not true at all. Remember that recent Congressional hearing about live streaming and sporting events? Well, the folks at Public Knowledge noticed that one of the speakers there was already noting how the FCC exemption on SOC could be useful in stopping "piracy" of sports broadcasting -- which of course is totally outside the realm of what the MPAA is asking for. But, of course, once the FCC allows someone to break your DVR or other consumer electronics device, it's not hard to see everyone else asking for their own "exception" as well... How about rather than breaking the devices that everyone purchased for a reason, the content providers stop freaking out about technology, and start learning how to use it to their advantage?

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The snap-together Solar Grasshopper kit uses solar energy to generate electricity and propel itself around. It's an easy to assemble electronics project that's great for first-time experimenters with little or no experience. Ages 10 and up.

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jrincayc writes "It's nearly the end of 2009. If the 1790 copyright maximum term of 28 years was still in effect, everything that had been published by 1981 would be now be in the public domain — so the original Ultima and God Emperor of Dune and would be available for remixing and mashing up. If the 1909 copyright maximum term of 56 years (if renewed) were still in force, everything published by 1953 would now be in the public domain, freeing The City and the Stars and Forbidden Planet. If the 1976 copyright act term of 75* years (* it's complicated) still applied, everything published by 1934 would now be in the public domain, including Murder on the Orient Express. But thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, nothing in the US will go free until 2018, when 1923 works expire." Assuming Congress doesn't step in with a Copyright Extension Act of 2017. What are the odds?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Will from the Journey Round My Skull blog has been scanning vintage, Soviet-era robot illustrations from Eastern European science fictional kids books -- the pictures are just lovely.

A Journey Round My Skull: Mummy Was A Robot, Daddy Was A Small Non-Stick Kitchen Utensil (Thanks, Dr. Monkey!)

A reader writes, "I just discovered this British artist, Anita Bruce, who knits Ernst Haeckel-esque sea-forms: plankton, corals, starfishes, etc."

Plankton Blog

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has pored over the terms of service for several popular ebook services and devices and come up with "An E-Book Buyer's Guide to Privacy," a handy chart that tells you what information about your reading habits you "agree" to send to these companies by simply standing in the vicinity of the device, clicking a link, or, in some cases, breathing.

In other words, your Kindle will periodically send information about you to Amazon. But exactly what information is sent? Amazon's wording -- "information related to the content on your Device and your use of it" -- reads so broadly that it appears to allow Amazon to track all content that users put on the device, regardless of whether that content is purchased from Amazon. Some security researchers have indicated that the Kindle may even be tracking its users' GPS locations. Is this the future of reading?

Thankfully, there are some e-reader options that do not connect wirelessly, nor include any privacy or "terms of use" provisions that allow monitoring of what you put on the device or how you use it. Sony's Reader, for example, may collect information about what books you buy from its own eBook Store, yet the Reader also works with books purchased from other sources as well. Even safer still, popular e-reader software programs, such as open-source FBReader, allow users to download content from a number of sources onto a multitude of devices, including one's computer or mobile, without handing over all information about their reading habits to one source, or anyone for that matter.

An E-Book Buyer's Guide to Privacy

The Obama administration imposes a 3 hour maximum on airlines that strand passengers on the tarmac, after which they must be let free. Airlines must also provide water to stranded passengers and let them go to the lavatory. The airlines imply that they'll cancel flights to avoid the consequences. Yes, attack your customers! That's the spirit!

Etsy seller lanternfly has made a stupendous octo-chandelier: "This octopus chandelier is made from sculpted arms and head, she has pink albino taxidermy glass eyes, pearl encrusted body covered with vintage and new pearls, scallop shells, pink pearl candles and painted with pearlized paint."

Our Girl Pearl Octopus Chandelier (via Craft)

Back in January, the WTO ruled against the US in an intellectual property dispute with China. Well, to be specific, there were three issues being discussed, and on the two important ones, the US lost. On the final, not particularly important one, the US won. But, as it has done before, the US took that and declared victory, leading to all sorts of headlines claiming that the US had "won" a trade dispute with China. So, when similar headlines showed up, again with the US claiming victory, it seemed worth exploring in more detail. You can read the full WTO report, where you'll see how highly technical this specific argument was, and note that, indeed, the WTO basically upheld the earlier rulings, with minor (mostly meaningless) exception.

So, the US does get to declare "victory" on this particular issue, but it's unlikely that China really cares. Also, it's more than a bit ironic that the US suddenly acts like a WTO ruling like this is meaningful. It's also striking to hear US Trade Rep Ron Kirk claim that "We expect China to respond promptly to these findings and bring its measures into compliance," when the US itself continues to ignore similar WTO rulings against the US when it comes to online gambling in Antigua. For the US to act like the WTO rulings mean something, shouldn't it need to live up to those rulings when it loses as well?

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Botnet and malware creeps are setting up their own ISPs, with their own IP blocks, so that spamfighters don't have anyone to complain to when they run them to ground:

"It's gotten completely out of hand. The bad guys are going to some local registries in Europe and getting massive amounts of IP space and then they just go to a hosting provider and set up their own data centers," said Alex Lanstein, senior security researcher at FireEye, an antimalware and anti-botnet vendor. "It takes one more level out of it: You own your own IP space and you're your own ISP at that point.

"If there's a problem, who are you going to talk to? It's a different ball game now. These guys are buying their own data centers. These LIRs and RIRs aren't going to push back if you say you need a /24 or /16. They're not the Internet police," Lanstein said...

"This is part of the problem that's causing the IPv4 shortage," Lanstein said, referring to the imminent exhaustion of the IPv4 address space, forecasted to occur in less than two years. "They stop paying the bills, the space gets null-routed and then it's a mess. There's clear fraud going on, but who can do something about it?"

Attackers Buying Own Data Centers for Botnets, Spam (via /.)

In this trailer for the film adaptation of the comic Kick-Ass (about a kid who decides to become a vigilante and hooks up with a superhero-crime-fighter Dad and his adolescent ninja daughter), the most balletic martial-arts gunplay is enacted by a small child. It's pretty odd watching, but the up-beat cover of the Banana Splits theme really makes it, if you ask me.

Kick-Ass-Red Band Hit Girl Teaser Trailer (via JWZ)

Nik writes in about his new tattoo: "This started out as a joke with friends at Sideshow Studios in Sacramento and the more I thought about it the more I had to get it. As a fan of Monkey Knife Fights we one-upped it with an octopus."

Monkey knife-fighting octopus tattoo (Thanks, Nik!)

An anonymous reader writes "Despite repeated 'for the children' campaigns, the Western Web as a whole has provided little or no isolation of pornography. This is why the Chinese are now attempting to march to a place where no country has been before: a Web without porn. Recent regulations have included closing down 'vulgar' mobile sites, disconnecting 'obscene' servers, and restricting domain registrations. Yet the breaking news for Monday is that the China is planning to enforce a whitelist on foreign domains: in particular, any e-commerce will have to register locally and obey Chinese law before they get whitelisted. Domains will otherwise be 'irresolvable' to Chinese Internet users. Meanwhile, the government is promoting this campaign heavily, calling it a 'fresh start.' It seems the Chinese may have to do without the Internet, before they can rid it of porn."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In the spirit of Math Monday, here is Jason Peacock's version of the 20-sided playing card construction George Hart featured in last weeks' column.

Playing Cards Polyhedral

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Forget Asimov's three laws of robotics. These days, there are questions about what human laws robots may need to follow. Michael Scott points us to an interesting, if highly speculative, article questioning legal issues related to robots, questioning whether or not a new arena of law will need to be developed to handle liability when it comes to actions done by robots. There are certain questions concerning who would be liable? Those who built the robot? Those who programed it? Those who operated it? Others? The robot itself? While the article seems to go a little overboard at times (claiming that there's a problem if teens program a robot to do something bad since teens are "judgment proof" due to a lack of money -- which hardly stops liability on teens in other suits) it does make some important points.

Key among those is the point that if liability is too high for the companies doing the innovating in the US, it could lead to the industry developing elsewhere. As a parallel, the article brings up the Section 230 safe harbors of the CDA, which famously protect service providers from liability for actions by users -- noting that this is part of why so many more internet businesses have been built in the US than elsewhere (there are other issues too, but such liability protections certainly help). So, what would a "section 230"-like liability safe harbor look like for robots?

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Can you count on booze to kill the bugs in egg nog?...

A perennial holiday dilemma: will alcohol kill the bacteria in homemade eggnog? Microbiologists Vince Fischetti and Raymond Schuch, from The Rockefeller University, ran an experiment in the lab to see whether salmonella can survive in a vat of spiked eggnog. Dr. Rebecca Lancefield's Eggnog Recipe.

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DesScorp writes "It's the end of an era in auto technology, as the very last big block V-8 engine from GM has rolled off the production line. The L18 engine was the last variant of an engine that had been in continuous production for over 50 years. The big blocks powered everything from the classic muscle cars of the 60s and 70s to heavy-duty trucks today. From the Buffalo News: 'When GM said last June the L18 would be eliminated by year's end, the announcement triggered another show of devotion to the product. Some customers ordered two years' worth of L18s, to put on the shelf for future use.' More than 5 million big blocks have been produced over the engine's history. The final big block engine to come off the line in Tonawanda, NY is headed for the GM Heritage Center in Sterling Heights, MI."

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The NY Times is reporting that the Chinese government appears to be raising the walls on the Great Firewall of China even higher, shutting down a bunch of sites, limiting the ability to let individuals put up their own websites, and completely restricting the ability to offer third party mobile content. Here's where it gets sneaky. The Chinese government claims that it's an effort to stop "piracy." And, indeed, some of the sites that were shut down appear to be sites related to file sharing. But this is great for the Chinese government -- because US lobbyists and diplomats have been complaining about Chinese "piracy" for ages, even as US diplomats have complained about free speech restrictions online in China. So, by hiding a more massive crackdown behind the claim that the government is really "cracking down on piracy," China knows that the US can't complain too much. After all, it's been demanding a crackdown on piracy for so long. So what if that "crackdown" also massively limits the ability of individuals to communicate freely online?

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Webdesigner depot has 60 beautiful satellite photos of Earth.

The Dasht-e Kevir, or valley of desert, is the largest desert in Iran. It is a primarily uninhabited wasteland, composed of mud and salt marshes covered with crusts of salt that protect the meager moisture from completely evaporating.

(Via The Presurfer)

I wrote an opinion piece for CNN about making gifts for the holidays.

For Christmas this year, I'm giving out homemade jars of sauerkraut (it costs me 50 cents a gallon and takes all of 15 minutes to shred the cabbage, mix in the salt and let it develop in a crock for a week), hand-whittled wooden spoons (these take a few hours each to make, but the therapeutic value of whittling on the porch is inestimable) and a couple of cigar box guitars I made. The other staffers at Make (and at our sister publication, Craftzine.com) have been busy elves this season as well. Here's a short list of the things they're making:

• Baby pictures mounted in old picture frames purchased at thrift stores for less than a dollar and painted a gold or silver metallic.

• Snow globes made from recycled glass jars and filled with little trinkets like Army men, plastic trees and foxes.

• A miniature remote-controlled submarine, made out of plastic plumbing pipes, with an underwater video camera attached to it to study ocean life in the San Francisco Bay.

• A cat toy that has an electronic circuit that senses when it is being played with and sends a Twitter message to its owner.

• An assortment of slippers, scarves and plush toy squid.

Making merry with homemade gifts (Shown here: Shawn and Arlo Connally's snow globes)

Enjoy programming AVR microcontrollers, but wish there was a better way to debug your programs then blinking lights? The best option is probably be to get a hardware debugging tool like the AVR Dragon, however it has a reasonably steep learning curve. An easier option might be to use the Simavr, a new software emulator for AVR chips. In addition to emulating the functionality of the AVR microcontrollers, it has a library that you can use to emulate peripherals, such as buttons or LED screens.

Ok, anyone want to use this to add Meggy Jr. support to MAME? [via adafruit]

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shrugger writes "I picked up my BlackBerry this morning to do a search and noticed Bing as my default search engine. I thought this was very strange, since I didn't pick this setting. I went to change it back to Google and, to my chagrin, Bing was my only option! Apparently Verizon has pushed an update that removes all search providers except Bing. Thanks a lot Verizon!" The Reg notes: "The move is part of the five-year search and advertising deal Verizon signed with Microsoft in January for a rumored $500m."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ah, yet another lawsuit over Google ads. These just never seem to stop. The latest, found via Michael Scott, has a few interesting elements, however. In this case, a small online retailer of used cameras and electronics, Sellify, is suing Amazon, not over its own ads, but ads of Amazon affiliates. The two main complaints are over trademark violations of buying keywords, and then defamation. Defamation? Yes, because apparently when people do searches on Sellify or some of its related trademarked names, like OneQuality, some of the ads that come up say things like:

Beware of the SCAM Artist
Camcorders at the Best Price
From the Trusted Source
amazon.com

So that's a bit different than the usual keyword advertising claim. The only problem, of course, is that these ads are placed by Amazon affiliates, and any defamation claim almost certainly should fall under a Section 230 safe harbor that protects Amazon. The claims in the lawsuit that Sellify notified Amazon are meaningless. Basically, Sellify is suing the wrong party. They might have an argument if they sued the affiliates in question, but they appear to have chosen to focus instead on the big, easy target. But, the whole purpose of Section 230 is so that you can't just focus on the big, easy target, but have to sue those actually responsible.

Now, trademark claims, however, are not covered by Section 230, so we're back to the standard legal questions in these sorts of competitive keyword advertising claims. But this has been covered a lot, and many courts have found that there is no trademark violation in competitive ads on trademarked keywords, so it's hard to see that one getting very far either. It seems like the only argument the company might have is a potential defamation claim if it were filed against the affiliates. But the lawsuit against Amazon seems like a long shot.

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clang_jangle writes "Autoblog and others are reporting on Ford's planned extension to its in-vehicle SYNC multimedia systems — to enable SYNC-equipped Fords as rolling Wi-Fi hotspots. Customers would use their existing cellular USB modems, so for already equipped road warriers there would be no extra monthly charges. While there are other ways to get your car online (Autonet Mobile review here), the SYNC system does look especially simple and practical. Last year BMW made some noise about FOSS for their cars, but they seem to have since stopped talking about it. Will we see a FOSS option for automotive infotainment systems in the future?" The capabilities of SYNC even without W-Fi look potentially pretty distracting. Unless Wi-Fi is blacked out for the driver, the safety implications of this development are worrisome.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

James Turner has a piece on O'Reilly Radar outlining his choices for the best and worst tech of the unnamed decade we just barreled through. Open source and maker culture get big +1 shout outs. Seems like the worst list could be miles longer. And no Google in the best list? Wikipedia and crowdsourcing?

What are your candidates for best and worst tech of the aughts?

Here's James' "Maker Culture" entry:

The Maker Culture: There's always been a DIY underground, covering everything from Ham radio to photography to model railroading. But the level of cool has taken a noticeable uptick this decade, as cheap digital technology has given DIY a kick in the pants. The Arduino lets anyone embed control capabilities into just about anything you can imagine, amateur PCB board fabrication has gone from a messy kitchen sink operation to a click-and-upload-your-design purchase, and the 3D printer is turning the Star Trek replicator into a reality.

Manufacturers cringe in fear as enterprising geeks dig out their screwdrivers. The conventional wisdom was that as electronics got more complex, the "no user serviceable parts" mentality would spell the end of consumer experimentation. But instead, the fact that everything is turning into a computer meant that you could take a device meant for one thing, and reprogram it to do something else. Don't like your digital camera's software? Install your own! Turn your DVR into a Linux server.

Meanwhile, shows like Mythbusters and events like Maker Faire have shown that hacking hardware can grab the public's interest, especially if there are explosions involved.

The Best and the Worst Tech of the Decade

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