I enjoy reading the high end DSLR discussion boards on the internet. Those gearheads go ape over minute differences in "chromatic aberration" and "barrel distortion". They peep at pixels in Photoshop to see if their lens is able to give them a sharp image blown up to the size of the side of a barn. But all they seem to ever shoot pictures of is brick walls and cans of soda at varying distances lined up on their dining room table!

I think if you are going to make a fetish over camera equipment, it should be junk store cameras, not DSLRs. There's something about a fifty year old scratched up plastic lens that makes magic happen. The proof is on exhibit at JunkStoreCameras.com.

Marcy Merrill, a professional photographer, has been accumulating cameras at swap meets and thrift stores and running rolls of film though them to see what comes out. She has captured some remarkably atmospheric images and each one is accompanied by a photo of the two dollar plastic camera that took it. Check it out...

Marcy Merrill's Junk Store Cameras

• Ann Curry's report on NBC about the horrific suffering of children in Haiti, even the lucky ones who have been rescued and are receiving medical treatment. The video is hard to watch. (screengrab above: a child receiving surgery without anesthesia)

• Haiti Twitter information, compiled by the ATLAS program at the University of Colorado. Organizers suggest following a standard syntax, to make conversation and connecting more effective.

• A collection point for amateur radio communications data related to the quake is here.

• A Scottish nurse in Haiti blogs about the toll of frequent, ongoing aftershocks:

The Haitian staff are showing signs of stress. Many of us here are experiencing loss of appetite, nausea and headaches. The constant movement of the ground makes our buildings sway and that is causing motion sickness, as well as high levels of anxiety. The children are fairing remarkably well.

• The tweeting Carrier USS Carl Vinson (@CVN70) will serve as a 'floating airport' for Haiti relief operation.

• New satellite maps of Haiti coming in: "Damage evaluation map based on satellite data over the Port-au-Prince area of Haiti, following a 7.0 magnitude earthquake and several aftershocks that hit the Caribbean nation on 12 January. Map based on data from CNES's SPOT-5, JAXA's ALOS and the U.S.-based GeoEye-1 satellites; processed by SERTIT. " Click for full-size.

• Dan Harris, ABC News: "Saw my first real bout of looting in #haiti today. People are openly and increasingly worried re social unrest here."

• Boston Globe's "The Big Picture" blog has two posts with incredible, powerful photographs from Haiti over the past few days. Here is part one, here is part two.

• The New York Times' "The Lede" blog is an excellent source for ongoing analysis and news updates. Also, see this interactive map, using satellite imaging data from GeoEye, which shows the capital city before and after the earthquake.

• Danger Room: tweets from the front line of Haiti relief.

• At night, Port au Prince is lit by burning tires.

• Some 300,000 people have already been displaced by the disaster.

• When Haitian Ministers Take a 50 Percent Cut of Aide Money It's Called
"Corruption," When NGOs Skim 50 Percent It's Called "Overhead": Crushing Haiti, Now as Always

• Our Role in Haiti's Plight, by Peter Hallward

• Democracy Now: US Policy in Haiti Over Decades "Lays the Foundation for Why Impact of Natural Disaster Is So Severe"

• Op-Ed, New York Times: A Country Without a Net / Tracy Kidder

• Haiti's largest jail collapsed in the earthquake, and all the inmates fled, according to a UN report.

• Catherine Lainé (Boing Boing Video interview with her in Haiti) tweets, "Things you can do: Call your congressman/senator re: cancelling Haiti's debt. The country will need every penny to rebuild."

• Jay Smooth of Ill Doctrine published this excellent video op-ed today: Mini Doctrine on Haiti.

(Some links in this post via Ned Sublette, Todd Lappin, Kristie LuStout, Brad King)

You may recall last year that prosecutors in Pennsylvania wanted to charge some girls who had taken either nude or partially unclothed photos of themselves, and then sent them via their mobile phones, with "child porn" charges. This seems pretty ridiculous no matter how you look at it, and it was good that a judge temporarily blocked the prosecutor from moving forward. You would hope that this would give the prosecutor a chance to rethink this idea, and perhaps realize that it's beyond extreme.

Instead? The prosecutor is appealing the ruling and still wants to charge at least one girl with child porn charges. The ACLU is fighting back, not just for this particular girl, but apparently over the threats of felony charges on 16-girls, who were then forced to participate in a "re-education" class to avoid charges. I have no problem with children being educated about why such things are really bad ideas, but to threaten them with felony charges, especially when even the mothers of one of the girls says that photos were just some girls goofing around, and in most cases no worse than what you'd find it a typical Victoria's Secret catalog? That seems like a prosecutor going too far.

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Early last week several questions were submitted to former CIA analyst Ray McGovern about the sad state of counter-terrorism in the United States and he has answered frankly, and in-depth. In addition, McGovern also solicited former FBI attorney/special agent Coleen Rowley to review his answers and provide her own comments. Ray's largest advice to the intelligence community was to "HOLD ACCOUNTABLE THOSE RESPONSIBLE. More 'reform' is the last thing we need. Sorry, but we DO have to look back. The most effective step would be to release the CIA Inspector General report on intelligence community performance prior to 9/11. That investigation was run by, and its report was prepared by an honest man, it turns out. It was immediately suppressed by then-Acting DCI John McLaughlin — another Tenet clone — and McLaughin's successors as director, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden, and now Leon Panetta."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Watch on YouTube | Download MP4 | Dotsub (with foreign language translations)

In this episode of Boing Boing Video, I speak with Haitian-American blogger and sustainable tech development activist Catherine Lainé (photo at left from earlier this year). She was working in Haiti when the catastrophic earthquake struck earlier this week. Catherine spoke to us via Skype video from Cap-Haïtien, where she is working out of a space shared with AIDG (Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group) and a kindred nonprofit known as SOIL.

A number of her family members live in Haiti. At the time of this interview, all were safely accounted for, except for her brother, who resides in the devastated capital city of Port-au-Prince. He is currently still missing. Catherine is trying to get into the city to locate him, as I publish this blog post.

Among the observations she shares: aid groups are running out of body bags, and corpses are piling up so fast that the morgues have no space. The internet is a vital form of communication, as are cellphones—when they work—and she is seeing people in Haiti using social networking services as a means to try and locate missing loved ones within Haiti. The environment is so chaotic and roads so badly damaged that even in-country, mobile technology and web-based social networking services like Facebook are playing a vital role in the reconnection process. Don't assume that because Haiti is so poor, nobody's using the internet. She says cell service has been spotty, with certain carriers performing better than others. She connected to us using WIMAX, and the degree to which that service has performed during the disaster makes her a real believer in the promise of that particular wireless technology.

Edited video transcript after the jump (recorded at 1130pm ET on Jan. 14, 2010), along with Catherine's suggestions on how to help.

---

BOING BOING: Where are you right now?

CATHERINE LAINÉ: About 100km outside the capital, about a six hour drive given the current road conditions.

BB: What has the connectivity been like since the quake hit?

CATHERINE: Pretty difficult. Everyone got on the phone at the same time to talk to their families, one of the major cellphone companies here—their towers collapsed. But communications are normalizing, and I've heard from relatives via cellphone today.

BB: How do you go about trying to find someone there, given all of the chaos, and how difficult it is to get from one place to another with damaged roads?

CATHERINE: People are relying a lot on cellphone calls. Travel within the country is extremely difficult. I'm hearing a lot of people using social networks, posting pictures of lost loved ones on Facebook or CNNn's ireport site. Right now it seems that the internet is one of the more resilient forms of communication.

It's surreal. People are used to hearing about Haiti as the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, and because of this the idea that some of these people in Haiti are using internet-based technology to find loved ones might be surprising. But I'm shocked and happy that companies like Access Haiti are able to keep their services up and operational. WIMAX has been trying to get off the ground in US cities like Philadelphia and San Francisco, and I'm definitely a bigger fan of that technology now in terms of disaster coping, after this experience.

Most of the cell providers are down. One of the largest companies is an Irish company, Digicell. Typically they're among the best service in the country and their engineers are having such a difficult time coping. Voilá, another popular mobile provider, is just barely starting to get calls through, it's a shock when phone calls get through, it's like magic when the phone rings right now.

BB: What are AIDG and other sustainability NGOs that you collaborate with focusing efforts on right now?

CATHERINE: We're coordinating with civil engineers to come to the capital and do risk assessment. One thing we're going to try and do is help with translation and logistical support, helping to coordinate the incoming volunteers from various organizations, to help put people coming in from outside to work in the most effective ways possible, because we are very familiar with the country and with the needs here. So, a lot of coordination help.

BB: What do people need to understand about this current crisis that they don't understand?

CATHERINE: I think one of the things people forget about natural disasters is that after the immediate disaster falls out of the news, the need is still there. When they're opening their hearts right now, they also need to think about a long term giving strategy. Put it in your Google calendar, and give again in a year. When the reconstruction starts, we're going to need another outpouring. Reconstruction is a long process and we're going to need their help for a long time.

People need to realize it's not going to turn around overnight, but that they should not lose hope for Haiti.

BB: Many watching this may not be familiar with Haiti. When we hear about Haiti we think about this poor country cursed with a history of violence and natural disasters. What would you say to someone who thinks of Haiti as a problem?

CATHERINE: People need to think about the way they frame news stories... referring to Haiti all the time as "the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere," it's just an example of journalistic laziness. In any story, there is a backstory that doesn't sell papers, that doesn't get traffic. The story we hear about Haiti is always about its poverty, and not about its beauty.

What's so heartbreaking about this particular tragedy is that just when Haiti is at this point of such hope, Bill Clinton running the Clinton Global Initiative and saying this is the time in history when Haiti has the biggest chance for positive change... people don't know that, the typical person in America hasn't seen the amazing richness and beauty of the country.

My family's here, so it's hard for me not to come here, but the energy, the language, the people... the first time I came here was in 2006, and it felt like coming home. It's like Marmite, you love it or you hate it. Once Haiti gets under your skin it's there for life.

I think it's good that more Haitian-Americans are reporting about the news, in this news cycle. They can give a different sense about the country than someone who's just going there for the first time and is not of the culture. There's a sense of a different tone with which people talk about Haiti, a different flavor who are either from Haiti or have had experience in developing countries, they have a different understanding. When people talk about Haiti, there are a lot of arts and culture in different parts of the country.

Haiti isn't just a basket case. I think people need to understand the other social, economic, and political factors that have conspired to make Haiti the way it is right now. You need to think about those to understand why Haiti has come to the point it is right now. Haiti has not become almost a failed state by accident.

For instance, consider the difference in how the Carter and Reagan administrations dealt with human rights during the Duvalier regime. During the Carter administration, the rights of journalists and activists in Haiti were respected a little more because of the pressure from the US. But when Reagan took office, that all changed because of America's focus on "fighting Communism," and journalists and human rights workers here felt the pressure immediately. Haiti does not exist in a vacuum.

BB: Catherine, are there some final thoughts you'd like to leave our viewers with?

CATHERINE: Being here, it's been incredible to see the outpouring of support and emotion that people have put forth... If there is any good thing you can get... from a disaster like this.... it's that people can be.... so kind and generous. [pauses, in tears.] I would say more, but...

There are so many bodies on the street, the morgues are full, the Red Cross has run out of body bags... just the thought of all the people who are still buried under the rubble... right now, it is overwhelming.

---

Catherine suggests that those who wish to help the
people of Haiti consider donating to the following organizations:

• The Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG)

• Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL)

• Partners In Health (PIH)

• YELE

• Food For The Poor

(Image of Catherine Lainé courtesy whiteafrican; special thanks to Boing Boing Video editor Eric Mittleman)

I must admit that I'm not usually a fan of "pop surrealism". Context and expression in art is much more important to me than pop references and obsessive technique. It distresses me to see images jammed with unrelated figures vomited onto the canvas with no concern for overall composition. Perhaps I'm too picky, but day-glo color combinations of pink and purple and orange don't qualify to me as "harmony" and generic pretty girls in space helmets, Japanese movie monsters and tikis aren't a fit substitute for real subject matter.

But I really love the paintings of Mark Bodnar.

Bodnar's work springs forth from the long tradition of cartooning, but he succeeds in making it feel contemporary, rather than treating it as a static object of fetish. His paintings exhibit all of the clarity and directness of the great illustrators of the past and his technique is marked by simplicity, contrast and balance. But his greatest strength lies in the meaning behind the images. Instead of creating mish-mash assemblages of non-sequitur designed to give the illusion of meaning, Bodnar's work feels more like illustrations to stories that have yet to be written. Creating windows into wonderful worlds is magic of the first order. Mark Bodnar is a master of that particular brand of alchemy.

Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that the European Space Agency's (ESA) Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain says that uncertainty is undermining the best use of the ISS and that only by guaranteeing the ISS's longevity would more scientists come forward to run experiments on the orbiting laboratory. 'I am convinced that stopping the station in 2015 would be a mistake because we cannot attract the best scientists if we are telling them today "you are welcome on the space station but you'd better be quick because in 2015 we close the shop,'' says Dordain. One of the biggest issues holding up an agreement on station-life extension is the human spaceflight review ordered by US President Barack Obama and the future of US participation in the ISS is intimately tied to the outcome of that review. Dordain says that no one partner in the ISS project could unilaterally call an end to the platform and that a meeting would be held in Japan later in the year where he hoped the partners could get some clarity going forward."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A few folks sent in Andy Oram's recent blog post that noted how countries like India, China and Brazil were gaining more power on the international diplomatic stage, and that could mean a pushback against more draconian intellectual property attempts. Brazil, China and India have all realized that, as developing nations, they often benefit greatly from reduced intellectual property regimes:

As I understand the argument, the institutions responsible for passing new rules respond to the most powerful countries. The US and Europe are on the decline in these organizations. All the countries that benefit from looser IP regimes--China, India, Brazil--are growing in economic strength and are finding themselves in more and more seats at the tables of the world's closed economic institutions. For just one concrete example, look at the shift of responsibility in recent years from the G-7 to the G-20. The G-7 is a familiar set of countries that were powerful from the 1950s through the 1970s. The G-20 is truly diverse, bringing in strong economies from around the world (but still just the ones with some international economic clout).

I'll believe it when I see it. While it is true that those other countries have a seat at the table, it's still the lobbyists from the US and Europe that seem to be dictating the agenda. In recent years, we've definitely pushed increasingly draconian IP laws on those countries. So until we see more serious pushback (and Brazil is really the only major country I can remember that has been proactive on that front -- India and China have appeared more willing to claim that they'll move toward US-style IP rules) it's difficult to believe this is really happening just yet.

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AND it's on wheels (and as far as I know, by "wheels," they don't mean logs underneath) [via Dinosaurs and Robots]

Log Cabin Studio

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Given that early benchmarks of the Lucid Lynx were less than encouraging, Phoronix decided to take the latest alpha out for a spin and has set it side-by-side with an early look at Fedora 13. "Overall, there are both positive and negative performance changes for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Alpha 2 in relation to Ubuntu 9.10. Most of the negative regressions are attributed to the EXT4 file-system losing some of its performance charm. With using a pre-alpha snapshot of Fedora 13 and the benchmark results just being provided for reference purposes, we will hold off on looking into greater detail at this next Red Hat Linux update until it matures."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Given that early benchmarks of the Lucid Lynx were less than encouraging, Phoronix decided to take the latest alpha out for a spin and has set it side-by-side with an early look at Fedora 13. "Overall, there are both good and bad performance improvements for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Alpha 2 in relation to Ubuntu 9.10. Most of the negative regressions are attributed to the EXT4 file-system losing some of its performance charm. With using a pre-alpha snapshot of Fedora 13 and the benchmark results just being provided for reference purposes, we will hold off on looking into greater detail at this next Red Hat Linux update until it matures."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Several sources are reporting on a Google event this week that attempted to bring some transparency to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) that has so far been treated like a "shameful secret." Unfortunately, not many concrete details were uncovered so Ars tried to lay out why there has been so much secrecy especially from an administration that has been preaching transparency. "The reason for that was obvious: there's little of substance that's known about the treaty, and those lawyers in the room and on the panel who had seen one small part of it were under a nondisclosure agreement. In most contexts, the lack of any hard information might lead to a discussion of mind-numbing generality and irrelevance, but this transparency talk was quite fascinating—in large part because one of the most influential copyright lobbyists in Washington was on the panel attempting to make his case. [...] [MPAA/RIAA Champion Steven] Metalitz took on three other panelists and a moderator, all of whom were less than sympathetic to his positions, and he made the lengthiest case for both ACTA and its secrecy that we have ever heard. It was also surprisingly unconvincing."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Artist Anastassia Elias builds miniature dioramae inside of toilet-paper tubes, using paper of the same color to create little dimensional scenes from life. Empty-loo-roll-day is always fun around our place, the cue to get out the stickers and markers and decorate the empty tube with Poesy, then run around the house playing kazoo or telescope. Maybe we'll level up to tiny still lives in a couple of years.

Anastassia Elias - Illustrations collages dessins peintures - Galerie (via Neatorama)

Seven-and-a-half metres across, with 1,000 mirrors, suspended 50 metres in the air from a crane, and illuminated by spotlights from all over the city of Paris during this year's annual Nuit Blanche arts festival. The work is La Maîtresse de la Tour Eiffel by French conceptual artist Michel de Broin. [via Dude Craft]

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Last month we pointed out what a bad idea it was for book publishers to go against the market's wishes and to delay the release of certain ebooks, hoping to drive more people to the (higher margin) hardcover versions of the book. This is incredibly anti-consumer thinking and assumes, incorrectly, that people will happily accept the format the publisher gives them. Not surprisingly, consumers are starting to rebel. Apparently some of the books are getting hit with one-star reviews on Amazon as punishment. For example, HarperCollins -- one of the leading supporters of these silly "windowed" releases -- is discovering that its well-hyped book Game Change is filling up with one-star reviews. Going against what your consumers want is almost never a good idea.

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Barence writes "'With the economic hangover starting to wear off, the technology giants are once again recruiting in earnest. Apple, Google, and Microsoft all have vacancies on their websites, and now could be the perfect time to land a job at one of computing's biggest hitters.' PC Pro talked to people inside Microsoft, Apple, and Google to discover how to track down the best jobs, and what it takes to get through the arduous selection and interview processes." With lots of experience both within and without, what other words of wisdom can be offered to those wishing to break into a mega-corp?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pedro Matias showed off his mad txtin sklz at this year's Mobile World Cup and managed to set a new record for "fastest, most accurate" texts as determined by the event's corporate owners. "history was made when Portugal's Pedro Matias set the new World's Record for texting by typing a 264-character text in just 1 minute 59 seconds (besting the previous record by 23 seconds). Of course, each Mobile World Cup must have its share of controversy -- in this case, Engadget Mobile's very own Chris Ziegler led a silent protest during the awards ceremony. The group was reportedly upset over the use of QWERTY phones (the LG enV3 in this case) to break the record."

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!

Paul asks:

I'm a museum educator, and working on an exhibit where I want to have a knob that you can spin around to change the color of an exhibit. I thought about using a potentiometer, but I am worried that it might break if people try to turn it too far. Any idea what I could use? Do they make a potentiometer that you can keep turning?

Interesting question. I now know that museums are pretty tough environments, so I understand your concern about it breaking. I can think of three options that might work:

• Rotary encoder
• Continuous turn potentiometer
• Regular potentiometer, with a slip clutch

Using a rotary encoder is the first thing that comes to mind. These devices have a disc with markings in them that spins when their shaft is turned, and have a sensor (usually optical) that detects when the marking move by. Because the sensor part is non-contact, they are generally more robust and can last longer than, say, potentiometers. The downsides to using them is that they are more complicated to use, and have a lower resolution than a potentiomer solution. The Arduino playground has a nice example of using a rotary encoder with a microcontroller.

A continuous turn potentiometer is an interesting option; I actually didn't know they existed until now. They certainly solve the issue of breaking by turning too far, because they don't have a hard stop. The only issue that I can think of is that their value will will probably jump suddenly from full on to full off as they make a complete revolution, which may require special handling. Actually, there is a second issue- I don't know where to buy them! Anyone have some pointers?

If you can't find a continuous turn potentiometer, a final idea might be to use a regular potentiometer, but connected indirectly through a slip clutch. The idea is to use something that will limit the amount of torque that the user can put on the potentiometer, which will prevent them from turning it too far and breaking it. You can purchase a special mechanical device that will do this, or perhaps even use a loose belt that will slip when the knob is turned too far.

Good luck with your project, and be sure to let us know how it turns out!

Have a different way to do this that you think might work better? Sound off in the comments!

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It seems that a recent digital fundraising drive for Haiti relief has stunned organizers at the Red Cross and White House. As of the last tally on Friday the campaign was at well over $8 million. "Earlier Thursday, when the Red Cross topped $3 million in text and social media donations — it hit nearly $40 million from all sources by late Thursday — spokesman Jonathan Aiken described it as 'a phenomenal number that's never been achieved before. People text up to three times at 10 bucks a pop,' Aiken said. 'You're talking about roughly 300,000 people actually spontaneously deciding, "I can spare $10 for this." And that's remarkable.' As of late Thursday, more than half of all donations to the Red Cross's Haiti relief effort had been received online, according to a news release.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's no secret that a lot of the network neutrality debate has been positioned as pitting online companies -- such as Google -- against infrastructure companies -- such as the telcos. That's a bit of an unfair characterization, because there are lots of issues at play when it comes to network neutrality, but it's getting a lot of attention that Google and Verizon filed a joint statement to the FCC about net neutrality. Of course, despite the PR value of this, I wouldn't read too much into it. The letter itself (pdf) lays out their "common ground" in incredibly broad and vague language that is borderline meaningless at times. And, of course, at the same time both companies filed their own separate statements in which they disagree heavily (Verizon even calls out Google by name). By way of comparison:

• Joint Submission by Google and Verizon: 9 pages
• Google's submission: 98 pages
• Verizon's submission: 139 pages

There's obviously still a lot that they don't agree on at all. Still, it is nice that they at least tried to come together a bit to find some common ground. That is pretty rare in a political culture often driven by extremes on each end playing tug o' war and hoping that the end result is somewhere in the middle. It would certainly be nice if this sort of thing became a little more common -- with more folks trying to find what the points of agreement are, separate from the points of disagreement.

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Arvisp writes to tell us that the symbolic "Doomsday Clock," designed to represent how close civilization is to catastrophic destruction, has been moved away from midnight. "First set at seven minutes to midnight, the clock has been moved only 18 times since its creation in 1947. The group, which includes more than a dozen Nobel laureates, last moved the hands of the clock in 2007, from seven to five minutes before midnight to reflect the threat of a "second nuclear age" and the challenges presented by global warming. Today, at a press conference in New York, the Bulletin announced that despite the looming threats of nuclear weapons and climate change, it would move the hands of the clock from five to six minutes before midnight."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Seems that it isn't just the astronauts at NASA who are flying high. A baggie of blow was found on the floor of a space shuttle hangar at Kennedy Space Center last week.

On the assumption that hydrogen-powered cars (jet packs?) will be commonplace some day, H-hawker Horizon introduced a consumer gadget at CES that converts water into hydrogen and stores it safely in solid form.

The small desktop device simply plugs into the AC, a solar panel or a small wind turbine, automatically extracts hydrogen from its water tank and stores it in a solid form in small refillable cartridges. The cartridges contain metallic alloys that absorb hydrogen into their crystalline structure, and release it back at low pressures, removing concerns about storing hydrogen at high pressure. This storage method also creates the highest volumetric energy density of any form of hydrogen storage, even higher than liquid hydrogen. Unlike conventional batteries, these cartridges carry more energy capacity, are cheaper, and do not contain any environmentally-harmful heavy metals.

Horizon believes the HYDROFILL is the first step towards private refueling of new generations of fuel cell electric vehicles. Fuel cell technology can greatly improve the features and usability of many battery or engine-powered devices, and create the possibility for lower cost electric cars that drive longer distances and recharge instantly.

[via electronics-lab.com]

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This weekend is the Foresight Institute's annual conference, about the connections between molecular manufacturing, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. There's still time to register, but if you can't attend in person, they'll be Webcasting the event. (The live video will be low-res due to the conference hotel's bandwidth, but they hope to post high-res video later on.) From the Foresight Institute:

Several rapidly-developing technologies have the potential to undergo an exponential takeoff in the next few decades, causing as much of an impact on economy and society as the computer and networking did in the past few. Chief among these are molecular manufacturing and artificial general intelligence (AGI). Key in the takeoff phenomenon will be the establishment of strong positive feedback loops within and between the technologies. Positive feedback loops leading to exponential growth are nothing new to economic systems. At issue is the value of the exponent: since the Industrial Revolution, economies have expanded at rates of up to 7% per year; however, computing capability has been expanding at rates up to 70% per year, in accordance with Moore's Law. If manufacturing and intellectual work shifted into this mode, the impact on the economy and society would be profound. The purpose of this symposium is to examine the mechanisms by which this might happen, and its likely effects.

"Foresight 2010: the Synergy of Molecular Manufacturing and AGI"

krou writes "The BBC is reporting that Alan Ellis, who ran music file sharing site Oink from his flat in the UK, has been found not guilty of conspiracy to defraud. Between 2004 and 2007, the site 'facilitated the download of 21 million music files' by allowing its some 200,000 'members to find other people on the web who were prepared to share files.' Ellis was making £18,000 a month ($34,600) from donations from users, and claimed that he had no intention of defrauding copyright holders, and said 'All I do is really like Google, to really provide a connection between people. None of the music is on my website.'" Reader Andorin recommends Torrentfreak's coverage, which includes summaries of the closing arguments.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The drive to ram through the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is ramping up, with the next meeting set for the end of this month in Mexico. ACTA is an unprecedented copyright treaty (unprecedented in that it reaches farther than previous copyright treaties, and that it is being negotiated behind closed doors, without any public input or oversight) that will force copyright policing duties on Internet companies (vastly increasing the cost of hosting "user-generated content"); create new penalties for infringement (including Draconian penalties such as disconnection from the Internet on accusations of infringement); and require countries to search hard-drives, personal media players, and other personal data at their borders.

Last month, Google's DC office hosted a public debate on ACTA, with Steven J. Metalitz, a lawyer and lobbyist representing the International Intellectual Property Alliance; Jamie Love, an activist with Knowledge Ecology International; Jonathan Band, a lawyer representing a coalition of library groups and a variety of tech and Internet companies and Ryan Clough from Silicon Valley Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren's office; moderated by Washington Post consumer technology columnist Rob Pegoraro.

The video runs to 90 minutes. I don't get a lot of 90-minute chunks of time in my life, but I made time for this. It was one of the most spirited -- even heated -- debates I've heard on the subject, and it got into substantive questions of law, jurisdiction, economics and ethics. It was especially interesting to hear Metalitz, the main mouthpiece for the private corporate interests behind this proposal, attempt to defend both the proposal and the secrecy behind it.

Two recurring points that Metalitz raised were that the secrecy in the treaty was a requirement of foreign negotiating partners, and the US's hands were tied; and that the treaty wouldn't require any of the "advanced" nations to change their law (he repeated the oft-heard unfounded slur that Canada is a rogue nation when it comes to copyright law).

Both of these points are simply wrong. The country demanding that ACTA be kept secret is the good old US of A, whose strategy for this is being driven by former entertainment industry lawyers who have found new homes as senior officials in the Obama government (the Democrats are terrible on copyright, sadly -- we can thank Bill Clinton for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act). These lawyers are Metalitz's old pals, his colleagues in the decades he's spent winning special privileges and public subsidy for his rich clients.

Even more ridiculous is the claim that ACTA won't require any changes to law (if that was true, why bother with it?). As the EU's Commissioner-designate for the Internal Market stated, ACTA will trump the democratic law made by elected governments, requiring changes that are created in smoke-filled rooms that only corporate bigwigs get access to.

ACTA is a profoundly undemocratic undertaking, as is amply demonstrated in the debate in this video. K-street lobbyists, corporate execs, and other movers and shakers know everything that's going on in the ACTA negotiations, but the public is frozen out of the debate. And as Jamie Love points out, public access to other copyright negotiations -- such as those at WIPO -- have fundamentally changed their directions, because the public doesn't want expensive gags and handcuffs put on the Internet in order to bolster the entertainment industry's profits.

Watch this video. It may be the most productive 90 minutes you spend today.

Google D.C. Talk: ACTA - The Global Treaty That Could Reshape The Internet (via Michael Geist)

We were just explaining why it appeared that Alan Ellis, the admin for OiNK had not actually violated any UK laws, and it looks like the jury agreed. Ellis has been found not guilty. I have to admit that I'm really surprised by this, but it is certainly a good thing. You shouldn't be found guilty of actions done by others, and if people were using OiNK to violate copyright law (as, certainly, some were) that shouldn't fall on Ellis. Separately, as has been noted previously, OiNK really highlighted where the recording industry itself failed to fill the demand that was there.

Of course, it will be interesting to see what comes next. My guess is that the entertainment industry will use this to support Mandelson's Digital Economy Bill as necessary, or to push for even more draconian copyright laws, such as adding in "contributory" copyright infringement into the law in some manner. This was a good ruling, but it may be used to push through bad laws in response.

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In the latest episode of The Memory Palace podcast, reporter Nate DiMeo tells the captivating story of "The Great Moon Hoax" of 1835. According to a series of New York Sun articles published that year, a respected astronomer named Sir John Herschel had observed an amazing array of flora and fauna on the moon, including bipedal beavers, winged humanoids, and (yay!) blue unicorns. None of it was true. (Or so we're told now.) And Herschel wasn't even aware until much later that he was the star of this bit of science fiction presented as fact. The lithograph above accompanied one of the articles to illustrate what Herschel had "seen" through his giant telescope. "The Moon in the Sun"

"If you are watching this message it is because I have been murdered by (Guatemalan president) Alvaro Colom..," says Rodrigo Rosenberg, a Guatemala City lawyer, in the video above. Xeni posted about this last May, but now, in an incredible twist, there is apparently evidence that Rosenberg wasn't actually murdered by Colom. Rather, he was allegedly killed by a hitman that he hired himself as part of a bizarre sacrificial suicide to frame Colom. Hmmm... From The Guardian:

The 18-minute testimonial – which surfaced at the funeral – was uploaded to the internet and triggered a political hurricane in the central American country... A UN investigation has concluded the lawyer, depressed over personal problems and angry with the government, sacrificed his own life in an elaborate sting. "Who planned the act? We have to conclude that it was Rodrigo Rosenberg himself," Carlos Castresana, head of the UN commission, told a stunned country . "He decided to sacrifice his life in exchange for a change in the country. There can be no other explanation." In a news conference the president, who faced protests and resignation calls, said he had been vindicated and that the country could move on.

In a plot twist worthy of Agatha Christie investigators said Rosenberg made the recording knowing that two days later, on May 10, assassins he had hired would ambush him near his home. He was shot three times in the head, once in the neck and once in the back. He apparently hoped the video would render him a martyr.

After the video surfaced the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, a UN panel set up to investigate crimes during Guatemala's civil war, launched an investigation supported by local prosecutors.

It found that Rosenberg was distraught over an ugly divorce, the death of his mother and the murder of a client, Khalil Musa, and his daughter, Marjorie, who was Rosenberg's girlfriend. The lawyer blamed government officials for the double slaying, which he linked to a money laundering plot.

"Lawyer in YouTube murder plot video hired his own assassins – UN" (Thanks, Gil Kaufman!)

Poor handwriting recognition was just the part that became industry legend. John Gruber explains why Apple's first tablet computer didn't do so well.

Sarah James at Instructables has made this awesome light-up EL wire costume, and shares the process with us in her excellent tutorial.

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Sockatume writes "Residents in Craigavon, South Africa complained of '[h]eadaches, nausea, tinnitus, dry burning itchy skins, gastric imbalances and totally disrupted sleep patterns' after an iBurst communications tower was put up in a local park. Symptoms subsided when the residents left the area, often to stay with family and thus evade their suffering. At a public meeting with the afflicted locals, the tower's owners pledged to switch off the mast immediately to assess whether it was responsible for their ailments. One problem: the mast had already been switched off for six weeks. Lawyers representing the locals say their case against iBurst will continue on other grounds."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

coondoggie writes to mention that the US Department of Energy is planning to set up a new "National Energy Sector Cyber Organization" in order to protect the national bulk power electric grid. For the low, low cost of $8.5 million they will help integrate smart grid technology with the electric grid, speed research, and establish new policy and protocols. "It is paramount that smart grid devices and interoperability standards include protections against cyber intrusions and have systems that are designed from the start (not patches added on) that prevent unauthorized persons from gaining entry through the millions of new access points created by the deployment of smart grid technologies, Hoffman stated."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Stefano Zannini, the head of mission for Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Fronteres / MSF) in Haiti, spoke to reporters this morning about the organization's operations in response to the catastrophic earthquake. Following are my notes from this call, and from related emails with MSF staff. Here's a link for online donations to MSF.

---

• All 3 MSF medical facilities in Port-au-Prince, the capital city, were damaged in the quake: a health center in Martissant slum, the Trinity trauma centre (60 beds), and the Solidarité maternity hospital (a 75 bed emergency obstetric facility). Two new operating facilities will be set up in the next 48 hours, including an emergency inflatable hospital due to arrive in Haiti on Saturday (like the one in the photo above — Maggie blogged about this earlier on Boing Boing).

• MSF staff have scavenged equipment from damaged hospitals and medical centers to augment resources at the Choscal hospital in the Cité Soleil district where operations are centered. Materials and surgical equipment have also been salvaged from a free maternity hospital normally operated by MSF. They are continuing to deliver babies, also. The two other obstetric hospitals in the area were destroyed in the earthquake.

• MSF staff in Haiti have been working shifts of up to 24 hours straight since the quake hit 3 days ago. They are exhausted. The first MSF planes with supplies are now arriving in Port-au-Prince, bringing goods and reinforcement staff. Some 40 tons of surgical equipment and sanitation treatment supplies to ensure clean drinking water are on the way.

• Many thousands of survivors are now homeless, or afraid to return to quake-damaged homes. Everyone is seeking shelter. People are sleeping in the streets, protecting themselves with blankets, or if they do not have blankets, covering themselves with plastic bags.

• The immediate focus for MSF teams is on expanding the ability to perform surgery for trauma victims, and responding to the incoming flood of victims who need immediate first aid for wounds. MSF priorities in days to come: stabilizing wounded, referring more complicated cases to specialists, reinforcing staff teams, restarting obstetric care, and addressing mental health needs of survivors. Also monitoring the need for food, clean water, and shelter.

MSF: "It is a race against time because infected wounds need rapid interventions. Inflatable operating theatres, with more surgical specialists are en route. But there are major issues of access and transport, with the staff delayed in the air and on the roads. "

• Survivors are trying to rescue their personal effects from their houses. During the daytime, streets are crowded with people looking for help and trying to find their families. Zannini: "I can see thousands of them walking in the streets, asking for help, asking for everything. Trying to stop every car they see in order to get something to go on."

• People are transporting patients on doors which are being used like stretchers. Also transporting patients by car, truck and moped. A few hospitals were not completely destroyed by the earthquake.

• Zannini: "In our hospitals, there are thousands of people waiting for surgery."

• Lots of survivors with open fractures needing surgery. First surgery last night was a complicated delivery of a baby. Zannini: "I am very proud to share with you that we were able to save the life both of the baby and the mother."

• Three things survivors need most right now: medical attention (including surgery), food, safe drinking water.

• Zannini: there were hundreds of dead bodies at MSF facilities. "Trucks from the Haitian government have come to retrieve them. We have protocols about treating the bodies with disinfectants to limit the risk of infection spreading. We do whatever we have to do... our primary role is looking after the [living] wounded."

• Currently MSF's teams are operating out of medical facilities that survived the earthquake. The inflatable hospital structures should be arriving today, and will be set up as fast as possible. These structures will include a surgery operating theater.

• Government trucks are going around the capital collecting dead bodies. A reporter on the conference call asks about dead bodies and the spread of disease. Zannini replies that MSF is focused primarily on surgical care: "Thousands of people need immediate surgical intervention."

• How concerned is MSF team about the spread of disease from corpses? Avril Benoit, director of communications for MSF Canada: "We get qustions like that all the time after a disaster. In our experience as a medical organization, we have rarely seen disease spread. We are always concerned about it, keeping an eye on it. After the hurricane in Gonaives [Haiti], the major priority was clean drinking water... water and sanitation experts are on the way to Haiti now and will be working on that from MSF side and from other organizations... there is no question that clean drinking water is a priority right now, but risks of disease spreading are seldom seen."

• Dr Mego Terzian, from an MSF emergency cell: "Triage, stabilisation of the wounded and referrals for surgical needs are the medical priorities. The dead bodies represent a medical issue in the sense that it's a factor of stress for the survivors. But in this context, as the cause of the death is not an infectious factor, there is no risk of epidemics linked to bodies."

• Asked how operational the Haitian government is, Zannini replies: "We speak with other actors, we meet with them, but our priority now is on the patients." Asked about coordinating with the UN or other NGOS, Zannini replies, "We are focused around our teams."

• 40 tons of supplies are on the way. On Thursday, MSF team in Haiti received medical supplies including medicines/drugs via airplane. The biggest needs at first were antibiotics, blankets, medical equipment. "At the moment we have enough supplies." More supplies coming in. "Most common problem is open fractures."

• What materials are needed most in the field? "Equipment, drugs to stabilize patients." Avril Benoit: "We have also been able to recover some of the material from our damaged hospitals. One cargo plane is due to arrive from Bordeaux, France, and another from MSF base in Panamá."

• MSF has been operating 24 hours a day. Staff have been working up to 24 hour shifts at a time in the immediate days following quake, but goal is to rotate staff in 12-hour shifts. Staff has drinking water and food, they are exhausted but coping as best they can. MSF: "25 new staff are expected to have joined the teams in Port au Prince by the end of today."

• Psychologists are arriving soon to help with mental health needs of Haitian victims, and with the mental health needs of MSF staff. But surgical activities are top priority right now.

• Zannini still expects more survivors to be rescued alive from damaged structures. "It is impossible for me at the moment to know" how many more survivors may be recovered in coming days.

• Asked "When will it get better?" Zannini replies, "It became better when we started surgical activity... we are full of patients... but as far as we are able to treat and stabilize and operate, things will [continue to] improve."

(Special thanks to Pete Masters from MSF. Photo: Inflatable medical village Doctors Without Borders set up in Mansehra, Pakistan. Credit: Remi Vallet, via Discovery News. )

Dave Weinberger has a thought-provoking post where he discusses why an "open" internet is so important, and suggests that we may be thinking about things incorrectly due to the term "open."

The Net as a medium is not for anything in particular -- not for making calls, sending videos, etc. It also works at every scale, from one to one to many to many. This makes it highly unusual as a medium. In fact, we generally don't treat it as a medium but as a world, rich with connections, persistent, and social. Because everything we encounter in this world is something that we as humans made (albeit sometimes indirectly), it feels like it's ours. Obviously it's not ours in the property sense. Rather, it's ours in the way that our government is ours and our culture is ours. There aren't too many other things that are ours in that way.

If we allow others to make decisions about what the Net is for -- preferring some content and services to others -- the Net won't feel like it's ours, and we'll lose some of the enthusiasm (= love) that drives our participation, innovation, and collaborative efforts.

So, if we're going to talk about the value of the open Internet, we have to ask what the opposite of "open" is. No one is proposing a closed Internet. When it comes to the Internet, the opposite of "open" is "theirs."

I'd certainly never thought about it that way, but it does make a point. I do think that many more people feel "at home" on the internet in a way that they never could or would in other platforms or media. And part of the fear that people have about losing an "open" internet is that it will decrease any incentive for participation. There is definitely a sense that part of the reason why some folks would like to pull back on openness is to turn the internet from a platform for users towards a more controlled broadcast sort of platform. That is, it won't be about communication, but about content delivery -- and when you do that, it loses a significant portion of its value. And I think that's where the shift from "ours" to "theirs" comes from. Not everyone can put a show on TV, but anyone can put a video on YouTube or just create a website. The internet is about communication, and when you start mitigating who can communicate and how, you lose the value of community.

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adeelarshad82 writes "Intel has responded to the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust investigation, unsurprisingly challenging the FTC's allegations as well as criticizing the agency for what the company calls an attempt 'to turn Intel into a public utility.' The motion is a response to the FTC's December announcement of a lawsuit brought by the FTC, accusing Intel of anti-competitive practices. Intel also goes on to provide a paragraph-by-paragraph rebuttal of the FTC's complaint and proposed remedy, although most of the company's response seems designed to promote the impression that those that failed, failed on their own."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Spotted in the Make: Forums:

Need to do some heavy lifting of the physical kind, but only have some wimpy servo motors on hand? Why not follow Antonb's directions to Hack your Servo, and turn it into a powerful linear accelerator. The instructions are a little tricky to follow, however the basic idea is to use the servo motor as a high-torque gearbox, which is then used to turn a screw to raise or lower your load. Using this method, he claims to be able to lift a 10kg load, which is pretty impressive!

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Natalie Jeremijenko @ EXIT ART tonight if you're in NYC. Opening tonight, show is January 9 - February 6, 2010...

Waterpod: Autonomy and Ecology, the sixth exhibition of the SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics) program, documents and revisits the Waterpod's five-month voyage around the boroughs of New York. It includes videos, photographs, relics, art works, journal entries, and ephemera that tell the story of this unusual public art project.

The Waterpod was a floating, sculptural structure designed as a futuristic habitat and an experimental platform for assessing the design and efficacy of living systems fashioned to create an autonomous, fully functional marine shelter.

A New York-based multinational team, led by founder and artistic director Mary Mattingly, drew upon the talents of artists, designers, builders, civic activists, scientists, environmentalists, and marine engineers to bring this cross-disciplinary collaboration to fruition in the waterways of New York City. During a global recession and within strict government guidelines, the Waterpod managed to achieve new ways of community outreach, resource sharing, and art creation.

To fortify against the possibility of widespread climate change, desertification, overpopulation, and rising sea levels, the Waterpod offered a pathway to sustainable survival, mobility, and community building through a free, participatory project and event space that visited the five boroughs and Governors Island, for a voyage lasting from June to October 2009. The Waterpod’s mission has been to prepare, inform, and offer alternatives to current and future living spaces.

As a self-sufficient, navigable living space, the Waterpod showcased the critical importance of water within the natural world. Collectively embracing the richly-patterned folkways of the five boroughs of metropolitan New York, the Waterpod reified positive interactions between communities: private and public; artistic and societal; scientific and agricultural; aquatic and terrestrial.

Related:

• MAKE AUDIOZINE - - Natalie Jeremijenko.
• Natalie Jeremijenko: The WorldChanging - Interview.
• Make - Volume 02 - Maker: Natalie Jeremijenko - (Page 22).
• Jeremijenko talks art, activism, - interspecies cooking. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!

I love how this cabin, designed by Piet Hein Eek for a musician, has logs cut the 'other' way. [Thomas Meyer Archive via Treehugger]

At a higher education conference (dgree.org) last week, I met Marie who told me the following story about her young daughter, Annika.

"I have a son who is a whiz at math. I've kind of understood what he needs and where he's going. My daughter was different and I didn't really understand who she was and what she did. Then I became familiar with MAKE. I recognized that she's the kind of kid who's always off doing something, making something out of parts she finds around the house. I realized she's a maker. I was so happy."

When I wrote Marie asking if it was okay to write about Annika, she responded with a quote from her daughter: "Did you tell him that if you turn your back on me for one minute, I start making?" What a great kid!

I can't tell you how much that means to me. I feel fortunate that we produce a magazine that helped a mother discover her own daughter in a new way. I don't think it's the only such example out there. I wonder how many kids there are that could benefit from being seen as makers.

Young Makers Program

Last summer, Tony DeRose, of Pixar, talked to me about an idea for developing a program for young makers. He and his kids built a Potato Gatling Gun and brought it to Maker Faire last year. They had such a great experience, taking an idea and developing it in their garage shop, and bringing their work to share with others at Maker Faire. Tony felt that more kids should have this kind of experience.

In addition to talking to me, Tony had been talking with folks at the Exploratorium in San Francisco about what he thought then were "two different things: 1) how to use Pixar's cachet to promote science and math education, and 2) his family's love of making." Tony was introduced to Karen Wilkinson and Mike Petrich who have run the Learning Studio at the Exploratorium for years. (They've organized the Exploratorium's participation in Maker Faire each year.) The Learning Studio is dedicated to the idea that science and math education can be advanced by tinkering and that places like science centers should encourage more creative ways of making and doing. They saw Tony's interests as a way to try out some new ideas at the Exploratorium and work more closely with us at MAKE.

We talked about getting kids to meet makers and demonstrate different modes of making. We wanted to explore projects in areas such as circuit-building, soft circuits, music, and mechanics. Mike and Karen want to have making become a regular part of the Exploratorium experience. We also want to find places where kids can work with mentors to make things. So, we also brought Jim Newton and TechShop in as partners. Together, we've come up with a Young Makers program for the Bay Area, which is now ready for a trial run.

I'll use Tony's words to give an overview of Young Maker program:

People learn in many different ways, but many learn best by building things. Building toys such as Lego blocks offer powerful and open-ended experiences for younger children. Unfortunately, as shop classes have closed over the past few decades, there remains very little infrastructure to nurture older kids and teens who want to expand beyond construction kits.

The Young Makers program is intended to create such an infrastructure. The idea is to create a community, both online and physical, that brings together like-minded kids, adult mentors, and fabrication facilities. Mentors help young makers define a project vision if they don't already have one, and then guide the kids in realizing that vision. Along the way, both kids and their mentors will expose the underlying math, science, and engineering principles behind the projects, explore tool usage and safety, and collectively create a collaborative culture of innovation and experimentation. Maker Faire becomes the deadline, and offers a stage for the resulting projects to be exhibited and explained.

In my view, we'd like to help develop young makers and encourage them to participate in Maker Faire. We'll be creating a special kids area at Maker Faire this year and we will invite kids to exhibit their projects. Our initial focus is on teens from middle school through high school.

Kickoff of Open MAKE at the Exploratorium

As part of the Young Makers program, the Exploratorium will host "Open MAKE" on the last Saturday of the month, beginning January 30th, continuing on February 27th and March 27th and concluding on April 24th.

The goal of the program is to encourage kids to make, show them different things they can learn to make, and work with kids who'd like to bring some of their work to Maker Faire.

On each Saturday, we will start with a "Meet The Makers" program in the McBean Theater from 11am-12pm. From 12:30-3:00 pm, we'll be "In the Studio" where kids can do projects and learn from other makers.

For our first program on January 30th, our theme is making simple circuits for small robots. Our featured makers will be Ken Murphy, maker of Blinkybugs, and Windell Oskay and Lenore Edman of Evil Mad Scientists Labs, who created Bristlebots. Kids will be able to make Blinkybugs and Bristlebots in the studio.

(We're still firming up the list of makers for future dates.)

If you have kids (or can borrow some), please join us at the Exploratorium, January 30th. I'll blog about what we learn from creating this program. We'd hope to see Young Maker programs develop in other communities as well.

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sopssa sends along a TechCrunch report on comScore qSearch numbers indicating that Bing is currently gaining market share faster than ever before. "In December, Microsoft's search engine gained another 0.4 percent to capture 10.7 percent of US search queries. That makes five straight months of steady share gains for Bing since it launched — Bing's share is up 2.7 percent in total since May, 2009. Google gained only 0.2 percent to end the month with 65.7 percent market share. What is even more interesting is if you look at year-over-year query growth rates for each search engine. Bing's growth is actually accelerating. Its growth rate in query volume was 49.4 percent in December."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I have no idea how well it works, but I'm loving the minimalist zen-garden aesthetics of this Mast Humidifier from Masuza. The wood, supposedly, is naturally rot-resistant and imparts a lemony smell to the air. [via Gizmodo]

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Bert Reyntjens writes "Some time ago, the (nude) photograph of the wife of Helmut Lotti, a Belgian singer, was used in a famous Flemish quiz 'de slimste mens ter wereld' (or in English 'the smartest man in the world'). Several newspapers and magazines reported on this, some displayed the photograph, others didn't. Now Lotti and his wife are suing several of these publishers for copyright infringement because they didn't have the permission to show this picture.

Everything so far seems more-or-less normal, except that one magazine (Story) was also sued even though it didn't publish the photograph (that link is in Dutch -- here is the Google translation), it only mentioned it. According to the lawyer for Lotti -- 'a mere reference to an image should be considered a reproduction of the image'!"

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Barence sends in a report from pcpro.co.uk that says "Under its original plans, Mozilla would roll out Firefox 3.6 and 3.7 over the course of 2009, each bringing minor improvements to the browser. However, a steady stream of delays to Firefox 3.6 has rendered that goal unobtainable, forcing Mozilla to rethink its release. As a result, Firefox 3.7 has been dropped and will be replaced with feature updates for Firefox 3.6 that will be rolled out with security updates. This should free up the team to work on the next major release, Firefox 4, slated for the last quarter of 2010, which is expected to follow the same development process."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

GetLoFi posted this demo of a hacked Korg Kaossilator with a variable clock, resulting in some sweet time/pitch stretches -

Sometimes newer devices get overlooked for purposes of circuit bending.  Two main reasons are price and abundant use of SMT components almost too  small to work on. The Kaosillator is one such device. However once the novelty of the factory sounds wears off it is necessary to explore other possibilities and Kaosillator is no exception.

The first modification is an addition of the LTC precision module in order to control the pitch. Wiring is very simple with only Ground, Positive, and the Output connection. Nothing needs to be cut or removed. The Output from the LTC module can be patched directly to the Crystal leg that controls the Kaossilator CPU.

A well placed LTC1799 certainly seems able to spice up the stock sounds on this one. Check out the full how-to for more on circuit bending the Kaossilator.

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January is Make Space for Crafting month on CRAFT, and we're taking you inside the workspaces of some of our favorite and prolific crafters. Check out the tour and Q&A with Paul Overton of Dude Craft to see how he organizes his space and "makes the magic happen," so to speak.

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Special deliveries for space could someday arrive via cannon, if physicist John Hunter has his way. His natural-gas powered Quicklauncher system could cut the cost of equipment transport from $5000 per pound, to about $250. The prototype is set to be tested next month.

How to Shoot Stuff into Space

STEP 1: HEAT IT
The gun combusts natural gas in a heat exchanger within a chamber of hydrogen gas, heating the hydrogen to 2,600?F and causing a 500 percent increase in pressure.

STEP 2: LET THE HYDROGEN LOOSE
Operators open the valve, and the hot, pressurized hydrogen quickly expands down the tube, pushing the payload forward.

STEP 3: TO INFINITY AND BEYOND
After speeding down the 3,300-foot-long barrel, the projectile shoots out of the gun at 13,000 mph. An iris at the end of the gun closes, capturing the hydrogen gas to use again.

Popular Science: A Cannon For Shooting Supplies into Space

(Thanks, Lee Billings!)

Image courtesy Flickr user edbrambley via CC

theodp writes "To power the Tools for America's Job Seekers Challenge, the US Department of Labor tapped IdeaScale, a subsidiary of Survey Analytics, which is headquartered in Seattle with satellite offices in Nasik, India and Auckland, NZ (PDF). According to the Federal Register (PDF), an Emergency OMB Review was requested to launch the joint initiative of the DOL, White House, and IdeaScale to help out unemployed US workers. A cached Monster.com ad seeks candidates to work on the development and maintenance of ideascale.com, but in India at an annual salary of Rs. 200,000 to 300,000 ($4,4000 to $6,600 US). BTW, an earlier White House-sponsored, IdeaScale-powered Open Government Brainstorm identified legalizing marijuana as one of the best ways to 'strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness.'" There's no guarantee that Indian workers recruited by that Monster.com ad would work on US Department of Labor projects.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

You may recall recently that the Florida Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee issued an opinion saying that judges shouldn't use Facebook to connect with any lawyers. This made little sense since judges can, in fact, be friendly with lawyers in real life. There must be something in the water down there, as new rules from the Florida Bar are so broad that they could potentially ban lawyer blogs because of an attempt to more carefully limit how lawyers "advertise" (found via Michael Scott):

The substantive rules provide, among other things, that an attorney website can't "describe or characterize the quality of legal services being offered." Rule 4-7.2(c)(2) Thus, I can't tell you in this post that I'm committed to using my legal skills to provide positive results for my clients (even though this is true). And I can't give you information regarding my past results, so I probably shouldn't tell you the true information that I lost a case I argued in a Florida court as cooperating counsel for the ACLU in a "John Doe" case. Rule 4-7.2(c)(1)(F). I also can't include testimonials; therefore, I request any former students or clients not to post comments saying what a wonderful lawyer and/or professor I am. Dramatizations and many other creative marketing devices are also verboten. Of course, my personal concerns about the new bar rules are trivial when set beside those of all the Florida law firms who must now spend vast sums of money to revamp their websites to try to comply with the new rules, not to mention the concerns of non-Florida firms that hire Florida attorneys.

That same blog post, by Lyrissa Lidsky, reasonably points out that the First Amendment should protect legal advertising as long as it's not inherently misleading. Of course, this issue has come up in the past as well. Five years ago, we wrote about concerns that laws in Kentucky required "filing fees" for lawyers to pay for "each advertisement" that would make legal blogging in the state prohibitively expensive.

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d5w writes "There are a thousand and one NGOs responding in some way to the disaster in Haiti, but the necessary infrastructure is usually overlooked when people give charity donations. In fact, some popular donation sites actively downgrade charities for spending on infrastructure. Here are two organizations responding in Haiti, though, that have a purely tech infrastructure focus: Télécoms Sans Frontières brings mobile telecom rigs and satellite phones to disaster sites, making sure that responders on the ground can communicate with each other and that individuals can contact families abroad; here's an eWeek story about TSF. MapAction sends experienced GIS people and GPS equipment to provide up-to-date mapping, which is important when the landscape has just changed drastically. Any others?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thingverse user Clide has invented a business-card that fires US pennies, handling them in lots of 10.

The thick components get sandwiched between the two thin layers. Start by gluing the two identical thick pieces to the thin side without the magazine. Use the other thick piece (the slide) as a guide and make sure it can slide easily between the parts and close flush. Then glue the side with the magazine on top. Take care not to glue the magazine down and make sure the slide can still move back and forth. The slide must be in place before you glue it together because it can not be installed after the rest of the card is assembled. Two #32 rubber bands are needed to use the card.

Penny Shooter by clide (via Make)

Michael Geist sez, "Reports from Costa Rica indicate that final approval of the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States is languishing in the Legislative Assembly due to concerns over the copyright provisions. The CAFTA copyright provisions are similar to those found in the other major U.S. trade agreements concluded in recent years: DMCA-style protections, ISP liability, and copyright term extension are all part of the package. In this case, it is the responses that are most noteworthy. Within Costa Rica, the article reports that the copyright provisions in the trade treaty have set off a wave of student protests over what it means for education. Meanwhile, health officials are concerned that the provisions on pharmaceutical products "would bankrupt the public health system." The response from the U.S. is important as well. It is delaying market access to sugar from the developing country until the copyright reforms are in place. Until that time, Costa Rican sugar producers will not be able to sell their product in the U.S."

U.S. To Costa Rica: No Sugar Access Without Copyright Reform (Thanks, Michael!)

(Image: No to CAFTA, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from wonderjunkie's photostream)

Now that the FCC's Net Neutrality comment-period has closed, Ars Technica's Nate Anderson has rounded up a list of charitable organizations with nothing to do with Net Neutrality, who nevertheless weighed in to support AT&T and Comcast's position -- these organizations are also all beneficiaries of large corporate donations from the telco giants. So much for charity -- when a donation to the Boys and Girls Club by AT&T comes with an obligation to weigh in on regulatory proceedings that threaten the profits of AT&T, it's not really a gift... More like selling out your group's good name.

Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Will and Grundy Counties. Comment: "The ability to utilize this technology in a cost-effective manner did not happen by accident or by government policy. It happened because of a competitive marketplace that rewarded the companies who invested in the latest networks and products. I believe that the development of new federal rules and regulations will only inhibit these types of investments."

The Big Brothers/Big Sisters, especially at the local level, aren't known for having opinions of the innovation effects of government policies in the telecommunications sector... but they do take money from AT&T, as the picture below reminds us.

Why the Kankakee County Farm Bureau hates net neutrality

Spotted over @ Arduino.cc, forum member Things shares pics of his mind-numbingly bright RGB LED project -

I bought 20 3W RGB LED's the other day, and wired them all up on a 7mm piece of aluminium. Each colour is controlled by a FET, and by an Arduino (For now). I play to build it into a box and add DMX control with an ATMega. This thing draws around 21A @ 3.3V! I am using a computer power supply to power them at the moment. This thing is BRIGHT!

Yeah like so bright that you really MUST NOT EVER look directly at it or risk instant eyeball vaporization! No seriously - without any diffusion, I'm guessing this thing must be like a death-ray for eyes - SERIOUSLY! *Ahem* so yeah … that above pic of the unit powered on was apparently taken in a sunlit room - but who needs the Sun with this thing around?!

Pics + discussion in the Arduino forums.

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1sockchuck writes "Some developers using Amazon EC2 are wondering aloud whether the popularity of the cloud computing service is beginning to affect its performance. Amazon this week denied speculation that it was experiencing capacity problems after a veteran developer reported performance issues and suggested that EC2 might be oversubscribed. Meanwhile, a cloud monitoring service published charts showing increased latency on EC2 in recent weeks. The reports follow an incident over the holidays in which a DDoS on a DNS provider slowed Amazon's retail and cloud operations."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On my family's Christmas holiday trip to Walt Disney World, I happened upon a copy of the 2002 book Disney's Looking at Paintings: An Introduction to Fine Art for Young People, written by Erika Langmuir and Ruth Thomson to coincide with an exhibition at London's National Gallery. I picked it up for an idle peruse and within seconds, I was hooked.

I confess that I am not a very sophisticated appreciator of fine art. Novels like Chaim Potok's My Name is Asher Lev and Steven Brust's The Sun, the Moon and the Stars (as well as films like Emile de Antonio's Painters Painting) have given me a glimmering of what other people see when they look at paintings, but they've also left me half-convinced that I was missing something important. I find most paintings...nice, but somewhere between the art, my eyeballs, and my brain, something seems to go astray. Sometimes I'm just left wondering what the big deal is.

Looking at Paintings is a beginning textbook for young children (I'd say 6-12) who are wondering the same thing. Using beautifully reproduced paintings and crisp prose, Looking at Paintings expounds on the history of visual art, and the use of size, shape, color, light and dark, perspective, frame, motion and materials in creating visual effects. The short chapters are lavishly illustrated, and each section ends with a short quiz and a Mickey Mouse comic that uses comedy to re-cover the material.

Having read the book, I feel like I learned rather a lot. The beautiful art, combined with the simple, intelligent accompanying text, has me looking at artists from Pollack to Chagal to Rembrandt in new ways. I only wish someone had handed me a book like this when I was about seven. I can't wait to get to a gallery again.

Looking at Paintings: An Introduction to Fine Art for Young People

When Joel Slemrod of the University of Michigan won his Ig Nobel Award in 2001, part of the prize criteria was that the research involved "cannot, or should not, be reproduced". Luckily for Slemrod, that's since been changed to "first make people laugh, and then make them think".

See, Slemrod and partner Wojciech Kopczuk of Columbia University are the researchers who found evidence that the very rich die in greater numbers just before estate taxes are scheduled to increase—or just after the taxes have been reduced. Since he published, Australian and Swedish researchers have replicated his results. And now, he says, it appears the United States is about set up a grand natural experiment with elderly rich people as guinea pigs.

As of January 1 of this year, the U.S. estate tax has been abolished for the year 2010, and is scheduled to be reinstated in 2011 with rates as high as 55%. If our findings (and those of our colleagues in Australia and Sweden) are right, there some would be "moved" from the end of 2009 to the beginning of 2010, as some rich folks hold on to bequeath their assets tax-free. Of course, the really morbid stuff will happen at the end of this year, when dying in December of 2010 will incur no estate tax, but dying beginning in January 1, 2011 can trigger a tax liability equal to more than half the taxable estate. It's being called the "Throw Momma from the Train" tax provision.

Thingiverse user clide made this awesome folding business card that can be loaded with a "magazine" of 10 US pennies and will shoot them out one at a time under rubber-band power.

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Considering the amount of hype and buzz that came about when Dean Kamen's Segway was first introduced, it seems like the company is going for the exact opposite in discussing its recent merger with a UK company. The company didn't even mention it for nearly a month, and only said something once rumors started spreading, and then the blog post they put up about it gives very little in the way of detail. They don't even mention the company's name:

Segway Inc. is pleased to announce that in connection with a merger that occurred on December 24, 2009, Segway was acquired by a company that is based in the United Kingdom. The acquiring company is backed by Jimi Heselden, a prominent U.K. businessman and the Chairman of Hesco Bastion. Mr. Heselden is also an investor in the independently owned Segway U.K. distributorship.

The company also got some funding (and lost its latest in a long, long, long line of CEOs), but in an interview with the local paper, Dean Kamen admits that he doesn't even know who the new investor is.

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NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "After Starr v. SONY BMG Music Entertainment was dismissed at the District Court level, the antitrust class action against the RIAA has been reinstated by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In its 25-page opinion (PDF), the Appeals court held the following allegations sufficiently allege antitrust violations: 'First, defendants agreed to launch MusicNet and pressplay, both of which charged unreasonably high prices and contained similar DRMs. Second, none of the defendants dramatically reduced their prices for Internet Music (as compared to CDs), despite the fact that all defendants experienced dramatic cost reductions in producing Internet Music. Third, when defendants began to sell Internet Music through entities they did not own or control, they maintained the same unreasonably high prices and DRMs as MusicNet itself. Fourth, defendants used MFNs [most favored nation clauses] in their licenses that had the effect of guaranteeing that the licensor who signed the MFN received terms no less favorable than terms offered to other licensors. For example, both EMI and UMG used MFN clauses in their licensing agreements with MusicNet. Fifth, defendants used the MFNs to enforce a wholesale price floor of about 70 cents per song. Sixth, all defendants refuse to do business with eMusic, the #2 Internet Music retailer. Seventh, in or about May 2005, all defendants raised wholesale prices from about $0.65 per song to $0.70 per song. This price increase was enforced by MFNs.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader passes along this quote from a report at 24/7 Wall St.: "There have been over 3 billion downloads since the inception of the App Store. Assuming the proportion of those that are paid apps falls in the middle of the Bernstein estimate, 17% or 510 million of these were paid applications. Based on our review of current information, paid applications have a piracy rate of around 75%. That supports the figure that for every paid download, there have been 3 pirated downloads. That puts the number of pirate downloads at 1.53 billion. If the average price of a paid application is $3, that is $4.59 billion dollars in losses split between Apple and the application developers. That is, of course, assuming that all of those pirates would have made purchases had the application not been available to them for free. This is almost certainly not the case. A fair estimate of the proportion of people who would have used the App Store if they did not use pirated applications is about 10%. This estimate yields about $459 million in lost revenue for Apple and application developers." A response posted at Mashable takes issue with some of the figures, particularly the 75% piracy rate. While such rates have been seen with game apps, it's unclear whether non-game apps suffer the same fate.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

azoblue writes with this teaser from Ars Technica, presenting a tempting suggestion for online consolidation: "E-mail, IM, Facebook, phones—what if all of these ways to reach you over a network could be condensed into a single, unique number? The ENUM proposal aims to do just that, by giving everyone a single phone number that maps to all of their identifiers. Here's how it works, and why it isn't already widely used."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Keep warm this winter with an easy to make portable heater you can stick in your pocket, under your hat or anywhere for some extra heat.
To download The Portable Heater video click here and subscribe in iTunes.
Subscribe to MAKE Magazine for other great projects
you can do over the weekend.

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For many years, cable/telco/satellite companies would do "exclusive" deals with apartment buildings and other developers, which would limit what services could be offered in those buildings. Back in 2007, the FCC stepped in to say such deals were illegal. But, of course, there are always loopholes. Broadband Reports highlights how a bunch of buildings are using loopholes like telling you can chose any cable company you like... but if you choose a different one they have to pay an extra $40 for water and trash. And... the FCC says these kinds of deals are legal, for now, though it may move against them soon. But, in the meantime, your landlord can effectively force you to choose a cable/telco/broadband provider.

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Earlier this week I was exiting an event in San Francisco's Potrero Hill neighborhood when I bumped into PizzaHacker and his amazing Franken-Webber portable wood burning pizza oven.

Drive-by guerilla street food is some of the best food out there. Just glancing at the prep table I noticed the choicest ingredients. Fresh basil, buffalo mozzarella, smoked salt? Further investigation finds that PizzaHacker uses sauce made exclusively from organic heirloom tomatoes and hand kneads his naturally leavened sourdough for what some say rivals the most trendy pizza establishments in the area.

Part of what makes this open air culinary spectacle work is the heavily modded Webber 22.5" grill that's been outfitted with fireproof blocks and a domed top comprised of factory cement and perlite that's been molded in the original Webber top. Using chunks of wood and charcoal, the Franken-Webber quickly reaches 1000F (the ideal temperature for cooking authentic Neopolitan-style pizza).

Here's a video from PizzaHacker's site:

More:

• How-To: Build a temporary wood-fired pizza oven
• DIY NY Pizza
• Make a pizza box solar oven

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Mitch Lasky was the executive vice president of Mobile and Online at Electronic Arts until leaving the publisher to work at an investment firm. He now has some harsh things to say about how EA has been run over the past several years, in particular criticizing the decisions of CEO John Riccitiello. Quoting: "EA is in the wrong business, with the wrong cost structure and the wrong team, but somehow they seem to think that it is going to be a smooth, two-year transition from packaged goods to digital. Think again. ... by far the greatest failure of Riccitiello's strategy has been the EA Games division. JR bet his tenure on EA's ability to 'grow their way through the transition' to digital/online with hit packaged goods titles. They honestly believed that they had a decade to make this transition (I think it's more like 2-3 years). Since the recurring-revenue sports titles were already 'booked' (i.e., fully accounted for in the Wall Street estimates) it fell to EA Games to make hits that could move the needle. It's been a very ugly scene, indeed. From Spore, to Dead Space, to Mirror's Edge, to Need for Speed: Undercover, it's been one expensive commercial disappointment for EA Games after another. Not to mention the shut-down of Pandemic, half of the justification for EA's $850MM acquisition of Bioware-Pandemic. And don't think that Dante's Inferno, or Knights of the Old Republic, is going to make it all better. It's a bankrupt strategy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The wonderful San Francisco science fiction reading series, SF in SF, is back for its fifth year, kicking off tomorrow: "SF in SF is pleased to present authors Jeff Carlson and Nancy Etchemendy. Each author will read a selection of their work, followed by Q & A moderated by author Terry Bisson. Book signing and schmoozing in the lounge afterward. Books for sale courtesy of Borderlands Books. Seating is limited, first-come, first-seated. All bar proceeds and tips benefit Variety Children's Charity of Northern California."

Admittedly, the Truth Wrist Band kit will not work on your pets. So if your mutt has been using up all the solder, you might need a different form of interrogation. However, if the culprit is human, this kit will work quite well!

A wearable device that dynamically reflects your psycho-emotional response to the world, promoting internal states to be externalized and made into interactive forms of expression. Measuring the galvanic skin response (a marker of emotional arousal commonly used in lie detector tests), this device's lights turn from blue to red as the wearer becomes aroused. Ask the wearer an evocative question and reveal his or her inner Truth.

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It's hard to comprehend who could be against the idea that federally-funded research (i.e., research funded by your tax dollars) shouldn't become available to the very public who paid for it. But many publishers pushed back hard when the National Institute of Health (NIH) began enforcing a rule that required the research it funded to be published openly a year after it was published in a journal. Again, this was really incredible. Journals get all of their content for free. They do not pay the authors. The journals often claim the copyright over those works as well -- despite the lack of payment. The journals also do not pay the peer reviewers either. The biggest expenses of most publications... not even present in such academic journals. And yet they still charge huge fees for the publication itself. It's a great scam, and they don't want it to end. But even the NIH rules still give them a year's monopoly. Yet, they hated it so much that they even got Rep. John Conyers to try to pass a law ending the requirement -- which thankfully went nowhere after lots of people protested.

The good news is that it looks like the Obama administration is looking to go in the other direction. The EFF points us to the news that the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is looking at ways to have this requirement go beyond just NIH and require public access for all federally funded research, including from organizations like the National Science Foundation (NSF). OSTP is asking for comments and input on the idea -- and it's an idea that makes a ton of sense. It seems likely that journal publishers will protest, but hopefully common sense will prevail and federally funded research will become open, accessible and available to everyone.

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teqo writes "Hackers belonging to the Chaos Computer Club have allegedly cloned digital security ID cards for some German airports successfully which then allowed them access to all airport areas. According to the Spiegel Online article (transgoogleation here), they used a 200 Euro RFID reader to scan a valid security ID card, and since the scanner was able to pretend to be that card, used it to forge that valid ID. Even the airport authorities say that the involved system from 1992 might be outdated, but I guess it might be deployed elsewhere anyways."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

And you don't even need a blanket. Ingrid Brandth's Daily Shelter transforms into a small playhouse.

Feeling safe is not necessarily being safe. We feel protected and secure in surroundings that are familiar to us, where we can control the space around us - physically or psychologically.

The Daily Shelter is a table inspired by my grandfather Sigvald Andreas Brandth. He was an inventive designer who based many of his ideas on excitement, humor and secrets. And just like his many designs, this table has a hidden story.

At first glance it looks like an ordinary table. But for the one who knows its secret, it can be transformed into a shelter where one can hide from scary sounds, ghosts or family members. Just like a snail feels safe in its house.

[via inhabitots]

More:

• HOW TO - Make a Cardboard Playhouse
• Table folds up into picture frame when not in use
• Periodic table

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As high-definition graphics become more and more entrenched in this generation of game consoles, Nintendo has had to deal with constant speculation about a new version of the Wii that would increase its capabilities. Today, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime bluntly denied that a hardware revision was imminent, saying, "We are confident the Wii home entertainment console has a very long life in front of it." He added, "In terms of what the future holds, we've gone on record to say that the next step for Nintendo in home consoles will not be to simply make it HD, but to add more and more capability, and we'll do that when we've totally tapped out all of the experiences for the existing Wii. And we're nowhere near doing that yet."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot points us to the news that the ACLU is looking to challenge Homeland Security's policies that it has pretty free reign in searching your laptop at the border. Now, to date, the courts have said that this is perfectly legal, so it's not clear what is "new" that the ACLU hopes to prove. However, last year, after revealing that the new administration still stood by these border computer searches, it also revealed some data on laptop searches, suggesting they are quite rare -- but do still happen. However, the ACLU is seeking people whose laptops were searched, but that looks like a pretty small number of people. While I agree that these searches seem quite questionable for a variety of reasons, I just don't see this lawsuit being effective.

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I'm unsurprised but vindicated to read of this research from the Max Planck Institute and Indiana U that says that diets are more apt to succeed when they are simple -- complexity kills. I think this is why Atkins worked so well for me (80 lbs in about a year): low-carbing is just easy to do, all you really need to do is stop eating high-carb food:

"For people on a more complex diet that involves keeping track of quantities and items eaten, their subjective impression of the difficulty of the diet can lead them to give up on it," reported Peter Todd, professor in IU's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

Jutta Mata, now a professor of psychology at Stanford University, said this effect holds even after controlling for the influence of important social-cognitive factors including self-efficacy, the belief that one is capable of achieving a goal like sticking to a diet regimen to control one's weight.

"Even if you believe you can succeed, thinking that the diet is cognitively complex can undermine your efforts," she said.

Sticking to Diets Is About More Than Willpower -- Complexity Matters

(Image: lunch, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from malias' photostream)

Another sweet ParentHacks tip, from reader Chrissy -- I love the elegance of realizing that the dishwasher door, when opened, is a self-cleaning, toddler-height food-prep area:

Stumbled across this idea by accident this week when my four year-old wanted to help with the cooking. She's kind of a wild stirrer and flour has a tendency to end up all over so I was feeling resistant to having her help. The dishwasher happened to be open and I got the idea to just set to bowl on top of the open dishwasher door. It was just the right height for her to help add ingredients and stir, and the pile of flour and sugar that usually ends up on the counter ended up on the dishwasher instead, making clean up as easy as closing the door :) It was definitely one of those "how did it take me so long to think of this?!" sort of moments.

Let little kids "help" with cooking by placing the mixing bowl on the open dishwasher door

(Image: Dishwasher, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from brownpau's photostream)

krou writes "With swine flu fading in the UK (projected winter deaths of 65,000 have been downgraded to 1,000, and new cases are decreasing) the UK government has been left with millions of unused vaccines, and (unlike its contract with Baxter) no clear break-clause to get out of its contract with GlaxoSmithKlein. Although the amount paid for vaccines has not been disclosed, it likely cost the UK government several hundred million pounds. Other governments are also in a similar position: the US ordered 251 million doses of the vaccine, and France and Germany are aiming to cut back on their orders considerably. To say that the case for the pandemic has been over-estimated appears to be an understatement. Now, the WHO has announced that it is to investigate whether or not it bowed to pressure from drugs companies to overplay the threat." (Continues, below.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I love these little cardboard dioramas inside of toilet paper tubes, crafted by artist Anastassia Elias. Spotted on Boing Boing. I was touched by part of Cory's post:

Empty-loo-roll-day is always fun around our place, the cue to get out the stickers and markers and decorate the empty tube with Poesy [his daughter], then run around the house playing kazoo or telescope. Maybe we'll level up to tiny still lives in a couple of years.

*I* wanna live at Uncle Cory's house!

Anastassia Elias - Illustrations collages dessins peintures - Galerie

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Roboticist film-maker John Nolan's gallery of animatronic creations is a treasure-trove of wonderful, grotesque creations in states of partial undress.

www.johnnolanfilms.com: gallery of photos (via JWZ)

Wagner James Au sez, "Jonathan Lethem's latest novel Chronic City includes a virtual world inspired by Second Life, so fittingly, this Sunday Lethem is promoting his book *in* Second Life on the Copper Robot show, using an avatar named PerkusTooth Riddler, based on the character Perkus Tooth from the book. If you don't have an SL account you can watch on the web ."

Jonathan Lethem Appears in Second Life This Sunday As Avatar Based on Character From His Novel, *Chronic City*

Copper Robot: Novelist Jonathan Lethem

Cory Doctorow has a fun column over at The Guardian responding to three of the common quips used by people to dismiss social networks, and pointing out why those complaints miss the mark. He responds to the following three:

• It's inconsequential -- most of the verbiage on Twitter, Facebook and the like is banal blather, by noting that what's inconsequential to you is most likely not inconsequential to those it's actually targeted at.
• It is ugly -- MySpace is a graphic designer's worst nightmare, by noting that this is done for a good reason, which is to make it a place where blatant overly designed marketing can't take over.
• It is ephemeral -- Facebook will blow over in a year and something else will be along, by noting this is a feature and makes sure that the services adapt or die.

There are, of course, lots of other silly "complaints" but my favorite (and perhaps this is really a subset of the first one) is that "I don't want to use Twitter because I don't care what someone is eating for lunch." And, certainly, at some level I can understand the thinking behind that. And, yet, one of the first times I realized how useful Twitter could be was a couple of years ago, when a random Twitter message about what someone was eating for lunch resulted in a chance to meet up with someone who I'd only known as an occasional email acquaintance -- because it passed on a variety of little tidbits of information that we wouldn't have realized otherwise. Since then, I've noticed this quite often. No, I might not care what everyone I follow ate for dinner all the time (not that very many people I know share that info), but quite often these random tidbits of information paint a great picture of someone, which can be useful at other times. And, honestly, if your complaint is that you don't want to know what someone had for lunch -- stop following the people who post what they had for lunch.

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Over on O'Reilly Radar, Tim O'Reilly gives his first-blush assessment of the Google Nexus One.

There will be many posts focusing on the look, feel, and features of the Nexus One, so I'm going to focus on what Android's latest incarnation says about the competitive landscape - what I've elsewhere called the war for the web. Android vs. iPhone is one important front in that "war."

One from his plus column:

Google Goggles is still a bit rough, but really promising. I understand why it's not pre-loaded on the phone, but think it has real promise as a must-have app, and one that plays to Google's strengths. I believe that image recognition and speech recognition are key to future UI improvements in mobile devices, and I applaud Google's long term commitment to these areas, even though they aren't yet fully baked. And the awe factor when you see someone point a camera at you and have the app say "That's Tim O'Reilly" tells you just how much more a device can do when it is backed by big data and powerful algorithms running on a cloud platform. (Google has kept face recognition out of the production version of Goggles, but I had a full version demoed to me a few months ago, and it was truly a taste of the future.) Augmented reality is coming to the iPhone as well (Layar, the Yelp Monocle, and ShopSavvy being only a few examples), but this is Google's home turf.

And one from his minus:

I really miss access to my iTunes music collection, which is also where I listen to audiobooks from audible.com. That being said, this omission pushes me back in the direction of cloud music apps like Last.FM and Pandora, though I'm wishing that Rhapsody was available, since I'm already a subscriber via my Sonos home music system. Google has added its own built-in music app, but it has a limited selection, and what's worse, pre-empts the controls on the headset. At least right now, they aren't available to other music applications - pressing the pause button while in Last.FM just starts a competing stream from the Google music app. Unless Google is REALLY serious about getting into the music business, they should give up on their own app and work with third parties to fill this hole.

A Few Thoughts on the Nexus One

More:
Alt.CES: Nexus One teardown
Alt.CES: Google Nexus One an iPhone Killer?

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A 100-bed hospital, built in 36 hours. Doctors Without Borders uses inflatable lifeboat fabric to set up portable, reusable trauma centers in disaster zones, including Haiti. Help support smart, innovative humanitarian action.

The tombs of at least a dozen pyramid construction workers have been found in Egypt, near Giza. Egyptologists would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that the pyramids were not built by slaves.

Project Excite Bike acgourley writes...

I hooked up my exercise bike to my xbox. Now burnout is awesome. [Videos and Schematics]... Ok really this article is a technical description of our current 'excitebike' prototype - it is not a step by step guide. But! If you really want to make your own, this, in addition to the schematics+source, should be sufficient.

The point of the device is to capture the pedaling speed from an exercise bike and make it control a single button on a gamepad, which in turn can be the 'gas pedal' for racing games. We have this working with an xbox 360 gamepad but it can be adapted for other controllers and game systems easily. It would be simple to adapt this to a steering wheel controller, for example.

Using the prototype is surprisingly fun, and remarkable in its ability to make you forget just how hard and long you're working out. It's tedious to return to working out just to hit a time or distance threshold when you're used to more direct pedaling imperatives.

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Back in 2007, the TSA wrote a "mythbuster" blog post on its site claiming that no 8-year-olds were on the TSA "no fly" list, which apparently was a challenge to the NY Times. While it didn't actually find an 8-year-old on the "no fly" list, it did find one on the "watch list." To be fair, the TSA in its blog post does acknowledge that there could be some 8-year-olds on the watch list, but none on the no fly list. And the Times did not find one on the no fly list -- so the TSA's blog post is technically accurate.

That said, the TSA blog post also claims that if there are mistakes that lead to an 8-year-old being on the watch list, airlines can "automatically deselect" them. And... that did not appear to happen. The kid that the NYT found apparently gets vigorously searched every time he flies. The Times did get the TSA to say on record that "there are no children on the no-fly or selectee lists," but the fact that little Mikey Hicks gets searched so much highlights the problem. Right now, it seems like everything is based on a name alone. That's not particularly sophisticated. By this point, shouldn't the TSA have better tools than just a name to determine if someone is worth additional scrutiny?

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An anonymous reader writes "Interesting video interview on silicon.com with Sheffield University's Noel Sharkey, professor of AI & robotics. The white-haired prof talks state-of-the-robot-nation — discussing the most impressive robots currently clanking about on two-legs (hello Asimo) and who's doing the most interesting things in UK robotics research (something involving crickets apparently). He also voices concerns about military use of robots — suggesting it won't be long before armies are sending out fully autonomous killing machines."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It doesn't get any better than this. (Thanks, Amy!)

In the courtroom's supreme moment of tragedy, it is often possible to watch a man go from life to death in a few seconds. Here, smiling and self-assured, a killer faces the court. The judge's voice begins...

It rolls out over the silent room. The criminal listens. He bites his lip. His eyes are far away. The judge's voice drones on...

You are hereby sentenced... The condemned man catches his breath sharply, trying to grasp the cold fact of the situation...

...to die in the electric chair. This killer is crushed. This is his reward for murder. And may God have mercy... He hears no more. The people are avenged.

Read the rest of "Drama In The Courtroom" (Coronet/April 1947)

Rev. Al Ridenour is one of my heros. He is a prankster, an entertainer, a troublemaker and a genuinely nice guy. I met him when he was the chief "cat herder" of the infamous Cacophony Society in Los Angeles. Now he's created something equally demented and even more fun- The Art of Bleeding.

The Art of Bleeding website describes their project as...

...a uniquely non-accredited educational institution offering powerful and ego-destabilizing theatrical programs in safety education. Often staging productions from an actual ambulance, our programs combine live performance, film, puppets, music, and animation to create a sort of "PARAMEDICAL FUNHOUSE" in which the groping ego may ultimately experience TRUE SAFETY CONSCIOUSNESS.

The Art of Bleeding has created a new educational project called Gory Details. Real people relate real catastrophic medical emergencies either in person (interviewed by a bevy of attentive "nurses") or by dialing a toll-free hotline. The "gory stories" are re-enacted and disected by a gorilla, a hand puppet and a robot in a kids show format reminiscent of the old Soupy Sales Show.

There are three video episodes of Gory Details online so far. Rest assured that these videos are definitely not safe for viewing by your mom.

Gory Details Ep. 1: Mango Flies

Gory Details Ep. 2: Dog Bite

Gory Details Ep. 3: Moths & Drugs

A few years ago I picked up Ken Libbrecht's Field Guide to Snowflakes, thinking any self-proclaimed snow junkie like myself should own it. A renowned snow scientist and physicist, Libbrecht's great little book taught me about snowflake fundamentals and helped me identify different types of flakes and learn what each shape tells us about the weather. Then my friend Katie got me Libbrecht's The Art of the Snowflake: A Photographic Album, a stunning coffee table book filled with snowflake photographs (like the one above) Libbrecht has taken using his snow photography rig. Recently I stumbled across his site, which details each component of his photo-microscope rig, including cost (although this part is a bit dated), perfect for trying to come up with the setup for cheaper. Check it out if you have any interest in snowflakes or micro-photography.

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We actually had some high hopes for Kodak not to go down this road, as it had shown some desire to actually focus on innovation, rather than going the litigation route, but apparently that wasn't working. As a bunch of you have sent in, Kodak has decided to go after both Apple and RIM for patent infringement -- and like so many these days, it's going for a double dip by filing a lawsuit in the courts and separately using the ITC loophole as well. How often do we see this? A company with a legacy business that is under threat of innovation... and it suddenly starts focusing on patent lawsuits rather than concentrating on actually adapting. Sure, it can try to do both at once, but it's rare to see that happen. Once the company breaks out the patent lawsuits, it's almost screaming out that its innovation efforts aren't very successful.

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I like Art Kunkin, the octogenarian founder of the 1960s underground paper, the LA Free Press, and I like the title of his recent blog entry even more: "Prevent Your Brain From Turning Into Stone By Using Apple Cider Vinegar."

Here's more abut Kunkin: a profile from Fortean Times reveals that he eats an apple or pear every week that has been sitting in a jar of uranium ore. He says:

“It’s a very simple procedure. I have a jug full of Pitchblende rocks and I put a pear or apple in. I’ve been eating a piece of this fruit every week for nearly a year now, taking a risk at this point because I really don’t know how strong the radioactivity is. The latest theory of aging has to do with mitochondria, saying that while they are the source of life and energy for the body, they also kill each other off in the process of producing the ATP. What I am assuming is that the radiation is affecting the mitochondria inside the still living apples or pears that are in my jug, helping those mitochondria to be healthy and reproductive . Then when I eat this fruit, I am absorbing healthy mitochondria that transmit their energy to my mitochondria, a process of adding life energy to my body from the inside out. This is an energetic process far different from that of simply replacing depleted chemicals in our body by eating food or vitamins or using medicinal hormones. I explain in my book the exact safe methods by which I handle this otherwise dangerous radiation."

artkunkin.com - The Immortality Blog

"My fear—for Google and for us—is that the reason they know it's the Chinese government behind these attacks is because Google gave them the key." —Douglas Rushkoff, in the Daily Beast.

I've always found that the most interesting art lies at the intersection between two totally different styles. One of the best examples of this theory existed more than a half a century ago as an unlikely offshoot of country and western music.

From the 1930s through the 50s, country music exploded into a bunch of different styles- old time hillbilly folk music (exemplified by the Carter Family), bluegrass (Bill Monroe), honky tonk (Hank Williams) and cowboy music (Sons of the Pioneers). But the most exciting (and most fun) branch of the country and western musical family tree was the fusion of jazz and country music- Western Swing.

Before you say, "I hate country music." take a few moments to listen to the unrestrained madness of Speedy West and Jimmy Bryant at their peak...

I'm a record collector... a dangerously fanatical one. I have thousands and thousands of LPs and 78s covering a 25 foot long wall of my library from floor to ceiling. A long time ago, I realized that only a tiny fraction of the world's great music existed on CD. The only way to get a true picture of the history of 20th century popular music was to haunt garage sales and swap meets and scoop up the detritus from the golden age of recorded music. You wouldn't believe the amazing stuff that is totally forgotten today!

78 collectors are a bit of an enigma to other record collectors. I was at a party of musicians, record collectors and radio DJs once and the topic of conversation came around to the most money any of us had spent on a single record. One girl spoke of spending $250 on an obscure do-wop 45rpm single. Another guy admitted to spending $500 on an LP. I was the only 78 collector in the crowd, so they turned to me and asked what was the most I had ever paid for a 78. I replied, "My budget is $2 a disk. When I stop finding interesting disks at $2, I'll consider going up to $3. But there's so much good stuff out there at $2 and below, I can't absorb it all."

You don't have to fill your kitchen sink with soap suds and dusty old shellac any more to hear this music. Kind souls on the internet are bringing their treasures to you every day. You just need a link. Here is the only link you need for Western Swing music. Soak it up!

Highfalutin' Newton's Western Swing on 78

bheer writes "A zero-day attack on IE was used to carry out the cyber attack on Google and others that's been getting so much ink recently, reports The Register, quoting McAfee's CTO. While the web (and security) community has pointed out the problems with IE's many security flaws (and its sluggish update cycle) in the past, IE shows no sign of vanishing from the corporate landscape."

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.

Reuters has a short article detailing how the UK has been successful in luring a growing number of foreign entrepreneurs to open up shop (or even move their companies to the UK). While there are still plenty of foreign entrepreneurs starting or moving companies to the US, it's got little to do with the US government -- which often makes it quite difficult for foreign entrepreneurs to relocate here. While, thanks in large part to Brad Feld's activism, there is finally some movement on a startup visa concept, the US government still takes a rather hostile view towards foreign entrepreneurs and foreign startups. With other countries actively courting and welcoming them -- and backing it up with some infrastructural changes, this should be seen as a serious problem for US innovation. Of course there's a lot more to this issue, and there are certainly institutional reasons why the US has long had a strong startup culture, but we shouldn't merely assume that we can just rest on our laurels, especially as others are ramping up their efforts to attract hot startups.

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I love this DIY camera dolly track, built from a $15 "Ivar" Ikea shelving "side unit."

A few days ago, I found out that the Ivar "wooden ladder" was perfect to use it as rails for my cinema dolly! I can now make some nice sequence shots with this 18€ (USD$15) accessory from Ikea.

[Thanks, Tim Tate!]

Ivar loves Dolly

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