Holy crap, this video truly is the most awesome thing ever!!11one!11. I know nothing about this, other than what's on the YouTube description: "Promo for Giorgio Moroder taken from a Casablanca Records promo tape." I was talking with Joel Johnson about how creepy Moroder seemed in this video, with the pervo-stache and the cocaine shades. "But he mades the trains boogie on time," says Joel. Mr. Moroder is still very much with us, btw: he is 69 years old, and actively composing. Here's his website.

When you're done watching, go listen to this (or buy it). I think it's my favorite Moroder track.

(via Q-Burns Abstract Message via DailySwarm via Mixhell)

Having already been told by a German court that it needs to magically know what songs infringe and which do not, file storage locker site RapidShare was already facing some difficult legal issues in that country. And now that company faces another problem. It's been ordered by a German court to figure out a way to proactively block the upload of 148 titles. Of course, the company can try to do some fingerprinting, but there are always ways around things like that -- and that creates a huge problem for RapidShare. Because if one of its users figures out how to upload one of these books, RapidShare takes the blame -- in the form of $339,000 fine and 2 years of jailtime for execs for each instance that a forbidden work gets through. In what world does it make sense to hold the execs of a company criminally liable for something done by the users of the site?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

roh2cool writes "If you are a watch freak and also happen to be a fan of ultra rare (and expensive) gadgets, this might just interest you. The LG GD910 watch phone looks like a normal watch – except for the fact that it can double up as your mobile phone when needed. 'It is quite thin at just 13.9mm and packs in 3G and Video Calling capabilities as well. The phone is quite stylish and the front fascia is covered by scratch-proof tempered glass. It comes with a Bluetooth headset so you don’t have to keep talking like David Hasselhoff talked to his super-car KITT in the “Knight Rider” series.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One favorite quote from Hunter S. Thompson, who died exactly five years ago (give or take a few days) ago, is this one, the opening lines from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like: I feel a bit lightheaded. Maybe you should drive. Suddenly, there was a terrible roar all around us, and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, and a voice was screaming: Holy Jesus. What are these goddamn animals?

Thompson and his lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta visited Las Vegas in 1971 to cover the Mint 400 race for Sports Illustrated. But the article they wrote was about far more than that.

Las Vegas Review reporter Corey Levitan writes an article in which he tries to figure out what was real and what wasn't, which as might be imagined when dealing with Thompson seems like a tough thing to figure.

We were a bit concerned last year when the FCC held hearings which were technically about the national broadband policy, but instead focused on copyright, something that is clearly well outside the FCC's mandate -- something the FCC already got in trouble for a few years back with its attempt to mandate a "broadcast flag." However, there are now some additional concerns that this administration is ignoring the limits of the FCC's mandate. As you may recall, a few weeks back, the Justice Department -- at the urging of the entertainment industry -- set up a special IP task force to deal with "the rise of intellectual property crime." However, some are quite worried about how this task force intends to go about this.

Copycense points us to a letter sent to the Justice Department by the Center for Democracy and Technology, which noticed that, in the announcement of this new task force, the Justice Department said it intends to work with the FCC on intellectual property enforcement. That's a problem:

What's wrong with that? It's an invitation to major mission creep. The FCC's job is to execute and enforce federal communications law. It has no authority and no role in enforcing other laws. Lots of unlawful activity -- from intellectual property infringement to racketeering to securities fraud to deceptive advertising -- may occur over or using communications networks. But that doesn't make it the FCC's job to police such activity. The FCC's focus is, and should remain, promoting the availability of high quality communications capabilities in the United States -- not policing what users do with those capabilities.

In addition, the only reason to involve the FCC would be to force the entities the FCC regulates -- communications providers, and in particular ISPs -- to start actively policing I.P. infringement. Having government force ISPs to take on this new role should raise serious red flags. The idea that ISPs don't serve as gatekeepers or content censors, and aren't themselves responsible for what users do on the network, has been a bedrock principle that underpins the Internet's open and innovative nature. Casting it aside would be a serious mistake and a radical departure from U.S. communications policy.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Ben Wilson Design did this awesome F1 race car model entirely out of red Puma shoe boxes (for a Puma promotion). [via DudeCraft]

PUMA F1 CAR-D

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Paper Crafts | Digg this!

Predictably Irrational author Dan Ariely used to enjoy taking Airborne, until he read reports that it didn't prevent colds. Before he read the reports, he was "97.5% sure" Airborne didn't work, but that tiny bit of doubt was enough for the placebo effect kick in. The news reports killed the placebo effect. He was sad that he didn't have a cold placebo to depend on, but his mother recently sent him a new nostrum and he is happy again. (I think it is Oscillococcinum, a homeopathic "medicine.").

Dan Ariely: Got My Placebo Back

In 1995, astronomer, amateur hacker tracker and Klein-bottle maker Clifford Stoll wrote an essay (and a book, too, but I haven't read that) explaining why this Internet thing will never work. His main argument seems to be, "Hardware and software will all top out in the mid-90s and, thus, the Internet will never ever get any more user friendly or portable. Also, it is different and scary." Hilarity ensues.

The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works ...

What the Internet hucksters won't tell you is that the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don't know what to ignore and what's worth reading. Logged onto the World Wide Web, I hunt for the date of the Battle of Trafalgar. Hundreds of files show up, and it takes 15 minutes to unravel them—one's a biography written by an eighth grader, the second is a computer game that doesn't work and the third is an image of a London monument. None answers my question, and my search is periodically interrupted by messages like, "Too many connections, try again later." ....

Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet-which there isn't-the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

Why the Internet Will Fail, essay reprinted from Newsweek

Via Unlikely Words

Physicist Sean Carroll has built up a bit of a name for himself by tackling one of the age old questions that no one has been able to fully explain: What is time? Earlier this month he gave an interview with Wired where he tried to explain his theories in layman's terms. "I’m trying to understand how time works. And that’s a huge question that has lots of different aspects to it. A lot of them go back to Einstein and spacetime and how we measure time using clocks. But the particular aspect of time that I’m interested in is the arrow of time: the fact that the past is different from the future. We remember the past but we don’t remember the future. There are irreversible processes. There are things that happen, like you turn an egg into an omelet, but you can’t turn an omelet into an egg."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Flickr user fotogra4er replaced the fluorescent tubes lighting his aquarium with LEDs. Which, of course, make way more light and way less heat for the same amount of energy. Then he upped the ante by cooling the LED lighting bank with circulated tank water, exploiting what waste heat the LEDs do generate to warm it, and thus saving even more power that would otherwise go to the tank heater.

[via Hack a Day]

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Education | Digg this!

A concise list of every landing mankind has ever made on other planetary bodies. Have to say, I did not know that the USSR had sent that many probes to Venus. (Via Betsy Mason)

MojoKid writes "Hard drive capacities are sometimes broken down by the number of platters and the size of each. The first 1TB drives, for example, used five 200GB platters; current-generation 1TB drives use two 500GB platters. These values, however, only refer to the accessible storage capacity, not the total size of the platter itself. Invisible to the end-user, additional capacity is used to store positional information and for ECC. The latest Advanced Format hard drive technology changes a hard drive's sector size from 512 bytes to 4096K. This allows the ECC data to be stored more efficiently. Advanced Format drives emulate a 512 byte sector size, to keep backwards compatibility intact, by mapping eight logical 512 byte sectors to a single physical sector. Unfortunately, this creates a problem for Windows XP users. The good news is, Western Digital has already solved the problem and this quick overview at HotHardware offers some insight into the technology and how it performs."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Remember how the last Guns 'N Roses album leaked to the internet -- and somehow the FBI thought it was a good use of their resources to get involved and arrest the guy who uploaded the files -- leading to him pleading guilty and getting two month's house arrest? Would you believe there's another approach?

Jeff Barr points us to the news that Vince Neil, the "sometimes lead vocalist for Motley Crue," has a new single out -- which first leaked to the internet. But rather than freak out about it, Neil decided to offer it up directly himself for free, and to make it more valuable to get it directly, by offering the track, the video for it and a desktop wallpaper in the official version. And with that announcement, he also reminded folks that the full album will be out later this year, and he hopes they're looking forward to it.

Which response do you think endears more fans? Which response makes a stronger bond between the musician and the fans? Which response is likely to make more people feel good about paying for stuff from an artist? Now, Vince Neil isn't as well known as Guns 'N Roses -- so it's not a direct comparison. But, it does offer a decent way to look at how different musicians handle similar situations.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Vectorial Elevation is a telerobotic art installation in Vancouver, Canada that enables you to aim 20 searchlights around the English Bay via the Web. Four cameras around the city then photograph your design and the system creates a Web page for it. I'm into the ability to change the environment remotely at this scale, but having to wait in line to have a go reminds me of the first Web telerobot, Ken Goldberg's Mercury Project from 1994. (Ken didn't like the idea of Web users having to queue up either, which is why he went on to develop methods for collaborative telerobotics.) Rafael Lozano-Hemmer created Vectorial Elevation in 1999 for Mexico City's Zócalo Square. The installation will be online in Vancouver through February 28. From the project's concept page:

This website includes a virtual model of Vancouver where you are able to design "light sculptures" with 20 robotic searchlights located along English Bay. Once you are happy with your design you submit it together with your name, location and dedication or comments. Every night from dusk to dawn new designs are quietly rendered sequentially as they are added to a queue. The project automatically creates a personal webpage for each participant, documenting his or her contribution with views from 4 project webcams. With a 15 Km visibility radius, the installation intends to blend the virtual space of the Internet with one of the most emblematic public spaces in Vancouver.

Vectorial Elevation

daedae writes "It seems Facebook has been granted a patent for the news feed, as a method of monitoring activities, storing them in a database, and displaying an appropriate set of activities to an appropriate set of users. 'That sounds pretty broad, and the social-networking world was all atwitter at the possible ramifications. Writing for ReadWriteWeb, Marshall Kirkpatrick proclaimed, "This could be very big. ... MySpace, Flickr, Yahoo, Twitter (?), the sharing part of Google Reader, and even Google Buzz — do all of these sites have technology at the center of their social experiences that falls under this new patent of Facebook's?" The patent may not be that broad. Nick O'Neill at the All Facebook blog wrote that the patent doesn't appear to cover status updates as used by Twitter. "It appears that this patent surrounds implicit actions. This means status updates, which is what Twitter is based on, are not part of this patent. ... Instead, this is about stories about the actions of a user's friends. While still significant, the implications for competing social networks may be less substantial," O'Neill wrote.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This gentleman is Tony Alexander Pete, 43, aka "Happy." Police in Ogden, Utah are seeking Happy who is a suspect in a burglary that took place Wednesday evening. Happy, a career criminal, is easily identified due to his unique facial tattoos. From the Salt Lake Tribune:

The victim told police that he was asleep about 7:30 p.m. when he was awakened to find the pair standing over him. At first, the men yelled that they were cops, then threw the blanket over him.

"The guy said he could still see from under the blanket though, and he described one of them as having 'clown eyes.' "[The victim] said he knew him as 'Happy,' because he had been staying there with him until recently," Sangberg said.

"Ogden cops have out clown posse - literally"

At Institute for the Future, we've started a project looking at the future of persuasion and how technology affects behavior. The researchers are blogging on the subject here, mostly as a way for us to share examples, initial thoughts, and essays-in-progress with each other (and anyone else interested in the subject). Today, my friend Mathias Crawford wrote a very thoughtful and provocative post about persuasive game designed to, say, persuade you to eat less, exercise more, or increase your productivity. In his essay, Mathias suggests that the real potential for persuasive games isn't just to change behavior but also to help us understand why we behave a certain way. From the essay, titled "Ends vs. Means and Persuasive Games" on IFTF's Persuasion blog:

As (Carnegie Mellon professor Jesse) Schell points out (in a videotaped speech making the rounds this week), persuasive technologies like the Ford Fusion dashboard, are already being designed with game-like feedback in mind. To him these technologies fall short, however, because they are being engineered by people who are not game designers. If game designers would start to design reward systems that aimed to improve behaviors, we'd have feedback mechanisms that are much more enjoyable, and as a corollary that are much more effective.

Though I agree with his conclusion - that there is a clear need for people with game design expertise to design things that can help people improve behaviors - by focusing on creating technologies that aim to achieving measurable ends, Schell misses a much more important use of persuasive technologies: namely, technology that aims to influence means.

"Ends vs. Means and Persuasive Games"

What do you do once you are already a skilled radio designer and restorer? Well, if you are Greg Charvot, you decide to build a shortwave radio using a single type of transistor as an active element. Normally, one would use number of different transistors, each designed to handle different amounts of power and amplifying bandwidth. Limiting yourself to a single type may seem like a mental exercise today (pun intended), but was apparently much more common back when transistors weren't easy to come by, so Greg isn't completely off his rocker. Also, by only using one kind of part, it should make repairs much easier.

Designing a radio like this is a little bit complicated, but not nearly as much as it might sound. The trick is to divide the radio function into manageable pieces, which can then be designed and tested individually. You will notice that Greg's radio (pictured above) is made up of a bunch of small prototyping boards. Each board contains a single circuit with a specific function, and physically separating them makes it much easier to test the parts, as well as swap out the ones that might be malfunctioning. It's also a neat design aesthetic, because it very closely resembles the way you would draw an electrical schematic to represent the circuit.

If you are interested in building a radio, I would strongly recommend giving it a go. Start with a kit, though, and pick one that explains the design of each stage so that you can learn how it works. It will definitely be an interesting experience, and who knows, it could be the start of a new passion! If you have a favorite kit or other guide to recommend, chime in on the comments.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Electronics | Digg this!

There was some news a few days back about how people who use Pandora end up buying more music, while people who use Spotify do not. Of course, if you understand these two services, this should be completely obvious. After all, Pandora is like radio -- with a bit of randomness, and no real way to just play what you want. Spotify, on the other hand, is designed to replicate your music collection -- a cloud-based iTunes. Unfortunately, those who focus too narrowly on the idea that music sales is the music business may find this news as further support for moving away from services like Spotify. On top of that, I've heard from people who were at the conference where this "research" was announced, and it turns out that the guy presenting it never mentioned Spotify at all. It's just that the press is assuming he meant Spotify.

However, either way, just looking narrowly at music sales is a mistake. As we've discussed, selling music is not a very good business any more, but that doesn't mean that there aren't good music business models -- it's just that selling music probably isn't one of them.

With that in mind, it's worth taking a look at a recent report put out by Will Page, an economist for PRS in the UK -- and the guy who put out that report last year showing that the music industry was actually growing, not shrinking, when you looked at all the component parts. In his latest report, Page takes on the question of "average revenue per user" (ARPU) when it comes to the music consumer out there -- with a specific look at Spotify (and, unlike the NPD report that's getting all this press, Page actually has real info about Spotify).

Around here, we're used to hearing about ARPU in the context of telcos. It's a stat that telco execs and Wall Street money folks obsess over. Five years back, we warned why the telcos obsessive focus on ARPU was dangerous, and could lead to bad long-term strategic decisions. Page's report effectively suggests the same thing is true in the case of the music business. With the move to various music services, such as Spotify and Pandora, there is a sudden push to look at "ARPU" of music consumers as well -- and if the average music buyer in the UK spends £63 on music, and Spotify can get them to sign up for a £120 plan, that seems like a pretty good thing. Right?

But, as Page notes, the real story is a hell of a lot more complicated than that. What if Spotify is picking off just the "top users" who were actually spending £150 per year? Or, what if it's getting people who didn't buy music at all to pay for subscriptions? Then, any direct revenue is incremental, and the pricing could really matter -- since lower prices could bring in a lot more total revenue by bringing new "buyers" into the market. Furthermore, just focusing on the ARPU from direct payments for music (sales or subscriptions) misses a big part of the story. Live shows are a large and growing part of the market, but don't make it into such calculations. Merchandise and other direct-to-fan offerings also probably aren't included in many of those calculations. And, in fact, we've heard that Spotify is looking to enable those other business models as well -- and isn't just focused on the obsolete metric of "music sales."

As such, services like Pandora and Spotify shouldn't necessarily be judged on how much they contribute to plain old music sales, or even direct ARPU -- but how much they drive people to spend money within the music ecosystem -- and then figure out where that money goes, and whether or not it's allocated in a way that benefits or harms the various players in the space. If Spotify helps make every other aspect of the music industry more valuable, but depresses the market for direct music sales, that shouldn't be seen as a bad thing at all.

Once again, it reminds us of the necessity to not get too narrowly focused on a subsegment of the market when trying to figure out what's happening -- but to explore the larger ecosystem of how much money is being generated around music -- and then we can look at where it goes and what it funds. That is, we shouldn't be worried about how much people spend on horse carriages, but on transportation. So remember that whenever you hear numbers being thrown around about how much money is being made or "lost" in various industries. If you don't look at the overall ecosystem, you often miss what's happening.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Several sources are reporting on a new metric that computer scientists are going after with respect to recommender systems — recommendation diversity. "In a paper that will be released by PNAS, a group of scientists are pushing the limits of recommendation systems, creating new algorithms that will make more tangential recommendations to users, which can help expand their interests, which will increase the longevity and utility of the recommendation system itself. Accuracy has long been the most prized measurement in recommending content, like movies, links, or music. However, computer scientists note that this type of system can narrow the field of interest for each user the more it is used. Improved accuracy can result in a strong filtering based on a user's interests, until the system can only recommend a small subset of all the content it has to offer."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

shewfig writes "The California legislature, which previously tried to ban incandescent light bulbs, just added to the list of banned things... swear words! Fortunately, the measure only for the first week of March, and compliance is voluntary — although, apparently, there will be a 'swear jar' in the Assembly and the Governor's mansion. No word yet on whether the Governator intends to comply."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Due for downloadable release next week (unfortunately, in Japan only), Rittai Kakushi e Attakoreda (which, via Tiny Cartridge, roughly translates to Hidden 3D Image: There It Is!) probably comes as close as anything we've seen so far to answering that long-burning question, "What're the cameras on the DSi really for?" Augmented reality games haven't quite flourished, "print club" distractions don't hold much sway in the West -- but achieving good Johnny Lee-style 3D by motion tracking via the DSi's front-mounted camera is something we can all get on board for, even if it's just for the simple paper-cut hidden object minigame Attakoreda offers. Rittai Kakushi e Attakoreda is out next Wednesday, March 3rd -- I'll update then with a report on just how well it works.

DJ Carlito, aka my brother Carl, who has become the go-to deejay for Indian weddings in Virginia (I am absolutely not kidding), shares the links and images in this post and explains:

Holi, the yearly festival celebrating the return of color to the world, will start on Sunday Feb 28, 2010 and continue for 2 days until Monday March 1st. Holi is celebrated on the Phalgun Purnima (or Pooranmashi, Full Moon) according to the Hindu Calendar. Holi is a festival of radiance (teja) in the universe. The celebrations officially usher in spring, the celebrated season of love. There are several stories of the origin of Holi -- and several various deities are involved in this holiday.

More about the celebration here. Video above: Rang Barse. Another goodie: Holi Aai Re," from the Bollywood classic Mashaal. Another gem from one of the biggest Bollywood blockbusters ever: Holi ke Din. And here's another Holi-themed video you may dig.

More about DJ Carlito (aka Xeni's kid brother, available for all your Indian wedding DJ needs): blog, Myspace. Listen to his weekly radio show "If Music Could Talk" Sundays 7-9pm EST online or on-air at WRIR in Virginia, and dig his show archive here online.

If you're in NYC on March 7, you can get your Holi on at a big parade on that date. Scanned flyer below. Hopefully the snow will have melted by then! Watch the videos in this post, and you'll see why the parade organizers have to warn people not to bring water guns or rainbow powder (it's right there on the flyer!)

DJ Carlito adds,

It's also worth mentioning that the "colors" used to be made from Dhak and Palash flowers but in more recent times have been made from such synthetic materials as metal alloys mixed with asbestos --- theres a movement to go "organic" again with the colors -- which are thrown, smeared, squirted on everyone you meet... but then by accident often inhaled, ingested, swallowed in the process. It's also the only holiday where use of ganga is pretty much widespread in the form of "bhang" -- which is ganga mixed with herbs and spices in a milky beverage form. The use of bhang is regulated by the government, and only authorized "dealers" can sell it. The drink is traditionally said to come from Shiva. I'm not sure how widespread the use is but friends tell me that its very common in the celebration.

The Smithsonian National Zoo just got a Pacific Giant Octopus. (Weeeelll, sort of. It's a baby, and currently only about three pounds. But it'll be giant someday, promise.) The little critter doesn't have a name yet, but he (they think it's probably a he, maybe) does have a web cam. The camera is set up to capture the octopus at feeding times—11 and 3 Eastern, daily. Which is, coincidentally, right about the time I could use a good cephalopod fix in my day.

Even better, this announcement led me to discover that the National Zoo has a ton of different animal web cams. Seriously, they're set up like a bunch of teenage emo girls over there. Lions, naked mole rats (!!), single-celled organisms, sloth bears (?!): You can watch 'em all live.

It sounded like a dream: a health club for nerds, only instead of treadmills and weight sets, members paid $125/month to work with CNC routers, laser cutters, and other high-end gadgets. The first of three TechShops opened in Menlo Park, California in 2006 but two more, one in Beaverton OR and the other in Durham, NC followed.

Currently, only the Cali shop remains open.

Both the TechShop Portland and TechShop Durham have closed their doors and are seeking smaller spaces. In the former case, it appears the shop was evicted after missing two months' rent.

In a Toolmonger.com forum thread, TechShop Durham founder Scott Saxon blamed the economy:

We have just under 25,000 sf here and secured our lease, as did Portland, during financially good times. The economy tanked right after we both started. Lack of funding is not the reason for anything. The reason we are moving is the landlord is unwilling to adjust to the current times. The rent here is simply too much.

We are moving to a much cheaper facility and with our present membership, about the same as Portland, we will succeed in 2010. I believe Portland will do the same. This is not political speak. This is just the way it is as told by the numbers.

Could it also be that the shops are experiencing member drain from the burgeoning hackerspace movement?

What do you think, readers? Is the day of the giant franchised TechShop over, to replaced by smaller, leaner, nonprofit hackerspaces? Will Portland and RDU bounce back along with the economy? Leave your thoughts in comments.

More:

• TechShop - A place for Makers to work on their projects

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Makers | Digg this!

Kevin Bankston at the EFF blogs,

Yesterday evening, the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to renew three expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, after the Senate abandoned the PATRIOT reform effort and approved the extension by a voice vote on Wednesday night.

Disappointingly, the government's dangerously broad authority to conduct roving wiretaps of unspecified or "John Doe" targets, to secretly wiretap of persons without any connection to terrorists or spies under the so-called "lone wolf" provision, and to secretly access a wide range of private business records without warrants under PATRIOT Section 215 were all renewed without any new checks and balances to prevent abuse.

EFF: Epic Fail in Congress: USA PATRIOT Act Renewed Without Any New Civil Liberties Protections

[Image: Patriot Act, a Creative Commons-licensed illustration by Wiretap Studios, large version here.]

Avant-garde artist Reid Peppard has a line of bold fashion accessories for men and women. Actually, bold is putting it mildly. The fashion accessories are pieces of fashioned taxidermy crafted from road kill and pest controlled vermin. The mouse bow tie is a particularly powerful statement, I'd say.

Photographer Glen E. Friedman remembers Bob "The Bullet" Biniak, a hero in the early days of skate culture who was a member of the original "Z-Boys" team. Biniak suffered a massive cardiac arrest on Sunday, and passed away Thursday at 12:51pm EST in Florida. From Glen's blog post:

Back in DogTown's heyday Biniak was known as one of the toughest, hardest skating dudes out there. Few could match his skills skating the infamous pipes out in Arizona or on the vertical flat wall of Mt. Baldy. In pool skating he was a clear innovator as witnessed by my lens, and Craig Stecyk's even earlier when he was interviewed in SkateBoarder magazine's first ever "Pool Riding Symposium." Bob early on received the coveted "Who's Hot" bio, and later, only for the most respected riders, a full length interview in SkateBoarder. He was also voted as one of the top ten Skateboarders of the year in SkateBoarder magazine's first annual poll held in 1977.

Bob "The Bullet" Biniak, original Z-Boy, Bad Ass Mother Fucker, R.I.P. (Idealist Propaganda)

Related: DogTown: The Legend of the Z-Boys, a book documenting Biniak and fellow skate pioneers, co-created by Friedman and C.R. Stecyk III.

Biniak's passing follows the recent loss of fellow early Dogtown greats Baby Paul and Dennis "Polar Bear" Agnew. There will be a memorial skate for Biniak at the Venice Skate Park (named for Agnew) this Sunday, according to Yo Venice.

(The following essay was written by my pal, writer Bill Barol. Look for more from him on Boing Boing in the future! -- Mark)

Even if the Hipstamatic were just another iPhone app it'd be worth your two bucks. What's not to like? The Hipstamatic 110 (the next-gen 150 is in review at the App Store) is a great little photo app that attempts to replicate the experience of shooting with a cut-rate '80s snapshot camera, right down to the leatherette "skin" and the big clunky shutter button. But the app isn't aping just any cheap camera; it's the reincarnation of the mysterious, beloved Hipstamatic 100, and right there is where the story takes a turn.

The original Hipstamatic was the invention of two Wisconsin brothers, Bruce and Winston Dorbowski. In the winter of 1982 they came up with what their big brother Richard later called "a million dollar idea for bringing photographic art to the masses cheaply" -- a camera inspired by the popular Kodak Instamatic (and probably by the Russian Lomo) but made entirely of plastic, right down to the lens. The brothers set up a fabricating shop in a tiny cabin on the banks of the Wisconsin River and got to work. Over the next 18 months they produced just 157 cameras, at $8.25 retail apiece. In the summer of 1984 they were on their way home from signing the lease on a new production facility when they were killed by a drunk driver. Nine years later the family lost most of the brothers' photos and work archives in a fire, and the Hipstamatic slipped into the half-light of photo history.

The story would have ended there, except for Richard Dorbowski.

In the summer of 2007 he decided to set up a web site memorializing his younger brothers. The site languished for two years, until two Web developers from Minnesota contacted Dorbowski about reviving the Hipstamatic for the iPhone. Their studio, Synthetic Infatuation, released Hipstamatic 110 just before Christmas last year. It's now in the Top 5 of iPhone photo apps. And it's an absolute blast. The clever interface is wholly successful at mimicking the experience of shooting with a Hipstamatic 100, even allowing a user to change "lenses" as he could with the original, or swap out "films" (which are really just cleverly-repackaged sets of digital effects). Best of all, the developers have so far resisted some users' requests that Hipstamatic have the capability to reprocess images shot in the iPhone camera app, keeping true to the "Grab it in real time and take your chances" aesthetic of the original camera. This hasn't prevented a community of iPhone shooters from getting some inventive and beautiful results. Their photographs are odd, skewed, sometimes murky, and have a great found-image quality. Which seems like exactly what the brothers would have wanted. According to Richard Dorbowski, writing on his blog in a post that manages to capture, snapshot-like, a complicated picture of love, grief, and passing time:

"My brother Bruce once said, 'It doesn't matter if the photos aren't perfect -- as long as people are capturing memories I will be happy.' At the time I didn't agree, but now in my fifties I finally understand what he was talking about."

Hipstamatic web site | Hisptamatic iPhone app | Hipstamatic Flickr Pool

KentuckyFC writes writes to share a new online test that is being touted as the "financial Turing test." The web-based exercise asks users to distinguish between real and randomly generated financial data. "Various economists argue that the efficiency of a market ought to be clearly evident in the returns it produces. They say that the more efficient it is, the more random its returns will be and a perfect market should be completely random. That would appear to give the lie to the widespread belief that humans are unable to tell the difference between financial market returns and, say, a sequence of coin tosses. However, there is good evidence that financial markets are not random (although they do not appear to be predictable either). Now a group of scientists have developed a financial Turing test to find out whether humans can distinguish real financial data from the same data randomly rearranged. Anybody can take the test and the results indicate that humans are actually rather good at this kind of pattern recognition."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last year, we wrote about the appeal in a case involving a US postage stamp which was based on a photograph of the US's Korean War Memorial in Washington DC. You can see the sculpture and the stamp below: There were a variety of issues involved in the case, including who actually owned the copyright, but in the end, the interesting question is whether or not this was fair use. The lower court had ruled that this was clearly quite transformative, different in nature, and did not harm the commercial value of the original work (which even the sculptor admitted). Thus it was fair use. To us, and many other experts in fair use, it seemed hard to question that logic, but when it comes to copyright, you can always be surprised by how judges interpret the law.

The Federal Circuit has ruled on the appeal and stunningly decided that this isn't fair use, claiming that it's not, in fact, transformative. I'm somewhat amazed -- as is law professor Peter Friedman in the post linked here. The two works are quite clearly extremely different, but the court felt that since they both were designed to honor soldiers killed in the Korean War, it couldn't be seen as transformative. The fact that the photographer took hundreds of images before settling on this one apparently didn't matter. On top of that, the fact that the snow totally changes the character of the image was dismissed by the court as being just "nature's decision." Update: That "nature's decision" line was really bugging me, and Friedman has updated his post to show it's bugging him too, so I wanted to write a bit more. If "nature's decision" makes something non-copyrightable, then it can be argued that all nature photography is not covered by copyright -- which goes against pretty much every precedent out there. It's hard to see how CAFC can make this argument.

While there were other discussions over who actually owned the copyright (the government claimed it should jointly hold it, since it had a lot of input in the memorial) and whether or not the photograph should not be subject to the copyright on the sculptures because architectural works can't have their copyrights cover photographs of buildings (both courts noted that a sculpture is not an architectural work), there's a much bigger issue here: why the hell did the government ever agree to build a public memorial and not get all of the rights associated with the memorial? This omission seems like a stunning failure of the government in creating this memorial in the first place. We've seen plenty of similar cases, involving copyright lawsuits over public displays of artwork -- and they all seem equally ridiculous from a common sense viewpoint. If you're commissioning a public piece of artwork, shouldn't you also make sure you get all the rights associated with it? Leaving them with the artist, and then displaying the artwork in public creates a massive sense of confusion for pretty much everyone. Your average man on the street assumes it's legal to take photographs of public pieces of artwork and to then do what they want with them. It's hard to think of any public policy rationale that would explain why the opposite is true -- and yet, that appears where things stand.

Rulings like this should be quite scary for both amateur and professional photographers. If you photograph things that are covered by copyright, you may be infringing. It's yet another scenario of "accidental infringement" that clearly was never intended to be covered by copyright law.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

62 Projects to Make with a Dead Computer by Randy Sarafan
Book site: deadcomputerbook.com
Buy on Amazon

We all have old, broken, or otherwise junk electronics stashed away in our closets. Randy Sarafan's 62 Projects to Make with a Dead Computer is just what it sounds like and much more, inspiring makers to repurpose mice, scanners, iPods, and yes, computers, to make high-tech housewares, newly-functioning gadgets, and accessories. The projects run the gamut of techniques, and with sections like fashion, pets, and music, there's something for everyone. Not only is the book full of DIY ideas, it also has excellent primers on electronics parts and the safety concerns regarding taking apart and repurposing tech-junk. Once you make your own upcycled projects, you can enter them in Instructables' Dead Computer Contest, where the deadline is March 7th.

Book Giveaway Time!

We're giving away 3 copies of 62 Projects to Make with a Dead Computer. Just leave a comment on this post, letting us know what kind of dead technology you have, just waiting to be transformed. We'll grab the winners' emails from your commenter account, so don't put your email address in the comment box! All comments will be closed by Noon PST on Monday, March 1st. The lucky winners will be announced next week on the MAKE Twitter feed. Good luck!

Sample Project: IR Camera

Over the years, I have collected a number of digital cameras that are not quite broken, but are definitely no longer quite working as they should. And as it turns out, a somewhat-broken camera is the perfect device for dabbling your feet in camera hacking. You already don’t expect it to work exactly as it should, so if you make a mistake, there isn’t the greatest loss. On the other hand, when you succeed in modifying it, the results are often phenomenal and result in experimental pictures that often far exceed all expectations.

Download the project PDF to make your own IR Camera!

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Reviews | Digg this!

FontFont is selling web licenses for their fonts in WOFF and EOT formats. Buy them and use in your Typekit account for free.

An anonymous reader writes to share recent statements by Chinese scientists that indicate troubled waters ahead if Google were to pull out of China. "More than three-quarters of scientists in China use the search engine Google as a primary research tool and say their work would be significantly hampered if they were to lose it, a survey showed on Wednesday. In the survey, 84 percent said losing Google would 'somewhat or significantly' hamper their research and 78 percent said international collaborations would be affected. 'Research without Google would be like life without electricity,' one Chinese scientist said in the survey, which asked more than 700 scientists for their views."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes to share recent statements by Chinese scientists that indicate troubled waters ahead if Google were to pull out of China. "More than three-quarters of scientists in China use the search engine Google as a primary research tool and say their work would be significantly hampered if they were to lose it, a survey showed on Wednesday. In the survey, 84 percent said losing Google would 'somewhat or significantly' hamper their research and 78 percent said international collaborations would be affected. 'Research without Google would be like life without electricity,' one Chinese scientist said in the survey, which asked more than 700 scientists for their views"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Handy tool for testing various equations in an :nth-child CSS3 selector (which rocks).

Handy clipboard-able stubs for lists, paragraphs, forms, etc.

There are some people out there who appear to believe that anything they don't like is defamation -- or anything that makes them look bad, even if it's true. Fortunately, that's not the way defamation law works. But it doesn't stop some from trying to use the law that way anyway. Kevin Carson writes in to let us know of a lecturer/author named Karin Calvo-Goller, who recently wrote a book on The Trial Proceedings of the International Criminal Court. Another law professor, Thomas Weigand, reviewed the book for Global Law Books and didn't feel it lived up to its potential. The review is a pretty typical book review. Hardly scathing.

But Calvo-Goller was apparently upset by it, and contacted the editor of the journal (another law professor) asking for the review to be suppressed on the grounds that the review might "have a negative impact on her 'professional reputation and academic promotion,'" and that there were factual errors in the review that were libelous. The editor refused to take down the review, noting that he did not find the statements libelous (including detailed notes on why the statements were not, in fact, wrong), but did so in an extremely polite manner. He kicked it off with a very friendly opening to Calvo-Goller, agreeing how painful it is to get a negative review of one's book (and relating his own experiences dealing with negative reviews) and warning her directly that:

I think, however, that your reputation would suffer even more if you emerged as someone who tried to suppress a critical book review of the kind published by Globallawbooks.org. That is my advice to you as a friend.

He also suggested, politely again, that if she disagreed with some aspects of the review, he would allow her to write up a response, which he would post alongside the review -- something that almost no other book review sites would offer.

Calvo-Goller apparently chose not to heed this advice or accept the offer, and after a terse note demanding the review be taken down again, she sued the editor for criminal defamation in France, where the editor is now scheduled to stand trial later this year.

The editor, Joseph Weiler, has written up the whole saga (pdf), including the letters between the two. He concludes by pointing out how this lawsuit seems to go against all principles of academic discourse:

I believe that in the circumstances of this affair, her action of instigating a criminal libel case against me for refusing to remove the book review is misguided and inconsistent with the most fundamental practices of all academic institutions with which I am familiar and with traditional academic discourse.

It really is difficult to see how someone could think that a slightly negative review could do more harm to one's professional reputation than filing a criminal defamation lawsuit against the editor who published that review.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Sigma US has revamped its website with new interactive features. It now includes a Lens Finder section that is aimed at guiding users to select the right lens according to their camera system, price and skill level. Other features include a photo share gallery, blog and social media tools.

Great interview @ Lifehacker with Lee (who writes for MAKE each month!)... Kevin writes -

With our DIY Week coming to a close, we thought we'd ask Lee David Zlotoff, creator of MacGyver and inspiration to clever makers and hackers everywhere, to share some of his thoughts on DIY, fix-all tools, widespread MacGyver-love, and MacGruber. Zlotoff grew up in Brooklyn and graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School, where he thrived in shop and pre-engineering classes. After landing in Hollywood, he picked up work as a writer on Hill Street Blues, a producer on Remington Steele, and, through a twist of fate and over-selling, creator and producer of MacGyver, the 1985-1992 action series whose secret agent refused to use a gun, preferred non-violent solutions, getting himself out of tricky situations using whatever he had on hand. Sure, some of the stuff at hand seemed a little too coincidental, but the solutions were vetted by scientists and engineers, even if not every step was shown to prevent eager fans from trying at home.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Makers | Digg this!

ptorrone writes "Hardware hacker 'Ladyada' has released an open source, retro, arcade-style, table-tennis-for-two clock called the MONOCHRON. According to MONCHRON project page the desire was 'to make a clock that was ultra-hackable, from adding a separate battery-backed RTC to designing the enclosure so you could program the clock once its assembled.' It includes an ATmega328 processor (with'Arduino' stk500 bootloader for easy hacking. It's completely open source hardware: all firmware, layout, and CAD files are yours to mess with."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I was only peripherally interested in high-voltage electronics when I was in school, but if someone had told me I could have an awesome letterhead like this this one, it would have totally changed my career. It's said to have been used by Nikola Tesla, the brilliant and eccentric inventor that brought us everything from AC power distribution to Tesla coils. [via boingboing]

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!

It would be neat if the life vests were still functional; then I'd actually consider taking this bag with me on an airplane ride.

Link (via NotCot)

Visit Jim Woodring's site for a close up look at his Moleskine sketchbook.

THE SALT-BLARSTED MOLESKINE

This fellow seems to know what he's doing. (Via Arbroath)

upto0013 notes the latest spot of trouble for Google in Europe: the EU says that Google's Street View images violate privacy laws. The EU's privacy watchdog asked Google to notify cities and towns before photographing (Google says it does this already) and to delete original photos after 6 months (Google keeps them for a year and says it has reason to do so). "[The privacy official] said that the company should revise its 'disproportionate' policy of keeping the original unblurred images for up to a year, saying improvements in Google's blurring technology and better public awareness would lead to fewer complaints — and a shorter delay for people to react to the photos they see on the site. Complaints about the images put online would usually be checked against the original photos."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

These kinda-cute pumps by vegan shoemaker Olsenhaus are made from polyester microfiber extracted from old analog TVs.

(via Ecouterre)</em