It looks like the IFPI has won a lawsuit against a guy in Denmark, who was accused of sharing over 13,000 songs. From the brief description on TorrentFreak, it sounds like there was plenty of evidence pinning this directly to the guy (though, it's not clear if there's evidence that he actually shared the files, or simply made them available). Either way, what's more interesting is that the court has fined him approximately $24,400, or a bit less than $2 per song. As the article notes, the court estimated actual losses from the file sharing, and then used a "doubling up" method. So it sounds like the court said each file cost a little less than a dollar and the fine was double that. While the whole issue of suing people for file sharing still seems a bit absurd, you have to admit that approximately $2/song seems a lot more reasonable than the $750 to $150,000 per song that the RIAA pushes for in the US (and in the Jammie Thomas case it actually got $9250). Even so, the guy in Denmark is thinking about appealing the "doubling up" aspect, believing that even that fine is too high, as there's no evidence that his file sharing resulted in any reduction in sales for the recording industry.

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Here's a tutorial for creating your own convincing stitched wound makeup with neat results. But instead of using the article's recommended glue and acetone(!), it might be wise to try spirit gum + spirit gum remover for a more skin-friendly approach. - a VERY easy to do VERY convincing scar!

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Lally Singh recommends a ZDNet piece predicting the imminent demise of RAID 5, noting that increasing storage and non-decreasing probability of disk failure will collide in a year or so. This reader adds, "Apparently, RAID 6 isn't far behind. I'll keep the ZFS plug short. Go ZFS. There, that was it." "Disk drive capacities double every 18-24 months. We have 1 TB drives now, and in 2009 we'll have 2 TB drives. With a 7-drive RAID 5 disk failure, you'll have 6 remaining 2 TB drives. As the RAID controller is busily reading through those 6 disks to reconstruct the data from the failed drive, it is almost certain it will see an [unrecoverable read error]. So the read fails ... The message 'we can't read this RAID volume' travels up the chain of command until an error message is presented on the screen. 12 TB of your carefully protected — you thought! — data is gone. Oh, you didn't back it up to tape? Bummer!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When I wrote my first post about the financial crisis, I noted that venture capitalists and startups were probably more protected than other areas of the economy, noting specifically that I didn't believe limited partners (also known as "investors" in VC funds) would fail to meet their capital calls. The way venture capital works is that the general partners (the folks who run the fund) go out and raise money from limited partners (LPs or investors), who agree to invest a certain amount. However, they don't just hand over the money. The VCs let the LPs hang onto their money until they need it and make a "capital call." For many of the bigger VC firms, the LPs who make up a large chunk of their funds come from huge institutional investors, such as pension funds and university endowments. I thought it was unlikely that they would fail to make their capital calls, because (a) they're huge and (b) they tend to only set aside a rather small percentage (5% is what I remember being told is standard) to put into high risk investments like venture capital. So, even if they were having trouble elsewhere, it seemed unlikely that they would bail out on the money they committed to VCs.

That might not be true, however. Immediately after the post, I heard from a few VCs who indicated it might be much tougher to get LPs to meet their capital calls than I expected. First, especially with smaller VC firms, the LPs might not be huge institutional investors who can shrug off losses elsewhere. Second, my original statement was before two straight weeks of a tumbling stock market (though it's bounced around since), meaning that the hurt put on the rest of the LPs portfolio may have been much bigger than originally estimated. Finally, while these big institutions may focus on only putting about 5% into high risk offerings like venture capital, they may have just realized that a much larger percentage of their money was already in high risk investments -- it's just that they didn't realize it. Thanks to badly rated collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), many people who thought they had put money in super safe AAA rated investment vehicles, quickly realized that they had actually invested in high risk vehicles. That might make them think twice about throwing any more money after high risk ventures.

And, indeed, that appears to be happening. Firms that are willing to "buy" the obligations to fund VCs are finding strong demand as various LPs look to get out of their obligations before the capital calls come. Unfortunately, there's a pretty small market of folks willing to take on these obligations, so there's a chance that the "fund" that a VC has officially raised, may turn out to be much smaller than they really believe. If an LP is unable to meet a capital call (or simply refuses to do so), the VC firm is basically stuck holding the bag. It effectively means that the size of the fund that they raised is actually smaller than announced. While that can mean fewer investments (especially if the GPs are nervous about their LPs), it can be a lot more disconcerting for startups on the funding conveyor belt. Usually startups go through multiple rounds of funding, which the VC firm bakes into its calculations when doing the initial funding. That initial firm may not lead later rounds (in fact that's rare), but it usually will participate, and now that may be more difficult. That could cause some VCs to push their portfolio companies to sell off or close up shop much faster than they normally would.

My guess is that this is still a temporary phenomenon. After the dot com bubble burst, there was lots of talk about how VCs would have trouble raising new funds, and that didn't happen. The big institutional investors know they need to allocate some portion of their holdings to high-risk/high-return vehicles, and venture capital is always a good place for that bet. Given Wall Street's implosion (and the resulting impact on east coast private equity and hedge funds as well), it's likely that venture capital will still appear as a good long term bet for high risk capital -- perhaps even better than in the past few years when there were suddenly many more options. In the short term, it may be a bit painful for startups (and VCs worried about not actually having the money they thought they had), but it still doesn't seem likely to have a huge impact on Silicon Valley. As for all the headlines you're seeing about layoffs at startups these days, don't read too much into them. A lot of companies are using the market as an excuse to effectively dump underperforming employees in a big "layoff." This way they get rid of the bad employees, and there's no negative connotation associated with the layoff like there might be in normal times.

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TechDirt notes the publication of the New Jersey voting machine study, the attempted suppression of which we have been discussing for a while now. The paper that the Princeton and Lehigh University researchers are releasing, as permitted by the Court, is "the same as the Court's redacted version, but with a few introductory paragraphs about the court case, Gusciora v. Corzine." What's new is the release of a 90-minute evidentiary video — the researchers have asked the court for permission to release a shorter version that hits the high points, as the high-res video is about 1 GB in size. See TechDirt's article for the report's executive summary listing eight ways the AVC Advantage 9.00 voting machine can be subverted.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TechDirt notes the publication of the New Jersey voting machine study, the attempted suppression of which we have been discussing for a while now. The paper that the Princeton and Lehigh University researchers are releasing, as permitted by the court, is "the same as the Court's redacted version, but with a few introductory paragraphs about the court case, Gusciora v. Corzine." What's new is the release of a 90-minute evidentiary video — the researchers have asked the court for permission to release a shorter version that hits the high points, as the high-res video is about 1 GB in size. See TechDirt's article for the report's executive summary listing eight ways the AVC Advantage 9.00 voting machine can be subverted.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's a gorgeous pair of steampunk goggles (just in time for Halloween), done in titanium, brass, and leather. Their makjer, Anticz, writes:

The main housing and attach points for the nose and temple pieces are milled from a solid billet of Titanium alloy. I chose Titanium for several reasons. First, it's much lighter in weight than brass. This was important to me because, I wanted them to be comfortable to wear. With the leather and optical components in these, I thought they would feel like boat anchors on my face if I constructed them from brass. The surface of the Titanium is coated with a high tech super ceramic material known as Titanium Nitride. This is what gives them the gold color similar to brass. TiN (Titanium Nitride) is extremely hard, highly wear resistant and very stable so these goggles should last for several hundred years.

Titanium Goggles

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Kevin's kid-sized Mega Man costume in-progress is looking impressive - in particular, the megabuster/gun light effects. -

The Mega Buster was another important part of the costume... I could have just done two gloves, but that would have been lame. Anyways, I liked Mr Wilsons idea of using tupperware for the construction, I just decided to take it to the next level. Read on for my steps and final product.

- Halloween Costumes - Mega Buster [via Neatorama]

More:

Mega Man Stitchin'

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An anonymous reader writes "Serious heart surgery usually involves stopping the organ and keeping the patient alive with a cardiopulmonary bypass machine. But this risks brain damage and requires a long recuperation. Scientists at Harvard University and Children's Hospital Boston have now developed a device that lets surgeons operate on a beating heart with a steady hand. The 'robotic' device uses 3-D ultrasound images to predict and compensate for the motion of the heart so that the surgeon can work on a faulty valve as it moves. The approach should improve recovery times and give a surgeon instant feedback on the success of the procedure, the researchers say. Here's a (slightly gory) video of the device in action."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Serious heart surgery usually involves stopping the organ and keeping the patient alive with a cardiopulmonary bypass machine. But this risks brain damage and requires a long recuperation. Scientists at Harvard University and Children's Hospital Boston have now developed a device that lets surgeons operate on a beating heart with a steady hand. The 'robotic' device uses 3-D ultrasound images to predict and compensate for the motion of the heart so that the surgeon can work on a faulty valve as it moves. The approach should improve recovery times and give a surgeon instant feedback on the success of the procedure, the researchers say. Here's a (slightly gory) video of the device in action."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over the years, one of the companies that we've talked about here that has been full of hyperbole, but almost no substance, has been music startup Lala. It's gone through many different incarnations, each coming with grandiose claims that weren't supported by any reality. The amazing thing is that every time it made an announcement, the mainstream media rained down praise on the company, as if it were the savior of the music industry. For example, when it first launched, it was a near exact clone of an already widely failed business model: having people pay a dollar to trade their used CDs. Yet, the mainstream press treated the company like it was a great new concept -- despite the fact that a bunch of dot coms during the bubble had tried and failed to do that, and the company PeerFlix was already trying (and failing) to do the same thing in the DVD space. The press was so bought into the concept of Lala, that the NY Times even included the heavily venture funded, for-profit company in a story on companies that didn't want to profit (seriously). Then the company got lots of press by claiming it would donate 20% of its profits to a charity for musicians. But what about the claim that it didn't want any profits? If that were true, what profits did it plan to give away (and why only 20%)?

Either way, not much came of the CD swapping business, and last year, the company totally changed its business model, instead offering up free streaming music, insisting that it was ready to spend $140 million on those streams (despite the fact that, as far as we know, the company had only raised $9 million). The business model was apparently to lose money on every stream, and then get people to buy un-DRM'd music downloads instead. Except that, once again, the company was exaggerating. The non-DRM turned out to be a different kind of DRM, and as for that non-existent $140 million the company was ready to spend? Well, apparently it never showed up because the company shut down the service just a month later.

So, forgive us for being a bit skeptical whenever the company roles out a new announcement, and the press rushes to write about it. But, here we are, with Lala's latest business model being announced. At least, this time, much of the press coverage acknowledges Lala's ever-changing business and expresses some amount of skepticism.

On the whole, though, it's new idea sounds better than previous versions, at a first glance. The idea is to set up something of an online iTunes, with a few interesting features. For example, you can listen to any song in its catalog once for free. After that, you can "buy" it for only 10 cents. The problem is that you're only buying access to a stream of the song, rather than actually buying the song. So, the song itself goes in your online music player, and can then be accessed and played from any web browser. If you then want to buy an MP3 version, it costs another $0.79. On top of all that, apparently, you can download an app that will automatically add all of the music you currently have (whether legally or illegally obtained) to the online app. I tried to download the app and received an error, so I have no idea if it actually works.

There are a few notable things here. First, getting a bunch of record labels (both majors and indies) to agree to a 10 cent price for anything is a first. Second, getting the industry to agree to a system for "unlocking" songs that people already had (even ones they downloaded through unauthorized means) is also quite a feat. In the past, the RIAA has fought vehemently against such systems, such as when it sued the original MP3.com. If the system works, I could see it as a useful way of syncing the music I already have to an online player -- and if it actually works well, it's possible that it could make sense to then purchase other tracks that way. But there are a lot of ifs involved in that process, and initially, many people might just try to use it as a backup/virtual iTunes, meaning they won't buy anything new from it, which would quickly drain Lala's remaining bank balance, without bringing in much revenue. A Business Week article notes that the company only has $3 million left in the bank, which isn't very much unless it can raise another round.

One other point. That Business Week article concludes by suggesting that Lala's success may come from the fact that it's just trying to sell music, noting that it's about time the focus was just on selling the music: "An approach that's all about selling music. Not iPods, and not ads. Just music." I can understand why someone might think that makes more sense, but it's unlikely to succeed. Because of the lack of marginal cost on music, there will always be a downward pricing pressure. Therefore, focusing just on selling music is a dangerous business model. For instance, even if all music is free, Apple's going to make good money selling its scarce iPods. But if more and more musicians decide to offer free music, then Lala may need to find yet another business model to stay in business. It sounds great to focus on "just selling music" but the economics suggests that doing so is a bad business proposition.

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I love this 1956 ad on the race to install adequate electrical infrastructure to accommodate the ballooning demand for gizmos and appliances. A little bit of word-substitution and you'd have an article from the past five years bemoaning the lack of high-speed wiring to the curb.

The problem: The thirty-year electric appliance boom is running into a snag—warns the National Adequate Wiring Bureau. Most houses and apartments were built with relatively small electrical requirements in mind. Already, 50% of the people in some areas who want air conditioners can’t buy them because their wiring is inadequate, one expert estimates. The sale of freezers, ranges, water heaters and other appliances is being slowed.

The solution: New homes built under the adequate wiring code of the National Association of Home Builders provide at least 100-ampere cable into the home—and adequate inside circuits. In older buildings— the answer is rewiring.

Adequate wiring means business (Feb, 1956)

Great article @ Tech Review featuring MAKE advisory board member (and kit maker) Ladyada!

...Fried remains committed to the idea of sharing her designs--and her engineering expertise. She runs her own company, Adafruit Industries of New York City, through which she sells kits that allow people to undertake less subversive projects, such as making an iPod battery-pack charger and transforming a bike wheel into a customized LED display. All her kits are based on designs that can be modified or improved by her customers...

"I'm helping people learn electronics," Fried says, "and also ensuring that the information will always be available." And when users adapt and enhance her designs, she says, it helps make her products better.

My favorite part...

Von Hippel predicts a gradual shift in many industries. Eventually, he says, companies that make such things as high-tech devices and mountain bikes will no longer design their products; instead, the people who use the products will design their own. For example, companies that currently design machines for Boeing might still provide the materials and manufacture the machines, but engineers at Boeing will design the machines themselves, since they best understand how they'll need to use them. "I see open-source solutions increasing their hold in many more fields and being empowering for us all," Von Hippel says. As people who use the products, "we'll get more of what we want and be able to participate in design much more. Manufacturers will go to becoming foundries that produce what users design."

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I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Wired has an interview with Matt Mason, author of The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism, which discusses how businesses could make money off of piracy, rather than attacking people in a futile attempt to suppress it. And some of his ideas are gaining traction; work is underway on a TV show called Pirate TV, which he describes as 'two parts Anthony Bourdain, one part Mythbusters.' (Heroes executive producer Jesse Alexander is on board.) Also, Mason is pretty good about practicing what he preaches in that you can pirate his book on his own website."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Wired has an interview with Matt Mason, author of The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism, which discusses how businesses could make money off of piracy, rather than attacking people in a futile attempt to suppress it. And some of his ideas are gaining traction; work is underway on a TV show called Pirate TV, which he describes as 'two parts Anthony Bourdain, one part Mythbusters.' (Heroes executive producer Jesse Alexander is on board.) Also, Mason is pretty good about practicing what he preaches in that you can pirate his book on his own website."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nathaniel sez, "Sonicwall, the web content filtering vendor, now blocks XKCD as "Adult/Mature". A STICK FIGURE COMIC is now too mature for the internet. Classic."

As of this week I can no longer see XKCD at my office, due to SonicWall, a content filter service my company subscribes to. It is not blocked as "Adult/Mature Content". As this is the same service some businesses that offer public wifi use (Panera Bread in particular), this may mean XKCD has been dropped from a lot of public places.

I don't blame you, guy. I blame SonicWall. They're most anal about the smallest things. Only recently has my office gotten access again to MySpace, which was also listed as "Adult/Mature". principiadiscordia.com was listed as "Occult"; now it's still blocked, but listed as "Other". My best guess is that what did it for XKCD was the sexual positions strip...as far as I can tell, these people have little brain and less sense of humor.

SonicWall now blocks XKCD (Thanks, Nathaniel!)

Mighty God King's photoshopped classic sf/f book-covers is one of the funniest such exercises I've ever seen -- so good I've added the site to my RSS feeds. MGK Versus His Adolescent Reading Habits (via Eat our Brains)

I'm just getting back from Maker Faire Austin and about to take a nap, but I had to post this up first! - check out this speedy costume for the DIY Halloween contest in the Flickr photo pool!!


Dalek Halloween Pumpkin.

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It's Tuesday again! This week I made a Danger Shield for my Arduino. If you went to Maker Faire in Austin you might have tried it out it in the Maker SHED. I brought mine and everyone loved it. It's a great addition to your Arduino arsenal. Here is how Zach describes it:

The Danger Shield is an add-on for the Arduino micro controller board. It contains a variety of fun and useful electronic circuits that you can use to do fun and useful things. It is a fully self-contained shield. You plug it into your Arduino, and you can immediately start using it. No extra things to hook up, no external components. Just a really rad board ready to rock

The things you need:

• Danger Shield - available in the Maker SHED


• Arduino Diecimila - available in the Maker SHED


• Soldering Iron


• Rosin core solder

The things you don't need, but are great to have:

• Arms of Assistance - Make you own


• Fume extractor - Make your own

Step 1: Check out the kit

Spread out all the parts and take a look through the instructions. It's always a good idea to check out all the steps prior to starting.

Step 2: Insulate the USB plug

You need to wrap the USB plug so it doesn't short the completed Danger Shield. It's a lot bigger than most other shields and the pins on the back can contact the USB port.

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Next Meeting:
28 October 2008
7 PM - 9 PM (ET)
ALWAYS FREE!

Location:
Smith Hall of Art, Room 114
(Map of Block)
George Washington University
801 22nd St NW
Washington, DC 20037

Schedule for next meeting
Philip Kohn : Interactive video art: Harnessing 15 Seconds of Fame

It is human nature to "ham it up" on camera, especially if the recordings will be publicly displayed. Maybe evolution has created a basic need to leave a mark on the world, be it dog pee, graffiti, or art. Over the last 6 years, Philip has made 4 interactive video art installations that attempt to harness this desire.

Philip will talk very briefly about "Once Upon a Time" an interactive video story, "The Looking Glass" a wall hanging mirror that distorts space and time in a way that causes people to dance, and "Your Two Cents" a kiosk that records interviews, then manipulates them. Then he will show his latest piece "MockTV" which puts participants into 60's TV shows. During its month at Artomatic 2008, it recorded 2919 videos. His Top-10 will be shown, as well as a live demonstration.

Creative and technical aspects and some new ideas will be discussed.

A bad electric shock at age 3 gave Philip an intense fear of electrocution, but also an even more intense desire to learn everything he could about electronics. By the time he was in elementary school, Philip was building high voltage induction coils. His interests spread into chemistry, computers, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and graphics, pretty much everything I thought I'd need to achieve my life's ambition became to be a mad scientist--not angry, just a little crazy...in good way. As every good mad scientist knows, one's ultimate goal should be world domination. He sees the power of art as a means to this end. Interactive video gives him complete control over space, time, the visual, the auditory, the horizontal, the vertical, but most importantly it allows him to manipulate people. What he strives for is art that causes spontaneous regression back to a more playful age. For Philip, art is play, and he likes to use art to bring people into his sandbox and get them playing.

Afterdork
After the presentations, the exchange continues over food and drink at a nearby eatery.

Dorkbot DC

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Martin Hellman sends in a pointer to his essay that uses analogies from cryptography and the sport of soaring in an attempt to draw people in to thinking about the risks of nuclear weapons. Quoting: "... I did a preliminary risk analysis which indicates that relying on nuclear weapons for our security is thousands of times more dangerous than having a nuclear power plant built next to your home." Hellman is best known as co-inventor (with Diffie and Merkle) of public key cryptography, and has worked for over twenty-five years to reduce the threat posed by nuclear weapons. He is also a glider pilot with over 2,600 logged hours. Hellman adds, "Readers needing a break can go to some photos of the Sierra Nevada mountains taken from my glider."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Martin Hellman sends in a pointer to his essay that uses analogies from cryptography and the sport of soaring in an attempt to draw people in to thinking about the risks of nuclear weapons. Quoting: "...I did a preliminary risk analysis which indicates that relying on nuclear weapons for our security is thousands of times more dangerous than having a nuclear power plant built next to your home." Hellman is best known as co-inventor (with Diffie and Merkle) of public key cryptography, and has worked for over twenty-five years to reduce the threat posed by nuclear weapons. He is also a glider pilot with over 2,600 logged hours. Hellman adds, "Readers needing a break can go to some photos of the Sierra Nevada mountains taken from my glider."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Since today is a day of second looks, I've decided to hold on to the MSI Wind for a few more days. I have 30 days to return it, after all, so no hurry -- I guess.

The incompatibility is definitely with the Airport Extreme. After reporting that, I've gotten lots of clues from people here and on Twitter that indicate that there are serious compatibility issues with that router, I've even reported on one before with my Nokia N800 handheld computer (which I never managed to get working with the Apple router).

So, I'm willing to try another 802.11N router, even though I gotta wonder why people who make WLAN adapters don't debug their issues with Apple's (imho very popular and well-designed) router.

I really like DLink USB hubs, do they make good routers too?

BTW, I did install the new drivers from the MSI site. I have the "RT2700E" hardware.

It's been just over a month since the International Talk Like A Pirate Day, and yet, that's all I can think about when I hear Microsoft announce that today it's celebrating "antipiracy day", during which it will try to highlight everything the company is doing to combat unauthorized file sharing. Odd, then, that this would be the same company that in the past has admitted that it greatly benefits from piracy of its own products, in establishing worldwide standards and in competing against open source alternatives. The company, apparently, is a bit conflicted. In the meantime, anyone have tips on "talking like an antipirate?" I'm guessing it will include such strawman phrases as "it's just like stealing a physical product!," "all content creation would stop," and "content creators deserve to make money!"

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markmcb writes "I develop Rails applications and recently followed my lemming herd and made the switch to Git after learning some of the practical advantages Git offers over Subversion. As I'm sure there are many die-hard Subversion fans in the Slashdot audience, I'm curious what your key reasons are for sticking with Subversion. If possible, I'd like reasons that apply to 'most of the time' as opposed to arguments based on obscure features that may get used only a few times ever."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

markmcb writes "I develop Rails applications and recently followed my lemming herd and made the switch to Git after learning some of the practical advantages Git offers over Subversion. As I'm sure there are many die hard Subversion fans in the Slashdot audience, I'm curious what your key reasons are for sticking with Subversion. If possible, I'd like reasons that apply to 'most of the time' as opposed to arguments based on obscure features that may get used only a few times ever."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The folks at Saigon Market have posted terrific and very different music compilations by artists like Dustin "UPSO" Hostetler and David Horvitz, best known for traveling anywhere you want him to go, for a price. I like hearing what artists I like are listening to. Saigon Market podcasts

Previously on BB:
• Converse designed by UPSO
• New issue of UPSO's Faesthetic: UFOs!

At the Austin Maker Faire, Mister Jalopy was telling me about the scanner camera Stephen Miller brought and set up at last month's American Maker event. Here's the Flickr set of the portraits he took.

American Maker Fair Flickr set [Thanks, Mister J!]

More:

• Building a "scanner" camera
• Scanner Camera
• Weekend Project: Scanner Camera</li
  >
• http://makezine.com/american/

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A number of Boing Boing tv viewers asked for a higher-rez still of the Hodgman slashfic chartporn, a disturbing piece of fan-art which appears at the end of today's episode. And here you are: hi-rez image. Previously: (BBtv) John Hodgman: More Information Than You Require. This is not a book trailer, part 2.

</object

When my car acts up, I try to ignore it, hoping it will fix itself. (And it sometimes does!) The driver of this car shares my sense of optimism in spades. I hope it works out for him. (Via Arbroath)

theraindog writes "More than a year and a half after the first terabyte hard drives became widely available, Seagate has reached the next storage capacity milestone. With 1.5 terabytes, the latest Barracuda 7200.11 serves up 50% more capacity than its peers, and at a surprisingly affordable $0.12 per gigabyte. But Seagate's decision to drop new platters into an old Barracuda shell may not have been a wise one. The Tech Report's in-depth review of the world's first 1.5TB hard drive shows that while the latest 'cuda is screaming fast in synthetic throughput drag races, poor real world write speeds ultimately tarnish its appeal."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theraindog writes "More than a year and a half after the first terabyte hard drives became widely available, Seagate has reached the next storage capacity milestone. With 1.5 terabytes, the latest Barracuda 7200.11 serves up 50% more capacity than its peers, and at a surprisingly affordable $0.12 per gigabyte. But Seagate's decision to drop new platters into an old Barracuda shell may not have been a wise one. The Tech Report's in-depth review of the world's first 1.5TB hard drive shows that while the latest 'cuda is screaming fast in synthetic throughput drag races, poor real world write speeds ultimately tarnish its appeal."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"When being pulled out of a ditch, do not drive immediately back into the ditch."

(Via Criggo)

With the financial bailout process under way, our main fear was that the government would royally screw up, often by handing out favors to friends, rather than focusing on what actually needs to be done to get the economy moving in the right direction. To counter that possibility, one thing you heard repeatedly was that there would be unprecedented "transparency" in how the government conducted this. Transparency here is important. In fact, a big part of the reason we're in this mess in the first place was that banks consistently obfuscated the details of various deals, in order to hide the risk levels. That caused banks and others to buy hugely risky assets, believing they weren't that risky. So, is the government really being transparent?

Of course not.

The folks over at Planet Money note that the first contract awarded under the bailout, with Bank of New York Mellon Corp. just so happens to have the compensation details to Bank of New York Mellon redacted. If anyone is going to trust the government in handling the $700 billion, how much it spends and how it compensates the various banks that take part in the process clearly need to be open. Otherwise this is a huge opportunity for cronyism and corruption. To start out by blacking out the compensation details is quite troubling, and it doesn't exactly bode well for how transparent the rest of this process is going to be.

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The Medical Journal of Australia reports that a woman who has complained of smelling like a rotting fish for most of her life has been diagnosed with a genetic condition that causes her to emit a disagreeable odor.

The woman has been diagnosed with an incurable genetic condition called trimethylaminuria, or fish malodour syndrome, which affects the smell of sweat, breath and urine.

"The characteristic body odour resembling rotting fish can be intermittent, variable and influenced by diet, hormones and medications," her doctors said in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Here's a video about another woman who has this unfortunate condition. "It's not just body odor, it can fill an entire room. And recently it filled an auditorium. It's a very heavy, dark, deep, intense smell."

Unfortunately, there's no cure.

Woman's fishy-smelling mystery solved

Dorkbot Edinburgh has done a crazy cool pipe organ project:

The WaldFlöte project is basically a MIDI retrofit of a 1890's era 16 foot pipe organ. It converts MIDI input into solenoid drive to directly press the keys on one of the manuals - there is no permanent modification to the organ.

Members of Dorkbot Edinburgh have spent the last 7 months or so working on this and we're pretty pleased with it. It was publicly announced at the Electron Club Open Day on 18th October 2008 in Glasgow.

Here's my favorite video of the new instrument in action: Waldflöte VS Kazookeylele:

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And don't forget when you do something like this share it in our FLICKR photo group.

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Hugh Pickens writes "Simson Garfinkel has an interesting essay on MIT Technology Review in which he examines the way that Wikipedia has redefined the commonly accepted use of the word 'truth.' While many academic experts have argued that Wikipedia's articles can't be trusted because they are written and edited by volunteers who have never been vetted, studies have found that the articles are remarkably accurate. 'But wikitruth isn't based on principles such as consistency or observability. It's not even based on common sense or firsthand experience,' says Garfinkel. What makes a fact or statement fit for inclusion is verifiability — that it appeared in some other publication, but there is a problem with appealing to the authority of other people's written words: many publications don't do any fact checking at all, and many of those that do simply call up the subject of the article and ask if the writer got the facts wrong or right. Wikipedia's policy of 'No Original Research' also leads to situations like Jaron Lanier's frustrated attempts to correct his own Wikipedia entry based on firsthand knowledge of his own career. So what is Wikipedia's truth? 'Since Wikipedia is the most widely read online reference on the planet, it's the standard of truth that most people are implicitly using when they type a search term into Google or Yahoo. On Wikipedia, truth is received truth: the consensus view of a subject.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes "Simson Garfinkel has an interesting essay on MIT Technology Review in which he examines the way that Wikipedia has redefined the commonly accepted use of the word 'truth.' While many academic experts have argued that Wikipedia's articles can't be trusted because they are written and edited by volunteers who have never been vetted, studies have found that the articles are remarkably accurate. 'But wikitruth isn't based on principles such as consistency or observability. It's not even based on common sense or firsthand experience,' says Garfinkel. What makes a fact or statement fit for inclusion is verifiability — that it appeared in some other publication, but there is a problem with appealing to the authority of other people's written words: many publications don't do any fact checking at all, and many of those that do simply call up the subject of the article and ask if the writer got the facts wrong or right. Wikipedia's policy of 'No Original Research' also leads to situations like Jaron Lanier's frustrated attempts to correct his own Wikipedia entry based on firsthand knowledge of his own career. So what is Wikipedia's truth? 'Since Wikipedia is the most widely read online reference on the planet, it's the standard of truth that most people are implicitly using when they type a search term into Google or Yahoo. On Wikipedia, truth is received truth: the consensus view of a subject.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is like a real-world horror film: An undertaker driving a hearse chased a woman through Sydney, Australia in the middle of the night. The funeral director, Adam James Lee, 37, is being sentenced today. From The Sydney Morning Herald:

The funeral director is also appealing against a conviction for obtaining a benefit by deception after his business, Caring Funerals, switched two bodies and cremated the wrong one.

His lawyer, Roland Bonnici, told Downing Local Court today that nobody in his right mind would draw attention to himself as a disqualified driver under the influence of alcohol by menacing another person with a vehicle, and therefore Mr Lee's actions should be considered a cry for help.

"Stalked at midnight... by a hearse"

Freakishly talented L.A. artist Liz McGrath has a new exhibition of her phantasmagorical sculptures and watercolors opening Thursday, October 23, at the IguapopGallery in Barcelona, Spain. The show, titled "Tears of the Crocodile," runs through November 23. Liz sent me a (no longer) secret link to the exhibition preview. I think it's a jaw-droppingly beautiful body of work. Liz Mcgrath preview

Previously on BB:
• BBtv: Liz McGrath studio visit
• Liz McGrath show in Los Angeles
• Liz McGrath watercolor show

You may recall earlier this month that a judge in New Jersey barred some researchers from releasing their report into the security vulnerabilities found in e-voting machines from Sequoia that were being used in the state. Sequoia had fought hard to stop the research from even being done in the first place, let alone released, even threatening the researchers with lawsuits. Now, one of the researchers who did the research, Andrew Appel, has released a long report detailing a ridiculous number of security problems with Sequoia's machines. To be honest, it's not clear from the blog post about the report if this is the same one that's being suppressed or not, but it's pretty damning. Because this is an important issue that doesn't necessarily get enough attention, I'm reposting Appel's executive summary of just how screwed up these machines are:

Executive Summary

I. The AVC Advantage 9.00 is easily "hacked" by the installation of fraudulent firmware. This is done by prying just one ROM chip from its socket and pushing a new one in, or by replacement of the Z80 processor chip. We have demonstrated that this "hack" takes just 7 minutes to perform.

The fraudulent firmware can steal votes during an election, just as its criminal designer programs it to do. The fraud cannot practically be detected. There is no paper audit trail on this machine; all electronic records of the votes are under control of the firmware, which can manipulate them all simultaneously.

II. Without even touching a single AVC Advantage, an attacker can install fraudulent firmware into many AVC Advantage machines by viral propagation through audio-ballot cartridges. The virus can steal the votes of blind voters, can cause AVC Advantages in targeted precincts to fail to operate; or can cause WinEDS software to tally votes inaccurately. (WinEDS is the program, sold by Sequoia, that each County's Board of Elections uses to add up votes from all the different precincts.)

III. Design flaws in the user interface of the AVC Advantage disenfranchise voters, or violate voter privacy, by causing votes not to be counted, and by allowing pollworkers to commit fraud.

IV. AVC Advantage Results Cartridges can be easily manipulated to change votes, after the polls are closed but before results from different precincts are cumulated together.

V. Sequoia's sloppy software practices can lead to error and insecurity. Wyle's Independent Testing Authority (ITA) reports are not rigorous, and are inadequate to detect security vulnerabilities. Programming errors that slip through these processes can miscount votes and permit fraud.

VI. Anomalies noticed by County Clerks in the New Jersey 2008 Presidential Primary were caused by two different programming errors on the part of Sequoia, and had the effect of disenfranchising voters.

VII. The AVC Advantage has been produced in many versions. The fact that one version may have been examined for certification does not give grounds for confidence in the security and accuracy of a different version. New Jersey should not use any version of the AVC Advantage that it has not actually examined with the assistance of skilled computer-security experts.

VIII. The AVC Advantage is too insecure to use in New Jersey. New Jersey should immediately implement the 2005 law passed by the Legislature, requiring an individual voter-verified record of each vote cast, by adopting precinct-count optical-scan voting equipment.

Happy voting!

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rsk writes "It's official: Google has Open Sourced Android. The source code can be downloaded from Android's Git repository. Bugs are handled at the Google Code Android project page with documentation being handled by a collection of Google Site pages. One of the more interesting aspects of Android seems to be the seemingly Eclipse Foundation-like organization of the project, welcoming both Individual and Commercial developers into the Android development pot. One of the benefits of this arrangement is securing the existence of the project by involving commercial interests and their money in the process ... this is also one of the downsides; having commercial entities charter and lead features of a platform that their own commercial offerings provide 'enhanced' versions of, sometimes leaving the free offering always lacking in one obvious way or another. It's hard to say at this point how involved Google will be in this process, or the Open Handset Alliance in general, with managing the health of sub-projects under the Android umbrella as time goes on."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

rsk writes "It's official: Google has Open Sourced Android. The source code can be downloaded from Android's Git repository. Bugs are handled at the Google Code Android project page with documentation being handled by a collection of Google Site pages. One of the more interesting aspects of Android seems to be the seemingly Eclipse Foundation-like organization of the project, welcoming both Individual and Commercial developers into the Android development pot. One of the benefits of this arrangement is securing the existence of the project by involving commercial interests and their money in the process ... this is also one of the downsides; having commercial entities charter and lead features of a platform that their own commercial offerings provide 'enhanced' versions of, sometimes leaving the free offering always lacking in one obvious way or another. It's hard to say at this point how involved Google will be in this process, or the Open Handset Alliance in general, with managing the health of sub-projects under the Android umbrella as time goes on."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Upfront caveat: I'm not willing to say "When the Republicans lose" but I am hoping I get to say "When the Republicans lost."

So if the Republicans lose on November 4, they will have to make a much more serious transition than they think they'll have to.

They've been winning elections by saying nonsense things to the electorate, things that are precisely true, even though they know damned well that when the people hear them on TV or via email or word of mouth, they're hearing something different from the precisely true things they say. And lately they haven't even been worrying about the line between true and false. They say things like Palin was exonerated in Troopergate, when the exact opposite is true, she was indicted.

Now the "elite" -- people who know how to read and bother to, know this is what's going on. The Repubs didn't care because they could blow by our opinion of them, and as long as they were winning, what could we do about it?

Now it seems the Republicans may actually lose, and if they do, here's the change: If they want to get heard, they're going to have to stick to arguments that are based on what's actually going on.

I know -- it's tough.

Author, minor television personality, and Boing Boing guestblogger John Hodgman returns to BBtv for more heretofore unrevealed spoilers from his large new book of fake knowledge, MORE INFORMATION THAN YOU REQUIRE.

In today's episode, we answer questions posed by Boing Boing tv fans via The Twitter, including one from Annalee Newitz of i09 blog which pertains to the subject of nude self-portraits.

You really should watch this episode all the way to the end, for a special surprise awaits you there.

Here are previous Boing Boing tv episodes featuring Mr. Hodgman.

Edna Jester, 89, of Blue Ash, Ohio, was arrested for taking a football away from kids in her neighborhood. Apparently, the ball kept landing in her yard and she was fed up. She refused police demands for her to return the ball, so they arrested her for petty theft. From the Cincinnati Enquirer:

"That's my only way of getting through to these children," Edna Jester said. "I'll give it back to them later, but not right now..."

(The father of the boy who owned the ball) said he never wanted Jester to be arrested.

“I just wanted the ball back,” Tanis said. “My son paid for the ball with his own money.”

Tanis said she has kept about 10 balls – basketballs and soccer balls – belonging to his children that went into her yard. Jester said she has kept only three.

Woman, 89, arrested for keeping football (Thanks, Rick Pescovitz!)

An anonymous reader writes "A nice little old lady I know has had her number spoofed by some car warranty scammers. They're calling hundreds of potential victims per day pretending to use her phone number, and the angry ones call her back; some of them have even left death threats. She's terrified. Some well-intending anti-telemarketing folks have posted her address on the 'net as well. How can we figure out where these scammer bastards are, and what's the state of the current legislation to prevent caller ID spoofing? I calle the FBI in Boston (near where she lives) and they said they can't help. She's called her phone company, but they said they can't help either. She's had the same number for over 50 years and doesn't want to change it." If the Feds can't or won't handle it, what's the best approach here?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "A nice little old lady I know has had her number spoofed by some car warranty scammers. They're calling hundreds of potential victims per day pretending to use her phone number, and the angry ones call her back; some of them have even left death threats. She's terrified. Some well-intending anti-telemarketing folks have posted her address on the 'net as well. How can we figure out where these scammer bastards are, and what's the state of the current legislation to prevent caller ID spoofing? I calle the FBI in Boston (near where she lives) and they said they can't help. She's called her phone company, but they said they can't help either. She's had the same number for over 50 years and doesn't want to change it." If the Feds can't or won't handle it, what's the best approach here?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One year ago, writer and blogger Susannah Breslin pointed us to a shocking, sad story by Jeffrey Gettlemen in the New York Times about widespread rape in the African nation of Congo. Rape is used as a tool of war and civil destabilization, and the sheer scope and violence of the epidemic here is unprecedented. Here is that BB post, and here is an update posted a a few weeks later.

Today, a year later, there is a powerful followup story by Gettlemen in the Times. You really must read it. Susannah has a post up about this, and reactions, and how you can help, on Slate's new femblog, XX Factor.

[T]he UN has [since] declared such grand scale acts of sexual violence "a tactic of war." Now, Gettleman returns with another report from the frontlines. "Congo, it seems, is finally facing its horrific rape problem," he writes, "which United Nations officials have called the worst sexual violence in the world." Today, due to international attention, outside aid, and local efforts, a "culture of impunity" is breaking down, ending the silence when it comes to rape. More arrests of perpetrators are taking place than ever before, but, Gettleman is quick to point out, the number of those charged remains relatively small, particularly in a culture "where women tend to be beaten down anyway."

In makeshift forums, women are telling their stories. "'There was no dinner,'" one woman's tale begins. "It was me who was dinner." In the audience, several women wore T-shirts that read in Kiswahili: "I refuse to be raped. What about you?" Eve Ensler, best known for having written "The Vagina Monolgues," is seeking to put an end to the worst rape problem in the world. Ensler deems the phenomenon "femicide": "'I have spent the past 10 years of my life in the rape mines of the world,' she said. 'But I have never seen anything like this.'"

Rape In Congo, A Year Later: Change? (Slate XX Factor)

Photo: Honorata Barinjibanwa, a child rape victim in Bukavu, Congo, who became pregnant as a result of her attack. (Hazel Thompson for The New York Times / Thanks, Susannah Breslin)

Something Oliver Stone said about W. that got me thinking.

"I really, in my heart, think that this guy's policies are going to be around for a long time. And my grandchildren are going to be talking about this guy Bush like the way they talk about Teddy Roosevelt, the way they talk about Lincoln, the way they talk about Washington. I think he's had monumental impact on the future of this country."

Weird. I wonder what he means. I don't think he's right, but he did get me thinking, as I said.

Even if W wasn't a great President, he did become President and that's not easy to do as so many can testify. What he had down, what he knew how to do, was how to get elected President. Because:

1. He has good genes, no matter how dumb you may think he is, he isn't.

2. He was deeply involved with his father's losing 1992 campaign (not just according to Stone).

3. He loved his father and sought his approval, as all sons do, but didn't feel the love coming back.

So he did what he knew how to do, arranged it so he would run for President. After winning, he had no clue how to be President or even what it meant. I bet his father didn't take him into his confidence when he was in office. And while his father wasn't a great campaigner, he did really know to be President, he had been around the office for 20 years before he occupied it, as did many of the people he brought in with him.



Another observation, some based on intuition, and other parts based on observation of the 2008 campaign. While Bush II probably couldn't have done it without Karl Rove, it seems equally true that Rove needed Bush to win. But Rove may have found his new protege, who's getting broken in on the campaign trial, Sarah Palin, as Bush II was broken in by his father. That's the nightmare waiting for us should Obama win, which of course is nothing compared to the nightmare that awaits us if he loses.

Our internetexpert friends Gabe and Max have teamed up with Details magazine to produce an informative series of videos on how to be a stylish dude. Video Link on the YouTubes.

Related BB posts: Gabe and Max answer Bing Boing readers.

penance
who in the what now?
one sentence
freak machine
sketch
halfbakery
box doodle
mai'nada
you look great today

previously on web zen:
contribute zen 2006
Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Boing Boing reader Meadhbh Siobhan says, "I got my G1 from T-Mobile a couple days early. Is it 'cause i'm a nice person? long-time t-mob subscriber? cause i submitted a bug fix for openbinder when i was working for PalmSource? ... who knows. but i documented the out of the box experience..." G1 Out of the Box Experience (picasaweb)

alphadogg writes with a story that's about the possibilities for the next generation(s) of Ethernet, stuff far beyond 10base-T: "Ethernet has conquered much of the network world and is now headed deep into the data center to handle everything from storage to LAN to high-performance computing applications. Cisco, IBM and other big names are behind standards efforts, and while there is some dispute over exactly what to call this technology, vendors seem to be moving ahead with it, and it's already showing up in pre-standard products. 'I don't see any show-stoppers here — it's just time,' says one network equipment-maker rep. 'This is just another evolutionary step. Ethernet worked great for mundane or typical applications — now we're getting to time-sensitive applications and we need to have a little bit more congestion control in there.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

alphadogg writes with a story that's about the possibilities for the next generation(s) of Ethernet, stuff far beyond 10base-T: "Ethernet has conquered much of the network world and is now headed deep into the data center to handle everything from storage to LAN to high-performance computing applications. Cisco, IBM and other big names are behind standards efforts, and while there is some dispute over exactly what to call this technology, vendors seem to be moving ahead with it, and it's already showing up in pre-standard products. 'I don't see any show-stoppers here — it's just time,' says one network equipment-maker rep. 'This is just another evolutionary step. Ethernet worked great for mundane or typical applications — now we're getting to time-sensitive applications and we need to have a little bit more congestion control in there.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I've long been a staunch defender of Wikipedia -- a site that I think many of us find quite useful. Most of the criticisms directed at Wikipedia come off as misguided -- and usually come from people who only just realized that anyone can edit it and insist this is somehow bad before recognizing that this usually tends to be pretty good, because it means mistakes tend not to last very long. That isn't to say that mistakes aren't made -- or even that they're not made quite frequently. But, as long as you recognize that Wikipedia, by itself, is not meant to be the definitive source, then it is still an amazingly useful repository of information that can be used as a starting point.

However, Simpson Garfinkel has an interesting article pointing out that there is one element of Wikipedia's relationship to "truth" that should be examined. That is, the site very highly values verifiability over truth. In other words, it will always side with a citation over personal knowledge -- even if that citation is incorrect. This leads to some odd situations, when you think about it. After all, people will point out that Wikipedia's advantage over something like Britannica is that mistakes stay for much longer in Britannica. But, that might only be true if the Wikipedia entry isn't based on a false citation.

If the Wikipedia entry is based on a false citation, and there's no other citation that contradicts it, then it's likely that Wikipedia's entry will remain wrong, but citable. So, the easy editing of Wikipedia is a bit meaningless if the source of the false fact is not also editable (or if there's no citation that shows the original citation is wrong). I've seen this myself lately with the short entry about me. While I do take quite seriously the typical admonition not to edit your own entry, I have checked it at times. What amuses me, is that it tends to have my birthday wrong (flipping the month and the date, such that my real birthday -- December 8, or 12/08 -- is flipped to August 12, or 08/12). I've been watching a couple of people (one of whom I'm pretty sure I know) argue back and forth about the date, with the person who keeps flipping it back to the wrong date claiming at one point that he is me. He's not. Of course, I don't take this as evidence of Wikipedia's failure, but more a reminder of what the site is and what it's not. It's a useful starting point for investigation, which is quite often reliable and sufficient, but I wouldn't recommend betting your life on it. Or even your birthday.

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Here are directions to make a lovely poseable icky thing from fishing lure worms. Another project that would have a creepier effect in quantity. Though it's pretty creepy on its own.

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arcticstoat points out an article at Custom PC, according to which: "Microsoft has announced that today is Global Anti-Piracy Day. Launching several global initiatives, the aim is to raise awareness of the damage to software innovation that Microsoft says is caused by piracy. ... As well as educating people about piracy, Microsoft has also initiated a huge list of legal proceedings that it's taking out against pirates. Microsoft isn't messing about when it says 'global' either. The list of 49 countries that Microsoft is targeting spans six continents, and ranges from the UK and the US all the way through to Chile, Egypt, Kuwait, Indonesia and China." Interestingly enough, unauthorized copies of Vista might not be harming the company all that much: reader twitter was among several to contribute links to a related story at Computer World which highlights Microsoft attorney Bonnie MacNaughton's acknowledgement that pirates prefer Windows XP over Vista and Office 2003 over 2007.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

arcticstoat points out an article at Custom PC, according to which: "Microsoft has announced that today is Global Anti-Piracy Day. Launching several global initiatives, the aim is to raise awareness of the damage to software innovation that Microsoft says is caused by piracy. ... As well as educating people about piracy, Microsoft has also initiated a huge list of legal proceedings that it's taking out against pirates. Microsoft isn't messing about when it says 'global' either. The list of 49 countries that Microsoft is targeting spans six continents, and ranges from the UK and the US all the way through to Chile, Egypt, Kuwait, Indonesia and China." Interestingly enough, unauthorized copies of Vista might not be harming the company all that much: reader twitter was among several to contribute links to a related story at Computer World which highlights Microsoft attorney Bonnie MacNaughton's acknowledgement that pirates prefer Windows XP over Vista and Office 2003 over 2007.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr photo pool

Funnypolynomial combined six Game of Life kits to form this sweet 2x3 cellular automata display panel!

Game of Life Board

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Potugal based designer Luis Porem has created the "RBG Glasses" which have an internal channel in their frame for colored liquid to be poured. This gives the glasses a custom color depending on your mood for the day.

via DesignSpotter

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JohnHegarty writes "A Kentucky judge has upheld that state's seizure of some of the world's most popular online casino domain names, ruling they constitute a 'gambling device' that is subject to Kentucky's anti-gambling laws." Wasn't it surreal enough on the first round?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

JohnHegarty writes "A Kentucky judge has upheld that state's seizure of some of the world's most popular online casino domain names, ruling they constitute a 'gambling device' that is subject to Kentucky's anti-gambling laws." Wasn't it surreal enough on the first round?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ocularb0b writes "Cray has announced the CX1 desktop supercomputer. Cray teamed with Microsoft and Intel to build the new machine that supports up to 8 nodes, a total of 64 cores and 64Gb of memory per node. CX1 can be ordered online with starting prices of $25K, and a choice of Linux or Windows HPC. This should be a pretty big deal for smaller schools and scientists waiting in line for time on the world's big computing centers, as well as 3D and VFX shops."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ocularb0b writes "Cray has announced the CX1 desktop supercomputer. Cray teamed with Microsoft and Intel to build the new machine that supports up to 8 nodes, a total of 64 cores and 64Gb of memory per node. CX1 can be ordered online with starting prices of $25k, and a choice of Linux or Windows HPC. This should be a pretty big deal for smaller schools and scientists waiting in line for time on the world's big computing centers, as well as 3d and VFX shops."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Atlantic has an article in which the author, Jeffrey Goldberg, put various Bruce Schneier theories to the test, to see just how ridiculous airport security is these days. As expected, he discovered that Schneier is correct in calling most airport security "security theater." It's designed to make people think they're safer because they see something that looks like security, even if that security does absolutely nothing to stop terrorists. As the article notes, it's not at all difficult for terrorists to bypass the system, so the only thing the system is really good for is to (a) catch really, really dumb terrorists or (b) to make other people think that the security is doing something.

Schneier, of course, has been making this point for years, so it was interesting to see what sort of response Goldberg was then able to get out of the TSA's boss, Kip Hawley. His responses seem to fall into one of two categories. First, he suggests that the TSA is well aware of the potential vulnerability described, but he can't really explain how it's been fixed, or secondly, he insists that any odd behavior will be spotted by trained employees and stopped. Except that Goldberg tested that theory too, attempting to behave quite strangely -- including ripping up a bunch of fake boarding passes in plain view of people... who all ignored him.

Hawley's responses at times border on incomprehensible:

"What do you do about vulnerabilities?" he asked, rhetorically. "All the time you hear reports and people saying, 'There's a vulnerability.' Well, duh. There are vulnerabilities everywhere, in everything. The question is not 'Is there a vulnerability?' It's 'What are you doing about it?'"

Well, what are you doing about it?

"There are vulnerabilities where you have limited ways to address it directly. So you have to put other layers around it, other things that will catch them when that vulnerability is breached. This is a universal problem. Somebody will identify a very small thing and drill down and say, 'I found a vulnerability.'"

Either there's some totally secret system that the TSA is using to actually stop these vulnerabilities, or there isn't a system and Hawley is just being confusing in order to create some doubt. I'm not sure either one makes me feel any safer about flying. While some may claim that we should feel safer because there might be a more secretive plan in place that Hawley won't talk about, consider me a skeptic. Security through obscurity has rarely proven to be as effective as a real and open security plan. I'm not saying that the TSA should reveal everything it does, but given Goldberg's experiences in "probing" the system, it's not clear that any "secret plan," whether real or implied, is working particularly well.

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?"Sunset Now" by Pennsylvania-based artist Adam Parker Smith is a large installation in the shape of a sun built from colored plexi-glass, fiberfill, and lights that are controlled by a dimmer switch. The viewer simply adjusts the rising and setting of the sun at their own desired speed.

Adam Parker Smith

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From the MAKE Flickr photo pool

Looks like Flickr member Lockwasher created a macro cam with some very formidable stability -

Introducing the new Imperial HD 700. Weighing in at a hefty 7lbs this Macro Lens monstrosity is ready for what every you can dish-out! From it's Frankenstein-ed shutter release to it's retractable stability sensored aluminum kick stand this baby's got it all and then some!

- new lockwasher "industrial strength" camera

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arashtamere writes "Red Hat president and CEO Jim Whitehurst predicts the enterprise open source software business will emerge from the economic crisis stronger than the proprietary market. 'I've had a couple of conversations with CIOs who said, "We're a Microsoft shop and we don't use any open source whatsoever, but we're already getting pressure to reduce our operating costs and we need you to help put together a plan for us to... use open source to reduce our costs." And we've had other customers literally looking at ripping and replacing WebLogic or WebSphere for JBoss ... I think we'll know in about six to nine months but there is no question that open source will come out of this in relatively better shape than our proprietary competitors,' he told Computerworld."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

arashtamere writes "Red Hat president and CEO Jim Whitehurst predicts the enterprise open source software business will emerge from the economic crisis stronger than the proprietary market. 'I've had a couple of conversations with CIOs who said, "We're a Microsoft shop and we don't use any open source whatsoever, but we're already getting pressure to reduce our operating costs and we need you to help put together a plan for us to... use open source to reduce our costs." And we've had other customers literally looking at ripping and replacing WebLogic or WebSphere for JBoss ... I think we'll know in about six to nine months but there is no question that open source will come out of this in relatively better shape than our proprietary competitors,' he told Computerworld."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's another one of Korean artist U-Ram Choe's incredible mechanical sculptures that we've covered on Make in the past. This particular piece is called "Opertus Lunula Umbra" (Hidden Shadow of Moon) and was shown as part of the 2008 Liverpool Biennial. The animatronic sculpture is made from oars, rudders, and ship motors and is controlled by custom software through a 12-channel DMX in order for the 2-ton device to expand and contract like "tidal forces". Pretty amazing construction indeed and the video of it in action is even more impressive.

U-Ram Choe via Neatorama

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Mamiya has released the DL28 digital medium format camera system. It is a combination of the Aptus-II 6 Digital Back from Leaf and the 645AFD III body, that features a new coreless autofocus motor and an enhanced interface system. Sporting a 28 MP image sensor with a pixel pitch of 7.2 microns, the features of DL28 include 16-bit capture, 12 stop dynamic range and an ISO range of 50-800. Priced at $14,999, it will be available in November.

Following the McCain campaign's request to YouTube that it exempt both major presidential campaigns from the traditional process of notice-and-takedown to DMCA complaints (which YouTube rejected), the EFF and the ACLU have sent a letter to the various television networks who were responsible for the takedowns in the first place, asking them to stop sending bogus takedowns. On top of that, they ask YouTube to reconsider and start responding to counternotices and putting content back online more quickly.

While I can appreciate the stance taken by the EFF and the ACLU, and believe that they are correct that the networks' takedown notices are incorrect, I'm going to have to side with Public Citizen in suggesting that the real answer to this issue is fixing the DMCA, not through asking various parties to simply change their behavior. The real problem is the DMCA and the unclear boundaries of fair use today. While there's clearly not time to fix the law prior to election day, it doesn't seem right to just ask people to ignore the way the law works today. If the law is the problem, fix the law -- don't ask everyone else to play by different rules. That just sweeps the problems of the law under the rug, where they'll get a lot less attention.

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Apple has released Aperture 2.1.2, a minor update to its RAW-conversion and photo management software. The update improves the printing quality of books, cards and calendars ordered via the Aperture printing service and is recommended for users of Aperture 2.

1sockchuck writes "Microsoft and Google have opened a new front in their battle for global domination: data center energy efficiency. Just weeks after Google published data on the extreme efficiency of its previously secret data centers, Microsoft says it has achieved similar results with shipping containers (despite Google's patent) packed with up to 2,500 servers. The geeky benchmark for the battle is Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), a green data-center metric advanced by The Green Grid. Microsoft says its containers tested at a PUE of 1.22, while Google reported an average PUE of 1.21 for its data centers, which apparently are also now using containers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

1sockchuck writes "Microsoft and Google have opened a new front in their battle for global domination: data center energy efficiency. Just weeks after Google published data on the extreme efficiency of its previously secret data centers, Microsoft says it has achieved similar results with shipping containers (despite Google's patent) packed with up to 2,500 servers. The geeky benchmark for the battle is Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), a green data-center metric advanced by The Green Grid. Microsoft says its containers tested at a PUE of 1.22, while Google reported an average PUE of 1.21 for its data centers, which apparently are also now using containers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

1sockchuck writes "Microsoft and Google have opened a new front in their battle for global domination: data center energy efficiency. Just weeks after Google published data on the extreme efficiency of its previously secret data centers, Microsoft says it has achieved similar results with shipping containers (despite Google's patent) packed with up to 2,500 servers. The geeky benchmark for the battle is Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), a green data-center metric advanced by The Green Grid. Microsoft says its containers tested at a PUE of 1.22, while Google reported an average PUE of 1.21 for its data centers, which apparently are also now using containers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Delivering 1.2 million monthly page views is no easy feat. In this video, Robin Good shares with you how he has built this kind of traffic base and what choices he has made along his professional web publishing career to move this kind of traffic to his online domain. Photo credit: Robin Good If you want to blog for a living, you need an audience. Knowing how to monetize your content is good. But the most important step is getting people to come to your blog... and getting them to come in droves. That is the secret of any blogger's success story: a high traffic blog is the key to wealth and riches. Sounds easy enough, right? Unfortunately it is not. The truth is, it takes a lot of work to build traffic that is large enough to give you some discretionary income. The if-you-build-it-they-will-come mentality just isn't enough if you want to make blogging work for you. As Robin Good explains in this video, making MasterNewMedia the blog it is today was no easy feat. It was a slow process - six years slow in fact. But that work has paid off. Sitting on an average of 1.2 million page views per month and published in four different languages, MasterNewMedia has become a not-so-petite voice in the international blogosphere. So how do you create the kind of success that Robin Good has? My parent's used to tell me that the best way to learn was to learn by doing. Well, that old adage stands true for blogging as well. If you really want to make your blog into something that you can live off of, you just have to start working at it... and working at it... and working at it. As Robin Good would say, quality is second only to "perseverance" . But no one said that you have to do it alone. It never hurts to have somebody there to help guide and teach you to become a better blogger. If you want to find out what helped Robin get where he is now, here's the video along with its full text transcript: Intro by Andre Deutmeyer

Building A High-Traffic Blog

</embed
Full English Text Transcription

Hi guys this is Robin Good for MasterNewMedia. Ciao! More questions coming from you. What have I got this time? The question is: "How many visitors do I get everyday and what did it take to create this reader base?" Good question... good question indeed! So what is my reader base? You can come any first week of the month to MasterNewMedia.org International Edition and find the traffic stats. All of the data is there. The data is public and fully available to you. You can see unique visitors, page views, demographics, subscribers to RSS feeds and so on So what is this number? It is about 600,000 to 700,000 maybe a little more depending on the month. I think September might be a little bit more... around 700,000 to 800,000 unique visitors per month. Those numbers are divided between MNM English, Italian, Latino (Spanish), and Portuguese editions, and all together it makes those numbers. These people read from one to two pages each on average. Lets say one and a half pages so that makes for about one-point-one, one-point-two million page views per month. That is in fact nearly the number of ad impressions I can carry over in a month - i.e. how many times I can display ads to visitors. It is just above one million. I think it is a million two or so... that is 1,200,000 ad impressions. So how did I get to these big numbers? I didn't do anything really special. I did many little things. And it took a relatively long time. I have been here since 2002 (this is one of my first posts). In the beginning, things were much more infrequent, and then gradually it became more systematic until this became my work... my full time job, about four years ago. So month by month by...

• Sending out my newsletter
• Publishing new content... writing about stuff that I really really like
• Avoiding picking up the news and rewriting someone's news and not adding anything of my own by going out and unearthing stuff such as research and reports that don't get the exposure they deserve
• Creating unique content destinations containing some special articles, guides, and anthologies, or collections of videos

Through this I have been able bit by bit to add more visitors to my site. But of all the things that I have done, I think the one or the few that have made a significant difference are:

• Consistency
• Perseverance
• Posting content that is not short and superficial but goes in depth
• Creating very effective titles for search engine optimization
• Doing special things that people have taken note of and tell their friends and then... link and link and link

I think these things, along with the fact that I started a long time ago when there were certainly less people for such a broad topic, brought me to where I am now. Today it would be much more difficult, and I would have to be more specific. But I am not thinking in anyway that it can't be repeated or done better than I did. So I hope that helps. Look forward to your next question. Send them in at Robin.Good[at]masternewmedia.org. Ciao!

Originally shot and recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on October 21st 2008 as "How To Build A High Traffic Blog Site - Robin Good Video".

Red Herring is reporting on the question of where our elected officials invest their own money, noting that an awful lot of it has gone into tech companies. For example, the second, third and fourth most invested in company among Congressional members are Cisco, Microsoft, and Intel, following on GE, which had the largest number of lawmaker investors (88). Of course, the number of investors doesn't necessarily say how much is invested, as Apple leads on that list, with Congressional members having put somewhere between $6.4 million and $31 million into Apple. Elected officials only need to give a range for their investments, hence the large spread. Of course, all of the info in the article isn't really all that enlightening, as the companies that these folks are invested in are basically the same as you would find on a list of the biggest companies in the US. So, basically, our Congress critters invest in big companies, many of which are in the tech industry. That's not particularly surprising.

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Technologizer writes "Apple's new MacBook is a significantly different machine than its predecessor — a slicker laptop at a higher price point. But does it carry a large price premium over similar Windows PCs? I did a painstaking spec-by-spec comparison versus three roughly comparably-configured Windows machines, and came to the conclusion that the value it offers for price paid is not out of whack with the Windows world." The article uses the phrase "Mac tax," which one commenter points out is a recent Microsoft marketing canard.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Best of Instructables: Volume 1 (Full Length) from Instructables on Vimeo.

The Instructables team whipped up this really nice little video for The Best of Instructables in time for us to show it in The Best of Instructables area in the Maker Shed at Maker Faire Austin. In the Shed we had an area with some projects from the book, a make and take LED Throwies area, this video, and I did some demos from the Maker Shed stage (of the Flashlight Business Card, Marshmallow Shooter, Plastic Vacuum Former, Keyboard Wallet). A good time was had by all -- and it looked like we had very few copies of the book by the time we were done. Thanks to everyone who helped make this part of the Shed happen.

The Best of Instructables is available in the Maker Shed at a pre-release price of 29.99. We also have a landing page where we'll be putting up material related to the book. And Eric J. Wilhelm himself will be guest blogging here soon in celebration of the book's release. So stay tuned...

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Last week, in talking about the "big" spam bust, we focused on the key question: if this was such a big player in the spamworld, would it actually decrease the amount of spam we are seeing? The answer, apparently, is no. Slashdot points us to the news that spam levels remained about the same, even as officials claimed that the spam ring they busted may have represented 30% of the world's spam. There seem to be a few different theories as to why: such as the idea that the botnet these spammers controlled was set to keep on spamming automatically (which could mean a later decrease in spam), as well as the idea that other spammers quickly took control over the botnet (or were given control over it), and the suggestion that other spammers simply cranked up their own spamming operations to fill the void. So, yes, it's great that some big spammers have been arrested, but at what point is an effort made to actually stop the amount of spam that's flowing?

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Clive Thompson wrote an article about open source hardware, particularly the Arduino, in the November issue of Wired:

Check this out," Massimo Banzi says. The burly, bearded engineer wanders over to inspect a chipmaking robot--a "pick and place" machine the size of a pizza oven. It hums with activity, grabbing teensy electronic parts and stabbing them into position on a circuit board like a hyperactive chicken pecking for seeds. We're standing in a one-room fabrication factory used by Arduino, the Italian firm that makes this circuit board, a hot commodity among DIY gadget-builders. The electronics factory is one of the most picturesque in existence, nestled in the medieval foothills of Milan, with birdsong floating in through the open doors and plenty of coffee breaks for the white-coated staff. But today Banzi is all business. He's showing off his operation to a group of potential customers from Arizona. Banzi scoops up one of the boards and points to the tiny map of Italy emblazoned on it. "See? Italian manufacturing quality!" he says, laughing. "That's why everyone likes us!" Indeed, 50,000 Arduino units have been sold worldwide since mass production began two years ago. Those are small numbers by Intel standards but large for a startup outfit in a highly specialized market. What's really remarkable, though, is Arduino's business model: The team has created a company based on giving everything away. On its Web site, it posts all its trade secrets for anyone to take--all the schematics, design files, and software for the Arduino board. Download them and you can manufacture an Arduino yourself; there are no patents. You can send the plans off to a Chinese factory, mass-produce the circuit boards, and sell them yourself -- pocketing the profit without paying Banzi a penny in royalties. He won't sue you. Actually, he's sort of hoping you'll do it.

Read the article on Wired: "Build It. Share It. Profit. Can Open Source Hardware Work?"

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This video is simultaneously the most retarded and most awesome thing I have ever seen. "Yes We Carve: Pumpkins for Barack Obama." (Thanks, Dana!)

If you're in Los Angeles, you may want to head over to alt-comic Dave Hill's live show tomorrow night, Tuesday, October 21, where at 10:30pm local time, he says...

I will be exploding like a motherf#@ker all over again over there at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Hollywood. If you see just one thing that is explosive in nature tomorrow night, you should totally see my show because it is going to be incredible to the point where it makes all other things previously thought to be incredible to suddenly seem, like, not really all that incredible if you think about it (with the exception of Olympic figure skating great Oksana Baiul's gold medal-winning performance at the 1994 Winter Olympics, something we still talk about to this day). My guests on the show tomorrow night will be actress/singer Lucy Lawless, whom you no doubt remember from such programs as "Xena: Warrior Princess," "Battlestar Galactica," and a ton of other programs besides those ones I just mentioned; and also singer/songwriter/actor/man-about-town Loudon Wainwright III, whom you no doubt remember from the radio and also the popular films "The Aviator," "40 Year-Old Virgin," and "Knocked Up." There will also be snacks, fire, small animals, knives, smoke, and dancing. I really hope you can make it. You can get tickets right here.

Previously on BB:
* Dave Hill, Jedi Master in training.
* Dave Hill returns to Fashion Week '09
* Dave Hill is a very funny guy (videos)

VideoGamer sat down with Randy Stude, president of the PC Gaming Alliance, to talk about the state of piracy and DRM in today's gaming industry. He suggests that many game studios have themselves to blame for leaks and pre-launch piracy by not integrating their protection measures earlier in the development process. He mentions that some companies, such as Blizzard and Valve, have worked out anti-piracy schemes that generate much less of a backlash than occurred for Spore . Stude also has harsh words for companies who decline to create PC versions of their games, LucasArts in particular, saying, "LucasArts hasn't made a good PC game in a long time. That's my opinion. ... It's ridiculous to say that there's not enough audience for that game ... and that it falls into this enthusiast extreme category when ported over to the PC. That's an uneducated response." Finally, Stude discusses what the PCGA would like to see out of Vista and the next version of Windows.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The whole concept of staggered regional releases of digital products makes less and less sense in an internet age, but it does create some bizarre situations. Reader SteveD alerts us to the launch last week of a puzzle game called World of Goo that was apparently selling quite well (despite the developers' decision to offer it without DRM -- showing, once again, that you don't need DRM to sell a video game). However, two days after being released, the game disappeared from Steam, the popular video game distribution system, for European users. Apparently, the European publishers of the game wanted to delay the digital release of the game until the physical version was ready sometime next year. This seems backwards and bound to fail. Now any European player who wants the game is more likely to pirate it rather than buy it. It appears the game's developers aren't too happy about it either:

"As part of our European agreement, we are restricted from selling the game on Steam in Europe. I'm thinking this was a clause that was accidentally left in, since I can't imagine this kind of restriction is good for anyone. We're going to try to reverse it. We live in the future. We shouldn't even have countries and regions. Just one big Internet where everyone is equal."

It will be interesting to see what happens, as it's nice to think that this was an "accident," but we've seen too many company execs somehow think that artificial scarcity is a reasonable business model, and thus limiting the digital release for a while might make sense in their minds.

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Dave Rocamora writes:

After using a cheap plastic card table as my only table for nearly two years I decided it was time for a change. I had seen some large wooden tables that I liked and figured that I could make one myself. I also used reclaimed wood to make this table so it's a bit cooler looking (and environmentally friendly!).

The finished product is heavy, but not too bad. I'm using Douglas Fir which is a bit soft. Marks will show on the table, but to me that is okay. You may want to adjust your wood choice if you like something different.

He goes through the necessary steps on instructables so you can construct your own reclaimed wood table.

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An anonymous reader points us to Gizmodo for a fascinating video of NASA's Sky Crane. "When I read that the UFO-looking Mars Science Laboratory's aeroshell would use a floating crane — called Sky Crane by NASA — to softly land the rover on Mars, I couldn't believe it. Now, watching this hyper-realistic NASA simulation, I still can't believe how the whole thing works. I don't know about you, but the whole operation mesmerizes me to no end."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apparently the problems I've had this weekend are connected to an incompatibility between the MSI Wind netbook and my Airport Extreme router. At least there's a correlation, when the Wind is on, the router goes down, quickly, within a minute or two. If I turn off the wifi adapter on the Wind, I can leave it on indefinitely and the router works without a hitch. Or if I turn the Wind off, everything is fine. Or if I return the Wind to Amazon. :-(

Another piece of data, my networking problems started at the exact moment that I first turned on the Wind.

Conclusion: The Wind goes back to the factory and I travel with the Eee 901, for now at least. It has none of these problems, the Airport Extreme likes it, and it likes the Airport Extreme.

This week:
Rokuro, Slow-Motion/Fast Motion Camera Tricks, World's Simplest Motor? The Walking iPhone Robot, Twitch! Electric Shocks to the Face, D.V.D., The Knitted Reverse Face Mask.

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Best cat costume ever?

What's cuter than a platonic solid? A cat dressed up as a platonic solid for Halloween!

This instructable details the making of a soft quilted tetrahedron costume for the more patient of my two cats.

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cookiej writes "We just completed having our basement gutted and our house decontaminated from mold. The finished basement is gone, my office floor has been removed as well as 24' of drywall around the base of the room. So, we had a full home theater downstairs along with a couple of computers in the electronics closet that were completely immersed (rainwater, not sewage). We moved them to a sheltered area outside and covered them with a plastic tarp. Since the electronics were off when the water hit them, 1) do I have a chance of recovering them? 2) If so, is there a way to clean them with some sort of liquid bath that would not damage the electronics? and 3) I don't want to bring moldy pieces back in the clean house. How could I decontaminate the electronics themselves, pre-bath? Not looking to save the speakers, just the amp, DirecTV box, video switch, etc. Thanks for any help, here, Slashdot." Read on for more details of this reader's plight.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.