Ostracus writes "The latest request from the Pentagon jars the senses. At least, it did mine. They are looking for contractors to 'develop a software/hardware suite that would enable a multi-robot team, together with a human operator, to search for and detect a non-cooperative human subject. The main research task will involve determining the movements of the robot team through the environment to maximize the opportunity to find the subject ... Typical robots for this type of activity are expected to weigh less than 100 Kg and the team would have three to five robots.'" To be fair, they plan to use the Multi-Robot Pursuit System for less nefarious-sounding purposes as well. They note that the robots would "have potential commercialization within search and rescue, fire fighting, reconnaissance, and automated biological, chemical and radiation sensing with mobile platforms."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Solid Alliance has introduced a USB flash drive in the form of a skull ring. It has a capacity of 2GB, sells for $150 from Geek Stuff 4 U, and comes in a variety of fashionable colors. Skull flash drive (Thanks, Kirsten Anderson!)

(Please do not try this at home … work, at a friends house, visiting relatives, on vacation, or anywhere else for that matter.)

Daito demonstrates a unique strategy for synchronize visuals with music - by contracting facial muscles with electrical stimulation. Wow, his look of anticipation at the videos open seems a fair warning in and of itself!

[via Synthtopia]

More:

Den-kuri Master - electrical MIDI stimulator

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Guardian: "Our feeds now contain the full content of each article so that you can take guardian.co.uk with you wherever you prefer to get your news."

First, I'm not aware of any other publication of the Guardian's size and stature that has gone this way, and I know some people will be excited about it and welcome it.

However I don't think full text makes sense in all circumstances.

I prefer the River of News approach, as exemplified by nytimesriver.com and bbcriver.com, and full text feeds wouldn't work very well there. If you want to skim the news quickly, from a large number of sources, the style favored by the Times and the BBC works better. I wouldn't want to see all news sources feel pressure to go the same way as the Guardian.

I think giving readers choice is the best way to go.

BTW the Scripting News feed has always been full text.

Here's a funny video for Cintra Wilson's brilliant new book, Caligula for President.

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Read chapter 1 of Caligula for President

Here's a video of our guest blogger John Hodgman giving his wonderful presentation at TED in February 2008. John Hodgman: A brief digression on matters of lost time

John Moe, host of American Public Media's Weekend America radio show, tells Boing Boing:

For Weekend America's Halloween show this year we invited some writers to come up with scary stories that last no longer than half a minute. We did it last year too and it was lots of fun. I figure scary stories are fun but honestly who has time for the whole "he walked down the hall, step...by...step" nonsense, GET TO THE ACTION, I always say.

So this year we have an interesting crew: David Rakoff, Dana Gould, comics creator Richard Sala, a children's book writer, a horror writer, all adhering to the strict 30 seconds or less rule.

It's on the air tomorrow or found online here: Tales of Terror. Here's last year's edition, which featured Neil Gaiman among others.

(photo: peasap, via weekendamerica.publicradio.org)

Andrew Moseman writes "Part of the trouble NASA is encountering while fixing the Hubble Space Telescope comes from the fact that it's been up there for nearly two decades, and therefore carries computer systems long outdated here on Earth. 'One of the main computers that the Goddard team has been struggling with during the repair attempts runs on an Intel 486 chip, the height of 1989 technology.' Many of NASA's long-running missions rely on antiquated systems — the Voyager probes each have about 32k of memory — but the scientists say they can manage."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Feeeeliiiinngs, Wooa wooa wooa feeeeeliiings.. wooa wooa wooa".... Stunt artist broadcasts feelings during parachute jump Modern Mechanix 1935.

ALL the thrills of parachute jumping with none of its perils were recently experienced by spectators and radio listeners when Maximilian Skupin, stunt artist, broadcast his sensations while falling through space over the airport at Staaken, Germany.

In one hand Skupin held a short wave antenna composed of three metal blades criss-crossed to form a hexagon. Around his waist were strapped two carrying cases containing the transmitter and batteries. A small microphone similar to the mouthpiece used by switchboard operators was suspended just below his mouth. Skupin’s body served as a counterpoise, or ground, for the unique experiment.

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BB pal Nate Tyler has been working on the Obama campaign in Pennsylvania for the last few weeks. He's in Scranton, and he shares this with us:

We just came across this amazing artist in rural PA who, with a group of local artist friends, painted a large-scale replica of the Obama Hope poster in his field. I was just out there and it's pretty amazing.

Field of Hope (my.barackobama.com)

Remote Impact - Shadowboxing over a distance via Waxy.

Remote Impact is a "Sports over a Distance" game that provides a full body contact experience between geographically distant players. The game encourages extreme physical exertion and, unlike the Nintendo Wii and other console games, it recognizes and registers intense brute force. The physical intensity of the game contributes to general fitness, weight loss, and stress relief at the same time it allows you socialize and create new friendships over a distance in an entertaining sportive way.

Current widespread telecommunication technologies can support generic messaging and business-oriented tasks, but they do not adequately support opportunities for building a trust relationship between distant colleagues. On the other hand, traditional contact sports like football, rugby, and martial arts are well known for their effectiveness in social bonding and teambuilding. Remote Impact aims to provide these benefits to participants who are in different places.

A life-sized silhouette of the remote participant is projected on the interface, which resembles a mattress standing against a wall. A unique sensing system measures the location and intensity of each impact. Players can punch, kick, or throw their entire bodies against their projected opponent, and the system recognizes when there has been a hit or a miss. Players can dodge hits by ducking or moving out of the way, just as in real sports. More points are scored by hitting your opponent harder. At the end of a specific time interval, the player with the most points wins. Players can also talk to and hear each other through a voice connection between the locations.

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This fellow is selling a boat load of Votomatic III punch-card machines from the 2000 election. Only $75 and would likely make a cool case mod for a PC via 27B Stroke 6.

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Well, this seems like an incredibly bad idea. Apparently a company called SpeedDate that does (you guessed it) online speed dating has purchased the rights to the Facebook application Oregon Trail. Now, if you're of a certain age (and a computer geek) you probably remember Oregon Trail as an awesome game from the 80s ("you have died of dysentery"). I'm sure plenty of nostalgic folks installed Oregon Trail and had fun dying repeatedly of dysentery, but apparently SpeedDate didn't buy the rights to Oregon Trail to let people play Oregon Trail, but as a sort of trojan, by which they plan to replace everyone's install of Oregon Trail with their own SpeedDate Facebook app. The SpeedDate guys claim that there's a more popular Oregon Trail game (called Northwest Trail), but it still seems rather sleazy to take an app that people installed and swap it out for something entirely different.

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Lovely photo - anatomical drawings of Japanese movie monsters via Pink Tentacle.

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Oprah Winfrey enthused about the Amazon Kindle on her show today — it's her "new favorite thing" — and had Jeff Bezos on to announce a $50-off offer good till Nov. 1. A plug on Oprah is ordinarily a sign that a product has crossed over into the mainstream. But her show's audience has been slipping lately, and it's unclear how many cash-strapped citizens will be willing to part with $309 (after the special offer) for a new techno-gadget, for which they then have to shell out more money for DRM-encrusted content.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[Photos by Lenore, EMS Labs]

There's a saying that I like, that I've used in several instances (such as in the intro to the Maker's Notebook): "Keep modeling difference." In cybernetics, difference is information (information is "news of difference"). Difference is change, difference is an antidote to stasis, difference is where learning takes place. Last year, I titled my Dorkbot DC presentation about Maker Faire Austin '07: A World of Difference, because I realized that that's what we trade in at these fairs: so much creative, outside the box, innovative thinking that serves as an antidote to mainstream Blob culture. You can't come away from these fairs without being changed, without being inspired to reach beyond yourself, if even just a little.

At every Maker Faire, the MAKE editors are given the honor of presenting Editor's Choice Blue Ribbons to their ten favorite things at the fair. I always try and give away a few ribbons to makers who I think are painting outside the lines of Maker Faire itself. There's always the risk of difference becoming the same (if you know what I mean). So, one of my "marching to the tune of their own drummer" awards this year went to Kris and Carly DeGreave.

Walking through the Show Barn on Sunday late afternoon, tired and hungry, Blue Ribbons in hand, I came upon a table with a Monopoly board and some electrified chotzky on it. Sitting behind it were two lovely young women wearing impressive amounts of pink (including their hair) and plastic bling. They looked like punk cheerleaders, living Cute Overload. I would later discover that one of them, Carly, uses the handle dresslikecake on Flickr. That sums them up to a T. Kris and Carly dress like cake! I looked over the stuff on their table as they described it to me. The Monopoly board had working street lights on it and squares that lit up when your playing pieces landed on them and complete the circuit. They also had fiber-optic porcupines(?) on the table and some other fun, crafty electronics projects.

"Are you guys part of some school or group,?" I asked, not sure how these two fit in. "No," Carly said, "we just do this for fun!" I looked down at their Faire placard and read that they are sisters. "Wait, you two are sisters and you sit around doing electronics projects, just for fun?" I looked into a spangled sea of candy-colored cuteness and two bright, satisfied smiles. "Oh you guys are SO getting a Blue Ribbon!," I exclaimed, as I fetched my next-to-last one from the envelope. They might not have had the most innovative or complex or time-consuming projects at the Faire, but they certainly were modeling mad amounts difference.

So, here's to girly-girls who do electronics, manly-men who craft and sew, housewives who take up welding, conservative types who build wacky art cars, left-brained people who take up art, right-brained people who explore math and engineering, and anyone else who strives to keep learning and changing, living outside the lines and transcending perceived limitations. Because difference does make a difference.

Kris and Carly's Super Magnificent Blog

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Beardyman demonstrates what's possible using today's delay/looping gear and little else - all in one take. [via Synthtopia]

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Rob MacKenzie writes "I have to decide on a mobile phone to develop for. We're building a house with some automation built in, and we want the mobile phone to be able to control certain aspects of it, and retrieve information on what's going on in the house. Our choices are the usual suspects: Apple's IPhone, RIM's Blackberry, Nokia's line (Symbian), any Android phone we can get in Canada, J2ME generic app, or a Web-based UI we would interact with in the phone's browser. What would you choose if you had to go with one? Which exact model? We will be buying a few to develop for, so price is a bit of an issue."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rob MacKenzie writes "I have to decide on a mobile phone to develop for. We're building a house with some automation built in, and we want the mobile phone to be able to control certain aspects of it, and retrieve information on what's going on in the house. Our choices are the usual suspects: Apple's IPhone, RIM's Blackberry, Nokia's line (Symbian), any Android phone we can get in Canada, J2ME generic app, or a Web-based UI we would interact with in the phone's browser. What would you choose if you had to go with one? Which exact model? We will be buying a few to develop for, so price is a bit of an issue."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For many years, we've wondered about how new technologies may start to change the nature of friendship. In the past, friends would come and go over time, as friendships grew and receded during different stages of life for different reasons -- and that was fine. But in an age where everyone is connected electronically all of the time, and whether or not someone is a "friend" is a binary decision set at the click of a mouse, some are pointing out that it seems weird that social networks are setting up people to remain "friends" forever, even if they're not still friendly in real life.

Of course, it appears that much of this is actually mitigated by social norms and the rapid turnover of social networks. So, for example, while I've recently had many high school friends "refriend" me on Facebook, and I may chat briefly with those I really was friendly with, I pretty much ignore those that I barely knew. Sure they're on my "friend" list, but beyond that, it's rather inconsequential. But, more importantly, with social networks rising and falling rapidly, we seem to have a natural culling mechanism. So, all those friends I was connected to via SixDegrees and Friendster are meaningless now because I never use those services any more, and at some point the same will likely be true for Facebook.

Still, in the link above, Scott Brown does offer one amusing suggestion: a Facebook app that he calls the "Fade Utility." If there are "untended friends," they gradually fade from your friend list. Just like in real life.

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Matt had a great idea for expanding the usefulness of a servo motor - use it as an input device allowing one to record the motors position.

I thought this would be pretty fun; by reading the voltage from the center pin of the the servo’s potentiometer, it can be used as an input as well as an output device. Basically, you get a bunch of extra positional sensors ‘for free’.

In the above demo he uses the strategy to record and playback 'keyframes' with an Arduino - very cool! - Servo as input device [via Electronics-Lab]

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coondoggie sends in a Network World piece that begins "The Air Force laid out $29 million in contracts this week to build space-based sensors that could detect threats or hazards and protect satellites in orbit. Assurance Technologies and Lockheed Martin Space Systems will split $20 million of the two-year contract that the Air Force says should ultimately demonstrate a viable sensing capability, as well as integration with other space systems to offer threat and hazard detection, assessment and notification... The Air Force is looking to protect satellites from ground based lasers or anti-satellite missiles mostly."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jenny @ CRAFT writes:

Craftster user Summerswann scored a vintage card catalog at the thrift store ($7! Can you believe it?!) and turned it into a stylish coffee table with a bit of elbow grease and a few table legs. Great makeover!

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trackpick points out a recent ACLU initiative to publicize a recent expansion of authority claimed by the Border Patrol to stop and search individuals up to 100 miles from any US border. They have created a map of what they call the US Constitution-Free Zone. "Using data provided by the US Census Bureau, the ACLU has determined that nearly 2/3 of the entire US population (197.4 million people) live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders. The government is assuming extraordinary powers to stop and search individuals within this zone. This is not just about the border: This 'Constitution-Free Zone' includes most of the nation's largest metropolitan areas.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There are all sorts of annoyances associated with mobile phones, but apparently the biggest one remains the fact that people talking on mobile phones seem so prone to do so loudly, greatly disturbing those around them. A recent study found that loud mobile phone talkers were considered a bigger nuisance than things like answering a phone at the dinner table or having a really annoying ringtone. The company that put on the survey notes that people should remember to move away from noisy areas when on the phone, and should try to find a quieter place to talk. I also wonder if better speakers, to hear who you're talking to more clearly, combined with adding or improving sidetone (the ability to hear yourself through the phone's speaker) on mobile phones would go a long way towards decreasing mobile phone yelling.

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Great venue, clever name, and groovy flyer:

I'm there. Hope to see you and your projects, too!

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Heather Camlot reviews Syuzi Pakhchyan's Fashioning Technology in Microsoft Home Magazine:

I received a new craft book this week. When I saw the cover -- a photo of a woman with rock star headphones and the title Fashioning Technology (O'Reilly, 2008) -- I knew the book wasn't going to be your typical Holly Homemaker tome.

Syuzi Pakhchyan -- artist, roboticist and teacher -- subtitles her book "A DIY intro to smart crafting." Smart refers to the types of materials used, including fibre optics, phosphorescent powder, LED lights, capacitors and cell phone flashers.

And the 12 projects she crafts, from a Space Invaders tote to the LED chandelier and photochromatic blinds, are real geek chic.

"Smart materials and electronics have opened an exciting new world of possibilities for traditional crafting," Pakhchyan explains in the enclosed press release. "With this new palette of materials, we can now create objects infused with magical and mysterious qualities."

From the Maker Shed:

Buy Fashioning Technology by Syuzi Pakhchyan in the Maker Shed today!

This book demonstrates how to blend sewing and assembly techniques with traditional electronics to assemble simple circuits using conductive thread, solder joints for snaps, and switches for buttons. With the sewing machine as a viable substitute for the soldering iron, you can craft a new generation of objects that are interactive, quirky, and fashion-conscious.

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bednarz writes "Scientists have demonstrated what is being called the 'ultimate miniaturization of computer memory,' storing data for nearly two seconds in the nucleus of an atom of phosphorus. The hybrid quantum memory technique is a key step in the development of quantum computers, according to the National Science Foundation. An international team of scientists demonstrated that quantum information stored in a nucleus has a lifetime of about 1¾ seconds. 'This is significant because before this technique was developed, the longest researchers could preserve quantum information in silicon was a few tens of milliseconds. Other researchers studying quantum computing recently calculated that if a quantum system could store information for at least one second, error correction techniques could then protect that data for an indefinite period of time.'" Here's the NSF press release with pictures of the apparatus. They claim that this technique is promising because it "uses silicon technology" seems a bit of a stretch — the silicon the researchers employed was a painstakingly grown crystal of extremely high purity.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

bednarz writes "Scientists have demonstrated what is being called the 'ultimate miniaturization of computer memory,' storing data for nearly two seconds in the nucleus of an atom of phosphorus. The hybrid quantum memory technique is a key step in the development of quantum computers, according to the National Science Foundation. An international team of scientists demonstrated that quantum information stored in a nucleus has a lifetime of about 1¾ seconds. 'This is significant because before this technique was developed, the longest researchers could preserve quantum information in silicon was a few tens of milliseconds. Other researchers studying quantum computing recently calculated that if a quantum system could store information for at least one second, error correction techniques could then protect that data for an indefinite period of time.'" Here's the NSF press release with pictures of the apparatus. The claim that this technique is promising because it "uses silicon technology" seems a bit of a stretch — the silicon the researchers employed was a painstakingly grown crystal of extremely high purity.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Our good friends over at spooky blue have some great Halloween projects and this is no exception. Using some simple tools and materials you can make a kick-ass "toe pincher" coffin for your Halloween party or Haunted House.

Need some inspiration besides my great posts ;-) Then why not pick up a copy of the MAKE Halloween issue from our store.

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The latest MAKE: Weekend Project video guides you in the creation of an old-school Battlestar Galactica Cylon pumpkin complete with the scanning LED eye.
Cylon Jack O' Lantern

LAST NIGHT, I was talking to some people in our nation's capital about THE BATTLE OF GALACTICA.

(I was talking to them the way I normally talk to people, BEHIND A PODIUM, USING A MICROPHONE.)

As I trust you recall, this was a dark ride on the Universal Studios Tour in the early eighties that was ENTIRELY NON FICTIONAL, and which I visited when I was a human child. The ride was a BSG 1.0 tie-in in which your Universal Studios tram is captured by Cylons who apparently are attempting to invade the San Fernando Valley. They then hold your tram hostage in a makeshift space station, shooting their lasers around until you are rescued by two Colonial Warriors.

(WHY do these trams get into so much trouble? The answer is unknown.)

As I stressed to the people of Washington, it is important to know that the Colonial Warriors were not animatronic -- they were played by ACTUAL HUMAN ACTORS. (The Cylons, by contrast, were indeed animatronic, which I guess is another way of saying they were played by ACTUAL INHUMAN ROBOTS).

BUT: what I did not discover until years later, as I was piecing together my strange memories of this attraction via internet, was that these actors NEVER SPOKE. Instead, their lines were pre-recorded years before, presumably by other, better actors, and played over a loudspeaker -- a weird kind of torture which makes the ride now seem much more scary.

RECENTLY I discovered some amazing behind the scenes videos of the ride, presumably shot by these very actors, including one in which you actually follow along behind a Colonial Warrior as he runs through the ride doing his weird space mime, gesturing his head as though he were speaking. See "Following a Hero" -- the video portion begins after a series of stills.

I AM ESPECIALLY FOND of the video of the Battle of Galactica break room called "Back Stage at Battle of Galactica." See if you can spot the barbell, the completely incongruous map on the wall, and the man dressed as a Colonial Warrior writing a letter home. A letter which presumably contains only the word "WHY?" written over and over and over.

AS AN accidental TV personality and wholly fraudulent "actor," I often enjoy looking at this video whenever my head gets too big (usually at 10AM, and then again at 4PM).

MANY THANKS INDEED to Dale Long of byyourcommand.net, which is pretty much your one stop shop for BATTLE OF GALACTICA photos and videos.

That is all.

We Americans sure do love filing lawsuits for just about any reason. The latest is a guy who has sued AOL for putting text ads in his email messages, claiming that because he pays for his AOL account (that might be his first mistake), these ads are "fraud, unjust enrichment" and a violation of California business codes. He's trying to turn it into a class action lawsuit as well. Here's another suggestion: switch your email account. Hopefully this gets thrown out quickly.

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Homncruse sends in news of Bill Gates's new adventure, adding "I was working just one or two floors under this new office when it was all coming together. I even unknowingly shared an elevator with him at one time on his way up to the office." The article notes that the name "bgC3" derives from Bill Gates, catalyst, and the "third thing," neither Microsoft or the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "Just months after his Microsoft farewell, Bill Gates is quietly creating a new company — complete with high-tech office space, a cryptic name and even its own trademark. Public documents describe the new Gates entity — bgC3 LLC — as a 'think tank.' It's housed within a Kirkland office that the Microsoft co-founder established on his own after leaving his day-to-day executive role at the company this summer... However, bgC3 will also oversee Gates' personal pursuit of breakthrough ideas in science and technology. [An] insider said the goal isn't necessarily to create new companies, although ideas could be passed along to Microsoft, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — or others — as it makes sense..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yesterday's initial exploration of EC2 was a success. I have a server running in Amazon's cloud. It was up overnight. Still there the next day, exactly as I left it.

I was able to get Firefox installed and run a few performance tests of the net connection. Nothing that would blow you away, but enough for a modest server. There must be a way to up the bandwidth, but that's not a concern right now.

The next thing to learn how to do is: 1. Save my work so in case the server crashes I can restart it, and... 2. Reserve an IP address for the server, so I can map a domain name to it, and so that others can talk to the server over the Internet as you would any server. Eventually I will run scripting.com in the Amazon cloud, at least that's the plan right now.

As before, I'm just going to narrate my work here, and ask any questions I have here, and if they get resolved, provide the answers.

First question is whether the AMI that I create from my instance is private. I haven't entered any passwords into the Firefox install, so I'm not really risking anything. I guess I'm wondering whether I should install my server software in the AMI or in a disk image that gets mounted by the instance when its launched. My guess is the latter. Though I really would like to create a public AMI that has my server software built into it. This is one of the things I find really exciting, that I can create turnkey servers that other people can operate on their own, without me having to nurse the servers.

I put together a cheat sheet that summarizes the steps to creating an AMI from an instance.

I'm now bundling an AMI from my instance. I feel like I'm beginning to master the jargon!

Also bundling seems to be really slow. It's been stuck at 3% for about five minutes now.

Great news from Adam Simon via twitter:

iPhone NDA officially dead, swanky new developer forums are available in beta: https://devforums.apple.com

via Daring Fireball, here's a writeup on the details of the NDA: Are the iPhone APIs public yet?

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Bill Geerhart says:

Pamphlet review of 1948's "Behind the Lace Curtains of the YWCA" written by Joseph P. Kamp, an uncle of Jon Voight and a great uncle of Angelina Jolie.

Scroll all the way down to see the insane cover.

Paranoid Delusions of Angelina Jolie's Great Uncle

Kathe Koja is two of the finest writers I've ever read. Two, because she's had two careers: first as they doyenne of a lurid and literary horror subgenre they called "splatterpunk," a literary movement that she defined with books like The Cipher, which combined intensely poetic language and lavish grotesqueries.

Then there's the other Koja, the young adult writer whose debut YA, Straydog, showed us a very different kind of writer, whittled down to the bone, spare and simple like watching Astaire dance, books of deep alienation and hard redemption that made me remember exactly what it had been like to be a kid on the outside.

Kathe's a friend of mine, and I once lamented to her the loss of that first writer, the lavish and poetic Koja, and she said that she didn't really miss it, didn't plan on bringing those old splatterpunk books back into print (I immediately bought a second set of them used and carefully hoarded them). She then went on to describe the manifold rewards of writing for younger audiences, describing an experience so intense and rewarding that I ended up writing a young adult novel myself: Little Brother.

I've just finished reading Kathe's latest: Headlong, and now, it seems, Kathe Koja is just one writer again, a superb amalgam of the two Kojas I love to read so much.

Headlong is the story of Lily, a privileged girl at an exclusive prep school where she is a multigenerational legacy whose past and future are both utterly circumscribed by the expectations around her.

It is a good life, but it is not good to her. Lily isn't right for the life and the life isn't good for her, and she's trapped by it until Hazel arrives at her school. Hazel is an orphan, raised in New York by her brother who is now a successful photographer. Hazel is planning on flunking out of the school within a year, and her wildness opens something in Lily.

All this is told with many changes in time and point of view, and with the poetry that I remember from the first incarnation of Kathe Koja, but perfectly, perfectly synthesized with the second coming of Koja, spare and severe. These two voices, combined so well, become a laser for slicing open Koja's characters and revealing their souls in a series of explosive little scenes and sentences, each more evocative than the last.

You won't find a truer account of the oppressive weight of expectation and the liberating power of breaking free, rushing headlong into the dark and denying the safe and the known, nor of the intensity of adolescent friendship. Koja is one of the treasures of fiction, and of young adult fiction especially, and if you haven't read her, you really should.

Headlong

See also:
* Kids' lit renaissance, don't miss Koja!
* Going Under: moving kids' novel

Seen above, the gun heel from the Chanel Cruise 2009 collection. Chanel Gun Heel (Thanks, Michael-Anne Rauback!)

Cool looking photos of the body scanners the TSA is using in airports. Wouldn't this one be a great radioactive extraterrestrial for a scary movie? TSA body scanner images

A giant Golden Orb Weaver spider caught a chestnut-breasted mannikin bird in its web and made a leisurely lunch on the bird. The photo was snapped in a backyard in Cairns, Queensland, Australia. From the Cairns Post:

"Normally they prey on large insects, it's unusual to see one eating a bird," (said head spider keeper Joel Shakespeare at the Australian Reptile Park.)

Mr Shakepeare told ninemsn he had seen golden orb weaver spiders as big as a human hand but the northern species in tropical areas were known to grow larger...

"(The spider) wouldn`t eat the whole bird," he told ninemsn.

"It uses its venom to break down the bird for eating and what it leaves is a food parcel," he said.

Spider eats bird (Thanks, Jennifer Lum!)

NdJ writes "Looks like a whole new domain name battle ground is about to open up. ICANN have just made available their How to Apply for a New Generic Top-Level Domain Draft Applicant Guidebook. It won't be cheap for the individual but certainly achievable for many domain-name-pimps. 'The Evaluation Fee is designed to make the new gTLD program self-funding only. This was a recommendation of the Generic names Supporting Organization. A detailed costing methodology — including historical program development costs, and predictable and uncertain costs associated with processing new gTLD applications through to delegation in the root zone — estimates a per applicant fee of $US185,000. This is the estimated cost per evaluation in the first application round.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Several students at Parkway West Middle School in suburban St. Louis are facing suspension for inventing "Hit A Jew Day," during which they smacked Jewish students.

District officials said Thursday they believe that fewer than 10 children of the district's 35 Jewish students were struck.

District spokesman Paul Tandy said that in most cases, the students were hit on the back of their shoulders but one student was slapped in the face.

It began with an unofficial "Spirit Week" among sixth-graders that started harmlessly enough with a "Hug a Friend Day." Then there was "High Five Day."

Soon, though, the days moved from friendly to silly. Next there was "Hit a Tall Person Day" and, finally, "Hit a Jew Day."

"Mo. students face punishment for 'Hit a Jew Day'" (Thanks, Gil Kaufman!)

Nej. Ja.

(Via Lemonodor Auxiliary)

You may recall the story last year of a Russian school principal who was arrested for buying computers for his school that had counterfeit versions of Windows. Even though he had no idea that the software was not authorized, he was threatened with being sent to a Siberian prison (seriously), leading to some international outrage. Even Mikhail Gorbachev got involved, begging Microsoft to drop the case (unfortunately, Microsoft wasn't actually involved in the case and couldn't do anything). While the original case was dropped, many were surprised when the charges were refiled and the guy was found guilty. While he wasn't sentenced to a Siberian jail, he was fined over one-month's salary.

Of course, if Microsoft and the BSA thought that these sorts of moves would help deter piracy, they might want to adjust their thinking.

What happened instead, of course, was that many schools started looking into alternatives, such as Linux and other open source offerings, that came with a much lower likelihood of having them dragged into court and threatened with Siberian exile. And, the latest news (found via Slashdot) is that Russia has now made it official policy that all schools should use free software. If they want to use proprietary software, they can't use gov't funds to buy it.

It seems that all that "cracking down" on piracy worked wonders, huh? It sent the entire Russian school system directly into the hands of the competition. Good work.

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niktemadur writes "The BBC reports that a French team of stellar seismologists, using the COROT Space Telescope, have converted stellar oscillations into sound patterns, a relatively new technique that, according to Professor Eric Michel of the Paris Observatory, is already giving researchers new insight into the inner workings of stars. The subtly pulsating, haunting sounds are very similar to artist Aphex Twin's minimalistic nineties album 'Selected Ambient Works, Vol. 2,' only stripping away what little melody it had and leaving just the beat. These and many more recordings from space can be accessed at the Jodrell Bank Center for Astrophysics website, also known as the Jodcast."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

William Smith, an online bookseller and blogger at Hang Fire Books, acquired a stack of old Sexology magazines. Sexology was one of publisher Hugo Gernsback's many titles (his most famous being Amazing Stories). Here's an illustration using obelisks to compare the difference between the "auto-erotic act" and the "normal marital act."

You can easily see--through the dramatic difference in "the height and girth of the obelisk[s]"--that the "gratification derived from the auto-erotic act is only about 60% as much as that of the normal marital act". But hey, I'm an obelisk half-full kind of guy.

Obelisks of Erotic Gratification from 1930s Gernsback magazine, Sexology

Over at NYT finance correspondent Floyd Norris' excellent blog, a snip from a terrifying report out today from The Jerome Levy Forecasting Center at Bard College. Norris says they've "Been among the most worried — and therefore, most accurate — forecasters over the past several years." Dear God, I hope they are wrong.

Most investors, businesses, and analysts, despite their deep pessimism about the consumer outlook, will be surprised by the length and severity of the consumer pullback.

The public is starting to discover the seriousness of the state and local fiscal position, but the magnitude and fallout of the developing nonfederal government crisis will prove shocking.

Many fear that the present financial mess is setting the stage for surging Treasury yields, and most will be surprised by how low yields will fall. . . .

House prices will probably fall another 20%. . . .

The emerging market sector of the global economy is facing more than a financial crisis; it is facing a depression, which unfortunately is likely to be uncontained and severe in many countries. . . .

Even if the recession does end before 2010, employment will continue to decline. It is likely to fall for another year or two as downsizing and restructuring persist. The unemployment rate is likely to reach 8.5% by the end of 2009 and will be near 10% before it reverses.

United Panic (Floyd Norris Blog, New York Times)

My friend Jim Munroe's just adapted his fantastic slideshow, "Time Management for Anarchists" into a free, Creative Commons-licensed comic:

Time Management for Anarchists, a comic offering productivity tips for creative malcontents, has just been released as a Creative Commons licenced free download.

In a timeshifted Toronto, political firebrand Emma Goldman is paying the rent as a graphic designer… just a few cubicles down from like-minded radical Mikhail Bakunin.

She’s been sneaking in her own projects at work.

He’s her reluctant manager.

The tension is mounting...

The Time Management For Anarchists comic (Thanks, Jim!)

See also: Time-management for anarchists from a productive anarcho-geek

Check out this cool DIY project that requires your kid to help out on. Okay not requires but does look like it makes a cool family project. It's called the 6 minute DIY superhero cape.

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Scientists at the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium found a cute deep-water squid that looks like a fat little cartoon piggie:

Piglet Squid, Helicocranchia pfefferi: This funny looking squid is about the size of a small avocado and can be found most commonly in the deepwater (greater than 100 m or 320 ft) of virtually all oceans. Its habit of filling up with water and the funny location of its siphone with a wild-looking 'tuft' of eight arms and two tentacles had prompted scientists to name it the piglet squid.

Piglet Squid (Science Blogs, thanks Emeka Okafor)

On the Freedom to Tinker blog, Timothy Lee explores the irrelevance of the economic notion of "free riding" when it comes to many kinds of online collaboration. As Lee notes, many thinkers on this subject have talked about how projects like Wikipedia "overcome" the free-rider anxiety (the idea that someone else will benefit from your labor without having to contribute to it), but that's not quite right: when someone else's enjoyment of your labor costs you nothing, and buys you fame, then you don't have a free-rider problem at all:

The second problem with the "free riding" frame is that it fails to appreciate that the sheer scale of the Internet changes the nature of collective action problems. With a traditional meatspace institution like a church, business or intramural sports league, it's essential that most participants "give back" in order for the collective effort to succeed. The concept of "free riding" emphasizes the fact that traditional offline institutions expect and require reciprocation from the majority of their members for their continued existence. A church in which only, say, one percent of members contributed financially wouldn't last long. Neither would an airline in which only one percent of the customers paid for their tickets.

The Trouble with "Free Riding"

Scott Carney, an investigative journalist and WIRED contributor based in Chennai, India, has an amazing story out in this month's issue about mob bosses in Bangalore who are in cahoots with the IT industry:

Since the beginning of India's IT boom Bangalore has been the darling of globalization pundits and and development dreamers. The gist, as Thomas Friedman articulates it, is that the world is flattening so that workers and companies can compete for opportunities from anywhere on the planet. Bangalore, of course, is the shiniest example of globalization's success. However, what has been occluded from the discussion is how the massive investments and capital flows into Bangalore have also contributed to the rise of a powerful and violent mafia. Bangalore's economy is growing much faster than its judicial, regulatory and enforcement systems. The gap has proved to be fertile ground for an unregulated, informal and often criminal systems to fill the space.

In this month's issue of WIRED magazine I wrote a story called "The Godfather of Bangalore" where I showed how underworld dons have taken control of many of the city's land dealings by providing an alternate judicial system to mediate land claims. There is no easy way to solve a land dispute in India. Inherited parcels are often contested by dozens of semi-legitimate claimants and court cases routinely take 15 years to come to a judgment. But the pace of land development is relentless, and companies and wealthy individuals don't want to wait for the wheels of justice to finish, they want immediate resolutions.

Link to post on Scott's blog with more background on the story, and read it in entirety here: The Godfather of Bangalore (Wired).

ElementC writes "Sometime yesterday Nintendo uploaded the latest Wii system update. This update quietly patches a few bugs that allowed the installation of both homebrew and warez apps. Currently installed apps such as the Homebrew Channel and the video DVD library, DVDX, are reportedly not affected. Those not installing this update are blocked out of the Wii Shop channel and in the future may be blocked out of certain games. Team Twiizers cracked the last update within about eight hours. They're already on the case. Readers familiar with the architecture of the Wii will find the list of currently discovered changes interesting."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's been plenty of criticism over eBay's feedback system over the years, and recently the company famously stopped allowing sellers to give feedback, since many sellers were using it as a weapon to force buyers to give good feedback, or risk getting bad feedback themselves. However, the latest outrage over eBay's feedback system seems a bit silly. A seller in the UK is suing a buyer for libel for his eBay feedback.

In this case, the buyer bought a mobile phone, but was disappointed that the phone was beat up and not the model that was advertised. He complained to the seller, sent it back and asked for a refund -- which was given. However, he then posted feedback saying: "Item was scratched, chipped and not the model advertised on Mr Jones's eBay account." From the sound of things, this was accurate. The seller, unfortunately, seemed to think that because he refunded the purchase, that the feedback was now libelous. It's hard to see how he has much of a case (even in the UK where libel laws are much stricter). The feedback was accurate. The fact that the seller agreed to take back the phone and refund the difference doesn't change that.

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Ponca City, We love you writes "The NY Times reports that H211 LLC, a company controlled by Google's top executives, including billionaire founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, appears to have added to its fleet a Dornier Alpha Jet, a light jet attack and advanced trainer aircraft manufactured by Dornier of Germany and Dassault-Breguet of France. The 1982 Alpha-Jet seats two and was originally used by European air forces, but is now being sold relatively cheaply to civilians. The jet has landing rights at Moffett Field, the NASA-operated airfield that is a stone's throw from the Google campus. It is not clear who exactly flies the fighter jet, although Google chief executive Eric Schmidt is an avid pilot. If the top Googlers indeed own the fighter jet, they would be following in the footsteps of Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison, who has owned several aircraft, including fighter jets."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nice laser cut lamp by Steve Watson via NOTCOT. Cut the shapes and use a strip heater / heat gun to bend.

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Street Anatomy posted this awesome (and oddsome) visible anatomy toy modded by PhineasX. (Want!)

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Make an LED scanning Battlestar Galactica Cylon Jack O' Lantern!

Thanks go to Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories for the original article in Make: Halloween
To download Cylon Jack O' Lantern MP4 click here or subscribe in iTunes.

Pick up your copy of the Make Special Edition: Halloween at the Maker Shed.
Over 40 projects for the holiday that's made for makers. From the craftiest costumes to amazing animated props and the latest in computer-controlled haunted house effects.

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Tonight, Austinites can check out a cooperative community event:

In addition to the retro White Ghost Shivers' music, I'm excited to check out the Austin Time Exchange Network, South Austin Food Co-op, and Black Star Co-op...

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Mark Jackson writes "ISPreview reports that 86% of UK broadband users don't understand the usage limits on their service, and nearly one million have reached or exceeded their ISPs limit in the last year. This is important because 56% of major providers are prepared to disconnect those who 'abuse' the service. However, it also shows how damaging bad marketing can be, with 6.2M people believing they have an 'unlimited' service with no restrictions. The UK Advertising Standards Authority is also blamed for making the problem worse by allowing providers to describe their services as unlimited even if there is a usage cap, as long as it is detailed in the small print. However, consumers are none the wiser with over 10 million broadband customers never reading their usage agreements and a further 1.8M not knowing whether they have read it or not. Unsurprisingly 7.5M do not even know their download limit, which is understandable when so few providers clarify it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Make an LED scanning Battlestar Galactica Cylon Jack O' Lantern!

Thanks go to Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories for the original article in Make: Halloween
View the PDF

Pick up your copy of the Make Special Edition: Halloween at the Maker Shed.
Over 40 projects for the holiday that's made for makers. From the craftiest costumes to amazing animated props and the latest in computer-controlled haunted house effects.

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Michael Seville's very excellent BBQ/AV trailer won Crutchfield's recent Tailgate Dreams contest. The project is built around a 10-foot long propane tank and is equipped with an LCD TV and an array of speakers. Restoring the tank's trailer after prolonged exposure to the weather was a feat in its own right - nice job!
- 17-Foot Barbeque Grill Trailer [via Gizmodo]

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"Human Pump" by Gunwook Nam attempts to solve the global water crisis by capturing kinetic energy generated by human foot traffic in order to power a large system of pumps to move clean drinking water to the earth's surface in the form of a waterfall. Some very nice renderings of the design at the link below although the resulting water might need a better form of containment than the modeled shower-like output.

Human Pump via Inhabitat

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Amazon has announced several major improvements to its EC2 service for cloud computing. The service is now in production (no longer beta); it offers a service-level agreement; and Windows and SQL Server are available in beta form. ZDNet points out that all this news is intended to take some wind out of Microsoft's sails as MS is expected to introduce its own cloud services next week at its Professional Developers Conference.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There are some out there who have suggested that search engines such as Google and Yahoo are basically just massive copyright violators, because they scan, index and keep an archive of websites. That copied archive (usually called a cache) is, according to these commenters, an unauthorized copy. Now a court has basically destroyed that argument, noting that putting content online is giving an implicit license for search engines to index and copy. The lawsuit also claimed that individuals who visited the cached version were also infringers -- but the court also rejected that argument, claiming that the implied license extends to those users. The only part of the case that seems to be moving forward is whether or not this implicit license was broken after the lawsuit started and search engines still didn't take down the content. The idea there was that any explicit notification by the content holder might override the implicit license -- and thus search engines should have taken down the content as soon as the lawsuit started (thus signaling an explicit revoke of the license). Of course, the whole thing seems pretty silly. If the guy didn't want his content indexed, he should learn what a robots.txt file is for.

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TouchCounters are interactive electronic labels consisting of modular electronic devices with an integrated communication and sensing system. They are attached to physical storage containers in order for someone to get a better idea of what is inside these objects. The project also has a Java component that will relay a container's status and contents to remote users over the Internet. I guess this proves that we don't have any excuse left for not cleaning out our closets.

Touch Counters

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Emiliano shares the his experience building his own keyboard synthesizer, the "Lineal TML 01" -

In 2000, I had many designs and circuits tested, so I desided to put them in a cabinet. I bough a not-working Casiotone in a music store and build a wood cabinet. I put everything inside and hardwired each PCB. I design the front panel too, using MS PowerPoint.

The years till now I introduced many improvements, like a more stable VCOs and a Microcontrolled MIDI Interfase, that also replace some inestable analog circuits, like Transpose and 0800 DAC´s that has a poor performance cause its relative hi error tolerance.

- Lineal TML 01 - Analog Syntheziser [via Matrixsynth]

Arduino Pocket Piano Synth Kit

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Smivs notes a BBC report on a British team planning a 1000-mph record-breaking car. The previous land-speed record broke the sound barrier. The proposed vehicle will get from 0 to 1,050 mph in 40 seconds. "RAF pilot Andy Green made history in 1997 when he drove the Thrust SSC jet-powered vehicle at 763 mph (1,228 km/h). Now he intends to get behind the wheel of a car that is capable of reaching 1,000 mph (1,610 km/h). Known as Bloodhound, the new car will be powered by a rocket bolted to a Typhoon-Eurofighter jet engine. The team-members have been working on the concept for the past 18 months and expect to be ready to make their new record attempt in 2011."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ptorrone writes "Lots of open source hardware articles making the rounds this week, first up — Wired has an excellent piece on the Arduino project, an open source electronics prototyping platform, its founders and business model (they have sold over 50,000 units). And next up MIT's Tech Review has a profile on a few open source hardware businesses including NYC based Adafruit Industries best known for projects like the open source synth (x0x0b0x) and 'fun' projects like the Wave Bubble, the open source cell phone/wifi/GPS/RF jammer."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yesterday on Boing Boing Gadget, it was review Thursday and we flushed our systems clear: Joel posted a thoughtful review of the Android G1 and horrible hair review of an iPod dock while Beschizza reviewed the self-moving chess set he always wanted as a youth. Otherwise, Brownlee's glasses are disgusting, and Korens invent a system of radioactive hamster droppings to help save firefighter lives. A bedside table that breaks apart into bludgeoning weapons will make an excellent gift, although a scanning dictionary the size of an adult forearm would probably not. The new MacBooks can indeed use both GPUs at once, and we looked at rumors that a new Apple device is being spotted in the search engine wild. Beschizza, a shut-in, dreamed of an electric sunset, while Brownlee's inner eight year old squealed for a DVD playing Darth Vader head. There were also boxing robots, industrial Margarita makers and Joel imagining Opera on a Sybian. And, as always, a stop-motion nightmare chicken laid an egg that hatched into a car. Link

These organic-shaped lamp sculptures by artist Pieke Bergmans are made with a unique mechanical process she developed that can be endlessly repeated to create the perfect result. Check out the link to her site below which details this process with some amazing photo essays.

Pieke Bergmans

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The New Scientist has the skinny on the latest salvo in the war on Darwin: a resurrection of Cartesian dualism, with the idea that the brain is a physical object, but the mind that inhabits it is made from some kind of ghostly jesusite-235 that conclusively proves the existence of the Invisible Sky Daddy in a white robe and beard:

Schwartz and Beauregard are part of a growing "non-material neuroscience" movement. They are attempting to resurrect Cartesian dualism - the idea that brain and mind are two fundamentally different kinds of things, material and immaterial - in the hope that it will make room in science both for supernatural forces and for a soul. The two have signed the "Scientific dissent from Darwinism" petition, spearheaded by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, headquarters of the intelligent design movement. ID argues that biological life is too complex to have arisen through evolution.

In August, the Discovery Institute ran its 2008 Insider's Briefing on Intelligent Design, at which Schwartz and Michael Egnor, a neurosurgeon at Stony Brook University in New York, were invited to speak. When two of the five main speakers at an ID meeting are neuroscientists, something is up. Could the next battleground in the ID movement's war on science be the brain?

Well, the movement certainly seems to hope that the study of consciousness will turn out to be "Darwinism's grave", as Denyse O'Leary, co-author with Beauregard of The Spiritual Brain, put it. According to proponents of ID, the "hard problem" of consciousness - how our subjective experiences arise from the objective world of neurons - is the Achilles heel not just of Darwinism but of scientific materialism. This fits with the Discovery Institute's mission as outlined in its "wedge document", which seeks "nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies", to replace the scientific world view with a Christian one.

Creationists declare war over the brain (Thanks, Bill!)

One of the first sites that kicked off the whole "map mashup" craze was Adrian Holovaty's ChicagoCrime, which showed the locations of crimes in Chicago placed on a Google map. The site has since been integrated into Holovaty's startup, EveryBlock. However, the idea of an online crime map is certainly now considered quite a useful concept. Unless, you're the police, apparently. Over in the UK, police are complaining about a proposed online crime map, saying that it will help criminals figure out how to go where the police aren't. Indeed, we've already seen that various police departments use data mining tools to try to predict where new crimes will occur, but it seems a bit overblown to suggest that an online crime map would really be such a problem.

First of all, it assumes that criminals are smart enough to plan out their crimes by going online and seeking out low crime areas ahead of time. While that may be true of a few, it seems unlikely that your average criminal is going to do that. Second, there's usually a reason why crimes cluster in certain areas, and it's not like criminals are suddenly going to run to a new neighborhood because an online map shows there's plenty of (or little) crime there. It seems likely that most criminals in high crime areas already know that it's a high crime area. And, if all these criminals suddenly run to low crime areas, then the police should be able to adjust, right? Worst case, they just send more patrols to the low crime areas, since according to their own logic, that's where the criminals will head. And that, of course, shows the fallacy of the police officers' worries. They know that criminals won't rush to low crime areas, or there wouldn't even be an issue here.

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Becky Hogge of the Open Rights Group sez,

We’ve had about half a dozen returns for tonight’s “Piracy vs Obscurity” event at the Crypt on the Green in Clerkenwell, London, UK - the first date on Neil's UK tour and a special Open Rights Group benefit gig. If you’re a Neil Gaiman fan, and you’d like to attend, email info [AT] openrightsgroup [DOT] org and we’ll try and squeeze you in.

Tickets are £10 (or £5 for ORG supporters) payable in cash on the door. In return you’ll get to hear ORG's illustrious patron talk about piracy from the perspective of the creator, you’ll get to quiz him on his views and work, and you’ll even get the chance to win a copy of his new title The Graveyard Book.

Date: Today!
Time: 1900 for 1930 Place: The Crypt on the Green, St James Church, Clerkenwell, Clerkenwell Close, London EC1R 0EA, UK
Tax: £10 on the door, or £5 for ORG supporters (but NB email info [AT] openrightsgroup [DOT] org to be sure to get your name on the list!)

Come see Neil Gaiman talk in London tonight (Thanks, Becky!)

Duke University's Jennifer Jenkins sez,

Duke University Press has just released an expanded edition of “Bound By Law”, the comic book by three law profs about copyright, fair use, and documentary film. It includes a wonderful new Introduction by BoingBoing’s own Cory Doctorow and Foreword by Oscar-winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, and is freely available under a Creative Commons license.

From Cory’s Introduction: "This is a sensible book about a ridiculous subject. It’s an example of the principle it illustrates: that taking from the culture around us to make new things is what culture is all about, it's what culture is for. Culture is that which we use to communicate.

"The comic form makes this issue into something less abstract, more concrete, and the Duke Public Domain folks who produced this have not just written a treatise on copyright, they’ve produced a loving tribute to the form of comics.

"It’s a book whose time has come. Read it, share it. Get angry. Do something. Document your world."

Bound by Law?: Tales from the Public Domain, New Expanded Edition, Buy on Amazon

* Downloads: High-rez, Low-rez (Thanks, Jennifer!)

See also:
* Copyright comic is now on sale - "Understanding Comics" for copyright
* Comic book brilliantly explains copyright for documentary filmmakers

Matt "Metafilter" Haughey's laid out a 10-point plan for winning the nerd vote that I heartily endorse -- this is a platform I'd stand up and salute if any politician had the guts to endorse it. The points are: Broadband everywhere, universal healthcare, no federal tax on Internet purchases, renewed commitment to education, renewed commitment to science, real changes to transportation, early voting by mail, revamping copyright, a better job from the patent office, and open government.

1. Broadband Everywhere. I want crazy South Korea/Japan style broadband I've heard about for years: 100Mbps (upload and download) fiber connections for less than $50/month with unlimited bandwidth and the ability to run your own servers. I know the US is a big spread out country and it makes this stuff somewhat difficult/costly, but it's an ambitious goal with a ton of payoff. We don't have manufacturing jobs in the US anymore: we don't make things, we don't build things, we don't sew things here, but we do have lots of ideas and inventions.

The economy of the future in the US is going to be intertwined with the internet and if every man, woman, and child in America has all the internet access they could ever need and could quickly program, build, and deploy their own stuff on their own mega-fast lines, we'd have a million and one programmers and designers and crafters and more contributing to a new vibrant future economy. If fiber everywhere is too much, at least get 3G coverage in more places.

How to get my nerd vote

T-Mobile's new Google Android phone, the G1, is not as open as you'd hope -- all the good hardware is sandboxed off from the development environment and requires a signature to run. But hackers are already working to crack open the firmware. From the #android channel on Freenode:

I hacked my camera's firmware manually by using an exploit to cause it to execute arbitrary code - and then blinking out the entire firmware in 0's and 1's on the autofocus LED - read in by a photo transistor attached to a sound cable plugged into my microphone port - and then put back into 0's and 1's...
Then disassembled the ARM9 code in it and worked on porting CHDK to it...
I'm pretty sure having a whole OS at my disposal should make this a lot easier

The T-Mobile G1 — nice phone, but not totally open

These spiders look really simple to build, and the end results are a nice addition to your web-covered house. All the supplies are easy to find and inexpensive, just allow enough time for the paper mache to dry.

Need Some Scary Spiders for your Spider Web? I thought so too! Here is a look at how I made Spiders (like the one pictured here) and Victims to scare the unsuspecting ghouls! Please be prepared this process takes lots of drying time!

Learn more about DIY: Halloween Spiders

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Here's a lovely Instructable from Scoochmaroo, explaining how to make an edible (well, more edible) brain out of a watermelon -- suitable for vegan zombies.

# Slice off bottom of watermelon so it won't roll around.
# Peel green skin off of the watermelon.
# Score brainy folds in white flesh.
# With a sharp paring knife, carve channels out of melon to resemble cortical folds.

Melon Brains (via Make)

Iain sez, "Icelanders hit back at the freezing of assets under terror legislation by the UK Government. Postcards of cute Icelanders in cuter knitwear." Icelanders Are Not Terrorists (Thanks, Iain!)

Does it get any easier than this? What a great way to convert your laptop into a desktop. Check out the instructable for all the details.

All about making a DIY: Laptop Stand Made From a Coat Hanger

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An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the University of Washington have found that RFID tags used in two new types of border-crossing documents in the U.S. are vulnerable to snooping and copying. The information in these tags could be copied on to another, off-the-shelf tag, which might be used to impersonate the legitimate holder of the card." You can also read the summary of the researchers' report.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A virtual team is only as good as the way it operates. In the second part of this video interview, Ken Thompson, team collaboration expert, reasons about the difficulties people encounter when choosing to work in a distributed workgroup and explains further how following the behavior of nature's own biological teams can help your own collaboration workgroup significantly increase its performance. Ken Thompson - Photo credit: Robin Good How do you tell if your team is going to succeed? How can you establish mutual trust and create sincere relationships with your team members? No matter how cool or advanced the collaboration technology used what makes a huge difference is how your team manages and inter-communicates during its day-to-day activities. There are two key approaches every virtual team wanting to operate bioteaming principles should follow:

• Distributed leadership
• Tit for tat

To achieve specific goals, it is a wrong move to count on just one leader, to think there's only a person who can lead the team to victory. Every member should be put in the situation to contribute to the success of her own group. If your favorite soccer team only trusted his captain to score points, would it be a winning team? The other key approach is tit for tat. Tit for tat consists in creating a system of mutual trust among your members. If a member of your group fails at his job, you will explain clearly why she failed and where, and then you will forgive. The benefits of this way to collaborate with people is that you make your teammates never experience a loss of trust, which could ultimately end up with your team starting to work more superficially. Here, the second part of this video interview : (See Part 1 here) Intro by Daniele Bazzano

Work Like Your Soccer Team

One of the things I do is to try and get people thinking differently about teams without even mentioning bioteams. Think of your favorite soccer team, Manchester United, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Arsenal or somebody else, and just imagine that team wants to play... Just imagine if your favorite football team played the way your team in work play, your team in the organization, how would they be differently? And when I talk to people about this they laugh and somebody says:

""well, everybody can only pass the ball to the captain, and only the center forward is the only one in the pitch who can score."

And I say: "if your team played like that would they be top of the league or bottom of the league?" And they all laugh cause they know the team is not going to be as good. And then I say: "well let's look at it in another way." Let's take your work team and say:

"if my work team took some of the rules out of my favorite soccer team. If they played the way Roma play, how would my work team be different? And then would they be a better work team or a worse work team?"

When I do this with people, they start to identify things that actually are the principles of bioteaming. They actually self-identify these principles because I believe they're natural principles, and then we can start developing the theory if we base on some real experience.

Tit For Tat

When somebody approaches you on the Internet how can you really check whether they're going to be good for you? One of the biological principles that is very interesting is a principle called tit for tat and basically tit for tat is nature's most effective way to collaborate. And tit for tat says: if you deal fairly with me, I would deal the same way back with you. However if you do something that I'm not happy with, then I will instantly do something back for you to indicate that I'm not happy but then I will forgive and we'll carry on. So tit for tat is immensely valuable in dealing with someone over the Internet. For example: you ask them to do something for you and they don't do it. The nice approach might be just to forget about it. However the tit-for-tat approach is you say:

"look, I'm not happy with the quality of that work. You need to do that again. Unless you sort that out I don't think we're going to be at a work together."

And then when they do sort that out, you forgive. That's the most important thing about tit for tat. And so I use tit-for-tat extensively trying people out. I do something for them, they do something for me. And we build it up and then you get in a position where you can actually trust them on bigger things.

Something For Robin's Readers

What I would like to say to your many many readers is there's a different way to engage in teams, social networks, virtual teams, and business networks. And we don't have to invent it from scratch, nature has invented it and it evolved for us, and that's highly effective. So I would just ask you to challenge the way you think about your team and your groups, and maybe there's a totally different way to do it.

Learn More About Bioteaming And Best Practices For High-Performance Teams

• Bioteams - High Performance Teams Based on Nature's Most Successful Designs Click above to enlarge image Using the principles of bioteaming, command-and-control leadership gives way to connect-and-collaborate, where every member of an organizational team is a "leader." In nature and in bioteams, leaders don't give commands, they transmit information, trusting the team members' competencies and gaining accountability through transparency. True team leadership is about cooperation, not control. It's about acting on opportunities, and letting others lead the leader when they know best about getting stuff done.


• Virtual Teams And The Bioteaming Approach - A Video Interview With Ken Thompson - Part 1 A virtual team is only as good as the way it operates. No matter how cool or advanced the collaboration technology used what makes a huge difference is how your team approaches the actual day-to-day team operations. Ken Thompson, team collaboration expert, explains in this video interview with Robin Good, how following the behavior of nature's own biological teams can help your own workgroup significantly increase its performance.


• Communication Etiquette For Mobile, Chat And VoIP: How Not To Be Socially Intrusive When Communicating Online Understanding that having voice communications and making calls on the net is not the same as in the physical world, may appear unnatural at first, but it is of critical importance if you want to start positive relationship and be accepted as true digital citizen by your fellow mates.


• Online Collaboration: Microsoft Future Strategy and The Bioteaming Manifesto To be successful, virtual, networked business teams need a strategic framework in which to operate. They also need good planning and in-depth project analysis, effective and accessible technologies, constant coaching, systematic fine-tuning, feedback processes and the full understanding that their success cannot be determined by a pre-designated set of communication technologies by itself.


• Social Network Design: The Network Is A Living System, Design It As Such With the explosion in social software and the recognition that these types of systems need to reach critical mass to survive and prosper it is amazing that so few people seem to be applying the well-established philosophical principles of living systems (autopoiesis) to design for sustainability.



Originally shot and recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on October 24th 2008 as "Virtual Teams And The Bioteaming Approach - A Video Interview With Ken Thompson - Part 2"
About the author Ken Thompson is an expert practitioner in the area of bioteaming, swarming, virtual enterprise networks, virtual professional communities and virtual teams, and has published two landmark books:
• Bioteams: High Performance Teams Based on Nature's Best Designs
• The Networked Enterprise: Competing for the future through Virtual Enterprise Networks
Ken is also founder of an exciting European technology company Swarmteams which provides unique patent-pending bioteaming technologies for all shapes and sizes of groups, social networks, business clusters, virtual / mobile communities and enterprises. Swarmteams enables groups to be more responsive and agile by fully integrating their mobile phones and the web with bioteam working techniques. The latest Swarmteams implementation is SwarmTribes which helps musicians and bands form a unique collaboration with their fans for mutual benefit.

Octopus made from chopsticks (video above) and check out the site... via Buzzfeed.

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Winter just around the bend and you know what that means? It's time to plan you next interactive snow exhibit! Apparently this project was created for a ski resort in Australia. I would love to see this in person!

More about Interactive Snow Projection

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So, yesterday morning, we screwed up and accidentally deleted all the comments on Techdirt. We were able to pull a backup and get back most of them, but we were still missing 11 hours worth of comments from about midnight to 11am. A little while after posting our apology I got an email from Chris Golda, who I'd actually just met a couple weeks ago at a networking event in Silicon Valley. Chris is one of the guys behind BackType, a startup that is a comment search engine. He mentioned that BackType probably had a bunch of the missing comments in its database, and offered to share a data dump. In actuality, it looks like BackType had almost all of the missing comments -- and they've now been restored. The only thing we didn't have were the comment titles, but otherwise most of the missing comments are back.

So, here's a huge thank you to Chris and Mike at BackType for reviving our dead comments. Way to prove the absolute awesomeness of your product. Remember a few months back when we wrote about some silly argument that some bloggers were making about how it was important to determine who owned the copyright on blog comments? At the time, we pointed out how ridiculous that was -- and I think this proves it. Under traditional copyright laws, some might say that BackType violated copyright laws, but in actuality, they provided a huge service to us in doing so.

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I'm going to try and bottle the melted ice and see if I can sell it (capitalism is not dead yet)....

On October 29, 2008, the 79th anniversary of Black Tuesday, the stock market crash that caused the Great Depression in 1929, artists Ligorano/Reese will meltdown the “Economy.” In a new, time-based event, called Main Street Meltdown the artists will install the word “Economy,” carved in ice, in Foley Square, using the New York Supreme Court as a back drop. The event begins on Wednesday, October 29th at 9 AM and will last 24 hours.

The artists chose Foley Square, close to the heart of Wall Street, as the site to focus on the timeliness of the financial crisis in the final week of the presidential campaign. The artists refer to Main Street Meltdown as a “temporary monument.”

The monument measures 15 feet long, 5 feet tall, and weighs almost 1,500 pounds. It is the fourth in a series of ice sculptures by the artists that deal with important political issues. Earlier this year, Ligorano/Reese staged ice sculptures of the word “Democracy” during the Democratic and Republican Conventions in Denver and St. Paul.

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Part of Microsoft's big antipiracy day festivities was to talk about how it was ramping up efforts to crack down on unauthorized copies of its software in China (again, despite the fact that unauthorized copies in China are part of what helped establish Microsoft software as the de facto standard there). The efforts in China include more use of what Microsoft likes to call "Windows Genuine Advantage" -- which is really a DRM system known mostly for falsely accusing legitimate buyers of being pirates. Approximately half a million legitimate buyers were accused of piracy, leading many to suggest that WGA is quite similar to a rootkit, making your computer not function properly, all in the name of stopping piracy.

Over in China, it appears that they're not at all happy about WGA. Last year, a student there sued Microsoft for privacy violations in sending info back to Redmond via WGA, and in response to Microsoft's "get tough on piracy" campaign, apparently a bunch of folks in China are publicly denouncing WGA as being an illegal intrusion on their computers. They're accusing the company of trying to control computers without permission and of "hacking" their systems. Microsoft's response, of course, would be that legitimate buyers have nothing to worry about -- even though that doesn't quite seem to be the case. Still, it's difficult to feel all that sympathetic for the complainers -- as they should have known what they were getting with Windows. If they don't like it, there are other options on the market.

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blairerickson writes "A US firm Thursday unveiled plans to build a massive one-billion-dollar charging network to power electric cars in Australia as it seeks cleaner and cheaper options to petrol. Better Place, which has built plug-in stations for electric vehicles in Israel and Denmark, has joined forces with Australian power company AGL and finance group Macquarie Capital to create an Australian network. Under the plan, the three cities will each have a network of between 200,000 and 250,000 charge stations by 2012 where drivers can plug in and power up their electric cars. The points would probably be at homes and businesses, car parks and shopping centres. In addition, 150 switch stations will be built in each city and on major freeways, where electric batteries can be automatically replaced in drive-in stations similar to a car wash." I hope they're talking to the car companies about the necessary standardization it would take to make this work, too.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While there has been plenty of teeth gnashing by the entertainment industry, it still does appear that The Pirate Bay is legal under copyright laws in Sweden. While there is a trial going on, there is also already plenty of accusations of corruption involved in the trial (the prosecutor had a business relationship with a record label), and many still feel that The Pirate Bay will eventually be vindicated. However, there has been tremendous international pressure (much of it coming from US diplomats, with soundbites written by the US entertainment industry) to get Sweden to change its copyright laws. And, now, apparently some new "antipiracy" legislation is about to be introduced.

The plan is to require service providers to hand over the details on anyone who a copyright holder has "probable cause" to believe is file sharing. How that probable cause is determined remains something of an important open question. Just seeing the IP address shouldn't be enough, but it's not clear if the courts will agree. What will be more interesting is to see how the Swedish citizenry reacts to the introduction of this bill. While it hasn't caught on much elsewhere, the Pirate Party actually does have a decent following in Sweden, and the political party has already expressed its extreme displeasure over the wording of the bill.

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Matt Mets writes:

Mark your calendars! The next meeting will be on Tuesday, October 28th. Tho X. Bui will give an introduction to magnetics and magnetic material, and Bobby Metz will present his homebrew photography ball head. See you there!

Phoenix DIY Meeting 9
Tuesday, October 28th @7PM
North Tempe Community Center

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Filmmaker Ralph Leighton says, "This was the highlight of my recent trip to Vladivostok, Russia, where the film GENGHIS BLUES won the Governor's Prize at the Pacific Meridian Film Festival. It features Tuvan throat-singer ONDAR and the voice of [Nobel laureate and physicist] Richard Feynman. I hope you enjoy it." Back TUVA Future: Ondar in Vladivostok. If you're wondering what the hell Tuva has to do with Feynman, check this out. (Thanks, George Dyson!)

An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Government's plan to Censor the Internet is producing problems for ISPs, with filters causing speeds to drop by up to 86% and falsely blocking 10% of safe sites. The Government Minister in charge of the censorship plan, Conservative Stephen Conroy, has been accused of bullying ISP employees critical of his plan: 'If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd Labor Government is going to disagree.'" Read on for more, including an interesting approach to demonstrating the inevitable collision of automated censorship with common sense.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As Google not-so-eagerly awaits the US Justice Department's word on whether or not it's violating antitrust laws, it appears that the fear of Google-as-a-monopoly is not just a domestic US issue. There are a bunch of headlines about how Russia's antitrust agency has rejected Google's purchase of an ad agency in that country. Technically, the claim is that Google didn't file the proper paperwork, but the agency made it clear that it's worried about Google becoming monopolistic. Of course, as with the Google-Yahoo deal, it's unclear what the "monopoly" is that's being dealt with here or how people are harmed. It seems like this might just be a general "must fear Google" position, than anything based on an actual problem.

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If you're around Berlin, check this out! Artist Stephanie Backes will have her debut solo show at Loop starting Friday, October 24th. Her work suggests delicate futuristic arthropod junk robots, which in our crew is hard not to like. The exhibition's title, Wolkengraber, means "cloudgrabber." Via Cool Hunting.

Wolkengraber
Opening reception: 24 October 2008, 8pm
24 October-13 December 2008
Loop
Jägerstrasse 5
10117 Berlin-Mitte map

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vlad and friend boris presents 'Song for Sarah' for mrs. Palin. (via @andrewbaron)

Earlier this year, I wrote about how too many newspapers thought that adding "community" just meant putting comments on stories. That's not really engaging the community, though. While we've seen a few examples of newspapers doing a better job of really engaging communities, this new story out of Belgium may be one of the best examples so far. A reporter for a newspaper there, De Tijd, had been experimenting with some live blogging solutions, and decided to basically liveblog an editorial meeting where the paper decided how to cover a developing chapter in the financial crisis. While some others in the editorial meeting were nervous about "opening up" their editorial process, it actually was quite useful.

The wider community contributed plenty of useful feedback both on what they hoped the newspaper would cover (which was different than what the editors originally planned to cover), but also in providing more details about what was really important. It gave the journalists there much more insight into the real story, rather than the usual shallow coverage that often comes out of newspaper reporting on a sudden crisis (for example, recognizing that interbank lending -- or the lack thereof -- was a much bigger story than a collapsing stock market). It became truly interactive, with various journalists bouncing ideas off of the community and getting a lot of real time feedback to create a much better product.

Even more interesting was that after the reporter shut down the live chat, many in the group simply organized themselves into an IRC chat room and continued the conversation themselves. It's a fascinating story of how a newspaper embraced an actual community, rather than simply thinking that community was something you add on as a module at the end of the "real journalism."

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The Maker Shed has put together the first in a series of parts collections, called Maker Bundles. Maker Bundle #1 combines all of the electronic components to make four of the beginner-to-intermediate robot projects we've covered in MAKE magazine. For $20 off the cost of buying the parts separately, you get all of the components you need to make the iconic Mousey the Junkbot, two fundamental BEAMbots, a Trimet solar "top" and a SolarRoller, and Jerome Demers's awesome BeetleBot, a robot that uses only switches to create obstacle-avoiding behavior. My article on how to build Mousey can be found in MAKE Volume 02. I covered the basics of BEAM and how to build the Trimet and SolaRoller in MAKE Volume 06. Jerome's BeetleBot article can be found in MAKE Volume 12. You can also get my three project articles in The Best of MAKE collection.

Note that the parts bundles only include the electronic components. You'll need the back issues (or The Best of MAKE) for the build instructions and you'll need to scrounge a few mechanical/structural components, such as a dead computer mouse and some structural material for the SolarRoller and BeetleBot. All of what you need is easily found.

In the Maker Shed:

Maker Bundle #1
Our Price: $55.00
Availability: Usually Ships in 2 to 3 Business Days
We've had several neat projects over the years, and we're proud that Solarbotics has created a cool bundle kit to provide parts for completing them. In this great bundle you'll find what you need to build the Mousey (Make Issue #02), Trimet (Issue #06), SolarRoller (Issue #06), and Beetlebot (#12). Get this bundle and save over $20 compared to buying these kits separately.

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