SnT2k writes "Adobe recently release the beta version of Alchemy which compiles C/C++ code into AS3 bytcode (which runs on AVM2) that can run on the Flash or Flex platform and boasts increased performance for computationally-intensive tasks (but still slower than native C/C++). It was demonstrated last year during the Chicago MAX 2007 to run Quake. A few months later it has been demonstrated to run a Python interpreter and Nintendo Emulator. One interesting tidbit is that the thing is built upon the open source LLVM Compiler Infrastructure."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A court has issued an injunction temporarily banning the sale of a keylogger product called RemoteSpy. The ruling probably makes sense under the current FTC law, but it does raise some questions about whether it really makes sense to ban the sale of such a program, versus just the use of one. I can certainly understand why you might want to ban the sale of such programs, because if they're sold, they're perhaps more likely to be used. However, it still seems wrong to make it illegal to sell some software because that software can be used for illegal activities. Shouldn't the liability belong to those who actually use the software for illegal purposes?

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Looking for a stocking stuffer that you or the giftee will use for years to come? Want to only spend $16 bucks or less? Check out the Pocket Reference collection at the Maker Shed store. These little books are like "Pocket Googles" but you can actually find something with them! No network connection required either! Perfect for the workbench, the school desk, the craft table. I've kept one with me for years, these also appear on the MythBusters when they need to look up something. Super handy and there's even a "MAKE" edition....

Let's get started!

Thomas J. Glover Pocket Reference
We kept asking ourselves, "If there was just one tool that no Maker should be without, what would it be?" This may just be the "tool" we'd pick. This great little book is a concise all-purpose reference featuring hundreds of tables, maps, formulas, constants & conversions, and it still fits in your shirt pocket! Packed with mathematical formula, tables, standard conversion ratios, scientific facts, technical specifications, electric wire size vs. load, resistor color codes, Morse code, sun & planet data, earthquake scales, nail sizes, geometry formulas, currency exchange rates, carpentry, automotive, physical science, water friction losses, charts for battery charging, lumber sizes & grades, floor joint span limits, insulation R values, periodic table, and as they say, much, much more! It's no wonder The Pocket Ref was featured in MythBusters! All the reference information anyone needs on virtually any subject is right at the fingertips in this handy pocket-sized guide. Its tables, charts, drawings, lists, and formulas will be especially useful for contractors, students, travelers, electronics hobbyists, craftspeople, and engineers and technicians in virtually every field.
Price: $12.95

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Blip Festival 2008, a celebration of low-res visuals and chipmusic, hits New York City on December 4. Brandon Boyer has the details and a promo video over at Boing Boing Offworld! Blip Festival 2008: The Promo

A 91-year-old Jersey City woman was conned by a burglar pretending to be a utility company employee. He told her that there was a water emergency and that if she didn't hold down the flusher on her toilet, the house would explode. Meanwhile, he stole almost $4000 in cash from her apartment. From The Jersey Journal:

The man first opened and shut a faucet in the kitchen and then went into the victim's bathroom where he flushed the toilet, reports said.

The man then instructed the victim to "hold down the flush handle or else the house will explode," reports said...

But after about two minutes, the victim told police "I didn't care if the house exploded" and walked into her living-room, at which time she discovered her house had been ransacked, reports said.

"Jersey City senior holds toilet handle while water company impostor ransacks house" (via Fortean Times)

Michael wanted a bike stand, but didn't want to pay, and wanted to use it as a project to build his Computer Aided Design and fabrication skills.

We had been using ProDesktop by PTC, to learn how to design mechanical parts. He was doing the tutorials along with his classmates. He worked out the idea in Lego parts. He studied the existing mechanism available from Park Tools. He designed the individual parts, and made an assembly in ProD. When he had the system Then he took the drawings and laid them out on wood and cut using traditional woodshop tools. The full assembly and process are visible on his wiki.

Michael did this project while he was a freshman or sophomore at Duxbury High School. It showed me both the incredible power of the design process, and the amazing things that can happen when you put powerful design tools into the hands of a motivated student. He is now a Senior in Industrial and Mechanical Engineering at Umass Amherst. Graduate school and a promising career figure are just a few of the things in his future. When he did this project many years ago, I could see many possibilities for the techniques and the student.

How do you use Make and Craft to help teach? Have these publications changed the way you see projects and education? Do you have success stories of students who have created amazing things or gone on to fascinating careers as Designers or Makers? Give them and your program a plug by posting into the comments or adding photos and videos of their work in the Make Flickr pool.

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Ala Ebtekar is a Berkeley-based artist whose fantastic work juxtaposes "street" art and traditional Iranian culture. (Above, detail of this piece.) "In my own work, I'm trying to find a visual glimpse of a crossroad where present day events meet history and mythology," Ebtekar says. Ala Ebtekar site, Video profile on public television's Spark (KQED.org) (Thanks, Heather Sparks!)

Boing Boing Gadgets reader Tucker Cummings bought the Bandai Gun O'Clock and reviewed it for us! He loves it as a novelty, but apparently as an alarm clock it, er, misses the mark. From Boing Boing Gadgets:

The Gun O'clock has all the fun of Duck Hunt on the NES. Which is to say, it's fun, but I wish there was more to do. Both game modes are designed for very short rounds of play, which I found tremendously disappointing.

The clock's display goes to sleep after a few minutes. The backlight turns off, and the numbers turn from red to black, rendering the clock pretty much useless. Clearly, this is not the clock you should buy if you are looking for a useful time piece. But chances are, if you bought this clock, it was for the coolness factor.

And there is plenty of cool to be found.

Bandai Gun O'Clock alarm clock review

raque writes "Appleinsider is reporting that the new MacBooks/MacBookPros have built-in copy protection. Quote: 'Apple's new MacBook lines include a form of digital copy protection that will prevent protected media, such as DRM-infused iTunes movies, from playing back on devices that aren't compliant with the new priority protection measures.' Ars Technica is also reporting on the issue. Is this the deal they had to make to get NBC back? Is this a deal breaker for Apple or will fans just ignore it to get their hands on the pretty new machines? Is this a new opportunity for Linux? And what happened to Jobs not liking DRM?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With the judge agreeing that the information about Megan Meier's suicide can be included in the computer fraud lawsuit against Lori Drew, Drew's lawyers are discovering that the emotional aspects of the case may be difficult to get past. In fact, in reviewing questionnaires that potential jurors were asked to fill out, many expressed outright disgust and "viciousness" for Drew. Once again, it's becoming increasingly clear, that it will be impossible for Drew to get a fair hearing on what the case is actually about: whether or not it's a violation of computer fraud and hacking laws to break the terms of service for an online service. Instead, people are focusing on Meier's suicide, which has absolutely nothing to do with the actual charges. This is a witch hunt appealing to emotional responses, rather than reasoned ones. It's been rather depressing to see how many folks have no problem abusing the law in this manner. If the lynch mob aspect of this case is allowed to go on, it will eventually be looked back on as a mockery of the law.

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Hey Makers, I put together the LED Clock kit today - it took awhile to make but was really rewarding once I got going with it. Obviously the wiring was the hardest part but once you check all your connections and develop a pattern it goes by pretty fast. This kit also taught me a couple of things. One of those was how to tell the polarity of an LED. It all has to do with the length of the legs on the LED. Also I learned firsthand how bring LED's can really be. Unless you just want a clock that appears to be powered by a nuclear power plant inside your house, you will need to cover the clock with a sheet of paper.

All in all although it did take some work I now have a pretty rad LED Clock in my living room now. And I can tell people I hacked it together myself!

As I said before my only warning....would be these LED's are bright....really bright. Check out how they mess with my camera's lens below. If your interested in buying this kit, check out the Maker Shed to order it. More photos after the jump.

Close up of LED Clock Kit in it's box. It all looks so simple with the happy father and his kid looking so content. Will I be so happy at the end of this?

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yanx0016 writes "Wow, that's some news this week at SuperComputing 08. Apparently Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008, with a Chinese hardware OEM (Dawning), made #10 on the Top500 list, edging out #11 by only 600 Gflops. Folks were shocked to see Microsoft getting so serious around HPC; I think we are only beginning to see a glimpse of Microsoft in the HPC field."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On this episode of Bre Pettis' "Things," Adam Mayer shows off the Model 15 teletype machine from the 1930s he's been working on.

Things - Adam Mayer Explains The Teletype Model 15

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The premiere Make: television is 8 weeks away. Here's a snippet of what you'll see in the show -- John Park transforming a shopping cart into a stylish easy chair, and then into a go kart!

Make: television will premiere on Public Television stations and here on www.makezine.tv in January.

Each station programs slightly different schedules, call your Public Television station and ask for "Viewer Services" -- they'll tell you when it will be on.

Let us know what you think in the comments.

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Ray Beckermann is, once again, highlighting some highly questionable activities by the RIAA, noting that after getting defendants to agree to a settlement amount, the RIAA sometimes immediately asks for double the agreed upon amount, and submits that proposal to the court. It's unclear how widely this is happening, but at least in one case, it's good to hear that a judge has prevented the RIAA from getting away with this practice by denying the agreement, noting the different sum than the one agreed to by the parties:

Judge Nancy Gertner: ELECTRONIC ORDER entered re Stipulation To Judgment and Permanent Injunction filed by All Plaintiffs as to defendant LaShaana Straw. "The parties' Stipulation to Judgment is DENIED. Plaintiffs request that the Court approve a Stipulation requiring the Defendant to pay $10,700, yet state in their Response that they have agreed to accept half that amount, $5,350, in full satisfaction of the monetary portion of the proposed judgment. The Plaintiffs do not provide any reason for this highly unusual arrangement, and the Court will not approve a stipulation which fails reflect the actual terms of the agreement. The Plaintiffs must present to the Court a proposed judgment which accurately states the amount the Defendant will be required to pay to settle the claims."

This would be the same judge, by the way, who slammed the RIAA for its questionable legal tactics just a few months ago. You would think that the RIAA would know better than to try to play legal games with Judge Gertner.

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thricenightly writes "After more than 20 years in IT I've learned that the most valuable people in a team are frequently the old timers. Young pups straight out of college might (think they) know all the latest buzzwords and techniques, but in the real world, where getting working products delivered on time and on budget is of paramount importance, people who have been doing the job for a decade or two tend to be the people I'd rather be working alongside. I've recently been elevated to a position where I get to interview and choose those who get hired in my department. Although I'm very much focused on choosing the right person for the role regardless of age, experience or whatever, it's probably fair to say the more mature applicants will get a more sympathetic hearing from me than they might from most other interviewers for IT roles. The question is, what do I ask older applicants to get them to demonstrate the value of their experience? My current gambit is something like 'IT is seen as a young man's game. My next applicant after you is 23 years old. What do you know that he doesn't?' This gets responses ranging from the vague to the truly enlightened. All next week I'm interviewing for a number of senior software designer and developer roles. What should I be asking of the more experienced applicants, and what responses should I be looking out for?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Shmuck Alert is a blog that reports on accounts of people hassling reporters.

Above: Officer Friendly from the Oakland School District Police threatens to "stuff" Oakland Tribune photojournalist Jane Tyska into his cruiser and jail her. If you don't like profanity, cover your ears.

Remind us to watch our elbows next time we're in Oakland! That seems to be all it takes to make the local School District Police Chief go postal! The cop in question is seen hurling invectives and otherwise being a total ass to Oakland Tribune photojournalist Jane Tyska. According to him, the female photog struck his patrol car with her elbow, setting off an on-camera tirade in which he curses her up (and down!), threatens to 'stuff her' in the back of his (fatally-crippled) cruiser and accuses her of trying to incite a riot. Hey occifer, how about a steaming hot cup of 'CHILL THE #&$@% OUT!'? I've seen calmer reactions at school bus collisions...

Schmuck Alert - Potty Mouth Cop (Thanks, Michael!)

Today, Trossen Robotics announces:

Trossen Robotics is proud to be the first in the United States to offer the new MechRC Humanoid Robot! This new ready-to-walk robot is a breakthrough in price to performance. High torque metal gear servos, LiPo batteries for longer run times, a fluid 3D visual software programming interface for easy custom motions, and a remote control unit are included. Everything you need to have you own walking robot is included in this ready-to-walk kit! With over a hundred pre-installed motions and sounds you can get this robot throwing some dance floor shapes or some killer fighting moves straight from the box.

I'd have to spend some time with this bot to see if it's really worth the $600 price relative to, say the I-Sobot, which is only $96 (but obviously doesn't have the sophisticated programming capability of the MechRC, at least not out of the box). Sadly, the I-Sobot has also been discontinued, so get one while you can. The MechRC is definitely cheaper than other fully programmable mini humanoid-type bots, such as the Robonovas and the KHRs, which run in the thousand dollar range.

MechRC

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Thirty years ago yesterday, 900 people living on a commune in Guyana under the religious guidance of Jim Jones killed themselves, or were murdered. The story of Jonestown is an amazingly twisted tale involving faith, trust, charisma, control, and politics. In my opinion, that story has never been synthesized better than in Raven: The Untold Story of The Reverend Jim Jones and His People, just republished this week. Tim Reiterman, the main author of the 1982 book and former San Francisco Chronicle reporter, was investigating the cult for more than a year before the suicides. During a fact-finding mission to Guyana with Congressman leo Ryan, Reiterman was shot by Peoples Temple gunmen. He was injured, but Ryan and several others were killed. That's when all hell broke loose.

As Reiterman points out in his preface to the book, Jones had a sign hanging above his throne with this phrase painted on it: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Indeed. There are still stories from Jonestown waiting to be remembered, and lessons to learn from those stories. Raven: The Untold Story of The Reverend Jim Jones and His People is a good place to start. Also, Xeni will be posting a number of Jonestown related items today so please stay tuned.
Buy Raven: The Untold Story of The Reverend Jim Jones and His People (Amazon), Interview with Reiterman (TIME)

Checklist of things to do with a fresh Apache install to get reverse proxies working (on Windows).

1. Start with apache_2.2.9-win32-x86.nossl.msi, go through normal install. When it asks for domains I entered: twitterland.org, apache.twitterland.org (one of many unused domains I've bought over the years) and my Gmail address.

2. Rebooted the system.

3. Editing httpd.conf. In the default install the full path is:
C:\\Program Files\\Apache Software Foundation\\Apache2.2\conf\\http.conf

4. Uncomment two lines, to activate the proxy module, per advice.

4a. Configure Apache to only listen on port 80 of 67.18.151.42.

5. Restarted server. It works. http://apache.twitterland.org/

6. Added code to map /npr on this server to the OPML Editor (which is running on port 5337). Well, it didn't kill the server, but it's also not mapping to the right place. What you should see is exactly what you see at: http://npr2.twitterland.org:5337/

After a bit of fussing on the OPML Editor side of things, it worked. Thank you everyone for the help and encouragement.

Here's the code I added in step 6.

<IfModule proxy_module>

ProxyRequests On

ProxyPreserveHost On

<Location /npr>

   ProxyPass http:\//npr2.twitterland.org:5337

   ProxyPassReverse http:\//npr2.twitterland.org:5337

</Location>

</IfModule>

I have a bit more work to do, later, to get virtual domains to pass through the proxy, but I've heard that's pretty easy (heh, I'll believe it when I see it).

JTRipper writes "Monty Python seems to have done the right thing. Instead of issuing take down notices of their videos on YouTube, they are doing it better themselves with their own YouTube channel. They are putting all their clips (including snips from their movies) up in a decent resolution, with the only caveat being a link to buying the movies and TV episodes from Amazon."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've discussed the highly questionable activities of UK law firm Davenport Lyons for its supposed campaigns on behalf of various copyright holders. From what we had seen, the firm wasn't particularly interested in actually protecting content from being shared online -- only in threatening as many people as possible with "pre-settlement letters" to get them to pay up to avoid being sued. This certainly feels like what's commonly called extortion, especially, as it came to light that the pre-settlement letters are being sent to many innocent bystanders. Since this is a business model issue (squeezing individuals to pay up) rather than actually being about protecting copyright, it's no surprise that the pre-settlement letters would be sent as widely as possible, even if there was no actual evidence showing guilt.

However, the situation may be even worse than originally suspected. In an article about Davenport Lyons' latest client, TorrentFreak notes that the copyright holder may be contracting with a company to purposely spreading the content on file sharing networks for the purpose of making it easier to find people to threaten with pre-settlement letters. There are a number of different players involved here, but basically, copyright holders are licensing the copyright on various movies to a firm called DigiProtect. DigiProtect, in turn, hires Davenport Lyons to send out the pre-settlement letters. But in a leaked contract between DigiProtect and one copyright holder, it's made quite clear in the contractual language, that DigiProtect is expected to upload the movies as widely as possible prior to having a law firm send out the pre-settlement letters:

To achieve the purpose outlined in clause 1, LICENSOR grants DIGIPROTECT the exclusive right to make the movies listed in Appendix 1 worldwide available to the public via remote computer networks, so-called peer-2-peer and internet file sharing networks such as e-Donkey, Kazaa, Bitorrent, etc. for the duration of this agreement

In other words, it's quite clear that this has nothing to do with preventing content from getting on file sharing networks. Instead, they're specifically putting it there themselves, apparently hoping to get it as widespread as possible, in order to send out the threat letters more widely, so they can collect on the "settlements" from people scared that they're about to get sued. It's hard to see how that's not a massive abuse of copyright law.

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Windell of Evil Mad Scientist Labs is this many, expressed in a binary candle. He shows you how to make your own. Do you know how old he is?

(BTW: I don't think today is really his birthday, but let's play along. He *is* 0100010.)

Binary Birthday

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Watch carefully -- this information in this infomercial will "magically" pull us out of the Great Depression II.

Last week, we announced an Obfuscated code contest with a geektastic prize provided by our sponsor, Safari Books Online, who also offered BB readers one month free online access to any of the following books: JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, Learning Perl, and Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML. The goal was to write a wonderfully obfuscated code snippet that prints out the phrase "Boing Boing." The prize: one year of access to the complete Safari Books Online Library, a digital library of technical books from the likes of O'Reilly, Apress, and Addison-Wesley.

We were absolutely amazed by the entries. There are some incredible bits of code in there. But we had to pick one, so we did. Or rather Joel Johnson did, because this whole thing was his idea to begin with. So we are pleased to announce that the winner of the inaugural Boing Boing/Safari Books Online: MCD. The entry was pithy, clever, and got the job done (see above). Congratulations, MCD! And thanks to Safari Books Online for sponsoring the contest!

Stellian writes "The Federal Communications Commission adopted a Second Report and Order that establishes rules to allow new, sophisticated wireless devices to operate in broadcast television spectrum on a secondary basis at locations where that spectrum is open. It's the first time we have access to clear specifications for these devices, dubbed TVBDs — 'TV band devices' by the FCC. The published guidelines allow manufactures to create protocols and build compatible devices, which could be available in 18 Months, according to Larry Page. The full PDF text of this Second R&O is published on the FCC site."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In the comments section about the Pagan Love Song video, Haineux pointed to this fantabulous video of "Alvino Rey playing his pedal steel guitar in an early talk-box-like situation, with an anthropomorphic guitar puppet and a guy in a really odd hat." Truly, what more could you want?

Free To Be... You and Me was one of my favorite movie/record/books when I was growing up. Marlo Thomas's 1972 project brought together an all-star cast to perform songs, poems and sketches that challenged gender stereotypes and delivered a fundamentally humane, loving message about being who you are and not being constrained by society's expectations.

When I was a teenager, a couple of my friends, Shona and Ted, got ahold of a print of the film and showed it at my school. It was an instant smash hit. The memories came roaring back for all of us, the wonderful songs, the humor, the nostalgia. Those songs became anthemic in my social circle, and not just as some ironic throwback -- there's some kick-ass music on that soundtrack.

So in the early 1990s, I decided to put up a Free to Be... fan-site, and I went ahead and registered freetobeyouandme.com. Then life intervened. 15 years went by and I kept on paying for the domain. I'm not sure why -- I guess I thought I might get around to putting up that fan-site, and I didn't want the site getting into the hands of some pornographer or similar.

Last spring, I got an email from a law-firm in New York that represents the Free to Be Foundation..., a charitable trust that oversees the Free to Be project and produces educational material about gender equality. The note said that the Foundation was interested in getting the domain for use in connection with the book, and would I be interested in discussing the matter.

The note did not contain any threats, veiled or otherwise. It didn't call me a domain-squatter or mention WIPO's UDRP. It was polite, friendly -- just the sort of thing I'd expect from the people who gave us Free To Be...You and Me. So I called up the lawyer, Cris Criswell, and asked him to tell me more.

It turned out that the Foundation was about to publish a 35th anniversary edition of the book, with new art and a bound-in CD, and they wanted to use the domain to promote it. He explained that the Foundation was a charitable 501(c)3, with a board of directors that included Marlo Thomas, Gloria Steinem, and other people I admired and trusted.

"OK," I said, "it's yours."

"Just like that?"

"Sure. You didn't threaten me and you're doing good work. Of course you can have it."

"Of course I didn't threaten you. I figure fans have rights too."

See what I mean?

I asked for one thing: would they send me a copy of the 35th Anniversary edition, signed and inscribed to my newborn daughter, who was already listening to the soundtrack with me? Of course they would.

I'm holding it in my hands now. It's amazing. The new art is fabulous. And I've got the CD on now, and the music is just as great as I remembered. There's Rosie Greer singing, "It's All Right to Cry," Michael Jackson singing "I Don't Have to Change at All" (!), Alan Alda singing "William Wants a Doll," Harry Belafonte singing, "Parents are People,' the Smothers Brothers singing "Helping." There's Carol Channing reciting the cleaning poem, and Mel Brooks doing the convulsively funny "Boy Meets Girl" sketch. It is just brilliant.

And wonderful. If you were to distill the messages that every kid needs to hear to grow up to be a confident, loving individual who does what's right even when society sneers, if you were to turn them into great songs, funny poems, without a hint of preachiness or condescension, it would be this book and CD. Every kid needs this book -- and the organization that publishes it is every bit as great as the book itself.

Hi!

Hi!

I'm a baby!

Well what do you think I am, a loaf of bread?

You could be, what do I know, I'm just born, I'm a baby, I don't even know if I'm under a tree or in a hospital or what, I'm just so glad to be here.

Well, I'm a baby too.

Have it your own way, I don't want to fight about it.

What, are you scared?

Yes, I am, I'm a little scared. I'll tell you why. You see, I don't know if I'm a boy or a girl yet.

What's that got to do with it?

Well, if you're a boy and I'm a girl you can beat me up! You think I want to lose a tooth my first day alive?

What's a tooth?

Search me, I'm just born, I'm a baby, I don't know nothing yet!

You think you're a girl?

I don't know, I might be. I think I am. I 've never been anything before. Let me see, let me take a little look around. Hmm... cute feet, small, dainty, yup, yup, I'm a girl, that's it, girl time.

Well, what do you think I am?

You, that's easy, you're a boy.

You sure?

Of course I'm sure. I'm alive already four, five minutes, right? I haven't been wrong yet.

Gee, I don't feel like a boy.

That's because you can't see yourself.

Why, what do I look like?

Bald. You're bald, fellah. Bald, bald, bald, you're bald as a ping-pong ball, are you bald.

So?

So, boys are bald and girls have hair.

Are you sure?

Of course I'm sure. Who's bald, your mother or your father?

My father.

I rest my case.

Hmm. You're bald too.

You're kidding!

No, I'm not.

Don't look!

Why?

Ugghhh. A bald girl. Yuck. Disgusting.

Free to Be...You and Me (The 35th Anniversary Edition), Free to Be Foundation (includes free MP3s from the CD)

An anonymous reader writes "Today, more than 40 percent of all homes in the United States contain at least one video game console. Recognizing that all that gaming could add up to serious demand for electricity, NRDC and Ecos Consulting performed the first ever comprehensive study on the energy use of video game consoles and found that they consumed an estimated 16 billion kilowatt-hours per year — roughly equal to the annual electricity use of the city of San Diego. Through the incorporation of more user-friendly power management features, we could save approximately 11 billion kWh of electricity per year, cut our nation's electricity bill by more than $1 billion per year, and avoid emissions of more than 7 million tons of CO2 each year. In this November 2008 issue paper, NRDC provides recommendations for users, video game console manufacturers, component suppliers and the software companies that design games for improving the efficiency of video game consoles already in homes as well as future generations of machines yet to hit the shelves." The full report is freely downloadable as a PDF.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As quite a few folks have sent in, it appears that the always funny team of folks who made up Monty Python actually seem to get the concept of giving away infinite goods to increase the value of scarce goods. They've set up a Monty Python channel on YouTube, where they'll be putting up pretty much all of their videos in high quality. The video announcing this is quite amusing, and a good contrast to all those content providers who decided to sue YouTube, rather than learn to embrace it: First, it points out that plenty of folks have already been posting content to YouTube, and while they could sue, instead, they decided to fight free videos with free videos by putting up their own versions -- in higher quality. There's a funny segment where the Monty Python crew reacts to being told that all of this content will be available for free, and then the video notes that while this content will be free, they're hoping people viewing the videos will go to the Pythonline site and buy DVDs (scarce goods) of their movies as well. What an idea. Instead of suing, give fans what they want, and give them a reason to buy. Ideally, they would provide extra reasons to buy the DVDs, rather than just praying that people will, but this is definitely a much better reaction than so many others.

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Pygmy tarsiers, long believed extinct, have been found in Indonesia, according to a story in The Globe and Mail. In August, researchers from Texas A&M, led by Sharon Gursky-Doyen, trapped two males and a female in moutain-top mist nets on Mt. Rore Katimbo in Lore Lindu National Park in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. With distinctive eyes, the pygmy tarsiers are primates; they are"about the size of a small mouse;" they have claws instead of nails, which is a distinguishing feature.

Here's a short video from the researchers showing the pygmy tarsier running up a tree.

link to Texas A&M article.

Jack Imel playing the marimbas and tap dancing to "Pagan Love Song." (Via Filled with Chocolate Pudding!)

Longtime Boing Boing collaborator Bruce Sterling is closing the long-running Viridian Notes transmissions I enjoyed so much, and with it -- if I'm understanding correctly? -- the entire "Viridian episode" he dreamed up and nurtured over the last decade. Snip:

Recent events have clearly established that the character of the times has changed. The Viridian Design Movement was founded in distant 1999. After the years transpiring – various disasters, wars, financial collapses and a major change in political tone – the world has become a different place.

It remains only to close the Viridian episode gracefully, and to conclude with a few meditative suggestions.

As I explained in the first Viridian speech, any design movement – social movements of any kind, really – should be designed with an explicit expiration date. The year 2012 would have been the extreme to which Viridian could have persisted. Since the course of history has grown quite jittery, this longer term was spared us.

Some Viridian principles can be lightly re-phrased, buffed-up and likely made of practical use in days to come. Others are period notions to be gently tossed into the cultural compost. I could try to describe which are which – but that's a proper job for someone younger.

I'm following current events with keen interest. There's never been a better time for major political and financial interventions in the green space. However, Viridian List is about design interventions, it was not about politics or finance, so a decent reticence is in order at this juncture.

The Last Viridian Note (Thanks, Jolon)

PHOTO: "Fageda d'en Jordà," 2007, by MorBCN, of Barcelona, found on his Flickr stream.

nk497 writes "Over the summer, the London travelcard ticketing system — called Oyster — fell over twice, forcing the transport authority to offer free travel to the six million Londoners using the system. After that, it cut its contract with the supplier of the system, a consortium called TranSys. But now, Transport for London has signed a new contract to replace the TranSys one — with the same two companies that made up the TranSys consortium. Sure, that should fix everything."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The work with sprouting seeds is rinsing them: don't rinse enough and you get really unappetizing mold in with your fresh greens. Here's a solution to that problem that makes your toilet a little less wasteful. In action:

Of course, you have the added benefit of the odd looks you'll receive when you explain that you sprout food in your bathroom!

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Michael Minelli is suing Simon & Schuster because he does not think his photograph belongs in the book Hot Chicks with Douchebags.

In the book, Louis noted that Minelli's "popped-collar, spikey-haired presence was so far beyond regular douche, so far beyond uberdouche, he could spontaneously create a new element on the periodic tables--Douche Nine." At the time he was photographed by Louis, Minelli was working the door at the popular "Rehab" party at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. As first reported by Courthouse News Service, Minelli's Clark County District Court lawsuit seeks unspecified financial damages and legal fees. Last month, three New Jersey women sued Louis and his publisher over their appearance in "Hot Chicks with Douchebags," which they claimed was "vulgar" and presented them as "females who date dubious men."

Alleged "Douchebag" sues author

Australian politicians have been pushing to censor the internet for years, with its latest initiative being the most extreme and most ridiculous. Of course, even though each and every past effort by the Australian government has failed miserably, they always seem to think that this time it will be different. At least the largest Australian ISP thinks the government is out of its mind. The CEO of iiNet has agreed to sign up for the filters, but only to collect hard data in order to prove to the government "how stupid" the plan is:

"They're not listening to the experts, they're not listening to the industry, they're not listening to consumers, so perhaps some hard numbers will actually help. Every time a kid manages to get through this filter, we'll be publicising it and every time it blocks legitimate content, we'll be publicising it."

Good for them, though it seems unlikely to work. In the past when similarly ineffectual filters were demonstrated, Australian officials just interpreted it to mean they needed to pass stricter laws.

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0. I must use Windows, so please don't tell me I shouldn't use Windows. Thanks in advance.

1. I have at least two HTTP servers that I want to run on one box, one of them is Apache. The other is the OPML Editor. I may want to run Frontier as well (so I can serve Manila sites that are still in use).

2. If the colocation service allowed multiple IP addresses per machine, I would just use one for Apache and one for OPML and one for Frontier, and I'm done. Unfortunately the colo I'm using only allows a single IP address. So I must come up with a software solution.

3. Apache has a module that does a reverse proxy service, that allows you to route requests, by domain, to other servers. That's great, because I would just use Apache to do that. But last week I spent four hours fucking around with it and couldn't get it working. It turns out there are undocumented switches somewhere, no one is exactly sure, and there are no docs (at least none that make any sense to me).

4. Now I'm pretty sure it can be done. Someone must know how to do it. I promise if I figure it out I will leave behind a clear how-to. So if anyone has a clue, please let me know. Scripting News readers are famous for knowing arcania like this. So please show your stuff!

Update: I'm willing to use other HTTP software if its easier to set up reverse proxies, but I am not willing to use IIS. Last time I set one of those up it got horribly hacked. I think it's a target for a lot of kids out there, and you always end up with gremlins hanging out on your servers supporting warez and other strange shit. Rather not mess around with that.

By the way: I'm also looking for web app software I can run myself, hopefully simple to install, that takes a JPG and scales it down to 640-by-480 or even smaller. Ideally on Windows, again. Sigh. Even better would be someone else's service, but this is the kind of thing people usually don't want to do for you since it uses machine cycles.

mblase writes "Wolfram Research has released the seventh version of Mathematica, and it does a lot more than symbolic algebra. New features range from things as simple as cut-and-paste integration with Microsoft Word's Equation Editor to instant 3D models of mathematical objects to the most expensive clone of Photoshop ever. Full suites of genome, chemical, weather, astronomical, financial, and geodesic data (or support for same) is designed to make Mathematica as invaluable for scientific research as it is for mathematics."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While on the trail to the falls in Johnston Canyon, which is a wonderful walk off a road that runs between Banff and Lake Louise, we came across this beautiful snow-made creation that declares a couple's love for each other. The snow-made man and woman were starting to melt but here's good wishes to their anonymous creators.

HOW TO - Make a Bluetooth handgun handset for your iPhone, ManaEnergyPotion writes-

How to turn an airsoft handgun and a bluetooth headset into a fun, fully functional handset for your iPhone. Pull the trigger to receive calls and to, um, end them. Listen through the barrel, and talk into the grip. I think everyone has made the thumb and forefinger gun-to-the-head sign when someone unpleasant shows up on their caller ID. Eli and I thought it would be fun to make an actual gun handset, and it turned out to be surprisingly straightforward. No glue or powertools were required. Even though it's not very practical, there's something so satisfying about ending a call with this handset. Pow. Naturally, this handset works with any cell phone. You just feel like pulling the trigger more if you own an iPhone.

Perfect for this month's Spy Tech theme and MAKE volume!

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savuporo writes "NASA and its industry partners organized a two-week lunar in-situ resource utilization field test in Hawaii. The tested machines included a few different rovers and prototype plants for generating oxygen and water from lunar regolith. Astrotoday has picture gallery and video report. This follows on the heels of recent ESA lunar robotics challenge event held on Tenerife, which tasked student teams to build a lunar robot that would be able to search for water ice in lunar polar craters."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lidija Davis on ReadWriteWeb summarizes current VC advice for startups and entrepreneurs:

Go back to the garage. That's the message venture capitalists at the Dow Jones VentureWire Technology Showcase in Redwood City CA today, are offering to entrepreneurs and startups.

In the midst of one of the worst economic crises the world has seen, investors are in the main optimistic, and agree that to weather this storm and come out on top, today's entrepreneur's need to change their mindset and go back to basics: go back to the garage, and success will follow.

Expect to hear startups saying "yeah, we've gone into 'garage-mode,'" modeling after the term "stealth-mode." The only trouble is what to do with all the boxes?

image source.

Over the years, we've seen so many bogus reports on the supposed "losses" to various industries due to unauthorized file sharing, that it's about time the story was flipped. Reader SteveD writes in to point out the latest research, claiming that in 2007, the dollar value of all unauthorized music file sharing was $69 billion. The research company that put out the number does clearly state that those numbers are not lost revenue (good), but then goes on to still claim that this shows how damaging unauthorized file sharing is for the industry:

"A $69 billion figure is staggering to contemplate, but it effectively illustrates the impact of piracy on the music industry."

Actually, I disagree. I don't think it shows the "impact" at all. If anything, you could flip this around (as I did in the title) and use it to show how much goodwill and free publicity provided by fans the industry squandered by trying to turn those fans into criminals, rather than learning to embrace that free labor in a business model that took advantage of all of that free promotion. Sure, the headline is an exaggeration, but it's no more of an exaggeration than claiming that the $69 billion represents the extent of any problem. If there's a problem, it's in the fact that so many folks in and around the industry view this as a problem rather than a huge opportunity and resource.

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CWmike writes "Gregg Keizer sifted through many threads of e-mails released under the 'Vista Capable' lawsuit to dig up this jewel...More than a year before Windows Vista's release — and long before Apple started poking fun at the OS — Microsoft officials were already worried about comparisons between Mac OS X and Vista. An e-mail thread from October 2005 showed that an article in the Wall Street Journal by Walt Mossberg grabbed the attention of managers at Microsoft. In a column headlined What PC to Buy If You Are Planning On a Vista Upgrade, Mossberg alarmed one Windows manager who forwarded a bit from the column.... 'You won't have to worry about Vista if you buy one of Apple Computer's Macintosh computers, which don't run Windows,' Mossberg had written. 'Every mainstream consumer doing typical tasks should consider the Mac. Its operating system, called Tiger, is better and more secure than Windows XP, and already contains most of the key features promised for Vista.' Warrier added a comment of his own: 'A premium experience as defined by Walt = Apple. This is why we need to address [the column].'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CWmike writes "Gregg Keizer sifted through many threads of e-mails released under the 'Vista Capable' lawsuit to dig up this jewel...More than a year before Windows Vista's release — and long before Apple started poking fun at the OS — Microsoft officials were already worried about comparisons between Mac OS X and Vista. An e-mail thread from October 2005 showed that an article in the Wall Street Journal by Walt Mossberg grabbed the attention of managers at Microsoft. In a column headlined What PC to Buy If You Are Planning On a Vista Upgrade, Mossberg alarmed one Windows manager who forwarded a bit from the column.... 'You won't have to worry about Vista if you buy one of Apple Computer's Macintosh computers, which don't run Windows,' Mossberg had written. 'Every mainstream consumer doing typical tasks should consider the Mac. Its operating system, called Tiger, is better and more secure than Windows XP, and already contains most of the key features promised for Vista.' Warrier added a comment of his own: 'A premium experience as defined by Walt = Apple. This is why we need to address [the column].'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CWmike writes "Gregg Keizer sifted through many threads of e-mails released under the 'Vista Capable' lawsuit to dig up this jewel...More than a year before Windows Vista's release — and long before Apple started poking fun at the OS — Microsoft officials were already worried about comparisons between Mac OS X and Vista. An e-mail thread from October 2005 showed that an article in the Wall Street Journal by Walt Mossberg grabbed the attention of managers at Microsoft. In a column headlined What PC to Buy If You Are Planning On a Vista Upgrade, Mossberg alarmed one Windows manager who forwarded a a bit from the column.... 'You won't have to worry about Vista if you buy one of Apple Computer's Macintosh computers, which don't run Windows," Mossberg had written. "Every mainstream consumer doing typical tasks should consider the Mac. Its operating system, called Tiger, is better and more secure than Windows XP, and already contains most of the key features promised for Vista." Warrier added a comment of his own: "A premium experience as defined by Walt = Apple. This is why we need to address [the column].""

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Canon has asked US customers planning take advantage of its rebate program not to cash the checks they have received, following the company handling the rebates filing for bankruptcy protection. The problems relate to rebate checks for video and printer products dated prior to November 14th. Any customer yet to send-in rebate materials should also delay until further notice.

Wonderful collection of painted hands.

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LEDs are in technology all around us, familiar and helpful for sure but you may wonder - Who invented them? How do I use one? Is it possible to make my own LED?!? Learn the answers to these baffling questions and more in - MAKE presents: The LED

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Adam Jenkins writes "This book seemed to have potential, particularly since the image of nerds has changed in recent times. Once objects of derision and schoolyard bullying, nerds are now acknowledged as having a place in society. The Lord of the Rings became a multi-million dollar movie trilogy, the internet is now used by an incredible number of people, and computer games are no longer seen as being 'just for kids.' Around the years of the dot-com boom, successful nerds were driving Ferraris and going to cool parties. So it's not so surprising that the definition of a nerd has changed over time, nor that a society which has generally become better at accepting people who are different, has accepted nerds." Read below for the rest of Adam's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Back in 2005, when Microsoft was first mulling the idea of offering security software, we noted that the company was between something of a rock and a hard place. If it decided to charge for the software, people would accuse the company of trying to get people to pay to protect themselves from the security vulnerabilities in Microsoft's own software. Yet, if they went free, then they would face screams about antitrust violations for undercutting competitors in the security software market. We also suggested a third option: design better software that doesn't need security software. But, failing that, Microsoft chose what I think was the worst of the three options: selling security software. Perhaps not too surprisingly, not too many people took Microsoft up on the offer. It could be a combination of reasons why. First, Microsoft just doesn't have a good reputation when it comes to security. Second, that whole issue of paying the same company that created the security holes in the first place. Finally, it might just be inertia. People buy from McAfee or Symantec because they're two names that have been around forever and are recognized (and, most importantly, bundled on many brand-name computers).

So, after a couple years of failing to make much of a dent in the market, Microsoft has abruptly shifted to option number two. It will no longer be selling its OneCare security software and, instead, will be offering a free security suite for users, though with fewer features than the old OneCare offering. The various security software companies put out statements saying, of course, that this is no big deal, but you have to believe they're now doing whatever possible to stir up some complaints out of the Justice Department that this is an antitrust violation. Maybe a few years down the road Microsoft will simply move on to option three, and make software that doesn't require separate security software.

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Stormdrane made this beautiful Star Knot by following this tutorial.

Stormdrane's own tutorial for making a Paracord bracelet can be found in the new Make book, The Best of Instructables, reviewed recently by Marc de Vinck and available in the Maker Shed.

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tpheiska writes "NASA press release states that 'At approx. 3:33 p.m. EST, Piper reported that one of the Braycote lubrication guns had released grease into her toolbag. As she was cleaning the bag and wiping the tools and equipment inside, the bag floated away. Another bag carrying identical equipment is now being shared by Piper and Bowen.' Luckily they had a spare."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Field of Light" by Bruce Munro (currently installed at the Eden Project in Corwall, UK) consists of 6,000 acrylic stems connected with fiber optic cables ending in a clear glass sphere. The stems themselves hold no power, so there are 11 external projectors that send light to the balls while the entire installation covers an area of 60 x 20 meters with over 24,000 meters of fiber optic cable. Pretty impressive build, although we wouldn't want to be untangling these cables after the install is over.

via DeZeen

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Students @ Bancroft Elementary School in Montreal, Quebec are making some awesome music videos as part of the Modern Music Makers after-school program

students (five to ten years old) are divided into groups of four (give or take), and given the means to make their own songs from scratch. Explains Shaw: “Each group got a drum kit with a certain number of sounds on it—bass, melodies and some effects—and they each had a different palate of sounds to work with.” The means and materials at their disposal were limited at best, but that’s the beauty of the program: anyone can conceivably scrape together the minimum kit to pull it off. For Modern Music Makers, this consisted of a malfunctioning point and-shoot DV cam, some primitive green screen effects, a small laptop, a microphone, a soundcard, a midi keyboard, and an instrument from each kid’s bedroom. The real constraint, says Shaw, was time. “We had one hour a week to work with four groups of kids. The maximum [time] each one would get with the technology was 15 minutes. That’s not a lot of time to generate ideas. Luckily, the programs we used are good for doing stuff on the fly.”
[...]
“Being able to put that technology in the kids’ hands and have them work with it and realize they could create a video, create a song—you could see that disconnect being broken down.”

- Modern Music Makers [via Kitsune Noir]

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Celery writes "There's an interview with Ray Kurzweil on silicon.com talking up the prospects of gene therapy as a means to reverse human aging, discussing different approaches to developing artificial intelligence, and giving his take on whether super intelligent machines could ever have souls. From the interview: 'The soul is a synonym for consciousness ... and if we were to consider where consciousness comes from we would have to consider it an emerging property. Brain science is instructive there as we look inside the brain, and we've now looked at it in exquisite detail, you don't see anything that can be identified as a soul — there's just a lot of neurons and they're complicated but there's no consciousness to be seen. Therefore it's an emerging property of a very complex system that can reflect on itself. And if you were to create a system that had similar properties, similar level of complexity it would therefore have the same emerging property.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Celery writes "There's an interview with Ray Kurzweil on silicon.com talking up the prospects of gene therapy as a means to reverse human aging, discussing different approaches to developing artificial intelligence, and giving his take on whether super intelligent machines could ever have souls. From the interview: 'The soul is a synonym for consciousness... and if we were to consider where consciousness comes from we would have to consider it an emerging property. Brain science is instructive there as we look inside the brain, and we've now looked at it in exquisite detail, you don't see anything that can be identified as a soul — there's just a lot of neurons and they're complicated but there's no consciousness to be seen. Therefore it's an emerging property of a very complex system that can reflect on itself. And if you were to create a system that had similar properties, similar level of complexity it would therefore have the same emerging property.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The FT's got a story saying "YouTube is in danger of being upstaged commercially" by Hulu, the online video site owned NBC and News Corp. It's based on a report saying Hulu will make as much in advertising revenues as YouTube next year, about $180 million, despite having far fewer active users. Two points: first, is this really surprising given the strengths of Hulu's parents at selling advertising around content; second, when did this become a zero-sum game? The article sets up some sort of adversarial relationship between Hulu and YouTube, or between professional and user-submitted content. While perhaps there's some competition for advertising dollars -- as there is between any two parties selling ad space -- the two sites don't have to succeed solely at the other's expense. Despite what the likes of Andrew Keen would have us believe, there's room enough on the web for both professional TV shows and amateur fat cat videos, and the success of one doesn't intrinsically mean the failure of the other.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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An anonymous reader writes "Fewer than 1% of airline passengers singled out at airports using the much vaunted 'suspicious behavior detection' techniques are arrested, Transportation Security Administration figures show. The TSA program, launched in early 2006, looks for terrorists using a controversial surveillance method based on behavior detection and has led to more than 160,000 people in airports receiving scrutiny, such as a pat-down search or a brief interview. It has resulted in only 1,266 arrests, often on charges of carrying drugs or fake IDs, the TSA said. The TSA has not publicly said whether it has caught a terrorist through the program." In related news, the odds of sanity coming to the TSA plummeted today when Schneier said he's not interested in the top job there.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

30 incredible satellite images - this one is my favorite...

Garden City, Kansas, USA - Home to the largest zoological facility in Kansas, Garden City is known for its depiction in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.The croplands surrounding the city are irrigated by a vast underground aquifer, creating bands of bright red healthy vegetation that dot the image.

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Synplant takes a unique approach to creating sound with software synthesizers - Each patch starts as a 'seed' that sprouts branches towards parameters you choose. Decide you don't like a certain aspect of the voice? - just clip off the branch. Or if you like it a whole bunch, replant it as its own seed. 3-week demo available on their site - SonicCharge Synplant

More:

Singing Plants

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This hockey playing robot is a prototype for a more expressive one no doubt, but we here at Make also like to publish projects that aren't quite finished in order to show the process. This bot detects the movement of the ball and then takes a swipe at it. Next up, Gretsky no doubt!

via RobotGRRL

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This is what I was talking about yesterday.

"They should put their reporters in Detroit, Columbus, Indianapolis, where ever there are elements of the auto industry, and explain what will happen to these Americans when GM, Ford and Chrysler shut down, even if it's just for a few months. Really show us what the decision is. For once, scare us with the truth, instead of telling the usual bedtime story. That would be the honorable journalistic thing to do, but of course they're not doing it."

Well, someone is doing it. Here's an example.



Instead of sitting in a studio and asking questions based on incorrect premises, that somehow the collapse of the auto industry is a United States thing not happening because the world economy has collapsed, the NY Times sent a reporter and a photographer to Long Beach to describe the scene at the point where imported cars enter the US market.

"Gleaming new Mercedes cars roll one by one out of a huge container ship here and onto a pier. Ordinarily the cars would be loaded on trucks within hours, destined for dealerships around the country. But these are not ordinary times."

This Bubble calendar via BBG is pretty cute, if you have extra packaging material laying around you could make your own.

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?This tail-pipe hack is meant to make some noise every time the vehicle (in this case a motorcycle) spits out enough carbon monoxide that could be harmful to the environment. Since this might end up getting you into an accident, so we don't condone this type of modification, still it's kind of nice to hear the sound of trumpets rather than the usual gas guzzling motor sounds your bike normally spits out.

via Wrong Distance

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Sebastian walks you through the process for creating sample kits for use with the Little Sound DJ sequencer cartridge on Gameboy. The small amount of memory you have to work with makes this an interesting process in its own right -

Now, in my opinion there are three places to look for space when choosing where to crop you samples. You may notice that before the initial attack portion of your sample, there may be small amount of silence or almost silence. You can delete this, of course. Not only will this give you more time, but your depending on the length that you delete from the start, your samples may sound more "in time" with the rest of LSDJ (because the sound will be starting on the beat).

- Prepare Samples and create LSDJ kits

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Michael Holloway from the UK Open Rights Group sez,

Today we're proud to release ORG’s annual Review of Activities. It’s been a bumper year for digital rights. From HMRC posting half the UK’s bank details to the Darknet, to the ongoing campaign against Phorm, to three strikes and the rightsholder lobby’s so-far thwarted attempt to take control of your internet connection, this year was the year digital rights went mainstream. Thanks to generous support from the ORG community, we’ve been there giving an informed perspective on the issues to the natonal press, working with policymakers behind the scenes and mobilising the grassroots into effective action.

Threats to our digital liberties continue to menace us. 2009 will see new challenges, such as the Government’s proposed Intercept Modernisation Programme. That’s why, as we celebrate ORG’s third birthday, we’re also asking the community to renew their support for ORG. The ORG-GRO campaign is delivering excellent results (huge thanks to all the people who have contributed so far). But the leap from 750 to 1000 fivers received each month is not yet enough to guarantee us long term financial stability. We must reach our target of 1500 fivers before the end of the year. And we can’t do that without you.

ORG review of activities, Join ORG (Thanks, Michael!)

(Disclosure: I co-founded ORG and am proud to serve on its advisory board)

Today on Boing Boing Gadgets, we took Google's new iPhone voice search app for a spin, and reflected on the nostalgic smell of old NES cart sleeves, as well as the analog fluttering of old clocks. Brownlee wrote a post in morse code about a morse code watch, and admired an ad-hoc iPhone number pad for MacBooks. Meanwhile, Joel flustered about Apple's crappy hardware DRM and made an Arrested Development connection in regards to a busted philanderer's dirty iPhone pics, which he swears are a firmware "glitch." Guest blogger Tony Hightower gave us the scoop on organic motion: motion capture without the suit. A carbon-fiber acoustic guitar was attractively lute-like. Covert gamers cram old GameBoys into their graphing calculators. Joel deeply inhaled the miasmic retch of a Stitch himidifier. Also in the day, Joel invited readers to goatse his new picture frame (email 2062270093 DERP tmomail.net if you'd like to get in on the fun). Brownlee wanted to play his complete Tiny Tim collection on a horrifyingly surreal SpongeBob SquarePants dock. We took a Tesla for a spin by proxy, and made a call on our banana phones. Otherwise, Beschizza ripped apart a Boeing 788 in a stress test. and discovered a surprisingly cheap MacBook Air prototype that may not be all it seems. And Dan Lyons, aka "The Real Steve Jobs", is now being censored by Newsweek for doing exactly what he was hired for. Oh, also. The Zune? Prepare for its imminent release. Link

Back when Apple first sued Psystar, we were afraid that the smaller company wouldn't have much of a legal leg to stand on, even if it claimed antitrust violations by Apple -- which it did. However, the judge in the case is apparently unconvinced, dismissing Psystar's counterclaims, noting that Psystar did not do a very good job establishing that Apple has a monopoly, noting that the relevant market is not just the Macintosh operating system. Psystar can file an amended complaint, but it seems unlikely that the judge is going to buy any antitrust claims. That means the lawsuit, assuming it continues, will probably focus on the enforceability of certain end user license agreements, which could be more interesting anyway.

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I had just set the doll down on the floor of my studio when my kids walked in to see what I was making. Unfortunately, I was in the process of disemboweling yet another one of their beloved toys. This has happened once before during my Mechamo Crab build so I should have known better than to leave this kind of stuff lying around.

Even though they willingly offered me the old toy for dissection, nothing prepares them for the cruel reality that this once loved doll was...well, just a toy. Underneath the silicone skin is a bunch of plastic, speakers, wires, and motors, all waiting for me to hack apart and use in another project. It's a Makers gold mine!

My youngest daughter asked, "Why did her face fall off?" I just smiled and said, "Daddy is making something for work." She accepted my answer and happily ran off. I dodged that bullet! My oldest daughter was obviously fascinated by the inner workings of the doll. YES! She's hooked...another Maker is born!

Do you have any funny moments when you were building something? Post them in the comments below. Thanks!

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If you really want to understand electric circuit theory, eventually you will need to come to terms with Ohm's Law. So how can you get the concept across that I=V/R? Will your students be able to figure out that V=I/R or that R=V/I, or that all three of these equations are pretty much the same? How can they integrate these theories with their changing letter designations so they can be used in real life applications? How about throwing some throwies at them?

Many instructional materials for learning to work with electricity and circuits are based on 9 volt batteries. Often they start by having the experimenter place a resistor in series with the LED to reduce current flow, save on battery life and keep the LED from getting fried. Having to use a resistor at such an early stage of learning circuits introduces too much theory at the beginning. 9 volt batteries are also either moderately or unreasonably expensive.

There are many online resources for studying electricity and circuits. I particularly like one from Paul Falstad, which shows visuals for the current flow and direction. You can use his sample circuits, and modify them as well. He has many other visualizations of various math and physics concepts on his site.

Some of the ideas that you can pursue by using throwies are: How long will a throwie stay lit? If you add a second, third, or dozen LEDs in parallel to the 3volt battery, how will that affect the run time of the circuit? If you wire the same number of LEDs in series to the battery, how will that affect the duration of the life of the battery? If you add other components to the circuit, like, resistors, capacitors, transistors or photo resistors, how will the circuit behave? How do you use a multimeter to determine voltage, resistance, amperage, polarity and more?

Another reason to look to throwies is expense. If you take a look at the picture at the top of this post, from Make: Volume 6, page 116, you can find sources and prices for all the parts you need. LEDs are pretty cheap now. The batteries are reasonably priced as well, the magnets will cost some. You should be able to outfit a class full of throwie making supplies for relatively short money, but most of these parts can be harvested out of junk. LEDs are in most of the electronics that we throw out every day. Batteries are in every computer heading for the loading dock, and inside every hard drive is at least a couple of good high strength rare earth magnets. The older electronics are actually better for scavenging than a lot of the new stuff, since the parts were bigger and assembled with more traditional fasteners. If you are going to desolder components, you will need at least a soldering iron and some desoldering braid to go with your safety glasses.

One possible pitfall for this project is the magnets. They are definitely a source of potential mayhem in the hands of the average teenager. Certainly there are some ways to modify the project to minimize the chaos. Sittees? Stickies? Floaties?

Have you taught electricity with throwies or other simple materials? If you give it a try, take some pictures, video or make a posting to the Make Flickr Pool. Add some links to the descriptions. Add some comments to this post with more ideas on great ways to get students excited about learning electricity!

Are there other articles in Make or Craft that you think work well in the classroom or other learning environment? Post your ideas in the comments.

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CNet has a report that a federal judge has dismissed Psystar's antitrust suit against Apple. Observers had said that the counter-suit embodied the Mac clone-maker's best chance of prevailing and staying in business. We've been following Psystar and the dueling lawsuits since the beginning.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

To check the compatibility of your site across different browsers, operating systems, or screen resolutions there are a handful of little known tools which professional webmasters keep secretly inside their toolkits. I have gone out to find out what these are. Photo credit: BrowserCam edited by Daniele Bazzano As you probably know, you cannot take for granted how your web site will be displayed when called up on a computer running a different operating system than yours. In fact, there are at least three main issues that affect the way your web pages are displayed on other people screens:

• The browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc) and the specific version your viewers use
• The operating system (Mac, Windows, Linux) your viewers run on their machines.
• The screen resolution your viewers have set on their monitors.

To make this straight, a page rendered in Firefox 2 on a Windows machine probably won't look the same when opened again in Firefox 3 on a Mac. This is why as an online publisher you have to go out of your way to make sure your site displays almost identically across different browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions. But how can you test such a broad variety of possible combinations? Install all the available browsers and operating systems out there, and then test your web pages at each one of the different screen resolutions your monitor can handle? If you want to maintain your sanity, don't even attempt the above. The sheer number of possible combinations you need to test is pretty scary: 15 basic setups that need to be tested at least at three different resolutions makes for positive extended nightmare. Trust me. In this guide, I have personally hand-picked the best browser compatibility testing tools out there to help you check rapidly your site across different browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions. Cross-platform browser testing tools generally all work in the same way. You provide the URL of the web page you want to test, and then select the operating systems, browsers, and (when available) the specific screen resolutions you want to test your page on. The browser compatibility testing service you choose will then proceed to take a screenshot of that very page according to the specifics you have chosen (operating system, browser model and version, etc.), so that you can immediately evaluate what are the key issues to be addressed inside your web page HTML code tags. Here below is a comprehensive list of all the browser compatibility testing tools and services out there as well as a set of key basic criteria I have utilized to compare them:

• Price: Is the service free or does it require the payment of a fee to be used.
• Free Trial: Many services allow a free testing period. Find out who does.
• Browser: Which browsers (and browser versions) are supported by the service.
• OS: Indicates which operating systems are supported in the compatibiliy test.
• Screen resolution: Specifies whether you can test your web page across different screen resolutions.
• Unique characteristics: Discover the key feature that makes every service unique.

To make your analysis and selection task even most effective, here below I have also prepared a comparison table showcasing all of the available cross-platform browser compatibility testing tools, along with a full set of mini-reviews introducing each one. Here all the details: Intro by Daniele Bazzano

Cross-Platform Browser Testing Tools Comparison Table

go to the table! *Please refer to services sites for additional pricing solutions.

Check The Compatibility Of Your Site Across Different Browsers, Operating Systems, And Screen Resolutions

1. BrowserCam BrowserCam allows you to test your site across different browsers, and operating systems. The service works on any browser you can think of running on Windows, Mac, and Linux Fedora Core 9. Testing of different screen resolutions is also allowed. A unique feature of Browsercam is the possibility of testing how your pages are rendered on a Blackberry smart phone running Windows Mobile 5.0. BrowserCam is priced at $19,95 for one day of use, but there additional pricing solutions if you plan to use it for a longer time. Free to try for 24 hours and 200 screen captures. http://www.browsercam.com/



2. Browsershots Browsershots is perhaps the best free solution to test the compatibility of your site across different browsers, operating systems, and screen resolutions. Browsershots compares the layout of your site on almost any browser and OS in the market. You can also test your layout at different screen resolutions. Unique feature is the possibility of testing color depth, as well as Javascript, Flash and Java codes, to see how these parameters may affect the way your site is displayed. http://browsershots.org/



3. Litmus Litmus is a web-based service that lets you compare the rendering of your site in different browsers and operating systems. Using the Basic (free) version you can run tests on IE7 and Firefox 2. By purchasing one of the additional pricing solutions you can access a wider choice of browsers and operating systems. Litmus offers no trial period nor the possibility to test your site at different screen resolutions. As a unique feature the service allows you to test the layout of your newsletters (only for MS Office 2003 and GMail in the Basic version). http://litmusapp.com/



4. CrossBrowserTesting CrossBrowserTesting allows you to check the compatibility of your site on a large number of browsers including IE, Safari, Firefox, Opera, Camino, and some more. Operating systems available for testing are Microsft Windows, Mac OSX 10.5, and Ubuntu 7.10. Cross-BrowserTesting does not offer the option to switch between different screen resolutions, but Javascript and Ajax testing is available. Pricing solutions start from $1 for 5 minutes of testing with no limitations. You can test the service for a free trial period of 5 minutes. http://www.crossbrowsertesting.com/



5. Browser Photo Browser Photo is a web-based solution that takes screenshots of your web pages across different browsers and operating systems for layout-testing purposes. The service works with main browsers on the market (IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera) running on Windows, Mac and Linux. Browser Photo allows you to test browsers at different screen resolutions as well. No trial period is available. Priced at $15 for a one-time use, Browser Photo offers additional pricing plans to suit your needs. http://www.netmechanic.com/products/browser-index.shtml



6. BrowsrCamp BrowsrCamp is a web-based service that allows you to check the compatibility of your site across different browsers but only on Mac machines. Working on almost all the browsers you can run on OSX, BrowsrCamp also allows you to test your site at different screen resolutions. Starting at $3 for two days of utilize, the service offers additional pricing solutions for longer testing periods. Free testing on Safari 3.12 only. http://www.browsrcamp.com/



7. IE NetRenderer IE NetRenderer is a free web-based service that lets you compare how a web site is rendered across different versions of Internet Explorer (from 5.5 to 8 Beta 2). Screen-resolution testing is not allowed. An useful and unique feature of IE NetRenderer allows you to compare at a first glance any difference in the way your page is displayed on the screen between IE6 and IE7 . http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/



8. Multi-Safari Multi-Safari is a free browser testing service that allows you to check the rendering of your site across different versions of the Safari. The service is designed to avoid different installations of OSX to test the your site on older releases of the Safari web browser. Multi-Safari does not allow any test on different screen resolutions. http://michelf.com/projects/multi-safari/

If you are aware of other browser compatibility testing tools you tried and you think are worth mentioning here, please feel free to use the comment area below.

Originally prepared by Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia and first published on November 19th 2008 as "Browser Compatibility Testing: Cross-Platform Cross-Browser Multiple Resolutions Compatibility Testing Tools - Sharewood Guide".

Here is another great idea form James Li. This time he used some scrap cardboard and an old case fan to make a laptop cooler. Let's just hope his laptop does get too hot, cardboard ignites easily.

My laptop needs to be slightly elevated to cool it down, so here is a laptop cooler (unfortunately, not strong enough to be made into a stand) It even runs on USB power! All I need to plug it into a spare USB port. I stripped this USB plug form the masses of USB extenders that Dick Smith ship with their flash drives (that's that black USB plug)

More about the DIY: Cardboard laptop cooler

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This is a good place to learn about wireless communications using an XBee and an Arduino. There are a lot of different sensors that could use this same code with only slight variations.

I managed to put together a wireless accelerometer the other night using my two new XBees, an Arduino XBee shield, an XBee Explorer USB, an ADXL330, and some Python. I struggled a bit with some of it, so here's what I learned.

More about XBee & Arduino wireless accelerometer

In the Maker Shed:


Arduino Mini Board, fully assembled

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Pickens writes "The oldest genetically identifiable nuclear family met a violent death, according to analysis of remains from 4,600-year-old burials in Germany where the broken bones of these stone age people show they were killed in a struggle. Comparisons of DNA from one grave confirm it contained a mother, father, and their two children. 'We're really sure, based on hard biological facts not just supposing or assuming,' says Dr. Wolfgang Haak, from The Australian Centre for Ancient DNA. The stone-age people are thought to belong to a group known as the Corded Ware Culture, signified by their pots decorated with impressions from twisted cords. The children and adult males had the same type of strontium in their teeth — which was also found locally, but the nearest match to the women's teeth was at least 50km away, suggesting they had moved to the area. 'They were definitely murdered, there are big holes in their heads, fingers and wrists are broken,' says Dr. Alistair Pike from Bristol University. He noted that one victim even had the tip of a stone weapon embedded in a vertebra. 'You feel some kind of sympathy for them, it's a human thing, somebody must have really cared for them. ... We don't know how hard daily life was back there and if there was any space for love,' added Dr. Haak."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child initiative has received plenty of press over the years, though we've never quite fully understood it. While the idea of making cheap, durable laptops available to people worldwide has some value, the benefits haven't been fully explained and Negroponte's thoughts on how best to deliver them have been a bit perplexing. In particular, his apparent belief that competition in the space is a bad -- when competition might actually help realize the goal of a $100 machine more quickly than if OLPC goes it alone. In an attempt to boost volume, OLPC is getting a bunch of media companies to donate airtime and and ad space for a marketing campaign for the machine, trying to drive donations or sales under its "Give One, Get One" program, where people can spend $400 for an XO of their own, while another one gets donated to the cause. The head of the agency which created the ads for the campaign says they'll help build the economies of scale necessary to get the XO laptops down to the magical $100 price point.

Meanwhile, the prices of other netbooks, as these things do, continue to fall. While none are yet down to $100, it's hard to imagine that it will be too much longer before somebody breaks the barrier. And it probably won't be the OLPC group. With that in mind, Negroponte's anti-competitive, go-it-alone stance continues to confuse. If the market and competition can drive prices down, that's great for the OLPC mission, right? So why not abandon the single-product model (especially since hardware is basically a commodity, even with the XO's features), and focus on getting as many devices as possible -- even if they're another brand -- into schools worldwide? If the real OLPC innovation is the software, install it on the machines. It would certainly seem that the best course of action is to do whatever will drive the cost down the most quickly, and somehow using the growing consumer netbook market, rather than OLPC standing alone with its own machine, would do that. Negroponte seems hesitant to acknowledge that the bigger market can actually help OLPC's mission, even when ignoring that fact hampers that mission.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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A review of How to Build With Grid Beam @ The Citizen Scientist. Sheldon writes-

How to Build With Grid Beam is a guide to a clever and flexible system of construction for a wide range of home-built projects, from storage units to work spaces to furniture, vehicles, and structures. The system relies on the use of “sticks” or beams of square tube steel or aluminum or wood with holes placed at regular intervals along the length of each stick. Using lag bolts or other fasteners, these sticks can be assembled quickly and easily into structures that are quite robust and easily adapted and reconfigured. And when you are finished with a project, you simply disassemble the project and use the components for something else. By using adapters and add-ons, most of which can be found in hardware stores, industrial supply houses, or fabricated in even a modestly-equipped shop, the system can be expanded to encompass a staggering array of applications.

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Here's Far Cry 2 technical director Dominic Guay talking about the importance of "procedural content generation" for massive online games -- basically, using software to create worlds that had previously been hand-built by artists. It makes a lot of sense, but what fascinates me is the narrative possibilities for fiction about games: these procedural systems have or will shortly attain a level of complexity that makes it impossible to predict their outcomes. It's the Halting Problem -- worlds where software off the rails could generate impossible situations, upside-down worlds, treasure heaps, cowardly monsters and brave grass. I'm thinking especially of abandonware worlds where only a few players remain and the gamemasters have stopped paying close attention. What odd maps might be drawn as the die-hards explore the outermost reaches of these worlds?

"Another big benefit [of procedural content creation] is that you end up being able to do stuff you simply couldn't do otherwise," Guay continued. "It opens up innovation fields. If you're creating things through code, you have a deeper understanding of what you're doing, and you can bake in some limitations."

"Our artists needed to be able to build not a random tree, but a type of tree," he said by way of example. "It's actually much closer to building a particle system than building traditional art assets. Artists play with parameters more than they play with vertices."

Creating those tools allowed artists to define trees based on characteristics gleaned from extensive photo reference, more than to create a number of discrete tree variants based on those references...

When a team member made a seemingly minor after-hours change to the ecosystem, it ended up increasing the asset density of the game world by 25 percent -- resulting in more than a few headaches.

"If I'm tweaking a jungle procedurally, maybe I'll just tweak it in my test map," Guay said. "But when I integrate it into the game, somewhere in the 50 square kilometer game world, maybe in just three small areas, it might cause problems, and we won't find those problems until QA uncovers them."

MIGS: Far Cry 2's Guay On The Importance Of Procedural Content (via /.)

Wagner James Au sez, "Not only are [Obama's FCC Transition Team leaders] Kevin Werbach and Susan Crawford great Net Neutrality advocates, they're also into online games/virtual worlds-- Werbach belongs to not one but *two* WoW guilds, and Crawford calls herself a "big fan" of Second Life. Agreeing with his guildmaster Joi Ito, Werbach's also a big supporter of WoW as a model for the future of work and software development."

“What [Warcraft] does,” he continued in that post, “is provide an incentive for people to develop new software and ideas for collaborative production. Many of those ideas will translate to other group activities, including those within the business world. I think MMOGs will be, at a minimum, a significant testbed for these new technologies, because users see a direct benefit and are willing to experiment with new things.”

Unsurprisingly, this perspective extends to virtual worlds like Second Life, which has been an important component in Werbach’s Supernova technology conference. On her own blog, Professor Crawford, a board member at ICANN, also counts herself “a huge fan of Second Life” for the way it lets users retain IP rights to their content (though she confesses to difficulty when it comes to moving her SL avatar around.)

Obama’s FCC Transition Team Co-chair a WoW Player

See also: Net Neutrality fighters to head Obama's FCC transition team

Hurrah! This Friday marks the return of The IT Crowd, my favorite sitcom/nerd media EVAR, back for a triumphant third season!

Although Reynholm jumped out of a high window in the last series, his playboy son Douglas (Matt Berry) shows every sign of carrying on the family name (plundering the pension fund, putting flakes of gold in the drinking water, etc) and more or less takes over tonight's very funny opening episode. That leaves our IT-department trio of geeky Moss, lazy Roy and uptight Jen slightly overshadowed. But the sweet scene where Moss and Roy try some role-play to help Moss deal with park bullies just about makes up for it.

The IT Crowd (Thanks, Alan!)

LIFE and Google have teamed up to put 10,000,000 historic images online -- about 20 percent of the images are live now. The Disneyland images are great -- here's the old Submarine Ride. LIFE photo archive hosted by Google (Thanks, Neil and Slashdot!)

Gamasutra reports on a talk by Far Cry 2 developer Dominic Guay in which he discussed why procedural content generation is becoming more and more important as games get bigger and more complex. He also talks about some of the related difficulties, such as the amount of work required for the tools and the times when it's hard to retain control of the art direction. Quoting: "Initially, the team created a procedural sky rendering approach based on algorithms — which led to a totally unconvincing skybox that was clearly inferior to what a hand-authored skybox would be. 'We considered it to be a total failure,' he said. He explained that a great deal of focus must be put on the tools that surround the algorithms, to allow the systems to be properly harnessed. In the end, the game shipped with a revamped procedural sky system that ended up much more effective than the first attempt."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

treasure stolen gold
low the sun and busy bees
prepare for winter

We collected honey from our two backyard hives this fall and I've finally finished jarring it. The new hive, split from last year's hive, produced over 20 pounds of honey. This is more than our first hive produced last year, but the older hive was not to be outdone.

Queen Ann, in the second year of her reign, ran a very productive operation. Her daughters produced some of the lightest, most delightful honey I've ever had. The water content is so low that it pours out like a sheet of glass, folding at the bottom like you might expect from taffy.

From Ann's hive, we collected 100 pounds of honey, making the grand total 120 pounds between the two hives. This is the part we harvested. We leave enough behind for the bees to survive on during the long Minnesota winter, which amounts to another 80-100 pounds.

What's incredible is that all of this honey is produced from the flowers, trees, and vegetable gardens within a 2-3 mile radius of the hives. Two years ago, before I began this hobby, I wouldn't have thought this was possible in the city.

If you're interested in starting a backyard hive next spring, this is what you can look forward to. The real challenge of this urban agricultural experiment is to figure out what to do with the harvest.

Previously
Backyard beekeeping - splitting a hive

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coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission yesterday had a US District Court issue a temporary restraining order halting the sale of RemoteSpy keylogger spyware. According to the FTC's complaint, RemoteSpy spyware was sold to clients who would then secretly monitor unsuspecting consumers' computers. The defendants provided RemoteSpy clients with detailed instructions explaining how to disguise the spyware as an innocuous file, such as a photo, attached to an email."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In the past we've linked to some of Ian Rogers great presentations at music industry conferences, and now he's done it again. At a recent music industry conference, he told the assembled industry execs to basically stop whining about "losses" due to piracy and start making money. While I don't entirely agree with what business models will eventually be successful, Rogers makes a few key points in showing how musicians are making more money than ever before by figuring out ways to connect directly with fans, and not worrying about how many CDs they can sell.

It's worth reading through the entire presentation, but the key points he makes: the industry has changed, and the record labels no longer have a monopoly on distribution, and it's time they got over thinking that they can stuff that genie back into the bottle. Instead, they need to realize that people are spending more than ever on listening to music -- just not on buying CDs. Once they realize that, they need to get into the game, but do so by realizing that, as labels, they no longer have total control. In fact, it's now the musicians and the fans who are in a position of power, and the role of the labels should be to help enable the connection between musicians and fans.

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The Arkansas Arts Center is looking for submissions to their annual Toys Designed by Artists exhibition. It's their 36th year!

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An anonymous reader notes a posting up at a law blog with the provocative title Does Your Boss Have to Pay You While You Wait for Vista to Boot Up?. (Provocative because Vista doesn't boot more slowly than anything else, necessarily, as one commenter points out.) The National Law Journal article behind the post requires subscription. Quoting: "Lawyers are noting a new type of lawsuit, in which employees are suing over time spent booting [up] their computers. ... During the past year, several companies, including AT&T Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Cigna Corp., have been hit with lawsuits in which employees claimed that they were not paid for the 15- to 30-minute task of booting their computers at the start of each day and logging out at the end. Add those minutes up over a week, and hourly employees are losing some serious pay, argues plaintiffs' lawyer Mark Thierman, a Las Vegas solo practitioner who has filed a handful of computer-booting lawsuits in recent years. ... [A] management-side attorney... who is defending a half-dozen employers in computer-booting lawsuits... believes that, in most cases, computer booting does not warrant being called work."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Check out these shirts made from 3D models using an unfolding-polygon method similar to what product designers use when constructing paper models. Via Fashioning Technology. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Wearables | Digg this!

Video version of the $20 and under gift guide - electronic kits for $20 and under (M4V).

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JakartaDean writes "Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, famed Internet regulator, has lost his Senate seat. The AP is reporting that ' Stevens was declared the loser in Alaska on Tuesday night after a two-week-long process of counting nearly 90,000 absentee and early votes from across Alaska. With this victory, Democrat Mark Begich (the mayor of Anchorage) has defeated one of the giants in the US Senate by a 3,724-vote margin, a stunning end to a 40-year Senate career marred by Stevens' conviction on corruption charges a week before the election.' It's probably too early to tell what this means for Internet regulation, but at least there's a > 0 chance that the next committee chair will understand something about the Net."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In response to an article about how "Web 2.0 gives new tools to hate groups" I was tempted to write an entire post, mimicking the original, except changing every instance of "hate" to something positive. Yes, blogs and social networks can and are being used by hate groups. But they're also being used to combat ignorance and hate. They're just communication tools, and the fact that hate groups use them (as well as anti-ignorance groups) is hardly surprising. But rather than creating some moral panic about hate groups using these tools, why not encourage more people to use such tools to combat ignorance and hate? Instead, we get a bunch of supposed "experts" talking about how these uses need to be shut down. That does nothing productive. It just makes the hate group members feel even more angry and persecuted, which just fuels the hate. The solution is to educate -- and (oh, look at that!) web 2.0 provides some pretty good tools for spreading knowledge and fighting ignorance.

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I'm doing my guestblogging assignment this week while in Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. I came here to give a talk about Make and makers at Digitel (Digital Game and Intelligent Toy Enhanced Learning), by invitation of Mike Eisenberg of University of Colorado at Boulder's Craft Technology Lab. After my talk, my wife and I went for a hike to see some of the magnificent mountains that surround Banff. The first real snow of the season came last Sunday. I took this photo below of Mount Rundle with the Bow River making a loop in the Banff valley. The town is out of the picture to the right.

Tonight I've bought a book about the geology of Banff. Mount Rundle is on the cover. It's called How Old is that Mountain? by Chris Yorath. I want to learn more about this part of the Canadian Rockies and what they're made of.

Following our successful lift off, today on Offworld we saw the community start to extend the life of 2D Boy's brilliant indie puzzler World of Goo, and saw reason to be hopeful for Microsoft's upcoming Xbox 360 karaoke game Lips, despite entering a post-Rock Band, post-SingStar environment. We also heard good news about continued development on Citizen Siege, the darkly political game from the developers of the Oddworld series, nearly convinced David to take a Holiday In Cambodia, and found that one of the next games that could very well suck up the majority of our time could come from... Neopets? Link

Dynamoo writes "The good news is that Microsoft have announced free anti-virus software for consumers, dubbed Morro, available late next year. The bad news is... well, exactly the same. Although Microsoft's anti-malware products are pretty good, this move could drive many competitors out of business and create a dangerous security monoculture; major rivals will be lawyering up already. On the other hand, many malware infections could be prevented even by basic software. So is this going to be a good or bad thing overall?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lucas and his dad enjoy making stuff. In this video Brad interviews the young Tinkerer about the spiffy new speakers they made and rigged up to their stereo.

This was a great project - we followed the plans at http://makezine.com/12/diymusic_plate/ but didn't have the right wire, magnets, or plates. Instead we used 30 ga wire and magnets from RS and a variety of cups, plates, and disposable ware and compared how they all worked. They ALL worked well. This is one bulletproof project.

Making speakers is a really empowering thing. It can be as easy as wrapping some wire around a plastic cup, hooking it up to speaker terminals and listening in. Beyond that, you and your collaborators can find yourselves learning about crafting speaker enclosures, magnetism, electromagnets, repairing busted cones, and so much more. What have you done with magnet wire recently? Have you tried out projects from Make Magazine? If you have a tale to tell of the build, successful or 'learning experience', then post in the comments and add pictures and video to the Make Flickr pool.

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Gakken's New Edison-style Cup Phonograph Kit is a cylinder recorder that uses a needle to cut sound waves onto plastic cups. This kit lets you relive the excitement of Thomas Edison as he successfully recorded and played back sound for the first time on a similar cylinder recording system back in 1877.

Thomas Edison first experimented with sound recording by using paraffin paper, metal cylinders wrapped in tin foil, and then eventually settled on wax cylinders. As the story goes, the first thing to ever be successfully recorded and played back was Edison reciting "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Gakken's phonograph kit lets you recreate a model of how Edison first experimented with sound recording and playback, replacing the wax cylinder with regular plastic cups.

How does it sound? Here's a video, yours truly, recording a brisk rendition of "I've Been Working on the Railroad":

This is certainly no mp3 player, but that's what is so great. It's eerily low-fi and nostalgic; it makes your voice sound like it's one hundred years old. You can hear and see the medium speak, and that is what makes this kit so much fun! Clear some space next to your music collection: You might never throw away a plastic cup again.

View the Gakken Phonograph Kit in the Maker Shed.

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We've written plenty of times about the so-called "think tank" the Progress & Freedom Foundation. The group, which has called itself a "free market" think tank appears to be anything but free market when it comes to intellectual property issues. For years, it's been a huge supporter of increasingly strengthening gov't granted monopolies, often resorting to highly questionable arguments, such as suggesting that fair use harms innovation and that the DMCA shouldn't be changed because that would be gov't meddling in the free market -- ignoring, of course, that the DMCA itself is actually meddling in the free market. For years, the face of PFF's twisted claims on copyright was Patrick Ross, who then moved on to become a lobbyist for the entertainment industry (basically cementing what he was already doing at PFF with a more direct relationship). We thought it would be difficult to find someone who could twist arguments quite as much as Ross did, but PFF surprised us and went one step further.

It hired Tom Sydnor, who made quite a splash by writing one of the most ridiculous attack dog papers we've seen, taking a bunch of Larry Lessig comments completely out of context to accuse him of being a communist sympathizer. It was pure McCarthyism. The worst was when a variety of others pointed out Sydnor's out of context comments and put them back in context -- and Sydnor still stood by the paper, refusing to admit he took a single comment out of context. The truth was that it was difficult to find a single comment that was accurately portrayed.

Based on this, I tend to be immediately extra skeptical of anything that comes out of PFF (Adam Thierer's work is usually good, but that seems the exception). Sydnor's latest is an attack on the judge in the Jammie Thomas trial for declaring a mistrial in her case for wrongly instructing the jury that simply making a file available should be considered infringement. As the judge realized (correctly, in our opinion, and the opinion of plenty of legal experts) this was a "manifest error of law." For copyright infringement to occur a copy needs to be made. Simply making something available is not making an infringing copy. In typical Sydnor fashion, not only does he claim that the judge was wrong, he makes the judge out to be totally off the reservation in making such a ruling, claiming that the judge "misread or disobeyed precedents, federal treaties, scholarly reviews and the three branches of government."

Sydnor, of course, conveniently ignores pretty much everything on the other side, including precedents, scholarly reviews and the three branches of government (not international treaties for the most part, since the relevant ones have all been written by the legacy industry -- so indeed, they agree with Sydnor's assessment, but that's hardly compelling). The fact is that there have been folks who have weighed in on both sides, and there have been widespread legal rulings on both sides of the "making available" issue, as well as scholarly reviews. In fact, William Patry, a much more widely recognized and respected copyright expert than Sydnor, has written extensively on the issue, and seems to disagree with what Sydnor repeatedly claims is "inarguable."

More importantly, the recent trend has been quite clear: most of the courts recently taking up the issue have realized how little sense it is to accuse someone of copyright infringement when no copy has been shown to have been made. There are some exceptions, certainly, but most of the cases these days seem to be going against Sydnor's interpretation, which hardly makes it "inarguable" or as crazy as the paper makes out. Sydnor's decision to take some comments out of context, and then ignore the weight of the arguments on the other side, in order to paint the judge in this case as some sort of clueless rogue, is, tragically, fitting with PFF's reputation for throwing truth, reason and logic out the window in order to support the entertainment industry's position at all costs.

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