cathector writes "An article at spaceweather.com reports that the toolbag dropped during Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper's spacewalk has been recorded on film from earth: 'When Endeavour astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper dropped her toolbag during a spacewalk on Nov. 18th and it floated away, mission controllers probably figured they'd seen the last of it. Think again. Last night, Nov. 22nd, veteran satellite observer Kevin Fetter video-recorded the backpack-sized bag gliding over his backyard observatory in Brockville, Ontario. "It was easily 8th magnitude or brighter as it passed by the 4th magnitude star eta Pisces," he says. Spaceweather's satellite tracker is monitoring the toolbag.'" The actual loss of the bag was filmed, too; reader Kagura links in a comment on the original story to this YouTube clip of the bag's escape.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While we're waiting for the new economic stimulus plan to be unveiled on change.gov, or while we're waiting for it to kick-in, how about developing a backup plan at sparechange.gov?

Here's Tom Waits in a YouTube video singing the Depression-era "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?", lyrics by Yip Harburg, music by Jay Gorney (1931). It's a little rougher than the traditionally smooth Bing Crosby version.

They used to tell me, 
I was building a dream
With peace and glory ahead.
Why should I be standing in line
Just waiting for bread?
Once I built a railroad, 
I made it run
I made it run against time
Once i built a railroad, 
and now it's done
Brother, can you spare a dime? ...

Once in khaki suits,
Ah, gee we looked swell
Full of that yankee-doodle dee-dum!

Brother, can you spare a dime?

There are more and more people all around us needing our help.

Roland Piquepaille writes "The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) has some unusual teaching programs. One PhD student, Øyvind Brandtsegg, is a graduate of the jazz program and this article describes how has developed a computer program and a musical instrument for improvisation. The PhD student is 36 years old and is at the same time a composer, a musician and computer programmer. His 'computer instrument' can take any recorded sound as input and split it into a number of very short sound particles that can last for between 1 and 10 milliseconds. 'These fragments may be infinitely reshuffled, making it possible to vary the music with no change in the fundamental theme.'" Brandtsegg improvisational software is called ImproSculpt; his site contains several selections from his musical output, including "some pieces made with the predecessor of ImproSculpt," called FollowMe.

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ptorrone writes "MAKE Magazine has a fantastic 'Connections'-style video called THE LED — The short documentary has the history of the LED to modern day applications. Starting with Russian Oleg Vladimirovich Losev work which was largely ignored in the 1920s to making your own 'Cat's Whisker' — a primitive LED made from a metal-semiconductor point-contact junction forming a Schottky barrier diode. The first practical visible-spectrum LED was developed in 1962 by Nick Holonyak Jr., while working at General Electric Company."

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Erris writes "Opendotdotdot has good news about laws in the EU: 'EU culture ministers yesterday (20 November) rejected French proposals to curb online piracy through compulsory measures against free downloading ... [and instead pushed] for "a fair balance between the various fundamental rights" while fighting online piracy, first listing "the right to personal data protection," then "the freedom of information" and only lastly "the protection of intellectual property." [This] indicates that the culture ministers and their advisers are beginning to understand the dynamics of the Net, that throttling its use through crude instruments like the "three strikes and you're out" is exactly the wrong thing to do.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

longacre writes "A new $1,200 machine that uses the same amount of power as three light bulbs promises to condense drinkable water out of the air. On display at Wired Magazine's annual tech showcase, the WaterMill 'looks like a giant golf ball that has been chopped in half: it is about 3ft in diameter, made of white plastic, and is attached to the wall. It works by drawing air through filters to remove dust and particles, then cooling it to just below the temperature at which dew forms. The condensed water is passed through a self-sterilising chamber that uses microbe-busting UV light to eradicate any possibility of Legionnaires' disease or other infections. Finally, it is filtered and passed through a pipe to the owner's fridge or kitchen tap.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ponca City, We love you writes "Two mobile applications, NMobile and Trapster, are providing drivers with up-to-date maps of speed-enforcement zones with live police traps, speed cameras or red-light cameras. Each application pulls up a map pinpointing the locations of speed traps within driving distance and an audio alert will sound as vehicles approach an area tagged as harboring a speed trap. Both applications rely on the wisdom of the crowds for their data with users reporting camera-rigged stop lights and areas heavily populated with radar-toting police officers via the iPhone or their web-based application, creating the ultimate speed trap repository available to you when you need it most — while you're driving. To thwart false alarms and eliminate inaccuracies, Trapster enlists its community of nearly 200,000 members to rank speed traps on their accuracy. NMobile founder Shannon Atkinson declined to provide detailed data, though he did estimate that 'well over 1,000' users had downloaded the application since it became available last week. The company insists they've received only positive feedback from law enforcement officials and police officers regarding their products. 'If the application gets people to slow down, I think it's generally considered to be a good thing,' said Atkinson."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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.

Suscribe to the MAKE podcast for more great movies and videos from MAKE!

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The non-chain on the new Trek Soho

It looks like Trek may succeed in making non-chain bikes mainstream. Via CNN:

Trek Bicycle is part of a movement to bury the finger-pinching, pants-munching, rust-prone sprocket and chain, and usher in an era of belt-driven bikes that might have the inventors of the self-propelled transportation Schwinning in their graves.

Wisconsin-based Trek is introducing two models this holiday season that are chainless, instead using technology most often found in things like motorcycles and snowmobiles. While some smaller custom bike makers have used them before, Trek is the first to use the technology for mass-produced bicycles.

The largest U.S. domestic bike manufacturer is hoping to capitalize on a new group of urban pedal-pushers who are trading their cars for a more low-tech way to get around because of gas prices as well as health and environmental concerns.
...
the new belts are a low-maintenance solution to a chain, which has roughly 3,000 parts including all the links and connectors.

Aside from the whisper-quiet ride, the lighter and longer-lasting carbon-fiber composite belts won't rust, can't be cut, won't stretch or slip and won't leave grease marks around your ankles. A guard over the belt-drive and the construction of the system makes getting your pants stuck an unlikely scenario...

Trek's far from the first to offer alternatives to chains on bikes;there's a good overview of shaft-driven bikes on Wikipedia. At $900+, Trek's take isn't exactly inexpensive. If nothing else, they'll be interesting to test-ride!

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krewemaynard writes "Google has announced that they were able to sort one petabyte of data in 6 hours and 2 minutes across 4,000 computers. According to the Google Blog, '... to put this amount in perspective, it is 12 times the amount of archived web data in the US Library of Congress as of May 2008. In comparison, consider that the aggregate size of data processed by all instances of MapReduce at Google was on average 20PB per day in January 2008.' The technology making this possible is MapReduce 'a programming model and an associated implementation for processing and generating large data sets.' We discussed it a few months ago. Google has also posted a video from their Technology RoundTable discussing MapReduce."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

gozunda writes "My company is an open source software vendor/developer. We maintain a popular open source project and keep ourselves afloat by producing commercial products derived from or extending the value of the core project. Over time we've seen our business model eroding as other open source projects produce free versions of the same extensions and utilities that are our bread and butter. Something that was worth $5K last year is suddenly worth $0 because the free version is just as good as the paid. This same cycle is obviously having an impact on pure-play commercial software vendors. Is open source ultimately a race to zero? In ten years will there be any cost associated with commodity (non-custom) software? If not, will there still be a 'software industry' as it exists today, or will software simply be a by-product of the operation of other industries? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? As a professional developer, do I need to fear this or feed it?"

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Forget behavioral economics -- the Naked Scientists science podcast interviews a scientist who is investigating the hormonal basis for bubbles and crashes. It's endocrinal economics!

John - We found that the traders, if they had high testosterone in the morning relative the the median levels, they made a lot more money for the rest of the day than they did on the days when they had low testosterone.

Meera - When most people think of testosterone they obviously associate it largely with males. Does this then mean that females are relatively unaffected?

John - Women have about 10% of the testosterone that men do. It's entirely possible that they're not subject to this kind of overconfidence.

Meera - But you're also looking into levels of cortisol, as well.

John - That's right. In the current environment that may be the more interesting steroid. When the market turns around it turns into a crash what can happen is that cortisol, which is a stress hormone, can become elevated in the bodies of traders. Cortisol, if you're exposed to it chronically at high levels for a long period of time, it can have a devastating effect on both the mind and the body. In terms of affecting traders decisions what it can do is affect the memories you recall. You tend to recall bad memories, negative precedents. You tend to see risk where maybe there is none. You become fearful, you feel anxiety. I think that decreases a trader's appetite for risk. While testosterone is causing people to take too much risk cortisol is causing people to take too little risk in the crash.

Hormones and the Money Markets

---

Seven nights of one great discovery after another continues tonight at 9P e/p only on National Geographic Channel. From the ancient pyramids to the ocean depths, from lost cities to outer space, travel with the latest generation of intrepid explorers as they make one great discovery after another. Expedition Week, only on National Geographic Channel. www.natgeotv.com/expedition

TRNick writes "How can developers who are working for free protect themselves and avoid getting exploited by business users of Linux? TechRadar has an interview with former Fedora project leader Max Spevack to find out how his new role as manager of the community architecture team is designed to help. Quoting: 'About two-thirds of the Fedora packages are maintained by community people, and if we didn't have that community, that chunk of work would either not get done, which would significantly harm Red Hat's entire value, or would have to made up by more [paid] engineers. The challenge on the flip side of that is to make sure that everyone in the Fedora community feels valued, that everyone who contributes can be proud of the way that Red Hat uses their code.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IHateEverybody writes "Scientists have found evidence that the solar wind is ripping off chunks of the Martian atmosphere, which could possibly explain why Mars has such a thin atmosphere today. The chunks are being ripped up along 'magnetic umbrellas,' which are bubbles of magnetic fields which rise from the ground and extend above the Martian atmosphere. This is surprising because scientists previously thought that these magnetic umbrellas protected the Martian atmosphere. Now it looks like exactly the opposite might be true."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Barence writes "Google has launched a new service that allows users to tailor to their own search results. Called SearchWiki, the service allows Google account holders to move results up or off the rankings, or even add their own choice of site to the top of the search results. Google claims that any changes a user makes will only affect their results, and not those of fellow surfers, although it's difficult to believe that some of the feedback generated from the SearchWiki won't be used to fine tune the Google search algorithm. Is this a cunning way to encourage people to sign in while they search, thus providing Google with a richer set of data that can be mapped to specific user accounts?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

gupg writes "NVIDIA announced a new category of supercomputers — the Tesla Personal Supercomputer — a 4 Teraflop desktop for under $10,000. This desktop machine has 4 of the Tesla C1060 GPU computing processors. These GPUs have no graphics out and are used only for computing. Each Tesla GPU has 240 cores and delivers about 1 Teraflop single precision and about 80 Gigaflops double-precision floating point performance. The CPU + GPU is programmed using C with added keywords using a parallel programming model called CUDA. The CUDA C compiler/development toolchain is free to download. There are tons of applications ported to CUDA including Mathematica, LabView, ANSYS Mechanical, and tons of scientific codes from molecular dynamics, quantum chemistry, and electromagnetics; they're listed on CUDA Zone."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Looking for a solution that allows you to share high definition video with your friends or others? Tired of the restrictions that YouTube places on the quality, size, and length of the videos that you upload? In today’s Sharewood Guide, I will be reviewing eleven high definition video sharing and publishing platforms so that you can choose the YouTube alternative that best suits your HD video publishing needs. Photo credit: ray222 YouTube is the 800 pound gorilla in the online video publishing space. But there are many alternative platforms to publish and distribute your videos on. Many of those platforms hold distinct advantages over YouTube. In particular, one well known limitation of YouTube is its aversion to offering publishers the ability to share true HD content. YouTube doesn't allow publishers to upload high definition videos because of accessibility concerns. Many users just don't have the needed bandwidth because of a lack of available broadband to deliver the HD content. But recently even YouTube seems to be changing their tune in order to stay competitive in the evolving online video landscape. Word has it that YouTube is testing HD quality video playback. But that move has not made yet been made official. So for the time being whom do you turn to if you want to publish and share your high definition content? Here are eleven options from you to choose from. Listed alphabetically they are: Blip.TV, DailyMotion, Exposure Room, Miro, Pandora.TV, Veoh, Viddyou, Vimeo, Vuze, Wildscreen, Wuapi. Each of these video publishing platforms has its own advantages and disadvantages, but every single one of them will allow you to publish and share your videos at 720p HD quality or greater. Here, all the details:

Reviews Of High Definition Online Video Publishing and Sharing Platforms

See the Full Size HD Online Video Publishing Comparison Chart The solutions reviewed are by no means the only HD video publishing and sharing platforms that are available, but should none-the-less give you a good idea of what is available to use and what features each should have. Unless otherwise noted, all of the high definition video sharing platforms compared below offers unlimited storage and bandwidth for videos, as well as the capability to embed videos into other sites.

• Blip.TV Blip.TV is a high definition video sharing site based out of New York, NY. They are trying to focus on episodic content (i.e. series of shows) rather than viral videos in order to differentiate themselves from YouTube and other video publishing platforms. Blip.TV allows users to upload videos with any size, quality, or length restrictions. The video playback quality is the same as the quality with which it was uploaded - in other words Blip.TV does not compress or otherwise alter your video to save bandwidth. Once uploaded, publishers can also choose to allow their viewers to download content. If the publisher chooses to allow viewers to download their content, viewers will be able to download the video at full quality. Further differentiating Blip.TV from its competitors is the 50/50 ad revenue share Blip.TV offers with its publishers. So if you are looking for a platform to serve your high quality videos for free and make a few bucks off of it, check out Blip.TV Cost: Free Quality: Same as Source File Size: Unlimited Video Length: Unlimited Embeddable: Yes Unique Feature(s): Ad Revenue Share, Downloadable Video http://www.blip.tv/



• DailyMotion DailyMotion is a high definition video sharing site based out of Paris, France. DailyMotion is seen as one of the primary competitors to YouTube. Unlike YouTube, however, DailyMotion supports HD (resolution up to 720p) video publishing and sharing. But HD video publishing and sharing is only available to verified users, called MotionMakers by DailyMotion. Applying for MotionMaker is a straightforward process. This label merely denotes that the user is the creator of their videos, and that their videos do not contain any violation of intellectual property rights, copyright or otherwise. Once the user has been verified, the videos published by the user are labeled "Creative Content". As a MotionMaker, the user is able to upload videos of unlimited length and up to 1GB in size. However, viewers do not have the option to download that video as they do on some of the other sites reviewed here. Cost: Free Quality: up to 720p File Size: 1GB Video Length: Unlimited Embeddable: Yes http://www.dailymotion.com/



• ExposureRoom (XR) ExposureRoom is a high definition video publishing platform that is targeted at professionals, those who would like to gain more exposure for their work. ExposureRoom allows publishers to share videos of up to 720p quality. Like Vimeo and Blip.TV, once the video is uploaded publishers can also choose to allow their viewers to download the video at the original quality. ExposureRoom plans to provide an e-commerce platform where publishers can sell their video productions. I have not yet determined whether this feature is available, but when I do I will let you know. What makes ExposureRoom unique is their focus on the social networking aspect. The goal of the site is to connect professionals to a platform where they can exchange ideas and provide the talent with exposure and opportunity. Cost: Free Quality: up to 720p File Size: Unlimited Video Length: Unlimited Embeddable: Yes Unique Feature(s): Social Network for Video Industry Professionals http://exposureroom.com/



• Miro Miro, Japanese for “Look!”, is an open source desktop internet TV platform / video aggregator managed by the Participatory Culture Foundation. Miro like Vuze delivers high definition content straight to your desktop via a combination of peer-to-peer and direct download. Using Miro, users can subscribe to your video feeds via RSS. However, one disadvantage of Miro is that as a desktop application, you cannot embed video from Miro on to web pages. But Miro holds its own unique advantages over web platforms. Making Miro unique is the capability to create a co-branded versions of Miro. Miro Co-Branded Players enable content publishers to extend their brand and content onto the desktop. Furthermore, using the co-branding solution, content publishers can run advertising within the player to further monetize their content. Cost: Free Quality: Same as source File Size: Unlimited Video Length: Unlimited Embeddable: No Unique Feature(s): Peer-to-Peer, Desktop Player, Co-branding http://www.getmiro.com



• Pandora.TV Pandora.TV is a high definition video sharing site based out of Seoul, South Korea, so don’t be surprised if you see Korean ads all over the site. It is the leading player in the video sharing market in Korea… the equivalent of YouTube in the US but with high definition. Luckily for those of us who can’t read Korean, the interface is in English (as well as Korean) so the language barrier is not an issue. Like most of the other HD video publishing platforms reviewed here, Pandora.TV does not place any restrictions on the file size or the length of the video that can be uploaded. And Pandora.TV supports up 720p quality video playback. Cost: Free Quality: up to 720p File Size: Unlimited Video Length: Unlimited Embeddable: Yes http://www.pandora.tv/



• Veoh Veoh is another US based high definition video publishing platform. Veoh offers a maximum resolution of 720p for video playback. Additionally, Veoh is one of the few platforms that allow viewers to download content directly to their desktop (with the publishers expressed permission of course). Veoh is unique in that it is able to deliver its content in two different ways: streaming which is standard and through a DVR type application called VeohTV. VeohTV is a peer-to-peer desktop video aggregator that allows users to download videos from any website and save them for later viewing (similar to Miro and Vuze). VeohTV works with media center remote controls so viewers can watch and jump through content all from the comfort of their couch. Furthermore if publishers upgrade from the free account to Veoh Pro (also free but requires additional verification), they will have access to the Veoh video syndication system, which means that Veoh will automatically publish that same video to YouTube, MySpace, and others. Veoh Pro also consolidates reporting (similar to TubeMogul). Finally, Veoh can serve as an e-commerce platform for those who want to sell their videos. Veoh splits the revenue 50/50 with the publisher. Cost: Free Quality: 720p File Size: Unlimited Video Length: Unlimited Embeddable: Yes Unique Feature(s): Downloadable Video, E-commerce platform http://www.veoh.com/



• Viddyou Viddyou is a high definition video sharing site based out of San Francisco, CA. Like Wuapi, Viddyou supports 1080p quality playback of your HD video. Unlike Wuapi, however, if you want to publish and share your HD content you will have to pay some money. But at $34.95 a year, Viddyou shouldn't put too large of a whole in your pocket. If you are a paying (premium) member, Viddyou makes no restrictions on the upload size of your video or on the length of your video. Once uploaded, publishers get unlimited storage and delivery of their videos. So should they choose to download their videos, they can do so without restriction. Unfortunately, viewers cannot download the video. As a paid service, Viddyou can offer publishers and viewers what other platforms cannot: mainly extensive privacy controls and a lack of both advertisements and trolls. So if you are looking to share your videos in a clutter free, private environment through which to share your home videos or any content that you would like to control access too then Viddyou is well worth checking out. Cost: $34.95 / year Quality: up to 1080p File Size: Unlimited Video Length: Unlimited Embeddable: Yes http://www.viddyou.com/



• Vimeo Vimeo is a high definition video sharing site based out of New York, NY. Vimeo was one of the first online video sharing and publishing sites to offer HD quality uploading. There is no restriction in regards to video playback length. However, Vimeo does enforce a rule that limits user video uploading to 500MB per week. So if you were looking to upload long high definition home movies, this is not the place for you. One of the distinct advantages that Vimeo offers is the ability for viewers to download content. Naturally, the publisher of the content can choose whether they want to allow unrestricted downloads or allow downloads by authorized users (via a password) only. Cost: Free Quality: up to 720p File Size: 500MB / week Video Length: Unlimited Embeddable: Yes Unique Feature(s): Downloadable Video http://www.vimeo.com/



• Vuze Vuze does not fit the same mold as most of the other solutions reviewed here. Vuze is a desktop video aggregator that allows users to distribute and / or dowload high definition content. Vuze is a is a “commercial-grade platform” that serves as both a BitTorrent client and content service. Because it is based on the p2p model, Vuze is able to distribute high definition video quickly and efficiently straight to its users desktops. However, like Miro because it is a desktop platform, you cannot embed HD videos directly from Vuze on to a website. If you are a publisher looking for a way to let your viewers download your content quickly and without straining your own bandwidth, Vuze is an option worth checking out. Cost: Free Quality: Same as source File Size: Unlimited Video Length: Unlimited Embeddable: No Unique Feature(s): Peer-to-Peer, Desktop Player http://www.vuze.com/



• Wildscreen Based out of Berlin, Germany, and launched in April 2008, Wildscreen is one of the newest high definition video sharing sites on the web. But Wildscreen has tried to differentiate themselves by focusing on combining quality content with a social media network. Users will be able to publish and share videos of any size, length, and up to 720p quality. Further differentiating itself from its competitors, Wildscreen provides its publishers with the capability to create custom branded channels through which to share their content. Additionally, Wildscreen is the only solution that allows its publishers to keep 100% of the ad revenue from their video channel. This combined with no upload file size or video length restrictions, makes Wildscreen a site worth checking out. Cost: Free Quality: Same as Source File Size: Unlimited Video Length: Unlimited Embeddable: Yes Unique Feature(s): Publishers keep 100% of Ad Revenue http://www.wildscreen.tv



• Wuapi Wuapi is a relatively new high definition video distribution platform based out of Barcelona, Spain. Wuapi claims to have developed a proprietary distribution platform that allows for them to deliver high definition video more quickly and affordably than other sites. Backing up that claim, Wuapi offers publishers the capability to upload and deliver full 1080p HD quality videos. Like most of the solutions reviewed here, Wuapi sets no limits on video length, however they do have a file size max of 4GB for uploads. One disadvantage that Wuapi has is the inability to embed videos on to other sites. Otherwise Wuapi is a complete HD publishing solution, so hopefully that will change soon. Cost: Free Quality: up to 1080p File Size: 4GB Video Length: Unlimited Embeddable: No http://wuapi.com/

Do you see any mistakes with these reviews? Would you like to suggest other high definition publishing solutions? Would you like to share your own experiences with any of the solutions reviewed? Please leave a comment below.

Written by Andre Deutmeyer for MasterNewMedia and first published on November 23rd, 2008, as HD Video Sharing: Best Solutions To Publish High Definition Videos - Sharewood Guide.

Photographer Robbie Cooper shows just how focused young video-game players can be... NYTimes video.

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I got my first Allan Sherman LP when I was five: My Son, the Nut. It had been my mother's, and soon we both knew all the lyrics to all the songs. Not just the canonical "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah," but also "RATTFINK," "Eight Foot Two, Solid Blue" ("Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue"), "You Went the Wrong Way Old King Louis" ("You Came a Long Way From St Louis") and many others.

I can tell you why I loved them: they were subversive, they had wonky, comic rhymes, they were sung in a broad, nasal borscht-belt comedy voice, and they reminded me of the MAD Magazine parody songs that were my favorite part of every issue. I sang those songs everywhere I went. When I heard the originals, it was another revelation, the original lyrics revealing even more clevernesses in Sherman's lampoons.

Over the years, I've picked up a few more CDs as they were issued, and discovered more of his great material (the medley that contains "Do not build a stingy sandwich/pile the coldcuts high/customers should see salami/coming through the rye," and "When you go to the delicatessen store/Don't buy the liverwurst," is a major favorite around our household). But it wasn't until last week, when I finally got my hands on a copy of "My Son, the Box," that I got to hear every damned thing Sherman ever recorded.

Cross "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz" with MAD Magazine, throw in the Smothers Brothers and Dr Demento (Weird Al clearly owes a debt to Sherman) and you've got this remarkable box-set. Listening to these discs prompted me to do some digging on Sherman, which led to the revelation that Sherman was a prude who thought that the sexual revolution had destroyed America, which is just weird enough to be the icing on the cake.

When you go to the delicatessen store
Don't buy the liverwurst
Don't buy the liverwurst
Don't buy the liverwurst
I repeat what I just said before
Don't buy the liverwurst
Don't buy the liverwurst

Oh, buy the corned beef if you must
The pickled herring you can trust
And the lox puts you in orbit A-OK
But that big hunk of liverwurst
Has been there since October first
And today is the 23rd of May

My Son, The Box

A recent insider-meddling scandal inside the space-merchant game EVE Online prompted the creation of a democratically elected player council called the Council of Stellar Management (CSM). This newly constituted democratic institution is charged with helping the game developers balance out fun with fairness. I've often wondered whether democratic player-groups can vote for more fun, even when "fun" includes making the game harder and more frustrating at times.

1UP: When can we expect to see in-game results from the meeting?

AC: Well the immediate results were in the prioritizing of development effort applied to the game changes we advocated to CCP. Directly based on CSM advice, CCP will be rolling out game changes, balance alternations and improvements and additional programming effort on key areas. Of course, some of these things are going to take 3/6/9/12 months to see light on the live server, but a big part of the battle is to start the processing going and to know that we've helped to set the priorities for the next year of development for Eve. For me personally, the first big things I'm expecting changes on relate to Faction Warfare (the key content of the Empyrean Age expansion) being opened up to Alliance corporations and incorporating our advise and advocacy on a truly dynamic, open-ended plotline for the game itself. After that, I'm expecting CCP to roll-out improvements to the Black Ops range of Battleships and address issues with 0.0 Sovereignty and its current imbalance in favor of the defending power.

Building a Better Virtual World Through Democracy (via Terra Nova)

tiffanydanica writes "For all the flack Mozilla gets about its new security warnings for https sites, at least it warns the user when a mismatch occurs. Sadly the new Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop (released in part to fix some security issues), doesn't bother validating the SSL certificate on the other side before sending along the username and password, making it vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack. This is certainly a step up from transmitting the information in the clear, since the attacker must switch from being passive to active, but with all of the DNS security problems, it would be fairly trivial for a malicious attacker to grab a large number of Yahoo! accounts (be it for phishing or spaming). Hopefully this issue will get fixed shortly, but for now Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop users may wish to use the webmail interface."

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You can connect to the Wii remote over bluetooth or use an Arduino to send peripheral data to the Wiimote, but what if you want to interface directly with the Wiimote's IR camera? The sensor is particularly good at tracking coordinates for 1 to 4 points—it could be a simple way to add sophisticated tracking capabilities to your own project.

David Cranor writes,

There is a great site about hacking the wiimote IR camera to interface it with a computer - but it's all in Japanese! Perhaps you could post these links and see if anybody could translate it?

This page details how to desolder the camera itself and build a standalone circuit for it so that it can be connected to an I2C bus, and subsequently a computer (i think, anyway - the schematics are in English, and there's a video).

And this page talks about how to connect the camera to an Arduino via some of I2C shield that he's built.

I'd really like to have access to this information for my projects, so if somebody would be able to translate these pages, that would be awesome!

A quick run through Google's Japanese to English translator yielded a reasonably understandable result:

Wii IR sensor connection details
Connecting the Wii IR sensor to Arduino

The second link contains a wealth of information on talking to the IR sensor over I2C, including some details on adjusting sensitivity parameters. The translation is a little rough, but combined with some of the sample code, I think I have the gist of it:

To initialize the IR camera, you have two options: 1) a simple, default initialization or 2) an initialization that allows you to specify 4 configuration parameters that affect the sensitivity of the device.

Simple Initialization:
Just write the following byte sequences, with a small delay between writes (assumes a successful ACK). The first byte on each line is the register you are writing to.
0x30 0x01
0x30 0x08
0x06 0x90
0x08 0xC0
0x1A 0x40
0x33 0x33

Initialization with sensitivity setting:
The author defined 5 sensitivity levels, and there are four parameters (p0, p1, p2, p3) that are adjusted for each level. Here are the settings:

Level 1: p0 = 0x72, p1 = 0x20, p2 = 0x1F, p3 = 0x03
Level 2: p0 = 0xC8, p1 = 0x36, p2 = 0x35, p3 = 0x03
Level 3: p0 = 0xAA, p1 = 0x64, p2 = 0x63, p3 = 0x03
Level 4: p0 = 0x96, p1 = 0xB4, p2 = 0xB3, p3 = 0x04
Level 5: p0 = 0x96, p1 = 0xFE, p2 = 0xFE, p3 = 0x05

Quoting the Wiimote Wiki IR sensor page, these parameters correspond to:
p0: MAXSIZE: Maximum blob size. Wii uses values from 0x62 to 0xc8
p1: GAIN: Sensor Gain. Smaller values = higher gain
p2: GAINLIMIT: Sensor Gain Limit. Must be less than GAIN for camera to function. No other effect?
p3: MINSIZE: Minimum blob size. Wii uses values from 3 to 5

Either pick your own custom settings for the parameters, or choose them from one of the 5 levels above, then send the following data to the device:

0x30, 0x01
0x00, 0x02, 0x00, 0x00, 0x71, 0x01, 0x00, p0
0x07, 0x00, p1
0x1A, p2, p3
0x33, 0x03
0x30, 0x08

The author also links to the following source, which serves as a helloworld for reading sensor data directly from the IR camera:

Wii Remote IR sensor test for Arduino
Wii Remote IR sensor test for ATMEGA168

Finally, since the IR sensor is a 3.3v device, you'll want to do a little voltage conversion before interfacing it directly with a 5v device like your typical Arduino (Arduino Pro users don't have to do a thing). Sparkfun has a guide for using 3.3v electronics with 5v microcontrollers, which should be all you need. It makes me wonder if anyone sells a pre-built 3.3v shield.

Hopefully this is all you'll need to get things working. Make sure to send us a tip if you make something cool using the Wii IR sensor.

Previously:
HOWTO: Make a Wiimote peripheral
Hook your Wii nunchuck up to an Arduino

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Over on Dinosaurs and Robots, Mister Jalopy says:

A few months ago, Ry Cooder and I went out to the dry lakes with the Old Crow Speed Shop, the Bobby Green Bellytanker and the New York Times. The article (by Lawrence Downes, and photos by Eric Grigorian) is out tomorrow and it is wonderful.

There is the Los Angeles that people imagine of red carpet premieres, Botox lunches, velvet rope nightclubs, Venice bodybuilders and tony boutiques. It is not a fable. That is real. Or, at least, it physically exists.

Then, there is the Los Angeles that I know. Aerospace surplus hardware stores, smoky and ashtray-less Koreatown English hunt club bars in crumbling hotel basements, perfect beer buzz lunches at the Farmer's Market in filtered sunlight, the wild dogs of Pacoima, sprawling thrift stores, trolling junkyards for old diaries and Polaroids, the drag races at Pomona, chrome plating shops, backyards stacked with 300 bicycles, gold miners eager to show their biggest nuggets, fishing for carp in the Los Angeles River, optimists taking over art museums, the nicad battery selection at Electronic City, the metal patination case at Industrial Metal Supply, Kit Kraft Hobby, the gem vault at the Natural History Museum, the szechuan peppercorns of Alhambra, the churlish bartenders at Hop Louie, the sneaker shops of Little Tokyo, the imported coldcuts at Monte Carlo Deli, the Japanese garden on the roof of the New Otani Hotel, the bicycle swap at the Encino Velodrome, the DDR kids at the Santa Monica Pier, the mustard at Philipes, the dimsum carts of Monterey Park, the carnitas at Carrillos, the buffalo at Hart Park, the Kris Special at the Waystation, the netsuke room at LACMA, the Remington Rolling Block at the Backwoods Inn, the coffee shop at the LA Police Academy, the abandoned restaurant with leather walls at Union Station, the yardage of the Garment District, the abandoned fire station in the Toy District with the quartersawn oak lockers viewable through the crack in the door, the first two rows of lowrider history at the Pomona Auto Swap, Abe Lincoln's hat at the Huntington Library, the camillia forest of Descanso Garden, the bolt room of Roscoe Hardware that is hidden in a kitchen remodeling home center, the genius at the Museum of Jurassic Technology, the chile pepper booth at the Grand Central Market, sneaking to the top balcony of the Bradbury Building, the threadbare and dented Variety Arts Center, the orange groves of the 126 and secret utility salvage yard in the northeast San Fernando Valley.

Mister Jalopy continues: "Ry and I share this Los Angeles and it was fun to show it to Lawrence. He did us proud. Los Angeles tries to throw itself away everyday but we are still gold prospectors, hot rodders and guitarists. Our fundamental awesomeness will not be impinged.

I agree; what Mister Jalopy writes above comes closer than anyone to nailing why I love Los Angeles. Ry Cooder’s American West

DeviceGuru writes "Claiming that service-class robots will one day be pervasive, researchers at the University of the West of England's Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) have begun investigating ways to make robots seem more human. As part of a project to enhance robot/human relationships, BRL has created a robotic head that can exhibit emotions, based on both verbal and non-verbal queues. Check out the videos in the article — especially the slightly creepy one in which the robot contemplates its purpose and its relationship to its environment."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Beautifully designed prop documents in convenient .pdf form. Just download, customize the text, and print your own 1920s-style telegrams, ID cards, and more. These were created for live-action H.P. Lovecraft gamers, but anyone can enjoy them. Admittedly, this would have been nice to know about before Halloween, but I'll bookmark it for next year.

These were created by the talented Andrew Leman of ElectriClerk fame.

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An anonymous reader writes "I'm sure this is something all older Slashdotters are aware of: as I get older my once-sharp brain is, well, getting worse. In particular, I'm not able to remember things as well as I once did. As a geek my capacity in this area was always what defined me as a geek. Nowadays things seem to go in OK, but then leak out. A few weeks later I've mostly forgotten. So, I ask Slashdot: how do you cope with your mind getting older? What's your trick? Fish-oil? Brain Training on the DS? Exercise? Or just trying harder to remember things?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.