THE SAGA OF THE SHOE-TOSSER AND BOINGBOING: So, yesterday, some friends sent me animated gif-phemera based on the Iraqi Shoe-Tosser Guy Incident. What incident, you say? The one in which 28-year old Baghdad journalist Muntadhar al Zaidi (now an imprisoned folk hero) took off every 'ZIG'!! and threw them at George W. Bush for great justice. Of course an internet meme would ensue.

When it did, I posted a bunch of the gifs here on Boing Boing without thinking through what would happen if this image-dense post went crazy viral and every idiot in the world hotlinked us. The result: Just 24 hours later, this one dumb post cost us thousands of bucks in bandwidth (HELLO, BAILOUT OVER HERE?). Thankfully, our eagle-eyed sysadmin Ken Snider spotted the trouble before things got mega-bad and more zeroes accrued on the end of that figure.

We unpublished the post for a while, made arrangements to host all the goodies on archive.org, and have republished after adding some more fun junk to it.

Here you are, and you're welcome.
? Iraq Shoe Tosser Guy: The Animated Gifs (NOW WITH MORE LULZ) ?

INSTRUCTIVE MORAL: Shoes can be expensive. I could have purchased 8.3 pairs of real live Manolos for what this blog post cost us in just 24 hours.

BEST SPECIMENS OF THIS MEME: The Three Stooges one, which came from The American Caliban, or this YTMND thing: "Bush Dodges Everything." (contains loud hypnotic sound).

SELF-INFLICTED PUNISHMENT: I must now wear The Hat Of Shame, shown below. One of the Boing Boing Gadgets guys found this. Please do not hotlink it. In fact, close your eyes right now.

alphadogg writes "Five years ago, the US tech industry, politicians, and Internet users were wringing their hands over the escalating problem of spam. This prompted Congress to pass a landmark anti-spam bill known as the CAN-SPAM Act in December 2003. Fast forward five years. The number of spam messages sent over the Internet every day has grown more than 10-fold, topping 164 billion worldwide in August 2008. Almost 97% of all e-mails are spam, costing US ISPs and corporations an estimated $42 billion a year. What went wrong here?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Illustrator Jeremy W. Eaton has kindly scanned and uploaded some of his notebook sketches drawn under the influence of drugs such as marijuana, psilocybin, LSD, and Diet Pepsi. (Above: Hashish, 1996.)

Drawing on drugs

If you live in Los Angeles, please think of including Machine Project in your list of organizations you will be donating to this year. Machine Project is the coolest art/tech space I know of, and the free events they hold every year are bring much joy to the community.

Mark Allen, the founder of Machine Project, says:

I started Machine five years ago because I wanted a place that was comfortable, friendly, and interested in everything in the universe. Every month, our operations manager Michele and I have to raise almost $9,000 just to keep the doors open. Money above that amount we use to create the free events at Machine (almost 100 in 2008!) and put on shows like our one day takeover of LACMA. To survive we raise money from four sources - grants, workshops, the sale of books, and members – or future members – like yourself.

As the economy goes tragically haywire, everyone faces challenges including the foundations who grant us money. As a result, funding we were counting on to pay Michele's salary and the rent on our space will be significantly less, as in OH SHIT, HOW ARE WE GOING TO PAY THE RENT less.

Machine has always been founded on the idea of getting as many people as possible involved in Machine's projects for maximum awesomeness. Therefore, we are now going to do what we should have done all along - rely on the people like you who love Machine to be an active part in our survival.

If you haven't already, please:

*donate $128 or whatever level is right for you to become a current member of Machine

*give an additional gift to help this urgent campaign

*consider giving the gift of membership to a friend or dearest family member (we will write them an elaborate letter describing how great you are, and send it along with a machine book in time for the holidays)

*purchase workshop gift certificates for the crafty, the restless or the electronically inclined (Sewing, Arduino, electronics, MaxMSP are our staples, but many more are likely to follow); and

*do some extravagant holiday shopping from our online book store http://

Machine Project is a 501c3 registered non-profit and that donations are tax deductible.

If you know anyone else who can help us, please encourage them to become members -- or to make a significant gift. Please feel free to give me a call (213 483 8761) or email if you have any additional fundraising ideas, or would like to hear what our plans are.

It's an odd feeling for us to be scrambling to raise money after the fun and success of LACMA, but I think that everyone who was at that event, and everything else that happens at Machine (from the sex life of sea slugs to pirate jamborees to our holiday frybq) felt how special this year has been. If you believe in the things we did together this year, I hope you will also want to see Machine Project continue on.

Please help us keep doing great things together in the future. Become a Machine Project member or make an additional online donation right here.

Donate to Machine Project

It appears that the latest group to whine and complain about totally bogus "losses" from piracy are CD and DVD retailers in the UK, who have commissioned their own study claiming that 30,000 jobs may be lost to piracy. This is from the UK's Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), though the group doesn't seem to make any indication of its methodology (its own website doesn't even list the study at this point). However, from what's in the article, it certainly sounds like the usual tricks for presenting bogus stats on piracy. It only counts the changes in one direction, ignores the fact that the shift (not loss) in jobs is due to a variety of factors that go well beyond "piracy," and ignores all of the new jobs created due to the shift to digital distribution of content. But, of course, that doesn't make for nearly as interesting a story... especially when the ERA is teaming up with a bunch of famous actors to whine about how they are too incompetent to learn how to adapt to the changing market. If these folks ran the buggy whip industry a century ago, we'd all still be driving around in horse drawn carriages. Markets change, and it creates new opportunities. Stop whining about the the way things used to be, and focus on taking advantage of all of those new opportunities.

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Optigan aficionado Pea Hix created a homebrew sound disc for the awesomely obscure instrument - the first expansion for the instrument in 34 years!

It's the news you've been waiting for! We are now ready to release the first in a series of new, high quality Optigan discs. We've listened to your feedback and have produced a disc that contains the sounds most requested, and in the style that scored the highest in our survey. We call the disc Radioaktivox. Is in the style of a familiar German synthesizer band from the seventies. We used the much sought after Optigan/Orchestron choir sound for the keys- a sound made famous by said band. We used the original source material from the master tapes and have totally eliminated the clicks and pops at the loop seams.

Pre-orders are currently being accepted - NEW Optigan disc - RADIOTAKTIVOX

In case you're not familiar, the Optiganis a 70's-era electronic keyboard which creates sounds via samples recorded on optical disc. It was marketed as an easy-to use family instrument, but it's low-cost mechanisms and general quirkiness made it too unreliable for mainstream success. The instrument does however hold a special place in the hearts of many musicians due to its unique sound quality and kitschy prerecorded sequences.

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An anonymous reader writes "I work at a small business where we need to move around large datasets regularly (move onto test machine, test, move onto NAS for storage, move back to test machine, lather-rinse-repeat). The network is mostly OS X and Linux with one Windows machine (for compatibility testing). The size of our datasets is typically in the multiple GB, so network speed is as important as storage size. I'm looking for a preferably off-the shelf solution that can handle a significant portion of a GigE; maxing out at 6MB is useless. I've been looking at SoHo NAS's that support RAID such as Drobo, NetGear (formerly Infrant), and BuffaloTech (who unfortunately doesn't even list whether they support OS X). They all claim they come with a GigE interface, but what sort of network throughput can they really sustain? Most of the numbers I can find on the websites only talk about drive throughput, not network, so I'm hoping some of you with real-world experience can shed some light here."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I like to listen to audiobooks while hiking in the Santa Monica mountains. The ear buds that came with my iPhone are awful -- they fall out of my ears every 30 seconds or so when I walk. These comfortable headphones from Coosh have soft rubber rings that fit around my ears so the buds don't fall out. They also come with a mic and on-off button so you can make phone calls with them. I'm very happy with them.

Coosh headphones - $20

Artist Nancy Wu made a tasty (or disgusting) beef jerky handbag.

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Bob Logan compares two pedal cars: a $13,300 Audi and a Speeder you can build from plans that cost $18.

Anti-Globalism passes along a review in Ars of some recent speculation on the role of interconnected computer models in the global economic crash. "If Ritholtz, Taleb, Mandelbrot, and the rest of the computer modeling and financial engineering naysayers are correct about the big picture, then we really are arguably in the midst a bona fide computer crash. Not an individual computer crash, of course, but a computer crash in the sense of Sun Microsystems' erstwhile marketing slogan, 'the network is the computer.' That is, we have all of these machines in different sectors of the economy, and we've networked all of them together either directly (via an actual network) or indirectly (by using the collective 'output' of machines in one sector as input for the machines in another sector), and like any other computer system the whole thing hums along nicely... up until the point when it doesn't."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I like "dumb bots" (a.k.a. BEAM robots) as much as the next analog electronics fan, but Baca RoboCup is something entirely different. These baca ("foolish" or "stupid") robots are meant to be as idiotic as possible and must be "useless to society," in fact, the biggest chucklebot is voted the winner. BTW: It also states in the official Baca RoboCup rules that the bots "must make people laugh (without the use of explosives)."

I like these walking trashcan bots built by Robot Force, a group of builders from Osaka. They don't seem very stupid to me. I'd buy a trashcan that could walk itself to the curb. Maybe not surprisingly, they didn't win. Not stupid enough.

Bacarobo 2008 - Stupid Robot Competition [via Pink Tentacle]

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Pentax has announced a limited edition of the K2000 (K-m in Europe) in white, bundled as a double zoom kit with the camera body and two kit lenses. Both Pentax DA L 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 AL and Pentax DA L 50-200mm F4-5.6 AL lenses and the K2000 body sport a white finish with a black trim. The kit will be made available on a limited basis in February 2009 at a price to be announced. In addition, Pentax has also released an online game for K2000 users to learn more about the camera and have a little fun.

Prolific podcaster jetdaisuke shares this super-simple recipe for a talkbox upgrade to Korg's Nintendo DS synthesizer - using straw + tape.

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The Birds-themed Barbie doll is licensed Mattel toy.

In 1963, Alfred Hitchcock, the Master of Suspense, gave us a tale of terror not soon forgotten in his film “The Birds.” Dressed in a re-creation of the stylish green skirt-suit worn by the film’s ill-fated heroine in an iconic scene, Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” Barbie® Doll celebrates the 45th anniversary of the acclaimed film. From the doll’s classic ensemble to the perfectly painted expression to the accompanying black birds, every aspect captures the film’s infamous appeal.

The Birds Barbie (Via Fire Wire)

Ray Beckermann points us to the news that in a lawsuit involving various record labels against some USC students, the record labels asked the court to help identify the students -- which the court granted on the condition that the only use of the student info would be to seek injunctive relief (i.e., get them to stop file sharing) rather than monetary relief. However, as LAist is reporting, it only took a few months for the record labels to, instead, demand money via a typical pre-settlement letter, that demands thousands of dollars to get the RIAA and labels to not sue you. This certainly appears to be contempt of court, going in direct contrast to the judge's order.

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These unbelievably creepy pro-spy-camera ads have gone up in the Brighton, England train-stations. It's like they're not even trying anymore. (Or maybe it's a prank? Could someone really have put this up in a public place this with a straight face?)

(Thanks, Shardcore!)

grrlscientist writes in with a beautiful piece of science, beautifully explicated. The poignant bit is that the birds in question are all extinct. "Every once in awhile, I will read a scientific paper that astonishes and delights me so much that I can hardly wait to tell you all about it. Such is the situation with a newly published paper about the Hawai'ian Honeyeaters. In short, due to the remarkable power of convergent evolution, Hawai'ian Honeyeaters have thoroughly deceived taxonomists and ornithologists as to their true origin and identity for more than 200 years."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Coop says: "Nice clip of in-progress shots of Aaron Grote's retro-futuristic 60's-style bubbletop custom car, the Atomic Punk. As cool as the final product is, it is even more impressive when you see its beginnings as the rusty ass-end of a '59 Plymouth!"

Rod & Custom feature

This vortex of tumbleweeds in Australia is a thing of beauty. (via Arbroath)

From the MAKE: Flickr pool

The Botomless Paddling Pool constructed this excellent freeform APC circuit -

I'm taking a paper in the first semester coming up on making your own synth from scratch and I thought that I'd better polish up on my electrical knowledge as it's been a while since I've done anything that needed any real effort. As I've never made an audio circuit before I thought I should start simple and progress to the harder stuff. So I decided to start on the popular and simple Atari Punk Console (APC). Anyway, I made it and I was getting sounds from it, but nothing like what I should have been getting. The sounds I was getting sucked, mainly just static mooshed up with high pitched whines. It was bad for the ears, especially as I had the volume up and my headphones on! I eventually found out what was haywire, the chip I was running it off was wrong, as in one letter different in the code from the proper chip. Not a big problem, frustrating at most. I'll make the APC soon and put it in a nice case. I have the neck of a violin that it'll look cool in. The body I'm saving for a bigger project, perhaps a Weird Sound Generator.

I hope he doesn't abandon this design - it would look way awesome cast in resin! - Atari Punk Console... gone wrong

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One of Google's biggest assets is trust. The company's founder has admitted that adopting the "Do No Evil" mantra purposely set a very high bar against which to judge every company action -- often making it impossible to take the easy way out, even when the "right" solution was more a lot complex. However, over the past few years, the company has repeatedly distanced itself from that mantra, and we've all been seeing it in certain actions the company has taken. Earlier this week, we noted that it would be a mistake for anyone to trust Google to look out for the best interests of users, but you need to admit that Google often made that explicit promise, with both its mantra and actions, that it would, in fact, look out for the best interests of users over its own short-term goals. The company's execs clearly stated that its own long term advantages would be best served by watching out for its users best interests, even if it sometimes went against short term advantage.

Yet, with actions such as Google caving on its book scanning project and other decisions such as paying newspapers to scan their headlines, Google seems to have compromised its core principles a few too many times -- and it appears that users are starting to notice. A recent survey of the top 20 most trusted companies in the US shows that Google has fallen off the list entirely from its spot at 10 on last year's list. Of course, these sorts of lists will always fluctuate, but it still should be setting off alarm bells in Mountain View.

Much of Google's success is based on that implicit trust. People stick with Google because of that trust. They use products like Gmail, desktop search, and Google Docs because of that trust. If people are starting to lose that trust, it creates tremendous opportunities for someone else to step in to put a serious dent into Google's online dominance. The guy who did the study claims that Google's fall is probably just due to "big company syndrome," where people just start trusting big companies less, but that doesn't make much sense. Plenty of the other companies on the list are quite big as well, and have no trouble staying on the list.

Even if it's just as blip, Google should be extremely concerned with such an early warning sign that one of its biggest assets is quickly losing value.

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2phar sends news that on Monday a federal appeals court ruled unconstitutional the gag provision of the Patriot Act's National Security Letters. Until the ruling, recipients of NSLs were legally forbidden from speaking out. "The appeals court invalidated parts of the statute that wrongly placed the burden on NSL recipients to initiate judicial review of gag orders, holding that the government has the burden to go to court and justify silencing NSL recipients. The appeals court also invalidated parts of the statute that narrowly limited judicial review of the gag orders — provisions that required the courts to treat the government's claims about the need for secrecy as conclusive and required the courts to defer entirely to the executive branch."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

No wonder police officers sometimes confiscate and destroy the cameras of people who videotape them committing illegal acts -- the officers occasionally end up having to pay for their crimes, just like civilian law breakers do.

Remember the video I posted of a Critical Mass bicyclist who got knocked over by NYPD officer Patrick Pogan? Fox News reports that Pogan's been indicted and must report to the Manhattan prosecutor's office next week.

Police said Long was obstructing traffic and deliberately steered his bicycle into an officer. Charges were dismissed.

A video of the body-check that knocked Long over was posted on YouTube and has been viewed more than 1.6 million times.

Pogan has been stripped of his badge and gun and been assigned to desk duty.

As Radley Balko says, "If not for the video, the guy on the bicycle would probably still be facing charges."

Ryan is just a college student with his own robot hand and Millenium Falcon, right? Well, Ryan just happened to make his own with the help of a laser cutter and some Python scripting that he cooked up to make his Solidworks and Blender design real.

As part of the amazing class: How to Make Almost Anything, I came up with some cool software to process 3d models. The program, (written in python), slices a 3d model into layers, which can then be cut and assembled. As an extension, I wrote an add-on that fits each layer to a grid and generates assembly instructions from the grid. Using a custom press fit construction kit and the generated instructions; you can assemble a cool looking 3d representation of the original 3d model.

He is using Flickr and PictoBrowser to host his photos for the project, and his work in class. When you combine his finely crafted designs with the website and video on Youtube, it adds up to some fine project documentation.

At this writing, it is end of the semester crunch, so Ryan is a bit under water...

I will have some time over the break to clean up my code and hopefully share it with the world (GPL via gitHub, googleCode, etc) which is the vision for it... The current system cranks out 2d cross sections in pdf format, which works great with corel draw for the laser cutter. The pdf should import into other programs fairly painlessly and once imported, would work great with mill / shopBot / waterJet. I really want to see this thing take off, and would love to work with you. The next 48 hours are going to be final project hell, but I should have some time after. (trying to finish a robot suitcase that follows you around the airport, segway style...).

Thanks to * via Mit-ers for the tip.

If you could make anything, what would it be? Have you used Solidworks or Blender? How could you use Ryan's Python script to make three dimensional objects? Could you use other tools like a mill or Shopbot to create three dimensional objects from flat parts? What do you like to do when you document your projects? What is the effect of documentation on your making? Have you gotten positive responses about your work because of your web presence? What have you done with Personal Fabrication? Does your community have a Fab Lab, and have you had a chance to work in it?

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Last week, Mister Jalopy started out to write another one of is fine entries on D+R about "shackitecture" and ended up penning a proposal for an "Urban Homesteading Act," a new generation of homesteading laws.

As discussed on D+R previously, the local zoning and building departments represent an impregnable, byzantine bureaucracy so difficult to navigate that it often becomes an insurmountable obstacle to amateurs. Of course, those departments do a terrific public service that is necessary for civilization to continue, but I think there is a possibility to refine and streamline these departments to serve individuals.

There are communities dying from lack of investment, dwindling population, dying industry and a diminished tax base. Imagine a progressive rural community that opened a shackitecture/homesteading office - a building department that didn't tell you what you can't build, but what you can build. How would it work?

Tar Paper, Mining Camps, Norwegian Photographers, Adaptive Reuse of Milk Trucks and the Call for an Urban Homesteading Act

Related:
Remake the World

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TheSync writes "The Division of Labour blog spotlights a report written 100 years ago by a commission appointed by the Postmaster General, that came to the conclusion: 'That it is not feasible and desirable at the present time for the Government to purchase, to install, or to operate pneumatic tubes.' Here is a scan of the original NYTimes article. If only we had gotten the free government Intertubes in 1908!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last week Boing Boing was invited along with a small group of political bloggers and analysts to a sit-down Q&A with departing Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff. I had a chance to ask Secretary Chertoff a few questions about the TSA screening process. (Although had I more time, there would have been plenty of other questions I would have loved to ask, such as why U.S. Customs confiscates laptops; more on that in another post.) While I will be posting the complete transcript of the interview with everyone's questions (along with the audio recording if anyone is interested), I've excerpted the discussion about the TSA with questions from me and Security Catalyst's Michael Santarcangelo. I've edited the transcript slightly for clarity. "Joel Johnson: What's the number of direct terrorist actions that have been interfered with by TSA screening?" Michael Chertoff interview [BBG]

Every year, I do it right.

Sure, I dabble in the supermarket eggnogs, the rice and soy variations- I appreciate every earnest effort.

But the ne plus ultra of nogging ecstasy can only be found in a homemade recipe. It is another level of nog-osphere. It is the difference between twilight and Aurora Borealis.

I found the eggnog to die for [Painted sideboob jpeg ahoy, just so you know. – Joel] in one of my first cooking books when I was sixteen: Anna Thomas's "The Vegetarian Epicure."  After my first taste, I couldn't be satisified with the "Elmer's Glue" of commercial varieties.

In the beginning, I was a little shakey on how to separate an egg. But after cracking twelve beauties- more, actually, 'cause a couple landed on the floor- I was expert. The yolk and powdered-sugar slurry are then put into the fridge overnight-  the next day you add the whites and fresh cream.

 Yes, it takes a night and a  day to make The Nog of the Stars- are you ready to make the commitment?

Homemade eggnog consists of very few ingredients- and the closer you get to the hen and the cow, the more mind-boggling the results. Fresh whipping cream, raw milk, free range yolksters... that's the ticket!

My yuletide parties became famous for homemade noggin'. Guests arrive early, because the sweet nectar disappears fast. The psychoactive pungeance of fresh-grated nutmeg makes us all a little more giddy. Do you prefer virgin, or spiked?  I can make your eyes roll back in your head, either way.

Photo of "Kiss Eggs" by Raka,  whose Flickr collection is not to missed!

(Susie Bright is a guest blogger)

The process of serving legal papers on someone can be quite tricky -- especially if they're purposely avoiding it. However, a judge in Australia has now allowed a lawyer to serve a couple via Facebook with notification that they've lost their house due to defaulting on a loan. The court had already ruled that they were to lose their house for the default (the couple didn't even bother to show up in court), but before the house could actually be taken, the couple had to be served with the ruling. However, that proved to be much more difficult than usual, and after exhausting a variety of different attempts, the court finally ruled that using Facebook would be an acceptable way to serve the documents.

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Here's the complete image, at eatliver.com. (Thanks, Coop!)

UK-based historian Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison , has a piece up on counterpunch about the use of music in torture sessions at America's finest tax-dollar-funded Caribbean getaway:

There's an ambiguous undercurrent to the catchy pop smash that introduced a pig-tailed Britney Spears to the world in 1999 -- so much so that Jive Records changed the song's title to "… Baby One More Time" after executives feared that it would be perceived as condoning domestic violence.

It's a safe bet, however, that neither Britney nor songwriter Max Martin ever anticipated that this undercurrent would be picked up on by U.S. military personnel, when they were ordered to keep prisoners awake by blasting ear-splittingly loud music at them -- for days, weeks or even months on end -- at prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay.

The message, as released Guantánamo prisoner Ruhal Ahmed explained in an interview earlier this year, was less significant than the relentless, inescapable noise. Describing how he experienced music torture "on many occasions," Ahmed said, "I can bear being beaten up, it's not a problem. Once you accept that you're going to go into the interrogation room and be beaten up, it's fine. You can prepare yourself mentally. But when you're being psychologically tortured, you can't." He added, however, that "from the end of 2003 they introduced the music and it became even worse. Before that, you could try and focus on something else. It makes you feel like you are going mad. You lose the plot and it's very scary to think that you might go crazy because of all the music, because of the loud noise, and because after a while you don't hear the lyrics at all, all you hear is heavy banging."

Despite this, the soldiers, who were largely left to their own devices when choosing what to play, frequently selected songs with blunt messages -- "Fuck Your God" by Deicide, for example, which is actually an anti-Christian rant, but one whose title would presumably cause consternation to believers in any religion -- even though, for prisoners not used to Western rock and rap music, the music itself was enough to cause them serious distress.

A History of Music Torture in the War on Terror: Hit Me Baby One More Time (Counterpunch, thanks Ned Sublette)

Slashdot regular Bennett Haselton summarizes his essay this way: "Debate over the Lori Drew verdict has focused overwhelmingly on whether the ruling was technically correct, but there is another serious issue: the perverse incentives that this ruling creates for victims of online harassment." Read on for his essay.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

miller60 writes "A hosting firm has purchased a nuke-resistant bunker in Novia Scotia, and plans to convert it into a data fortress for financial firms. Bastionhost hopes to attract European financial firms wary of housing sensitive data in the US due to the USA Patriot Act. The facility is one of a series of 'Diefenbunkers' built during the tenure of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker to keep the Canadian government running in the event of a nuclear attack. While not all of these underground data bunker projects work out, a similar nuke-proof bunker in Stockholm, Sweden was recently converted into a stylish high-tech data lair for an ISP."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I just published my Instructable on getting my Arduino to take care of my plants. Specifically, Garduino waters the plants when their soil resistance level drops too low and turns on supplemental lighting to make total light daily equal 16 hours regardless of outside conditions. It's not pretty, but it works!

Other than de-uglification, let me know what other improvements I should make and if you make your own, better version!

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"The Grid System is an ever-growing resource where graphic designers can learn about grid systems, the golden ratio and baseline grids." Looks to be a great resource for griddies (did I just coin that?). #

Yes. #

"A quick reference guide of typographic terms and classification with definitions of form and usage for Latin based writing systems. Handy for the desk, the TDR contains over a thousand facts on typography." #

I tend to believe that the various song performance "collections" organizations around the world have a history of going too far in trying to collect on every possible use of a song. However, it seems they can always go a step further. Apparently, in Spain, the collections group there, the Spanish General Society of Authors and Editors (SGAE), has been not just crashing weddings, but secretly videotaping them to record evidence of music being played. The venue, of course, is supposed to pay music performance royalties, and SGAE believes that it applies to such private gatherings as well -- though, it still seems a bit extreme to crash a wedding and film it. However, at least the courts in Spain realize that this seems a bit ridiculous and have fined the society for "breaching the intimacy" of the married couple with one such video. In the end, the society was fined more than the restaurant for not having the requisite license.

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Will These Vehicles Run? Modern Mechanix, 1932.

HERE’S a real brain tickler for puzzle fans—study the drawings above, figure out whether the lead balls and the water motor will move the vehicles or not (and why), send in your less than 300 word letter giving your reasons, and you may be rewarded with a check for $10. Somebody’s bound to win that $10 check; it might just as well be you. There are no hidden tricks in these drawings. All you need is an understanding of natural laws. In addition to the $10 award for the best tetter, all other letters published will be paid for at regular space rates. Keep your letter under 300 words, and be sure to mail it before May 15, 1932. Address letters to the Freak Vehicle Editor, Modern Mechanics and Inventions, 529 S. Seventh St., Minneapolis, Minn. Don’t fail to tell why the vehicles will or will not run. Here is the problem: A vehicle carries a number of heavy lead balls, on its roof, which fall off the end of a trough and strike a second trough, mounted at a 45 degree angle at the rear of the car. Will the falling of the balls make the vehicle move? The second vehicle is similar to the first, except that water is used instead of lead balls. The water is pumped against the trough by a motor, is retrieved in a funnel after it has passed down the trough, and is used over again. Will the water power move this vehicle?

Ok makers, post up your comments and solutions - since Modern Mechanix won't be sending you a check for $10, I'll send you a Maker's Notebook for the best answer. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Modern Mechanix | Digg this!

Kelly writes "An unsealed document in a Washington lawsuit filed last week at Seattle, Microsoft was well aware that the Xbox 360 was prone to damaging game discs even before the console was introduced in November 2005. Microsoft had three solutions for solving the issue, but all three solutions were rejected due to technical concerns or on the basis of cost. Microsoft settled on a cost-free fourth solution: a warning was added to Xbox 360 manual, which essentially placed the blame on users instead of the hardware." The scratching-disks problem was mentioned a few years back, too. I wonder whether more people would prefer a slight discount on the price of a console to the ability to reorient it while a disk was playing inside.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chiaroscuro case mod by Nick Falzone @ bit-etch via Gizmodo.

Nick, or Greensabbath as he's also known in some modding circles, is renowned for his incredible mastery of all woods that grow. While you'd think trees would fear him coming, we'd actually guess they'd be proud to end up in one of his carpentry wonders. When Nick approached us with the idea to great a funky new mini-ITX mod..we jumped at the chance to help him...

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German author Arno Schmidt was my great-uncle on my mother's side, my maternal grandmother's younger brother. I never met him, but when he died in 1979, my mother ended up with a collection of his writing. We want to donate these writings to a library for long-term preservation. We're going to do this slowly and carefully, because we want to do right by an ancestor, but also to learn as much as possible about the process to apply to preserving digital archives. I'll write more about the book collection later.

I also have a taped interview with my grandmother done by a Schmidt biographer, which I'm going to digitize and then release as an MP3 podcast. It'll be the first time I've heard my grandmother's voice since she died in 1977.

Today I want to see if it's possible to do some detective work to find some of my great uncle's letters to my grandmother, his sister -- from his home in Germany to her home in Rockaway.

Here's what I know. According to my mother, in 1977, a doctoral student from the University of Texas, Kenneth Wayne Egan, visited and with permission, studied the letters, which had been left to my mother by her mother, my grandmother, Arno Schmidt's sister. Apparently Mr. Egan took the letters, according to my mother, without permission. One thing's certain -- we don't at this time have the letters.

I have a letter from Dr. H-B.Moeller, Assoc Prof in the Department of Germanic Languages, thanking my mother for her help and hoping that she would extend her welcome, if needed again, in the future. My mother says she attempted to contact Dr. Moeller to inquire about the letters, but he didn't respond.

I scanned the letter and uploaded it to Flickr. Click on the thumbnail below to see the full image.



We did some searching and found Egan's doctoral dissertation mentioned in the bibliography of an analysis of Schmidt's Zettle's Traum. It's possible the originals are in a library at the University of Texas. If so, they should be returned to my mother so we can include them with the collection of our books in our donation. I'm not saying that Egan, or Moeller or the University of Texas did anything wrong, memories can fade over 30-plus years. But we believe the letters belong with the rest of Schmidt's writings, as a collection. In any case, it would be helpful to know where they are.

Update: Jeff Beckham sent a link to Dr. Moeller's page on the University of Texas website. I sent him an email asking for his help in locating the letters.

The Oak Ridge Associated Universities website has a splendid gallery of nuclear-age slide-rules (as Mr Jalopy notes, these are artifacts from an age after nukes but before pocket calculators) -- mostly circular cardboard calculators that help you compute the size of the crater generated by the nuke that touches off WWIII. Shown here, the 1960 Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer by EG&G.

As a convenience to those interested in the effects of nuclear weapons, this circular computer was designed to make data easily available on various weapon effects - some as functions of both yield and range and others on yield alone . . . The weapons data incorporated in this computer were taken from the very informative and useful text, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, edited by Samuel Glasstone for the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project of the Department of Defense.

Nuclear Slide Rules (via Dinosaurs and Robots)

Big holiday sale on the open source hardware product - Bug Labs: BUGbase units. Here's a note I received from their team today...

BUG orders are now shipping within 48 hours of purchase. BUGbase holiday discounts - for a limited time, BUGbase price reduced nearly 30% off MSRP from $349 to $249

2008 was a great year for Bug Labs, and despite our fair share of challenges - some self-inflicted, some not - we've learned quite a bit as we successfully launched BUG. As a way of ending the year with a bang, we're excited to announce that we are now fulfilling and shipping every BUG order within just 48 hours of purchase.

Also, we're pleased to announce holiday discounts on the BUGbase. For a limited time, we're reducing the price from $349 to $249 - almost 30% off our MSRP. And again, we will ship every BUGbase order within 48 hours, making BUG the perfect gift for any developer or hacker this Christmas. More info on the BUGbase can be found here: http://buglabs.net/bugbase.

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An anonymous reader writes "Technology Review has a story looking at Nepomuk — the semantic tool that is bundled with the latest version of KDE. It seems that some Semantic Web researchers believe the tool will prove a breakthrough for semantic technology. By encouraging people to add semantic meta-data to the information stored on their machines they hope it could succeed where other semantic tools have failed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The folks at Warner Music Group insist that their efforts to convince universities to enforce a not-so-voluntary "usage fee" on all students is part of an attempt to start a conversation on new business models. However, they conveniently leave important stakeholders (those who would be forced to shoulder the bill) out of such a conversation, and have still refused to actually participate here in the conversation. So far, their only "participation" was having a PR person send a statement scolding me for daring to raise questions about such a plan. Apparently, the sort of conversation Warner Music wants is one where everyone lines up and agrees with Warner Music.

And, of course, it should surprise no one that the RIAA, where Warner Music has plenty of influence, is still out there filing more lawsuits, even as Warner insists it's turned over a new leaf and is looking for a more reasonable solution. In other words, this isn't a "conversation" at all. It's a protection racket. Warner Music and the other major record labels are just going to keep suing until people agree to hand them a big chunk of money, apparently.

So, Warner Music, if you really want people to believe that you've turned over a new leaf, and that you're interested in a real conversation about new music industry business models, how about you call off the legal dogs and stop filing lawsuits against both individuals and companies and actually participate in a conversation? We're still more than willing to help facilitate such a conversation.

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(Flash video embed above, downloadable MP4 link here)

Today on Boing Boing tv, the first in a series of gaming/gadget features with Joel Johnson from an annual celebration of 8-bit/videogame-inspired music. Joel says:

Last week found us at Blip Festival 2008, the megalocus of live chiptunes music, where Game Boys met Atari STs with Amiga visuals for four evenings of square wave fun.

We were out in Gowanus in Brooklyn at the event, at least until Rob and I got tired and had to go home and rest our widdle heads. But until then, we got to speak to several of the artists just after their sets, and the BBtv crew is taking our drunken, blurry footage and actually making something worth watching out of it.

First up: Haeyoung "Bubblyfish" Kim

Here's the comments thread over at Boing Boing Offworld.

Photograph by Yifeng Song

If you happen to be living in rural Bolivia, building a water pump isn't going to include a visit to the local hardware store. Nor can you assume being able to plug into a power grid to operate your machine. So how do you get water?

Essentially, this was the challenge given to Kara Serenius, Hessam Khajeei, Galvin Clancey, and Gaby Wong, a team of students determined to create a safe mechanism for groundwater recovery and hopefully win a prize at the same time.

The team was competing in the first annual Designs for a Sustainable World Challenge, hosted and coordinated by Engineers Without Borders with the support of the University of British Columbia's Sustainability Office. Student teams were asked to create an object as defined by a social economic challenge (such as provision of water in Bolivia), all the while knowing that everything would need to be built in a short time frame and from what could only be described as garbage -- materials deemed as waste at the hosting university. Basically, this was akin to an ultra-sustainable episode of Junkyard Wars, with a heavy dose of social responsibility.

The design process for their solution -- a human-powered treadle pump -- necessitated a serious look at the development challenges in Bolivia, as well as a survey of the available trash you find in a university setting (lumber, metal rods, plastic piping, etc).

"I believe that one of the greatest achievements of this student-initiated event is that it brought students from engineering, forestry, environmental science, anthropology, history, and genetics together working on a common goal to develop new approaches to environmental issues," enthused Yifeng Song, one of the event coordinators. 

A total of 12 teams of students were armed with a few power tools and given time to plan a solution. Their tasks varied from increasing peanut-processing efficiencies in Bangladesh to devising ways to lower carbon dioxide emissions in China to capturing fresh water from the misty climes of coastal Ireland. 

After frantic planning, a fairly detailed schematic of the treadle pump was produced. On the day of the event, the sound of a whistle, a mad scurry to the garbage "pile," and six hours of frantic construction culminated in the final creation. In the end, not only did the treadle pump win first prize, but it also generated the loudest cheer when Wong stepped up on the pump and demonstrated that it did, indeed, work.

"The success of the event and the motivation of the students involved are both living proofs of the desire of today's youth to have a positive impact on the world of tomorrow," Song summed up. And the possibility for a little more fresh water isn't bad, either.

From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 12, page 16 - Dave Ng.

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This week I made the tinyCylon kit from the Maker Shed. It's a fun little project that has a lot of cool light patterns programmed onto the chip. You can purchase a tinyCylon kit in the Maker Shed.

Suscribe to the MAKE podcast | Download for iTunes

What you need:

• tinyCylon kit - Available in the Maker Shed
• Rosin core solder
• (3) AAA batteries

Tools you need:

• Soldering Iron
• Wire cutters
• Arms of Assistance - Make you own
• Fume extractor - Make your own

Step 1: Take inventory

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blackbearnh writes "If you've watched the Discovery Channel series 'Storm Chasers,' you'll be familiar with Dr. Joshua Wurman and his Doppler on Wheels radar, which he uses to study tornadoes up close and personal every spring. O'Reilly Media spent some time last week speaking to Dr. Wurman about what it takes, technologically, to operate a weather radar in 100-mile-per-hour winds in the middle of a lightning storm. They also talked about the value of this kind of research to both tornado and hurricane research, and how having a film crew around during missions affects the science."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The amazing Habu Textiles has started their annual yarn sale - they have the coolest yarns made of paper, silk, cotton, ramie, lots of strange and wonderful stuff for all kinds of art projects!

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Slatterz writes "With Macworld 2009 mere weeks away, one rumour that seemingly won't die is the idea of a Mac OS X Netbook PC. Asking a company to provide OS X drivers for their netbooks has, up until now, been met with silence, and probably a little quaking on the vendor side as they wait for the heavy footsteps of Apple's army of lawyers. It seems, however, that Realtek, who provide the WiFi chip found in the MSI Wind U100, are dipping their toes into the legally iffy world of the Hackintosh. Forum users at MSIWind.Net asked politely for drivers, and after a lot of patience, Beta drivers were provided."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've covered Monster Cable's long and illustrious attempts to abuse trademark law in trying to prevent absolutely anyone else from using the term "Monster," no matter how unrelated it is from Monster Cable's business. For the most part, the company has stayed quiet when accused of being a trademark bully, but after Monster Mini Golf did a good job whipping up public support via an eBay auction, Monster Cable has apparently started responding, by claiming it's not the trademark bully everyone makes it out to be:

Regardless of what false representations have been circulated about Monster, we are not a faceless corporate giant out to squash legitimate business concerns and rising entrepreneurs. We are in fact, a family-owned company that relies heavily on our brand name and reputation in order to continue serving our customers. We have always tried to provide our customers with the highest performance products at an affordable price.

While we are best known for our cable products, we also manufacture high performance accessories in business areas ranging in home theater, computing, gaming, portable entertainment and power management. To protect these business areas, we have sought and been awarded trademarks for each respective category. In addition to the areas above, in the past 30 years, we have also expanded the categories including sports and other lifestyle ventures. According to the trademark law, we must enforce our marks or we will lose them and they will become generic.

We were trying our best to avoid the lawsuit, and we are trying our best to settle the lawsuit.

There is a lot to respond to here, and we'll let folks in the comments respond to the questions over "affordable price" since Monster is notorious for being quite high priced. However, I'm not sure why it matters that it's a family-owned company. It doesn't change the fact that it's being overly aggressive and abusing the purpose of trademark law. It tries to paint its activities as being perfectly normal, but that's simply not true. We see a lot of trademark lawsuits around here, and Monster is definitely a lot more combative on trademark than most companies.

As for the claims that because its products work in other areas, that these trademark suits are legit -- that's simply incorrect. What a trademark covers is specific to what the companies does, and the tests concern whether or not there's customer confusion or brand dilution, and anyone would be pretty hard pressed to claim that Monster Mini Golf confuses anyone or damages Monster Cable's brand name in any way.

As for the claim that it must enforce or lose the trademarks, this is a common myth about trademark law. It is true that you need to enforce the uses of the mark -- but only in those direct markets. In the case of Monster Mini Golf or the deer salt lick, such usage will have no impact on making Monster Cable's brand generic and either they know it, or they're getting terrible legal advice. Tellingly, Monster Cable does not respond to the charges many have leveled that after either blocking a trademark application or suing others, Monster Cable then licenses back the Monster name to those who it stopped. As such it becomes pretty clear that it's not at all about stopping the name's usage and that the usage is clearly not confusing. So, Monster Cable may not consider itself a trademark monster, but it should show that with actions, not words.

Update: Ah, well, great. Monster Cable is now claiming that it's dropped the lawsuit against Monster Mini-Golf but is still demanding a licensing fee of $100/month, while claiming that it will contribute that and its own matching funds to charity. While it's great that Monster has dropped the lawsuit, it's ridiculous that the company is still demanding a license fee. Also, the company should at least admit that the only reason it's dropping this is all of the negative publicity generated by its heavy handed attempt to attack a business in a totally unrelated market.

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This kinetic sculpture by artist Reuben Margolin installed at the Swiss Center for Technorama near Zurich employs 450 suspended aluminum rods on 256 wires with 3,000 pulleys and sliding bars controlling the system. Interesting effect that employs no computers, only mechanical movements to create the result. Watch the video for the full effect.

via Cool Hunting

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What's the quickest way to add the capabilities of iPod Touch to your guitar? - try mounting 2 of them to your ax's body! (hey, I said 'quickest way', not 'cheapest')

The ipod closest to the guitar pick ups is running Itouch Midi's Martix app which im using to send midi to Ableton Live on my Macbook via wifi.
And the itouch near the bottom is running Bloom designed by Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers, Bloom is a generative music application.
Note: in this video bloom is just being run through my mixer when i play live it is run through various patches to alter it a bit.
The reason i shake the guitar is to clear bloom and start a new pattern, each time i shake it, it clears the boards and lets you start again.

[via Matrixsynth]

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It appears that the exploit in IE briefly mentioned a few days ago is causing a serious reaction: SteveAU writes "Microsoft has begun flooding media outlets with information advising users to switch to an alternate browser while a serious security flaw is being patched. The flaw, which affects all versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, is manifested via malware and has infected over 6000 sites thus far. Microsoft states: 'The vulnerability exists as an invalid pointer reference in the data-binding function of Internet Explorer. When data binding is enabled (which is the default state), it is possible under certain conditions for an object to be released without updating the array length, leaving the potential to access the deleted object's memory space. This can cause Internet Explorer to exit unexpectedly, in a state that is exploitable.'" According to the BBC report, though, Microsoft itself is only asking that users be "vigilant while it investigated and prepared an emergency patch"; it's outside experts who say to dump IE (at least for now).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BB pal Eric Paulos sent us this delightful holiday photo of a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania storefront. Click to see the larger image.

Web widgets are the new frontier of content distribution when it comes to social media marketing. Web widgets are tiny interactive micro-applications made up by small portions of code which can be easily embedded in your blog site, or run in a widget platform installed on your own computer. Photo credit: Webwag Social media is all about reaching out to and interacting with people through the Web. Web widgets enhance and build upon that interactivity further, providing rich, always up-to-date information to users / customers. And worth mentioning is web widgets are completely free and re-distributable. Web widgets belong to two categories:

a) Embeddable: you just grab the code of the widget and paste it into the HTML of your blog site. You can even add them to social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, and many others. b) Not-embeddable: you need to run a widget platform on your computer. Windows Vista and Mac Os X Tiger and above already have this feature built-in. Linux users can install Screenlets. For Windows XP and Mac users Yahoo! has developed its own widget platform as well.

Web widgets can integrate newsradars, photo galleries, games, video clips and compilations, Flash applications, and almost any type of media content you can think of. Lots of brands are even creating rich content, which you cannot find anywhere else on the Web, specifically for their web widgets! Media analyst and social media marketing expertPeter Kim has put up on his own site a fantastic collection of social media marketing examples, listing all the companies that use social media to market their products and services on the Web. To show you the potential that web widgets have in social media marketing, I have here selected, from Peter Kim's list, the very best widget applications created by companies, while adding a brief description. I have actually selected only those widget examples that allowed me to fully embed right into this article the widget application, making it easy for you to look at these examples and to evaluate their marketing strategy and effectiveness. Here all the details: Intro by Daniele Bazzano

Social Media Marketing: Best Widgets Applications

(Hand-picked and extracted from Peter Kim's Social Media Marketing Examples)

• Dove-MTV Fresh Takes

  
  Beauty company Dove has partnered with popular music channel MTV to promote its new line of products. In this web widget they offer small "webisodes" of Fresh Takes, a show airing on MTV channels starring singer and actress Alicia Keys. You can also chat with a meebo-powered chat room, or listen to music tracks by R&B singer Duffy. By answering to a short survey, Dove and MTV also give you the opportunity to win a $200 gift card from Amazon.



• The Hotel Indigo

  With this widget Indigo Hotels perpetuate their philosophy of making customers stay in touch with nature. You can read natural-food recipes, have a look at the upcoming local events in your city, or listen to chill-out music podcasts, as well as reading all the latest news from the company. And if you want to book your stay, just click on a button.
  

• Samsung Omnia

  Do you like the new Samsung Omina? From this widget you can preview some of the features of this new smart phone. Just drag and drop the little icons from the left to the right side of the screen. Watch a small video, listen to music tracks, or check how GPS info are displayed on the phone. You can even use this widget as a permanent clock: simply adjust the time zone and you're set.



• Stephen King's N.

  This web widget entails a graphic, downloadable version of "N.", the new graphic novel from Stephen King. From the widget brought by CBS and Marvel, you can watch small webisodes of "N.", and a small interview of Stephen King himself describing how this project was conceived and what makes it valuable to promote his new book. You can also order the book straight from the widget.



• WWE

  This web widget from WWE promotes the SmackDown Vs. Raw 2008 video game. You can watch videos taken from Nintendo WII and DS platforms, or have a look at screenshots of the game. After you've enjoyed the content, you're just one-click away from the official site or to purchase the game.



• Disney Music Block Party

  This web widget allows you to access all the podcasts from the popular Disney Music Block Party Tour. Check product details, tour information, or go straight to the iTunes Music Store to download the podcasts you like. And if you run-out of time, you can even grab the content and sync it to your mobile to enjoy it on-the-go.



• Walmart

  The popular low-price store company Walmart has partnered with Taste of home magazine, invitation service Evite and The Weather Channel to bring you everything you need from your garden parties with neighbors. Read food recipes, buy all you need to prepare your dishes with the shopping list feature, create personalized invitations cards, and check the weather forecast for your zone.



• Honda Readysodes

  Motor company Honda created this web widget to advertise its new SUV Pilot. This widget showcases a series of webisodes with funny videos that focus on the key strengths of the new vehicle. As many widgets of this kind, this works like an anchor to the official site, where you can go and create your own webisode or customize your Honda Pilot.



• Viva Hollywood

  Music channel Vh1 released this web widget to promote one of its most successful Spanish reality shows: Viva Hollywood, where players compete to become a telenovela star. From the widget you can watch a trailer which explains what the show is about, have a look at participants' bios, or go to Vh1 site for additional videos and images of the show.



• National Geographic News

  This minimalistic web widget allows you to put National Geographic latest news on your site. Just place your mouse cursor on the headlines to enlarge the news. You can also access National Geographic photo and video content very easily by using the buttons at the bottom.

Additional Resources

• Apple Dashborad Widgets
• Windows Vista SideBar Gadgets
• Yahoo! Widgets
• Screenlets (Linux)

If you want to have a comprehensive idea of what web widgets are, how they work and how you can you take advantage of their distribution and marketing potential, I suggest you give also a look to this other article on MasterNewMedia: "Digital Content Distribution Made Easy: Web Widgets - What They Are How They Can Bring New Life To Your Blog - Video Guide"

This resource list has been put together by Daniele Bazzano of MasterNewMedia - Original resource list of social media marketing examples prepared by Peter Kim for Being Peter Kim and published on November 23rd 2008 as "A List of Social Media Marketing Examples".

About the author Peter Kim is a former analyst at Forrester Research and international marketing manager at Puma AG. A well-known personality in the fields of social media and marketing, Peter Kim currently working to build a start-up to help clients formulate social computing strategies.

For our continuing "Boing Boing on GOOD" series, I wrote a brief essay about the possible psychological dark sides of Twitter, Flickr, and lifecasting that may go beyond amplified narcissism. Are the Truman Syndrome and Abraham Biggs's live suicide on Justin.tv canaries in the coalmine? From my article, titled "All the Web's A Stage" (above artwork by Imaginary Foundation):

In 1968, Andy Warhol famously forecasted, “In the future, everyone will be… famous for 15 minutes.” Of course, he was right. Personal computers and the Web have democratized the tools of media so that most anyone can create and distribute their own content without the need for deep-pocketed middlemen. Can’t get on TV? Start your own network. Create your own reality TV show starring you. Flickr already abounds with users who unabashedly post steady streams of self-portraits shot with phonecams held at arm’s length, and fans who praise them. And at microblogging hub Twitter, there are thousands of people delighted to share what they’re eating for dinner or that they’re stuck in traffic, and many thousands more who seem to care.

At Institute for the Future, where I’m a researcher, we’ve been exploring the idea that “everyone will be a channel,” and how that experience might inform and change the way we relate to each other, and ourselves...

"All the Web's A Stage" (GOOD)

At 3:00 Eastern time on Monday Dec. 15, 538 electors in state capitols across the US cast the votes that actually elected Barack Obama the 44th President. Obama received, unofficially, 365 electoral votes (with 270 needed to win). The exact total will not be official — or Obama officially elected — until Congress certifies the count of electoral votes in a joint session on Jan. 6, 2009. The Electoral College was established in its present form in 1804 by the Twelfth Amendment to the US Constitution. Electors are not required to vote for the candidate who won their state — in fact, 24 states make it a criminal offense to vote otherwise, but no "faithless elector" has ever been charged with a crime. "On 158 occasions, electors have cast their votes for President or Vice President in a manner different from that prescribed by the legislature of the state they represented. Of those, 71 votes were changed because the original candidate died before the elector was able to cast a vote. Two votes were not cast at all when electors chose to abstain from casting their electoral vote for any candidate. The remaining 85 were changed by the elector's personal interest, or perhaps by accident. Usually, the faithless electors act alone. An exception was in 1836 when 23 Virginia electors changed their vote together. ... To date, faithless electors have never changed the otherwise expected outcome of the election."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Youtuber sycmuzak posted this demo/explanation of his breadboarded sound circuit -

My homemade 555 timer synthesizer. I made it in about 2 hours from 2 555 timers, 4 capacitors, 1 resistor and 3 potentiometers. Schematic can be made available if demand is high enough. This is one of my first 555 timer projects, and I'm a high school sophomore, so feedback is appreciated.

It seems demand was high enough to warrant a schematic posting. Looks like fun -

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"Control Structure" by Australian artist Sam Smith is a sculpture and interactive installation built from hoop pine plywood, maple plywood, polyester resin, fiberglass, an LCD monitor and other materials. From the description: "A large digital video zoom lens extrudes from one eye socket like a bionic appendage, while the other eye is caved in and blackened. The correlating viewpoints between human eye and camera lens remain in constant flux. In the accompanying video a film set becomes a doorway between two worlds and a single hovering lens contains traces (corrupted artifacts and static signals) of a parallel data-verse: a mirror world that is the digital realm. As the artist comes into contact with the lens, his world is transformed, causing images to change orientation and play in reverse." Interesting project that might be even more interesting to try out first hand.

Sam Smith Artist Website

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The Copyright Board of Canada has decided to increase the levy on blank CDs from 21 cents to 29 cents each. The levy is a sort of "you're a criminal tax" that assumes blank CDs are going to be used for unauthorized copying. Blank CDs in Canada are now often more expensive than blank DVDs (which have no levy and hold more data), and most of that cost goes directly to the record industry. In 2006, about 70% went to the labels, but it seems like even more now, with actual price of CD-Rs dropping. With a 21 cent levy, a pack of 50 CD-Rs sells for about $12 before tax. That's 24 cents per CD-R -- 87.5% of the price goes to the record industry. And that's before the 8 cent increase.

The board notes that sales of blank CDs are declining, but justifies the increase by arguing that compression allows people to store more songs on a CD. Meanwhile, there's no levy on digital audio players (the Canadian record industry was worried it would legalize downloading and seemed to prefer to push for tougher copyright legislation instead). What's going to happen when the Copyright Board realizes that blank CD sales are likely declining, not because everyone is using compression, but because less people are using CDs? This "you're a criminal tax" has always been a short-term band-aid solution that's not going to fix the record industry's problem. Do Canadians really need to pay the record industry $30 million a year for the right to burn a few songs onto a CD every now and then? Luckily, the current government has expressed a desire to cancel the levy, though we'll have to wait and see if they can follow through.

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

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"Landscape" by Antoinette J. Citizen is a mockup of the world of Super Mario where the "mystery" boxes even make the "cha-ching" sound when you press a momentary switch underneath them. Pretty fun idea that most little kids today would say is too "low-rez", but would make grown-up kids giggle with nostalgia.

Antoinette J Citizen via DVICE

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GetLoFi posted detailed info on using their LTC1799 Precision Oscillator kit for pitch control on a Casio SA-39 Keyboard -

The kit oscillates at frequencies from 1KHz to 30Mhz and its output frequency is controlled with a potentiometer. The oscillation frequency from this kit can be substituted for the constant oscillation frequency a device receives from its internal crystal. The kit’s variable frequency will allow you to control the pitch of a device when it is patched in place of –or sometimes in parallel with—the device’s internal crystal.

Likely interesting even if you aren't working with that specific hardware - Circuit Bending Casio SA-39

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Simone Bardi makes these interesting pictures/sculptures made form recycled PC parts. I would like to see these in person and try and identify the sources of the electronics.

It's all about inspiration. Dismantling everything that can be disassembled just for the pleasure of changing perspective. Imaging and re-inventing a new life for all those little pieces outside their context. I follow my moods and put the pieces together.

More about Techmoods by Simone Bardi [Gawker Artists]

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Bart sez, " I'm a Canadian living in East Africa and we make cowboy shirts in Kenya from secondhand clothes that end up in the marketplaces. This link is to our brand spanking new website which has 58 one-of-a-kind Kenyan cowboy shirts. Each one tells a story and some have some really cool model shots. There are some videos of fabric hunts, fashion shows and interviews with the tailors."

Kilakitu | Clothing renewed in Africa (Thanks, Bart!)

Here's an odd one. Apparently the folks at Greenpeace are claiming that a move to computerize the permit system for logging companies in the Amazon rainforest allowed hackers employed by the logging companies to issue fake permits allowing them to log well beyond their quota. However, it's difficult to really see how the hackers or computerization really had much to do with this at all. Prior to that, the system was based entirely on paper, where it would seem much easier to forge a piece of paper. By moving it to a computerized system, if anything, it would seem to create a much better system for tracking and catching those that forge the permits. After all, any decent computer system should recognize if extra permits are being issued, or if they're forged completely, then a quick check via the computer should show that the permits being used are faked. An entirely paper-based system would allow for no such simple check.

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MarkN writes "It seems like whenever broad topics of game design are discussed on Slashdot, a few people bring up examples of Adventure Games, possibly owing to the age and interests of our members. I'd be interested to hear the community's thoughts on a piece I wrote on Adventure Games, talking about the evolution they underwent in terms of interfaces, and how the choice of interface affects some aspects of the puzzles and design. My basic premise is that an Adventure Game is an exercise in abstract puzzle solving — you could represent the same game with a parser or a point and click interface and still have the same underlying puzzle structure, and required player actions. What the interface does affect is how the player specifies those actions. Point and click games typically have a bare handful of verbs compared to parser games, where the player is forced to describe the desired interaction much more precisely in a way that doesn't lend itself to brute force fiddling. It's a point Yahtzee has made in the past; he went so far as to design a modern graphic adventure game with a parser input to demonstrate its potential." Read on for the rest of MarkN's comments.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I was doing a little research about Creative Commons, Public Domain, and Open Source Hardware, when I came across a great article at Core77 about a book called "The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind" by James Boyle. The book explores the plight of Public Domain and why it is so important to our future.

Since this is a book about Public Domain, it only makes sense that it be distributed in the Public Domain, right? Well, it is. You can either purchase the book, or download it for free.

More about "The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind" by James Boyle [Core77]

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Adobe has updated Photoshop Lightroom to Version 2.2. The latest version extends RAW support to the cameras included in the recent Camera RAW 5.2 release. The latest update also builds-in the camera profiles, previously available from Adobe Labs, that attempt to mimic the camera manufacturers' intended output.

Panasonic has posted the first firmware update for its DMC-G1 Micro Four-Thirds camera. The update is said to improve the AE Lock and MF Assist features, along with the overall performance. It also lets the user make color adjustments to the camera's LCD and EVF.

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This dress by Ying Gao reacts to it's environment by integrating proximity sensors. I would love to see this type of clothing being worn on the streets of NYC.

More about "Walking City" kinetic dresses

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The first part of this gift guide for photographers is by Derrick Story, Derrick is one of those people that I always look to for all things photography, specifically for the folks who are in the DIY world like makers... Check out what he has for you and read on for some additional photo gear from the editors at MAKE! (Pictured above: A shot from the MAKE: Strobe photography pool!)

OK, so you know what you're favorite photographer would really like: a Nikon D90 DSLR, or maybe that fast f2.8 70-200mm zoom lens. But that ain't gonna happen, especially this year. So instead, impress him or her with your photo cleverness by giving something utterly cool (and totally affordable).  The following list of suggestions are all priced at $50 or less... sometimes way less. So onward with our six goodies. And remember, you can add these to your gift list too.

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An anonymous reader writes "At a Tokyo railway station above a flat-panel display hawking DVDs and books sits a small camera hooked up to some image processing software. When trials begin in January the camera will scan travelers to see how many of them are taking note of the panel, in part of a technology test being run by NTT Communications. It doesn't seek to identify individuals, but it will attempt to figure out how many of the people standing in front of an advertisement are actually looking at it. A second camera, which wasn't fitted at the station but will be when tests begin next month, will take care of estimating how many people are in front of the ad, whether they are looking at it or not."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Many mobile phones' voicemail systems have worked on the basis of checking the caller ID of the incoming caller -- and if it matched the number of the voicemail box, it would automatically push the caller through to the admin interface. The idea was that if the owner of the box was calling, he or she shouldn't have to put in the passcode to get to the messages. The only problem with this was that, if anyone could spoof your caller ID, they could access your voicemail. After a few high profile such voicemail attacks, many mobile operators urged customers to change their voicemail preferences to require a passcode, no matter what. Still, there were some operations out there, that went under names like SpoofCard, Love Detect and Liar Card, that would spoof a caller ID to get access to a voicemail box. The company behind them has been fined, but what may be more interesting is that T-Mobile and AT&T were also both fined for apparently being misleading about their susceptibility to the hack.

That seems a bit strange, and the article is woefully short on details, unfortunately. Pretty much anything is hackable given certain circumstances, and it always seems a bit odd to totally blame a hacking victim for being hacked. So it would be good to know why T-Mobile and AT&T, in particular, were fined in this case. Did they not even allow passcodes to be enabled for those who wanted to avoid this potential hack?

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I met Van Jones in 2007 -- a community organizer and campaigning civil rights lawyer from Oakland -- and he was on fire with his new plan: to create "green collar" jobs that would put real, sustainable work in the grasp of people whose lives were being destroyed by the death of America's manufacturing sector. He had a really good, crunchy pitch, filled with credible stats about the efficiency of spending on green job creation -- and he also had a well-thought-through logistical plan for getting there.

Now Van's published a book on the subject, The Green Economy and now he's offering ten free copies to Boing Boing readers, through the link below (the form will stop working once ten people have signed up -- they're not harvesting addresses). Of course, you can also just buy a copy, or check out the videos of Van speaking,

The Green Economy on Amazon, Free copies of The Green Economy, Van Jones on GFA America, Van Jones: It's Simple

TokyoFlash has brought out its long-awaited "Waku" watch, a super-thin LED watch that uses a wide variety of textiles for the face, creating an unbroken loop with the band. You can customize the LED colours, too. We saw a prototype of these when we were in Tokyo in September, and my wife, an avowed non-watch-wearer, was absolutely taken with the "fur" version.

Waku

The Muppets/YouTube partnership is bearing sweet, musical fruit. Here are two fantastic musical clips to help familiarize your kids with the cultural significance of the great works of classical music: first, Beeker and his many clones perform Ode to Joy (viddy it, oh my brothers, just viddy it), then Gonzo the Great and his chicken orchestra cluck out The Blue Danube Waltz (by Strauss, the louse, he lives in a house, with Mick-ey Mouse).

(via Kottke)

On a gamer forum, a vigorous discussion about whether it's fair for employers to discriminate against World of Warcraft players when hiring, on the grounds that WoW players are never fully out of the game. A surprising number of players agree with this proposition.

I met with a recruiter recently (online media industry) and in conversation I happened to mention I'd spent way too much time in the early 2000s playing online games, which I described as "the ones before World of Warcraft" (I went nuts for EQ1, SWG and the start of WoW, but since 2006 I have only put a handful of days into MMOG playing - as opposed to discussing them - I've obsessed over bicycles and cycling instead).

He replied that employers specifically instruct him not to send them World of Warcraft players. He said there is a belief that WoW players cannot give 100% because their focus is elsewhere, their sleeping patterns are often not great, etc. I mentioned that some people have written about MMOG leadership experience as a career positive or a way to learn project management skills, and he shook his head. He has been specifically asked to avoid WoW players.

Topic: Recruiter told not to hire WoW players (via Raph Koster)

Leah Buechley's working on an installation at the Exploratorium in San Francisco using LilyPad Arduinos and conductive paint! I can't wait to see a video of it when it's done. Check out her Flickr set of the construction.

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The new micro-sized "netbook" laptops that have popped up this year are quite nifty, but unfortunately for Mac users, none of them ship with OS X. Fortunately, while you wait for Apple to release their own model, you can hack most standard PC netbooks to run a patched version of OS X.

Dan from Uneasy Silence got 10.5 up and running on his Dell Mini (photo above) and documented the steps required to make it work:

Kevin advised me that the chipset and processor of the Dell mini is so similar to the MSI Wind that a special slipstreamed version of 10.5 customized for the MSI Wind would be perfect (and painless) to get the little guy up and running.

The steps to Leopard-ize the mini are actually quite simple and easy to follow. After you download the slipstreamed ISO and burn the 3.2GB ISO to a DVD you boot up the Dell mini off a external DVD drive (Press 0 (Zero) at the BIOS screen) and installed Leopard as usual.

Brian Chen from Gadget Lab posted a video that shows you how to do this with an MSI Wind. The only complicated part of the process is to swap out the wireless card with one that's supported under OS X - not too big a deal.

Run Leopard (Mac OS 10.5) on a Dell Mini 9
Gadget Lab Video: Running OS X on a Netbook

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Master archivist Rick Prelinger sez,

For the past two years I've been putting together obscure/unknown/lost archival film clips showing the many vanished San Franciscos. This year I'm collaborating with the Long Now Foundation to present the third (and, I think, the best) iteration of Lost Landscapes of San Francisco, as one of their Seminars on Long-Term Thinking.

I've been busy throughout 2008 collecting and transferring new clips. We'll join two women hitchhikers and a dog as they cross a spanking new Bay Bridge in 1938; tour the wonderful Kodachrome world of the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition; witness the V-J Day riots and looting on Market Street; see a bit of the newly-restored "A Trip Down Market Street," a 1905 film many San Franciscans think they've seen but really haven't, as most other copies are in terrible condition; take a cable car ride to nowhere in a drab early-morning 1960s SF; and much much more.

Unlike most other film screenings, this one relies on audience members for a soundtrack. We'll encourage everyone to shout out names and places they recognize and to talk back to the screen -- interactivity the way it used to be.

I'm also going to talk very briefly about what it means to look back at the past and how every historical image will figure in the coming battle over the control of 3D models of the world.

BBers anywhere near SF, come join us for a holiday celebration, and bring your friends, ancestors and offspring!

The event's this Friday at 7PM at the Coswell Theatre, click below for details.

Lost Landscapes of San Francisco (Thanks, Rick!)

An Australian court has ruled that a posting on someone's Facebook page can serve as legal notice. I think that this is a bad idea -- I've got a lot of accounts hanging around on various social sites that I never check into (Facebook falls into this category). Lots of us do. Some of them don't even let you resign your account automatically, requiring you to send email to a special address, begging to be removed. T

he idea that you can have legal certainty that someone's seen your "I'm about to take away your house unless you object" notice because you stuck it somewhere, where someone has created an account under that person's name (how many of these services ask for ID to verify your identity before setting up the account in your name?) is ridiculous.

It's like serving notice on me by sticking a post-it on a toilet wall on which someone has written "Cory wuz heer" and declaring it legal.

In a ruling that could make legal and internet history, a Supreme Court judge ruled last week lawyers could use the social networking site to serve court notices.

Email and even mobile phone text messages have been used before to serve court notices, but the Canberra lawyers who secured the ruling are claiming service by Facebook as a world first.

Lawyers Meyer Vandenberg, acting for lending company MKM Capital, applied to Master David Harper of the Supreme Court last week to use the popular internet site to serve notice of a judgment on two borrowers who had defaulted on a loan.

Carmel Rita Corbo and Gordon Kingsley Maxwell Poyser failed to keep up the repayments on $150,000 they borrowed from MKM last year to refinance the mortgage on their Kambah townhouse.

Lawyers to serve notices on Facebook (Thanks, Georgie!)

Mur sez, "Found this tiny mammoth on Kelly Farrell's Etsy store and fell in love. She uses a laser to cut the parts for her designs, and her store is full of tiny things - city rings, tiny T-Rex, and tiny letters. Bonus for some lucky buyers: 'if you live in the NYC area you can even come to the studio and say "FIRE THE LASER" before it goes off.' I haven't the eye or the hand to actually make it, but the fact that it's a kit makes for a challenging and painfully cute project. Little dinosaurs! They're dinosaurs! And little!"

Build Your Own Woolly Tiny (Mammoth) (Thanks, Mur!)

Got an old pair of shoes lying around, waiting to be used in a ritual gesture of disrespect? Send 'em to the GW Bush liberry so they can put them on the My Pet Goat shelf.

George W. Bush Presidential Library
c/o SMU
6425 Boaz Lane
Dallas TX 75205

Old Shoes (via Making Light

Previously:

• Arab shoe-tossing isn't a gesture of friendly affection - Boing Boing

(Image: Worn Out Shoes, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike photo from Eschipul's Flickr stream)