Rob Carr writes "According to the Cassini team, 'Recent images of Titan from NASA's Cassini spacecraft affirm the presence of lakes of liquid hydrocarbons by capturing changes in the lakes brought on by rainfall.' The northern lakes are now larger following a period in which hydrocarbon clouds covered their skies. (The research was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.) This change adds to the evidence these areas are indeed hydrocarbon lakes. But this discovery raises several more questions: where is the methane in the atmosphere coming from, and how long can this complex hydrocarbon cycle on Titan go on? The new evidence emphasizes the need for another mission to Titan."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes "While earlier generations learned to Read with Dick and Jane, the NYT Magazine reports that today's tykes are getting their reading chops at online sites like Starfall (free) and One More Story (subscription). Quoting the Times Magazine: 'In their book "Freakonomics," Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt write that kids who grow up in houses packed with books fare better on school tests than those who grow up with fewer books.' So how will kids who learn to read online fare when they grow up?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Gareth Branwyn writes on technology, pop and fringe culture. He is currently a Contributing Editor at Maker Media. Recent projects have included co-creating The Maker's Notebook and editing The Best of MAKE and The Best of Instructables collections.

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A dear friend of mine, who blogs under the name Supa Dupa Fresh, and I share a grim truth -- we've both lost our spouses. One of the other things we have in common is an off-beat sense of humor. These two forces collide on her Fresh Widow blog, and especially, with her Fresh Widow (and Widower) Cards. She explains:

One night in my support group, S. said casually that he’d “left work early… I just pulled a widower card.” I thought about how often I’d done this in the months since LH died, but more about how I could make good use of some little advantage. All the handicaps I was living with… single (really, double) parenting, how impossible it was to go grocery shopping with a toddler, and how no one could see that anything was wrong. The side of me that is tempted to shoplift (but only cashmere or chocolate) was aroused. I was always comfortable as an underachiever, but could I have some legitimate “cover” after surviving catastrophe? Something versatile? Something I could use every day? And so the concept was born: Not as useful as a “get out of jail free” card, more powerful than a hall pass… it’s… it’s… The Widow Card!

AdamWill writes "Phoronix writes about the mess that is the Linux support situation for Intel's new graphics chipset, the GMA 500 — aka Poulsbo. Near the end they refer to my own post on the topic ('Okay, so after a whole day spent bashing around at this crap, I can very confidently and conclusively say, it's utterly broken'). Intel has a reputation as one of the most clued-up open source-friendly hardware companies, but if they can't sort out the mess surrounding the driver for this chipset — which is already used on the Dell Mini 12 and Sony Vaio P, and will be used on many future Intel-based systems — that reputation will take a serious hit."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

sergio80 writes in with a timely piece of history in this the International Year of Astronomy, celebrating the 400th anniversary of the invention of the telescope. "Galileo Galilei is often credited with being the first person to look through a telescope and make drawings of the celestial objects he observed. While the Italian indeed was a pioneer in this realm, he was not the first..." That honor belongs to Thomas Harriot, an Englishman, who bought his first "Dutch trunke" (i.e. telescope) shortly after its invention in the Netherlands and made a sketch of the moon as seen through it in July of 1609.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Ann Arbor Chronicle » Geeks Gather, Make Stuff -

Edwin Olson, assistant professor in the University of Michigan's Computer Science and Engineering department, didn't know beforehand about the A2Geeks Make TV Movie Night, but when he saw robots in the atrium of the CSE building, he figured it was something he might be interested in and stopped to chat. Olson directs the Autonomy, Perception, Robotics, Intelligence, and Learning (APRIL) lab on the third floor of the building.

Movie night was not an A2Geeks event per se. As Dug Song put it, the organization, which he helped form in November 2008, is meant more to support other existing groups than to run its own events. And on Thursday, the existing group getting some geek love from A2Geeks was GoTech.

Dale Grover of GoTech explained that it's an organization for people who like to make things using technology, and that when people come to their monthly meetings (generally the second Tuesday), they bring stuff they've made, like robots, or they spend their time making things, like printed circuit boards. They're the sort of people who enjoy Make Magazine and its TV version, Make Television.

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Boing Boing Video, Offworld, and Boing Boing Gadgets have been on the scene at the Global Game Jam in various cities around the world, and we'll be bringing you some fun post-Jam documentary LOLs next week. For now, check out this meta Flickr photoset, which contains lots of sleepy developers, half-consumed energy drinks, and funny things people think up when they're hyperconnected and under-slept -- international dance-offs, for example.

Above, Boing Boing Video colleague Jolon Bankey is also organizing the Global Game Jam Costa Rica, and this is the live stream for CR. Pura Vida, guys! Below, Jolon writes:

Hey Xeni! We're at the site of the Global Game Jam in Costa Rica, and all the teams are going strong! We have a few casualties curled up in a corner behind me, but for the most part people haven't slept, or did so for 15 minutes sitting in front of their chairs before jerking awake and getting back to rocking their virtual world in the short time left.

With only 27 short sleepless hours ahead of them, everyone is surprisingly energized. We have had continuous communication with the other locations around the world via webcams and projectors everywhere, which has been a lot of fun. There have been Macarena dance-offs between Costa Rica and the rest of the world, we lost a contest with Brazil, but Scotland gave us a 10 for our efforts.

We polished off some giant tubs of Gallo Pinto and huevos revueltos earlier, and now people are just trying to push through with an unending stream of Sobe Adrenalin Rush (*cough* sponsors Thank you Sobe!)

-jgb 12.04.29 pm Saturday January 31st, 2009
Offices of Schematic, Costa Rica
PLaza Roble, Escazu, Costa Rica

Previously on Boing Boing:
* Global Game Jam has begun! (live video stream)
* Global Game Jam (48 hour videogame dev marathon) this weekend!

synodinos writes "The public draft of the Java EE 6 Platform specification has been published and will remain open for public review and feedback until the 23rd of Feb, 2009. Perhaps the most notable part of this delayed draft is the Web Profile, which is first profile in the history of the Java EE platform. The draft is available for download and contains both the Java EE 6 Spec and the Web Profile Spec. There is a poll running at java.net regarding what the community thinks about the new spec. Although participation is yet rather small the results tend to show that the released draft did not cause any excitement."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A lot of people, including myself, will be watching the Super Bowl this Sunday. One thing that bugs me are all the long commercial breaks. Although it seems a lot of people like the commercials better than the actual game! This year I am going to try something different. I am going push the salsa and chips aside and set up my living room table for a build. I am going to be making the Stirling Engine kit by Gakken during those long commercial breaks. I'll let you know how it goes. Hopefully I can fire it up by the time the game is over.

I am always amazed at the quality of any of the Gakken kits, and the Stirling engine kit is no exception. I can't wait to get started making this one.

Are you making anything this weekend, or just watching the game? Leave us a note in the comments, Thanks!

All this week get 10% off you order in the Maker Shed, use code "2009OX" at the time of checkout - Happy Chinese New Year!

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Boing Boing reader Joe Sabia says he's created the first ever interactive photo hunt on YouTube. "There are 30 levels to the game, recapping all the big nominees for the oscars. 64 videos in all. i made use of youtube's annotations... thought you would enjoy." The subject matter may or may not be something that interests you, but I loved this clever and effective use of a mass-market web service feature (annotations) for a purpose other than the one for which that feature was originally developed.

Start here.

b8fait writes "The head of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows development confirmed that Windows 7 will take the unusual path of moving straight from a single beta, which was launched earlier this month, to a release candidate. Sinofsky fleshed out the plan today and hinted that just as there would be no Beta 2, the company would also not provide a RC2 build. In other words, there may be only one released build of Windows 7 before it ships, possibly much sooner than even some of the most aggressive rumors about Windows 7. How much different can Windows 7 really be with such a shortened beta cycle?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

(Charles Platt is a guest blogger)

Even this very humble shack in Louisiana looks mysteriously beautiful when the visible spectrum is blocked. If we had infra-red sunglasses, the world might appear a lot more pleasant than in its more usual shades of dull-brown, muddy-green, and dirt-gray.

(Charles Platt is a guest blogger)

My friend Richard Kadrey introduced me to infra-red photography. Sensors on digital cameras can detect infra-red, but normally are shielded from it by a protective filter that resides as a thin layer over the chip. You can hack a camera by removing the layer, but it is easier to buy a Fuji IS-1, which is infra-red-ready. If you use a lens filter that blocks the visible frequencies, the camera displays an image that consists of infra-red transposed into the visible spectrum.

Vegetation reflects almost all light below red, and thus appears “white.” Conversely, the upper atmosphere does not refract infra-red, and thus a blue sky appears “black.” An unexpected effect is that most fabric dyes reflect infra-red, so that a crowded sidewalk appears to be populated entirely by angelic people dressed in white.

During 2007 I drove across the country and took a bunch of infra-red photographs. The Southern states looked especially good, because they contain so much vegetation.

Sarah Palermo of the Keene Sentinal has a great piece that affirms the Maker's Bill of Rights:

WINCHESTER -- William L. Morse remembers a young woman who came to his auto repair shop a few months ago with a $3,000 repair bill hanging over her head.

He examined the car, which had been diagnosed by a dealership service shop, and repaired the vehicle for $300, he said.

"I've heard some pretty good horror stories," says Morse, the Bill in Bill's Ashuelot Garage in Winchester.

Many people are sent to dealerships for their repair work because of what he and other independent mechanics see as a monopoly on information.

...

From the time the Model T was introduced until recent years, cars operated on mainly mechanical systems. This gear connected to that belt, and the whole thing went "vrrooom."

When it didn't, a mechanic could open the hood or roll underneath to see which part was broken and fix or replace it.

Now, computers control most of the car, and diagnosing problems means buying and continually updating a computer system that plugs into the car's computer and reports a code, telling the mechanic where the problem is.

The price of the system and the continual upgrades vary, according to technicians and shop owners. Some programs can be $100, while others cost a couple thousand, said Leon Watkins, co-owner of Leon's Auto Center in Keene.

And sometimes, even with a system to translate the code shown on the computer into the appropriate problem, mechanics are still out of luck -- if the code is a brand new one.

Mechanics seek 'right to repair' [via Jon Udell on Twitter]

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Yesterday on Boing Boing Gadgets: • Samsung shoved 32GBs into a single stick of RAM. • We examined some multi-chromatic electromagnetic chart porn. • Pixel art makes good (if illegible) book jackets. • Brownlee was nostalgic for the days of Prodigy and the <s> emoticon. • Swaying in the wind, sixteen fabric inflatable robots. • Steve Jobs and Bill Gates made out in the Macintosh Dating Game. • We tried to formulate a question to ask sci-fi writers that would, fifty years from now, juxtapose the actual path of future technology with our own subconscious expectations of which way that path will wind. That won't make a lot of sense, so just read the post. • Beschizza broke rocks with a hammer made of engine parts. • The BBC got punked into believing in a magical cell phone created by Oompa Loompas. • We looked at some cool wallets made from cassette tapes. • We argued bitterly about the merits of a Space Invaders watch that doesn't actually play Space Invaders. • Kittens rode a Roomba around the room. • A clockwork trilobyte crawled out of the wreckage of the post-apocalypse. • We jumped to our feet and applauded the world's first vertical backflip on a Big Wheel. And more besides. Come read us! Link

An anonymous reader tips news that the US Senate has passed another bill to delay the transition to digital TV. This is the second such bill to pass the Senate; the first was narrowly defeated in the House. The new version has an important difference — it would allow the transition to take place gradually over the four-month period between the original transition date (February 17th) and the extended date (June 12th). TV stations around the country could choose when they wanted to make the change, allowing those who have already begun plans to stop analog transmission to continue their shut-down operations.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you've never seen a kid make a Drawdio - you're missing out. I get asked all the time what's the best kit to build with a son and/or daughter and the Drawdio is my #1 pick. Drawdio is an electronic pencil that lets you make music while you draw - it's a very simple musical synthesizer that uses the conductive properties of pencil graphite to create different sounds. The result is a fun toy that lets you "draw" musical instruments on any piece of paper. If you're old enough to remember Bill Cosby's "Picture pages" it reminds me of Mortimer Ichabod marker.

Back to Drawdio - It's less than $20 (It's $19.50) and there's one day left on our 10% sale so you can pick one up with a nice discount. Use the code 2009OX on check out to get 10% anything in the Maker Shed. Developed by Jay Silver and Adafruit it's a great kit that might spark a lifetime of science and engineering for a kid (or adult!).

I gathered up some of the links, videos and photos of Drawdio in action - check'em out and if you make one post up what you draw (and record video while you draw!). Oh, one more thing - it's an open source hardware project! Don't want to buy a kit, you can make your own!

More:

• Drawdio paint brush.
• How the Drawdio was invented.
• How-to Tuesday: Drawdio meets Unruly.
• Drawdio kit makes music while you draw.
• DIY Drawdio.

From the Maker Shed:

Get 10% off your order in the Maker Shed, use code "2009OX" at the time of checkout - Happy Chinese New Year! (Sale ends midnight, Jan 31st!)

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dowlingw writes "It looks like for the moment at least, all Google results are failing the malware checks and being listed with a warning 'This site may harm your computer,' including all pages from Google themselves. Users trying to visit pages at search results will only be able to proceed via manual manipulation of the search result link to remove the Google click-through (which is also broken). Until Google fixes this bug, it looks Google web search is useless." Update: 01/31 at 15:16 GMT by SS: The problem now appears to be fixed.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Starting at 9:43am EST 1/31/2009 Google says every site is malware... including Google. A few makers emailed me asking why every site was "malware" - looks like something went really wrong, or really right (for someone).

It's pretty clear what happened - Google became self aware and decided the web is mostly harmful - including itself. Suicidal Skynet...

Update: 30 minutes later it seems to be fixed - I guess John Connor zapped the machines, long live harmful sites!

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mattrandy123 writes with news that scientists from NYU and Utrecht University have discovered ordinary plant cells can fulfill some of the same regenerative functions previously attributed to stem cells. Quoting: "In the study, the researchers cut off the plant's root tip, thereby excising the stem cell niche, and examined the return of cell identities by measuring all gene activity. The results suggested that stem cells returned quite late in regeneration after other cells were already replaced. The researchers then used mutant plants in which the stem cell niche no longer functions to confirm their initial observations. Despite the absence of the stem cell niche, the plant's ordinary cells worked to regenerate all the major tissues constituting the root tip — a process that began hours after it had been removed. However, researchers found that plants without functional stem cell niches could not resume normal growth, showing that other cells did not replace all functions of stem cells."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The Associated Press, The New York Times, and other major news organizations have gone to court to fight the RIAA over its attempt to thwart a court order which ruled that a hearing in SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum could be streamed over the internet. The news organizations agreed with Judge Gertner, the district judge who'd granted the order, arguing : 'It is hard to imagine a hearing more deserving of public scrutiny through the same technological medium that is at the heart of this litigation'. As soon as I get a copy of the actual brief I will upload it and link to it. Another amicus brief opposing the RIAA's attempt to reverse Judge Gertner was filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other First Amendment proponents and is already available online [PDF]."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that NASA is offering free zero-g flight time for anyone with a viable proposal for emerging space technologies. While NASA will provide the flight time, approved projects will be responsible for all other expenses. "NASA's Facilitated Access to the Space Environment for Technology Development and Training, or FAST, program helps emerging technologies mature through testing in a reduced gravity environment. To prepare technologies for space applications, it is important to demonstrate they work in a zero-gravity environment. This unique testing environment can be provided in an aircraft flying repeated parabolic trajectories which create brief periods of zero gravity. The aircraft also can simulate reduced-gravity levels similar to those found on the surface of the moon or Mars."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ZOOM! Here's something for you BitTorrent & Miro folks... Torrent of Make: television Episode 105: Kinetic Wave Sculptures & Shopping Cart Chair...

Tour the elegant and hypnotic motorized wave sculptures, created by visionary maker Reuben Margolin. In the Maker Workshop John Park upcycles a discarded shopping cart into a stylish easy chair, and Mister Jalopy details the unsung wonders of his 1950 Studebaker. The Maker Channel features a treadmill bike, an obedient, robotic foot stool, a homemade foundry (built by two 14 year old wizards), and an ultra-high-temperature heat ray that can melt brass!

Make: television in HD, is available on public television (see local listings) - also as a torrent, Miro as well as on iTunes, YouTube, blip.tv, vimeo, direct downloads - the first and only TV show in history to do this! Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Make: television | Digg this!

Gamasutra has an interview with Ubisoft's Patrick Redding about the development of Far Cry 2. He explains his team's reasoning behind some of the decisions they made while trying to innovate in the very well-established first-person shooter genre. Ubisoft is also trying to crowdsource a guide for the game. "We don't want to be necessarily spoon-feed everything to people, because that gets insulting. It's also tiresome if you're constantly interrupting them to remind them things about that system. I like to learn things through trial and error, and I know a lot of players are like that. But accessibility isn't just about it being easy to pick up the controls. It's also making sure that you're supporting a certain kind of readability, giving the player a certain kind of feedback. Maybe the way to put it is that it might be less a function of the kind of low-level mechanics of the game at the control level, and more about how you're using the output of the game as good feedback for the player, so they at least are clear on the causal link between what they're doing and what's happening."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Content-restriction concerns about Wikipedia, social connectivity, the benefit of video lectures in academic environments, are just some of the interesting topics covered inside this week edition of George Siemens' Media Literacy Digest. Photo credit: Teemu Arina In this issue:

• Educational technologies and media expert George Siemens highlights the recent news that Wikipedia is considering to apply some restriction to its content, in order to prevent sudden and misleading changes.
• Since content production on the Web is now as easy as snapping your fingers, the real concern is gradually shifting towards how to create and communicate effectively credibility and trustworthiness. Are you sure what you learn comes from trusted, reliable sources?
• The ability to develop a greater analytical approach to news consumption will likely become a vital asset for anyone needing to know rather than being entertained.

If you are curious about where the future is headed, open to ask more unchallenged questions, and ready to look at new discoveries and disruptive changes taking place at the crossroad between personal learning, business and media, this digest is a good place to start. Here all the details: Intro by Robin Good

eLearning Resources and News

learning, networks, knowledge, technology, trends by George Siemens

Lessons From the Art of Storyboarding

I’ve made a commitment to improving my ability to communicate with images. As a result, I’ve been more aware of visual communication strategies. Presentation Zen offers comments (and links to a video) on Lessons from the art of storyboarding:

Storyboarding as we know it may have been pioneered by film makers and animators, but we can use many of the same concepts in the development of other forms of storytelling including keynote presentations or short-form presentations such as those made popular at TED. The storyboard process allows you to flush out themes and look for patterns as you apply your creativity toward presenting your content.

How Far Have We Come?

I’ve been collecting links and resources on early views of technology and the internet. News recordings from 1980s seem rather comical. And yet… consider what the next 25 years might bring. Here are two short clips of people grappling with what the internet might become.

• Peter Mansbridge the Internet as a “15 million people revolution”. Fascinating, considering that the 1 billion online threshold was exceeded in December 2008.
• 1981 Internet report - “imagine turning your computer on in the morning and reading the news”

Rethinking the Value of College

When higher education is viewed as being primarily about getting a job, reports of this nature understandably arise:

“Today’s economic downturn has blindsided a generation of young people around the globe brought up to believe that a college degree guaranteed them financial prosperity. Whether in the US, China, or in countries in between, graduates from even marquee-name schools are feeling the crunch, prompting many rightly to rethink the value of their education”.

Later in the article, the author turns the focus of college to something more in line with my thinking:

“College is not intended to be a trade school. Its purpose is to develop the skills necessary to be lifelong learners who are capable of finding new information, evaluating it, and applying it to the real world”.

Of course, if you have a degree and are looking for work, saying “I feel good about my capacity to handle information and can clearly see my contribution to the history of ideas” feels rather hollow.

Academic Earth

In the spirit of “aggregation is content creation”, Academic Earth provides what it calls “thousands of lectures from the world’s top scholars”. Aside from being useful learning resources for individuals, I’d like to know how many universities are using lecture videos from other scholars / universities. I haven’t come across research to date that discusses how open educational resources are being used. Yes, we get information like “MIT’s OCW gets X number of million hits per month”. I’m interested in whether or not universities are using open resources produced by other universities.

The End of Solitude

The End of Solitude is an interesting essay. It induces, in me at least, that odd mixture of “yes! that’s it!” and “no, not at all”. In periods of solitude and reflection, the world seems more real to me than it does in periods hustle, distraction, and busyness. I partly agree with the author that:

“we live exclusively in relation to others, and what disappears from our lives is solitude. Technology is taking away our privacy and our concentration, but it is also taking away our ability to be alone.”

But it is over-stated. I admit I start twitching slightly when I have lost an internet connection for a while. My uneasiness with being disconnected is not due to social reasons. A large part of my thinking happens in conjunction with the internet - I’m constantly searching citations, sources, articles, resources I’ve tagged, and more. My connectivity is not only socially to other people, but intellectually to the work of others (much like reading a book is an intellectual connection to an author). The concept of how the self relates to the crowd and how much time we allot for reflecting and creative thinking is important. I see that as related more to personal habits than technology.

Technology and Ideology

I view technology as being imbued with ideology. Technology is not neutral. A learning management system reflects a certain view on the part of designers. Second Life does as well. Social bookmarking tools also. (see the trend?). Technology is frequently thought of as “whatever has happened in the last several decades” (or, as Alan Kay says “Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born”). Obviously, technology includes books, paper, pencils, even institutions. Which is why I found this discussion on the campus interesting:

1. First proposition: the campus, like the computer, is a technology, an instructional technology.
2. Second proposition: there are many students for whom the lecture hall and notetaking is a poor instructional technology, and who do not learn much in the conventional classroom
3. Third proposition: the campus is a very expensive instructional technology.

Wikipedia - Tightening Editing

It is not much of a surprise that Wikipedia deals with consistent concerns about accuracy. Openness does not change humanity, but it does reveal its breadth. Those who have a penchant for destruction find openness as appealing as those who have a desire for creating something of value. To combat accuracy concerns, Wikipedia is considering restrictions on editing. Perhaps the complexity and challenges of one encyclopedia that incorporates all information could be overcome by smaller individual wikis under the care of networks and communities that have a vested interest. There is no reason why things need to be under one banner and one website. I almost always access Wikipedia through Google. The value is in the search, not the location.

Originally written by George Siemens for elearnspace and first published on January 30th 2009 in his newsletter eLearning Resources and News.

About the author To learn more about George Siemens and to access extensive information and resources on elearning check out www.elearnspace.org. Explore also George Siemens connectivism site for resources on the changing nature of learning and check out his new book "Knowing Knowledge".

Photo credits: Lessons From the Art of Storyboarding - Lola Moreno and Ramon Rosanas How Far Have We Come? - petrol Rethinking the Value of College - Marc Dietrich The End of Solitude - Anatoly Vartanov Technology and Ideology - Yuri Arcurs

(Charles Platt is a guest blogger)

Still on the topic of population and mortality (more or less), here is some light relief. I redraw the chart from a source that I found at www.graphjam.com.

(Charles Platt is a guest blogger)

To what extent do we feel overcrowded, as a species? I’m not talking about resources; just psychological factors.

To create this chart I turned to the CIA Factbook, where I looked up the populations of various nations and then divided this number into their land area (excluding lakes and rivers) to get the number of square feet available per person. I represented the results in squares that are all drawn to the same scale.

Of course if you are in Australia, where each resident has almost 4 million square feet to play with, you won’t make full use of your land ration, if only because most of it is desert. On the other hand, when I was in Australia I did feel intuitively aware that the country was, so to speak, empty. As soon as I drove out of an urban area, the emptiness was right there. Conversely, in Hong Kong, where citizens have barely more than 1,600 square feet each, everyone is intensely aware of being crammed into a very crowded place.

Personally I enjoy wilderness areas, but I wouldn’t claim that open spaces are essential for my mental health. I do, after all, still have an apartment in New York City containing just 350 square feet. The apartment next to mine, identical in size, used to be a home not only to a married couple, but also their young child.

I suspect that our romantic yearnings for “freedom to roam” may be just that: Romantic yearnings.

Following on our story the other day about copyright questions concerning the "appropriated art" that became the iconic Obama campaign poster, the Wall Street Journal has an interesting article exploring the fine line between derivative works and transformative works in the art world. As you probably know, derivative works (e.g., making a movie out of a book) are considered copyright infringement, but transformative works are not.

Of course, how you define a transformative work is a big open question. The article doesn't discuss it here, but for some unexplained reason, courts have mostly determined that there is no such thing as transformative works in music -- so sampling is mostly seen as infringement. The article, instead, focuses on visual artwork, though, where courts have ruled in different ways, depending on the artwork -- leading many to consider this to be a "gray area."

It probably won't surprise many, but to me the whole concept seems silly. The history of creativity has always included the concept of taking the ideas of others (those who influenced you) and building on them. That's the history of storytelling. It's the history of joke telling. It's the history of writing. It's the history of music. It's the way art is created. And that's a good thing. Art never springs entirely from 100% original thought. It's an amalgamation of what else is out there -- put together in a new way. What's even more ridiculous is that, in almost every one of these cases, it's difficult to see how the "original" complaining artist is even remotely "harmed" by the follow-on artists. If anything, it's likely that the later art would only draw more attention to the original artist. It's just that we've built up this ridiculous culture of "ownership" of ideas, where people think that someone else doing something creative by building upon my work is somehow "stealing." It's a shame, and it's incredibly damaging to our cultural heritage -- which, of course, is exactly the opposite of what copyright law is supposed to be about.

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joesmart writes to tell us that new work on OpenChange and KDE seeks to bridge the gap between groupware compatibility and open source. KDE developer Brad Hards spoke at the Linux.conf.au conference and said the goal of OpenChange is to implement the Microsoft Exchange protocols as they are used by Outlook. "OpenChange has client and server-side libraries for Exchange integration and relies heavily on code developed for Samba 4. It is open source software licensed under the GPL version 3. Hards said more work is being done on the client side and 'we have code for the server,' but estimates another 12 months of development is required to produce an OpenChange server ready for production."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

joesmart writes to tell us that new work on OpenChange and KDE seeks to bridge the gap between groupware compatibility and open source. KDE developer Brad Hards spoke at the Linux.conf.au conference and said the goal of OpenChange is to implement the Microsoft Exchange protocols as they are used by Outlook. "OpenChange has client and server-side libraries for Exchange integration and relies heavily on code developed for Samba 4. It is open source software licensed under the GPL version 3. Hards said more work is being done on the client side and "we have code for the server", but estimates another 12 months of development is required to produce an OpenChange server ready for production."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Leaked picture of the upcoming XO-2 OLPC via netbooknews.de. The next OLPC is being reported to be an open source hardware project too...

It appears that the very first photo of the next-generation OLPC XO 2.0 low-cost laptop has finally emerged on the Internet, showing us some of the things we should be expecting. In addition to that, it looks like Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the One Laptop Per Child project, has confirmed that the next-generation XO laptop is going for a different design and marketing strategy. To be more specific, the upcoming laptop, which could be released sooner rather than later, will be meant to provide users with a book that can be a laptop as compared with the first XO laptop, which was meant as a laptop that could be a book.

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Back at MidemNet, the most amount of "buzz" I heard for any particular new music service was for Spotify. Time and time again, I heard from a variety of people -- both from the recording industry and from the tech side -- that Spotify was a company that had truly figured out how to make a great music service. Of course, there was some bad news too. Due to licensing issues, it wasn't available in the US. I spoke with some of the folks from Spotify (who were at the event) and they said they were focused on getting more rights so they could open the product up further -- but it looks like the recording industry is pushing them in the opposite direction, yet again. The company has announced that, rather than adding more music to its service, some licensing issues mean they'll be removing music from the product. Once again, the recording industry seems to be missing the point. Every time it freaks out about some new useful service, and demands increased limitations (or, more usually, more money), it kills off whatever potential that service had, and puts yet another bullet in its already-Swiss-cheesed feet.

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An anonymous reader writes "Google has unofficially announced the GDrive by source code. In an in-direct way Google has publicly advertised the new much anticipated online storage drive called the GDrive. If you take a look at the source code of some javascript within the Google Pack, you will clearly see the GDrive referenced. The code categorizes the GDrive as an 'Online file backup and storage' device. It also provides the following descriptions; 'GDrive provides reliable storage for all of your files, including photos, music and documents' and 'GDrive allows you to access your files from anywhere, anytime, and from any device — be it from your desktop, web browser or cellular phone'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've seen plenty of stories of former disgruntled workers shutting down computer systems, locking others out or even running scams, but I don't think we've seen anything that had the potential to be as big a deal as the disgruntled tech who installed a logic bomb that would have wiped out all of Fannie Mae's computers, potentially shutting the organization down for at least a week to recover.

There are a few oddities here -- beyond just the simple question of how the system was set up in a way that would ever allow the ability to wipe out all machines in that way. First, the guy was fired -- but then allowed to finish up work that day, which gave him time to set the logic bomb. Why would you let someone who was fired (for a programming error) back to his computer to "finish" his day? These days it seems rather standard practice to escort fired employees off the premises. Next, the logic bomb wasn't spotted for five days. This turned out not to be a problem, since he had set the logic bomb to go off at the end of January (he was fired in October). Perhaps he did so to avoid having blame pointed in his direction, but if he had set it to go right away, or the next morning, it might have actually worked. Given Fannie Mae's role in the current financial mess, can you just imagine what would have happened if all their computers had melted down at once?

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During my appearance on Attack of the Show! this week, Kevin Pereira lined up some crew members to shoot with the Burrito Blaster. Brave souls. This is a photo of them, along with lovely co-host Olivia Munn, that Kevin took using the remote-controlled pole camera rig. One clever thing segment producer Sean Jordan thought of was to tap into the camera's video out so we could monitor what the camera saw. I wish we'd thought of that! This is just a humble point-and-shoot camera, too, so it may be a pretty solid addition to the project. If you want to see what you're shooting, just run a long RCA cable down the pole to a small monitor or video camera with a composite input.

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Transmeta, of course, was the massively hyped semiconductor company that was going to revolutionize the computing world with inexpensive microprocessors. Things didn't exactly work out as planned, as the company never was able to match the hype. By 2006, the company had been reduced to suing for patent infringement, as it no longer was making any products. Basically, it was the classic story we've seen over and over again: a company fails in the market place, and then falls back on suing those who actually succeeded. Letting such companies sue seems to go against every concept of free market capitalism. It's letting the marketplace losers make a claim on the earnings of the marketplace winners.

Still, Transmeta was having some problems with its go-it-alone strategy, so now it comes as little surprise that it's sold off its patents to Nathan Myhrvold's patent hoarding monster, Intellectual Ventures, whose business model is very troubling to those of us who believe in letting companies actually innovate. Myhrvold has been squeezing tons of money out of companies to effectively immunize them from future lawsuits from the massive number of patents he's been acquiring. It's taking money out of bringing products to market, and giving it to those who have nothing to market. It's basically a multi-billion dollar example of a patent system gone wrong.

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This beautiful flyer, by Joey Lopez, says it all:

If you're in / near Austin, hope to see you at next Wednesday's Dorkbot!

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This looks like a handy library for mobile-enabling your next Arduino project:

This library implements the Software serial Arduino library to establish a serial connection to a Mobile phone. The methods methods hides the AT+ commands from the user allowing messages to be sent by passing the method on a phone number or email and the message.

The specific AT commands were made to work with the Motorolla C168i, but you can tweak a header file to adjust things for the specific device you are using. It makes sending an email or SMS almost as easy as a single function call:

Example code:

#define rxPin 2
#define txPin 3

// set up a new serial port
SSerial2Mobile phone = SSerial2Mobile(rxPin, txPin);

//send a text message
phone.sendTxt("+15555550125","Lib SMS Test1");

//send an email
phone.sendEmail("sserial2mobile@example.com", "Lib email test1");


The reason the author chose to use the C168i is that you can get the phone on the cheap, without contract, and prepay for SMS service. It's also simple to make a serial cable which connects to a 3/32" stereo plug on the phone. In all, it looks like a pretty simple and cheap task to get this all working.

Note that it's the last day to use code 2009OX during checkout in the Maker Shed for a 10% discount. If you need an Arduino for this, go get one now!

SSerial2Mobile
Attaching a Motorola C168i to an Arduino

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Eric Gradman has created this awesome interactive fluid dynamics program called Besmoke. It is iPhone accelerometer aware and responds to sound input. It is based on Navier-Stokes fluid simulations.

Besmoke - Interactive Fluid Dynamics with iPhone and Sound Reactivity

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ruphus13 writes "Two of the technical leads and core committers of the Lucene Project have launched Lucid Imagination, a venture backed company now offering commercial versions of Lucene and SOLR in the hopes of making it the defacto choice of search technologies used by companies within their products. 'The Lucene search library ranks amongst the top 5 Apache projects, installed at over 4,000 global companies. Although OStatic is primarily Drupal-based, our site's search is based on Lucene. According to Lucid Imagination officials, the Solr search server, which transforms the Lucene search library into a ready-to-use search platform for building applications, is the fastest growing Lucene sub-project...Lucid's business model is roughly comparable to Red Hat's very successful model, in that it centers on support and services for free, open source software.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

And here's another bit of "transparency" that's just as lacking in the new administration as the last. For months, those of us concerned about backroom deals on intellectual property treaties bypassing an open legislative process have been demanding more sunlight on negotiations around ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. To date, the various folks negotiating the agreement -- which includes both entertainment industry representatives and government trade representatives from around the world -- have been averse to any sort of transparency, using the rather weak excuse that such treaties are always negotiated in secret. Amusingly, they even recently held a secret meeting where they promised to be more transparent. That's comforting.

In order to push this transparency issue forward, plenty of folks have been filing freedom of information requests to get documents related to the agreement and the negotiations. Up in Canada, these requests have revealed that the government may have publicly lied or misled people about its negotiations in ACTA. In the US, though, things are even more ridiculous. Apparently the US Trade Representative is refusing to release most of the documents requested under the FOIA claiming (I kid you not) that to release such documents could "implicate national security or expose the USTR's deliberative processes."

But, of course, the USTR had no problem at all sharing all this info with entertainment industry lobbyists. In the few documents that were released, it turns out that the USTR met privately with representatives of various "anti-piracy" lobbying groups multiple times in 2008 -- without bothering to consult with the folks who these laws would actually impact. In other words, they're getting one side of the story. Even worse, those lobbyists have been called out, repeatedly -- by the US government, no less -- for outright fabrications concerning the impact of piracy and counterfeiting. So why is the USTR only relying on them for determining how this trade agreement will work? And why is there no effort to make these negotiations more public so that all stakeholders have a say?

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No, it's not just a cute lil' change purse - Arlie and Jared's sewn-circuit softsynth combines crafty and noisy in a unnassuming portable package with a snap switch and conductive fabric.

In the Maker Shed:

Lilypad E-Sewing Kit

Don't forget - this week we have a 10% off sale this week in the maker shed, use code "2009OX" at the time of checkout - Happy Chinese New Year!

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From the makers of Exploded Phone comes the iSteam Phone, a t-shirt depicting an exploded view illustration that asks the musical question: What would the iPhone have looked like if Leonardo had invented it in the 15th century?

iSteam Phone [via Boing Boing Gadgets]

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Pandanapper writes to tell us Yahoo is reporting that if you find yourself watching an ad on a video screen in a public venue, the ad may be watching you as well. "Small cameras can now be embedded in the screen or hidden around it, tracking who looks at the screen and for how long. The makers of the tracking systems say the software can determine the viewer's gender, approximate age range and, in some cases, ethnicity -- and can change the ads accordingly. That could mean razor ads for men, cosmetics ads for women and video-game ads for teens."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earlier in January, the EFF and Public Citizen called attention to a local Fox affiliate using a DMCA takedown notice to remove a video that was used by an activist group, Progress Illinois, to comment on the broadcast. It was almost certainly fair use, but thanks to the way the DMCA works, even with a counternotice, YouTube is required to keep the video down for at least 10 business days. Considering that it was being used for commentary on current events, the fact that Fox is able to keep the content down for 10 business days should be seen as a problem. Anyway, as (former Fox lawyer) Ben Sheffner notes, Fox appears not to have filed a lawsuit in those 10 days, and thus, YouTube has restored Progress Illinois' account. Of course, as Sheffner also points out, Fox could still sue Progress Illinois at a later date, despite its failure to do so during the counternotice response window. Again, the whole scenario is problematic. Fox gets to take this video down at a time when it's most useful for commentary purposes, and then retains the right to sue at a later date without ever having to make a case for why the takedown was legitimate. It seems like there should be clarity that, if a company that issues a takedown does not sue following a counternotice, it should be seen as approval that the video is not infringing.

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I did a double-take when Collin sent me the link to this Flickr image of a Mini Maker's Notebook. What the...? It's one of our pal's Kent Barnes' "5 Minute Hacks." He made a Maker's Notebook paper book cover for a pocket-size Moleskine. Maybe if we ask real nice, he'll let us post the PDF so you can Maker-fy your own mini notebooks.

Maker'skine

From the Maker Shed:

You can get a gen-u-ine Maker's Notebook in the Maker Shed. And remember: All this week get 10% off your order in the Maker Shed, use code "2009OX" at the time of checkout - Happy Chinese New Year! (This sale ends midnight, Jan 31st!)

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An anonymous reader writes to tell us that Blizzard has added another victory in their campaign against World of Warcraft bots. A federal judge has ruled that not only did the Glider bot break the EULA, it can be classified as a circumvention device under the DMCA. "As we've noted before, Blizzard's legal arguments, which Judge David G. Campbell largely accepted, could have far-reaching and troubling implications for the software industry. Donnelly is not the most sympathetic defendant, and some users may cheer the demise of a software vendor that helps users break the rules of Blizzard's wildly popular role playing game. But the sweeping language of Judge Campbell's decision, combined with his equally troubling decision last summer, creates a lot of new uncertainty for software vendors seeking to enter software markets dominated by entrenched incumbents and achieve interoperability with legacy platforms."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Illinois was one of the early ones in a long list of states that tried and failed to set up anti-video game laws. It was (I think) either the second or third such law to then be thrown out as unconstitutional. Since then, nine or ten more states have all tried and failed to implement similar laws. However, it looks like one legislator in Illinois hasn't been paying much attention. He's trying to add some more clauses to the law, more than three years after it was rejected as unconstitutional. Of course, if he was looking to amend it in a way that fixed the unconstitutional part, you might understand it. But, he's not. He's just adding more restrictions to a law that has been deemed unenforceable. Another great moment in politics.

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mytrip writes to tell us that Mark Gorton of LimeWire fame is translating his knowledge from moving bits to moving people. Taking profits earned from his software business, Gorton is applying them to projects aimed at making urban transportation safer, faster, and more sustainable. "That's not the only connection between open-source software and Gorton's vision for livable cities. The top-down culture of public planning stands to benefit by employing methods he's lifting from the world of open-source software: crowdsourced development, freely-accessible data libraries, and web forums, as well as actual open-source software with which city planners can map transportation designs to people's needs. Such modeling software and data existed in the past, but it was closed to citizens. Gorton's open-source model would have a positive impact on urban planning by opening up the process to a wider audience, says Thomas K. Wright, executive director of the Regional Plan Association, an organization that deals with urban planning issues in the New York metropolitan area."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We just received the news that Rocky Mountain PBS will premiere Make: television this weekend on Sunday, February 1st at 11:30 am!

Episode 1 premieres this weekend and see the schedule for upcoming episodes.

Remember you can always watch Make: television online at makezine.tv. New episodes and the PDFs for the Maker Workshop are posted each week.

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Scott Beale of Laughing Squid pointed to two fantastic episodes of "Look Around You," a BBC Comedy from 2002 that parodies public science education videos.

All hail Discordia! (Via Forgetomori)

Modusoperandi, responding to markmarkmark in the Attenborough's response to creationists' hate mail thread, said:

markmarkmark "Jesus is my rabbi and all that is best in me is him and every mistake is my own."

One Night a man had a dream. He dreamed he was walking along the beach with the Lord. Across the sky flashed scenes from his life. For each scene, he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand; one belonged to him and the other to the Lord.

When the last scene of his life flashed before him, he looked back at the footprints in the sand. He noticed that many times along the path of his life there was only one set of footprints. He also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times in his life.

This really bothered him, and he questioned the Lord about it: "Lord, you said that once I decided to follow you you'd walk with me all the way, but I have noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life, there is only one set of footprints. I don't understand why when I needed you most you would leave me."

The Lord replied, "My precious, precious child, I love you and would never leave you. Also, you're being intermittently stalked by the Invisible Man."

Good one. Front page.

Global Game Jam is under way. Live stream above, and more about the event here and in this previous Boing Boing blog post. Boing Boing Video, Boing Boing Gadgets, and Offworld will be popping up in various cities, give us a shout in the comments if you'd like to give us a shout-out from your location, and send us a video! We'll reach out with upload info.

(Thanks, Ustream, Jolon Bankey, and Global Game Jam Costa Rica crew!)

Urchin writes to tell us that physicists working in a new field called "phononics" claim that waste heat from a processor could actually be used to add to its power. "Crunching data coded using photons - photonic computing - is one example, and in 2007 researchers built the first workable optical transistor. But now the idea of computing using heat flow is gaining popularity among applied physicists. Heat travels through solid materials by means of phonons - ripples of vibration passing through a series of atoms. Those ripples can be used to send and store data in digital form: one temperature is read as 0 or "off" while a second, higher temperature is interpreted as 1 or "on". Provided that the thermal memory is well insulated, it can keep its temperature - and data - intact for a long time."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Most readers here probably know the story of Allofmp3.com -- a Russian website that signed a licensing deal with a Russian music licensing group ROMS. The site was immensely popular because (a) it sold un-DRM'd files (back before that was common) and (b) sold music incredibly cheaply. The recording industry should have taken this as a lesson in how to create a super popular online music store -- but instead it freaked out, and nearly created an international diplomatic incident in threatening Russia with economic sanctions unless it shut the site down. The problem was that since it had the ROMS license, it was legal in Russia. In fact, Allofmp3.com even tried to pay the record labels some money -- which they refused. The record labels, of course, insisted that the ROMS license wasn't sufficient, but no Russian court ever agreed. Eventually the site was shut down, though it lives on at MP3Sparks. However, it's lost a lot of steam because the site has been blocked from accepting most common forms of payment.

Law Professor Michael Scott points us to the news of what appears to be a similar offering in Italy -- except that, in this case, the operators of the site have been sent to jail. The only news that I can find on this is from the IFPI site -- which is obviously a bit biased, but it does look like the owners of the site did get a license from the Italian Authors' Society (SIAE), which they believed was sufficient. A lower court agreed, but the appeals court has sided with the record labels.

But here's the kicker: the operators of the site have now been sent to jail for criminal copyright infringement. Already I have problems with most criminal copyright infringement cases -- because, by any reasonable standard, copyright is a civil dispute -- it's an issue between two businesses. In this case, it's even more egregious because it seems clear that the site wasn't just some random guy selling MP3s he had no right to, but had clearly tried to obtain the correct licenses. However, these days, when to do just about anything with music you need to get numerous different licenses (Peter Jenner, back at MidemNet, claimed that you needed 33 different permissions to do pretty much anything with music in Europe, though others disagreed), it seems fairly ridiculous to throw someone in jail for not being able to figure out every single party that has to sign off on something -- especially when you were lead to believe that you had what you needed via the Authors' Society.

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Linoleum asphalt mosaics, also called Toynbee Tiles, are artworks permanently embedded in pavement. In this video I'll show you how to construct your own from inexpensive materials. You can get real linoleum (don't use vinyl flooring) for this project by ordering free samples online. By cutting out a mosaic design in the linoleum and sandwiching it between layers of paper, wood glue, and asphalt crack filler, you can affix the mosaic very permanently to an asphalt surface, such as your driveway. You may choose to use a heat gun to make the linoleum easier to cut, or even a laser cutter. The earliest examples of these tiles were found in the 70s and 80s on streets in Philadelphia, all bearing the same (or very similar) message: "Toynbee idea / in Kubrick's 2001 / resurrect dead / on planet Jupiter." They are speculated to have been created by the same person until they began to gain a following. There's an active message board on the topic which shares sightings and other information. If you make one, please share your pictures in the CRAFT Flickr pool!

Subscribe to the CRAFT Podcast in iTunes, or download the mov, mp4, or iPhone/Android video.

Thanks to my pal Matt Mechtley for his help on this one. In this video I used this cc-licensed photo by Flickr user mojunk. The music is "Regurgitation Pumping Station" from the World of Goo soundtrack by Kyle Gabler; used with permission.

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suraj.sun writes to tell us that in preparation for nearly a quarter of a million people descending on Tampa for the Super Bowl, the Tampa authorities are deploying new tech for security communications and response. All of the incidents and communications will be plotted and tracked on a new implementation of Microsoft's Surface. Hopefully it wont have to reboot after every new incident report. "The Microsoft Surface device will display a Microsoft Virtual Earth map of the entire region tracking events, incidents, resources and tasks in real-time using its unique large display, multi-user, multi-touch and interactive capabilities, also allowing it to communicate with remote devices and PCs. With a quick hand-gesture, the map can zoom in and display a 3D image of the city, including detailed views of buildings and streets and real time resource tracking."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Aptly named Instructables user dirtydiaperchanger made this X-country ski stroller with relatively inexpensive materials. I hope my brother is reading, since he's got a little one up in Maine where there's five feet of snow.

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Davis Freeberg writes "As if the prospect of having the big telcos looking over your shoulder wasn't bad enough, we're already seeing reports of Comcast targeting innocent customers in DRM stings.

After receiving a takedown notice from Comcast's DRM squad, John Aprigliano had to spend an hour dealing with them, in order to prove his innocence. Apparently, Comcast wasn't able to tell that one of his old modems was really being used by someone else. Lucky for him, he's a network engineer and knew the right questions to ask, but sooner or later someone will end up losing their internet access over this kind of screw up. If Comcast wants to be the top P2P cop, shouldn't they be able to accurately identify between copyright infringers and their customers. So far they aren't off to a very good start."

Doesn't that make you feel comfortable now that Comcast has indicated its willingness to cut off internet access for file sharers? Once again, it would be great if we could implement a reverse three strikes policy, where three false accusations by the entertainment industry or an ISP leads to them losing their internet access.

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(Charles Platt is a guest blogger)

Here's another histogram which may seem a little grim but, I think, is worth contemplating. Suppose someone was born in the year 2004. If the factors which determined mortality in that year remain the same throughout the rest of that person's life, what percentage of his or her contemporaries will still be alive at various points in the future?

You can see that about half the people born in 2004 are expected to disappear by age 80, and from that point on, the number diminishes very rapidly. If you hope to live beyond 80, and you would like to depend on contemporaries for companionship, this may be a problem.

The good news is that the situation has improved. When a similar projection was made in the 1950s for people born in 1949, only 1 person in 5 was expected to live to be 80. We can feel happy that people today are surviving more tenaciously than anyone expected half a century ago.

How will our current prediction turn out fifty years from now? Presumably the answer depends on our priorities. If lives are worth saving, perhaps it will make sense to fund more research into the aging process.

jmizrahi writes "I've recently started working in experimental physics. Quite a few programs are used in the lab for assorted purposes — Labview, Igor, Inventor, Eagle, to name just a few. They are all proprietary. This seems to be standard practice, which surprised me. Does anybody know of any open source software intended for scientific research? Does anybody work in a lab that makes an effort to use open source software?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I blog about Mikey and Wendy's projects very frequently because they're doing so many cool things. One of the most impressive is their papercrete dome, which is now documented in this Instructable:

When my girlfriend (Wendy Tremayne) and I arrived in southern New Mexico one of the first things we did was look around for a local building material. Clay would need to be excavated and hauled in, straw bale was already expensive and not local, manufactured building materials like rastra were a little too off the shelf for us. We ended up settling on what we had locally available and that was/is paper. It is common for small remote towns to not have much in the way of recycling. Our town was collecting paper, but more often than not would just dump it in the landfill after collection. They were happy to help us load our truck up with their newspaper which was mostly a nuisance to them. We later found a source of rebar being made from old cars within a 100 miles of our place.

Since we would have a lot of batteries and solar PV equipment that needed a good home we decided to do our first structure as a battery room for our solar equipment. Domes are inherently strong and energy efficient structures. This is how we started building a battery dome from paper.

Great, inspiring work, y'all!

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Here's a report from KRON in San Francisco about The San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle's forays into online news in 1981. (Thanks, Mark!)

It's almost getting silly to post these examples, but it's yet another reminder of how much damage DRM can do to legitimate customers. The latest victims? Purchasers of the PC version of Gears of War. Paul Brinker points us to the news that due to a digital certificate expiring, PC players of the game have discovered that it no longer works. The only solution? Set your PC clock back to a date prior to January 29th, 2009. Once again, it's a scenario where the DRM did nothing, at all, to stop piracy -- but did plenty to annoy legitimate customers.

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Shaun Inman is making games. In 8-bit style. We like this. #

Shaun Inman is making games. In 8-bit style. We like this. #

theodp writes "At the World Economic Forum, Michael Dell's pitch to help Russia with its computers got the cold-as-Siberia shoulder from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. 'We don't need help,' shot back Putin. 'We are not invalids. We don't have limited mental capacity' (video — rant starts at 1:24). 'Our programmers are some of the best in the world,' Putin continued. 'No one would contest that here — not even our Indian colleagues.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

(Charles Platt is a guest blogger)

I have always enjoyed drawing charts and graphs as a means to enhance my understanding the world.

The histogram above addresses the most fundamental fact of human life: Sooner or later, it ends. To me, all other issues are trivial by comparison.

I made this chart using data from the National Institutes of Health. You can find your age group on the bottom scale, then check your average remaining life expectancy on the left scale. Naturally this number declines relentlessly as you get older.

The good news is that the longer you live, the longer you are likely to live. Thus, at birth in the United States, under conditions that prevail today, you can expect to live for a little more than 75 years. But at age 75, on average you still have another 10 years left. How can this be? Because some of the people who were born around the same time as yourself have already died by the time you’re 75, leaving only a subset who were less susceptible to disease (or accidents).

The bad news is that despite all our advances in medicine, sanitation, and other relevant factors, the chart still tapers off around age 100. Average lifespan has increased, but maximum lifespan has not changed significantly.

One reason may be that research to prolong maximum lifespan receives minuscule funding, especially compared with popular endeavors such as cancer research. Many people seem to feel that extending maximum lifespan would be “wrong” (even at a time of rapidly declining birth rates in many nations) or “unnatural” (even though our average life expectancy used to be around 40, and has improved through totally unnatural means such as antibiotics).

As you may infer from the quotation marks, I disagree. Of course, I realize that these are controversial issues.

One of the most effective special-interest groups seeking funding for longevity research is www.methuselahfoundation.org .

Where were you 25 years ago? My brother and I solved it by taking a hammer to it, then reassembling (shh). #

GalaticGrub writes "Technology Review has an article about a startup that wants to build a business out of crowd-sourcing the developing world. The company, called txteagle, seems to be interested mainly in using local knowledge to translate information into less common languages. The Finnish cell-phone company Nokia is a partner in the project, and CEO Nathan Eagle says that it provides a good example of a Western company that could benefit from txteagle workers. Eagle explains that Nokia is interested in 'software localization,' or translating its software for specific regions of a country. 'In Kenya, there are over 60 unique, fundamentally different languages,' he says. 'You're lucky to get a phone with a Swahili interface, but even that might be somebody's third language. Nokia would love to have phones for everyone's mother tongues, but it has no idea how to translate words like "address book" into all of these languages.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot points us to a story of a lie detector manufacturer, Nemesysco, who apparently was so upset with a report from some Swedish researchers in a technology journal, that they threatened legal action against the journal and the researchers, claiming that they would sue for defamation if the article wasn't taken down. Since the basic point of the journal article was that the lie detecting technology that Nemesysco was betting on simply could not work, you can understand why they might be upset about it. But calling it defamation is highly questionable.

If the information presented in the article was wrong why not just counter it and point out why it's wrong? Threatening defamation lawsuits and trying to shut up the researchers just makes it look like Nemesysco has something to hide. And, indeed, true to the Stresisand Effect, the article reports that the researchers have received a lot more attention for their research since the threats were issued: "It was hardly their intention. But since the article was withdrawn, I have received lots of mail and requests for copies of the article. The article would not have been read to this extent if the company had simply ignored it in silence." Who knows whether or not Nemesysco's lie detector works, but its common sense detector is apparently on the fritz.

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Just Posted: Our full review of the Pentax K2000 (or K-m to the Europeans amongst us). Pentax's latest baby DSLR enters the ring with much of the K200D's capability slimmed down into an even smaller, lighter, more use-friendly format. But the flyweight end of the DSLR market is home to some plucky competitors, so can the K2000 do enough to fight its corner? Read our 35 page review to find out.

A series from Jetpack Media. There's a new episode every Tuesday and Thursday. (Thanks, Eric Spiegelman)

meme breaks
first 50 digits of pi
create digital music
progress bars
pretty loaded
minesweeper: the movie
mac vs. pc
sniper twins

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

Julie188 writes "Microsoft blogger Mitchell Ashley, who has been using Windows 7 full-time, predicts that Windows 7 will fail to lure XP users away from their beloved, aging operating system — after all, Windows 7 is little more than what Vista should have been, when it shipped two years ago. But eventually old PCs must be replaced and then we'll see corporations, desperate to get out of the expense of managing Windows machines, get wise. Instead of buying new Windows 7 PCs, they could deliver virtualized XP desktops to a worker's own PC and/or mobile device. Ashley believes that Citrix's Project Independence has the right idea."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

2009 has only just begun and we have already featured 5 builds from the Maker Shed. It's been a lot of fun, but now we need your help. Is there anything from the Maker Shed that you would like to see us build? Maybe there is a kit that you just aren't sure how it works, or what it sounds like? Let us know, we would love some input from our readers. Leave your suggestions in the comments below. I can't promise I can build them all, but I'll try. Thanks!

All this week get 10% off you order in the Maker Shed, use code "2009OX" at the time of checkout - Happy Chinese New Year!

Here is what we have made so far in 2009:

How-to Tuesday: Maker's Notebook

How-to Tuesday: Valentines LED display

How-to Tuesday: Getting started with the 3pi

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In the Maker Shed: Plug-in Bread-Board Power Supply

In the Maker Shed: Mignonette Game Kit

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An anonymous reader writes "A hybrid fission-fusion process has been developed that can be used in some traditional fission reactors to process radioactive waste and reduce the amount of waste produced by 99%. This process uses magnetic bottle techniques developed from fusion research. This seems like the first viable solution to the radioactive waste problem of traditional nuclear reactors. This could be a big breakthrough in the search for environmentally friendly energy sources. Lots of work remains to take the concept to an engineering prototype and then to a production reactor."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While some of the complaining in the press about President Obama's lack of transparency is overblown, you would think that the new administration could at least live up to the rather simple promises it made days ago on transparency. On inauguration day, the administration promised, among other things:

We will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.

That's great! If only it actually happened. Jim Harper points out that Obama signed the "Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009" into law just a day after Congress sent it to him. This is a "non-emergency" law. The Whitehouse did put it on the website for review, but not for five days. And, it's especially troubling since there actually is a fair amount of controversy over the law. No matter whether you support it or not, the administration made a great promise that we support: putting it up on the website for five days to allow public review and comment, before the President signs it. And they didn't live up to that.

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Tufts University has a really good book available online about the physics of music and musical instruments. It's a nice balance between theory, examples, and hands-on projects.

The Physics of Music and Musical Instruments covers the physics of waves, sound, music, and musical instruments at a level designed for high school physics. However, it is also a resource for those teaching or learning waves and sound from the middle school through college, at the mathematical or conceptual level.

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...something extraordinary happened at the end of 2000. My partner, Pat, was a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. She did well enough to enable me to take six months off my freelance design business to work on new fonts. During that break, I created Coquette, Anonymous, and Mostra.

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overThruster writes "Inventor Ted Ciamillo and marine biologist Frank Fish (yes, that's his real name) are at work on a human-powered sub designed to cross the Atlantic. What's interesting is the highly efficient propulsion system which uses a 'tail' modeled after CAT scans of a dolphin's. From the article: 'Ciamillo and Fish say they knew they were onto something when the first prototype Lunocet, a piece of sculpted foam sandwiched between two pieces of carbon fiber, essentially swam by itself. When they released it at the bottom of a test pool, its buoyancy combined with its cambered shape generated a forward thrust that made it scoot across the tank.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tour the elegant and hypnotic motorized wave sculptures, created by visionary maker Reuben Margolin. In the Maker Workshop John Park upcycles a discarded shopping cart into a stylish easy chair, and Mister Jalopy details the unsung wonders of his 1950 Studebaker. The Maker Channel features a treadmill bike, an obedient, robotic foot stool, a homemade foundry (built by two 14 year old wizards), and an ultra-high-temperature heat ray that can melt brass!

The HD version is available at Blip by selecting the .MOV from the "play episode as:", Subscribe in iTunes or download the m4v here.

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Reuben Margolin, a Bay Area visionary and longtime maker, creates totally singular techno-kinetic wave sculptures. Using everything from wood to cardboard to found and salvaged objects, Reuben's artwork is diverse, with sculptures ranging from tiny to looming, motorized to hand-cranked. Focusing on natural elements like a discrete water droplet or a powerful ocean eddy, his work is elegant and hypnotic. Also, learn how ocean waves can power our future. Learn more about Reuben at reubenmargolin.com

Get the m4v, subscribe in iTunes., or watch on YouTube or Blip.

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Kick back with John Park as he demonstrates how to upcycle a no-longer-usable shopping cart into an easy chair. This Make: magazine-based project offers an introductory look at how to cut, bend, and shape metal using metal cutters, saws, vice grips, and other tools common to home workshops. John also attempts a "deluxe" version of this project that employs motors and switches to transform it into a "go-kart chair." View the clip to see his mixed results.

Check out the details for making this project!

Get the m4v or subscribe in iTunes.. Or watch on YouTube or Blip

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Check out the PDF for detailed instructions for building your own shopping cart chair.

Take a look at the Maker Workshop segment with John Park.

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In this 'Hidden Treasures' segment, Mister Jalopy waxes philosophic about the the unsung wonders of his old 1950's Studebaker, emphasizing how old-school design and build techniques can inspire and teach today's new generation of makers.

Get the m4v or subscribe in iTunes.. Or watch on YouTube or Blip.

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Make: television presents:

Treadmill Bike - Brent Curry crosses a two-wheeled bike with a treadmill to allow the 'rider' to produce a double-whammy of a workout.

RoboStool - Steve Norris's remote-controlled robotic foot stool comes to him wherever he wishes to sit.

Foundry - 14 year olds Oliver Ramin and A.J. Brackovitc make their own foundry for molding aluminum swords.

[Trouble Maker] Death Ray - Richard Whitney uses sunlight and the Fresnel lens from a rear projection television set to melt a steel security lock.

Get the m4v or subscribe in iTunes. Or watch on YouTube or Blip.

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An anonymous reader writes "Mount Redoubt, or Redoubt Volcano, is an active stratovolcano in the largely volcanic Aleutian Range of Alaska. The once quiet volcano has begun to roar once again. It's last eruption was in 1989 and geologists suggest that the next one is upon us. Alaskans who lived through the earlier eruption are stocking up on breathing masks and goggles. Starting on Friday, January 23 2009, the level of seismic activity increased markedly, and on Sunday AVO raised the Aviation Color Code to ORANGE and the Volcano Alert Level to WATCH. On the basis of all available monitoring data AVO regards that an eruption similar to or smaller than the one that occurred in 1989-90 is the most probable outcome. We expect such an eruption to occur within days to weeks." From the AP article: "Alaska's volcanoes are not like Hawaii's. 'Most of them don't put out the red river of lava,' said the observatory's John Power. Instead, they typically explode and shoot ash 30,000 to 50,000 feet high — more than nine miles — into the jet stream. 'It's a very abrasive kind of rock fragment,' Power said. The particulate has jagged edges and has been used as an industrial abrasive. 'They use this to polish all kinds of metals,' he said." The server for the Alaska Volcano Observatory appears to be overloaded and is unresponsive.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Recently, New Zealand passed a copyright law similar to ones being pushed elsewhere by the entertainment industry, that would require accused file sharers to be cut off from their internet connection, based on the accusation alone. This seems to go against any concept of due process, and even musicians (who this law was supposed to help) came out against it loudly. Unfortunately, the politicians who put the law in place clearly had their minds already made up, and are refusing to change the law, which will go into effect in just a few weeks. Apparently, they want to see how it works in action, before making a decision on whether to change it -- which I'm sure will be quite comforting to those who lose their internet access without any proof or conviction of unauthorized file sharing.

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Tech Ticker writes "The Indian Government last year announced the development of a cheap $10 laptop, but was later rectified as $100 laptop. Now the government has announced that HRD minister Arjun Singh will unveil the prototype of a Rs. 500 ($10) computer. The computer is developed by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai. No specifications were revealed but DNA, a daily newspaper, has mentioned that it will be small and portable, will feature Wi-Fi, LAN, and expandable memory, and will operate on 2 watts of power."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

?Here's a how-to on building the "Auriga", a portable electronic sensor box and cave surveying instrument with an electronic compass and serial output that can be cataloged using a computer or PDA. This particular build uses an old Palm PDA to collect the data. Check out the link below for parts list and details on how to build this device.

How to build an electronic cave surveying instrument

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Santiago Morahan's cardboard furniture is a cheap and easy solution for the multitudes of cardboard boxes that most people have hanging around their homes. The artist has stacked them up, cut a hole in the middle, and fire-proofed the cardboard so that the heat of the lamp doesn't burn down the house. The result looks like a lost set piece from Bladerunner and will definitely make your neighbors envious.

via InHabitat

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Michael Geist has the latest example of what appears to be a company abusing the DMCA takedown process to try to quiet the speech of someone they didn't like who was criticizing them. In this case, Canada Post sent a takedown notice to YouTube for a video from union members making fun of Canada Post's CEO. The video was a parody song, sung to a Dr. Seuss tune, with lyrics making fun of the CEO. Since the song was clearly not covered by any Canada Post copyright, a DMCA takedown would break the law, which requires any takedown be from the copyright holder. Canada Post tried to claim that the infringement was actually an altered photo of the CEO briefly shown in the film -- but that's a pretty clear fair use, and, as Geist notes, recent US court rulings say that fair use should be taken into account before sending a takedown.

This seems like a pretty clear case of abusing the takedown process to try to silence critics. But it's made even more interesting that it involves two Canadian organizations... but is using US law. That's because the video was hosted at YouTube, in the US. It certainly does raise, once again, questions concerning jurisdiction on the internet -- and how laws apply across borders.

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tsamsoniw writes "Singapore-based Atlantis Resources Corporation, which brings to the table tidal-turbine technology, is partnering with Scotland-based datacenter developer Internet Villages International) to construct a tidal-powered 150MW 'Blue Datacenter,' InfoWorld reports. If all goes to plan, the facility will eventually be powered entirely by clean energy produced by tidal-current turbines in the Pentland Firth, the stretch of water between the far north Scottish mainland and Orkney. The firth's currents could generate 700 megawatts of electricity by 2020." And reader Mike writes "Here's something to raise a glass to: recently the Rothes consortium of whiskey and scotch distillers announced that they have partnered with Helius Energy to install a power plant fueled entirely by whiskey by-products. The completed plant will use biomass cogeneration to convert draff and pot ale from the distillery into 7.2 MW of electricity — enough to power 9,000 homes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With Arizona getting rid of its speed cameras, after realizing they did nothing to make the roads safer (and may, in fact, have done the opposite), now it's time to move on to red light cameras, which have a pretty troubling history themselves. The latest, as pointed out by Jeff Nolan, is that Denver has failed to enforce the contract it had concerning red light cameras. Specifically, part of the deal was that the contractor running the cameras would deliver data on whether or not the cameras were effective (including a potential refund of money if they were not). However, the contractor, Redflex Traffic Systems, apparently simply hasn't delivered the data. Actually, to be clear, they haven't delivered any data. It's not just that some data has been left out, but that none has been delivered.

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January is almost over, and you know what that means? Our Chinese New Year promotion in the Maker Shed is almost over too! You might want to pick up the new Arduino Duemilanove and get 10% off. Better yet, use the coupon code "2009OX" at checkout and you will receive 10% off your entire order. Happy New Year!

New Arduino Duemilanove available in 10 different colors in Maker Shed

All this week get 10% off you order in the Maker Shed, use code "2009OX" at the time of checkout - Happy Chinese New Year!

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Blogstar is a simple idea born out of the traditional Monopoly board game and turned into a cool viral vehicle of buzz marketing. The rules are slightly different than a normal Monopoly game. In Blogstar, instead of earning money and buying properties to win, you can buy popular blogs and Google PageRank! Photo credit: Ophelia Cherry If you are looking for cool new PR idea that could get involved lots of bloggers in your language market, you may want to find out more about the story of Juliette and Marco, two Italian guys who have set out to create the blogosphere version of Monopoly. The game, which for now is only in Italian, is available online since before the Christmas holidays and it's distributed under a CC license. On the site you immediately download the PDF of the board as well as graphics for the cards, and everything else. But the game is also available as real physical object, just like the traditional monopoly and it is sold at less around $25. I was obviously flattered to find myself inside the game, along some of the most popular and well known Italian bloggers and have contacted Juliette Bellavita to have a brief online video interview to learn more about how her project and how it had come to be. In this video you can hear the story of the Blogstar game, and what it took to make it happen. You can use this as an effective model of how you can take established and successful products and still invent out of them new innovative, personalized vehicles for effective communication. Whether to create extra branding or to provide a way to do get outside of the traditional PR approaches, Juliette's and Marco's idea seems to be an interesting example of how you can engage opinion leaders and stars in any niche and make them your best marketing agents. Here all the details:

How To Engage Your Blogosphere A-Listers With A Board Game

Duration: 10'
Full English Text Transcription

Blogstar Game

Robin Good: Hello everyone here is Robin Good from Rome, Italy and you're wondering who am I interviewing today, check this out guys! This is the box of an incredible, new, physical game that is available for purchase online. It's called Bogstar Game. Show me the whole box Juliette! Juliette Bellavita: This is the game.
Robin Good: As you see, there is a wonderful girl behind it, and BlogStar Game is basically Monopoly, the friendly-game, made into a bloggers game. Juliette Bellavita, who's sitting here on my left side, she's just here because I've received this game and I've been playing with my kids, my nephews, my relatives, for all the Xmas-new year's holidays. It's fantastic because instead of having the train station and the post office, and all this stuff, you got all different blogs, and each one has a different value, and you can buy links from others and get more value for yourself, increase your Google PageRank, and every time somebody passes on your blog, they got to pay you. It's really quite interesting for all the bloggers involved, but let me ask a few questions to Juliette. Juliette Bellavita: Hi!

The Idea of a Board Game

Robin Good: Juliette, how and when did you get this idea? Juliette Bellavita: I got this idea with my friend Marco Magnocavallo, and we started thinking of Blogstar Game this Summer, during our holidays, and at the beginning it was just an idea. We were kidding about the blogosfera, the blogs scene. We started thinking about a game, if we can play a game with the most important Italian bloggers. Day by day we started to do a draft of the game, and at the beginning we were thinking to do just a PDF, downloadable by our web site. and day by day we started to do the graphic design, we started to print a copy of the game, and this is the result. After six months we had a copy of Blogstar Game and we sent it to all the bloggers in Italy involved into the game. Some bought the game, and some just play with the PDF downloadable by our web site. It's a Creative Commons game, so you can download it, or you can buy it if you want the box with all the pieces.
Robin Good: Yes, in fact, it is available on the site, you can purchase it right now. It is reachable at www.blogstargame.com. Very easy to remember, and right there you can buy it right now.

Inside the Box

Robin Good: Juliette, why don't you open it up and show few of the pieces inside, so people get an idea of what the game looks like, if they don't know Monopoly. Juliette Bellavita: Yeah, sure. This is the box and inside you have the board game, with all the people, you have the chances... It's a sort of Monopoly, you have more or less the same board, and this is Robin Good! And you have the jail, which is the ban from search engines such as Google, etc. And inside you have all the pieces. This is "popularity", that you can earn buying some blogs or playing with the game... ...all the pieces inside... ...and these are the chances like in Monopoly, so you have lots of questions, or something that happens to you. Some are good, some are bad, so you can never know! These are the bloggers... voilá, here. A lot of blogs!
Robin Good: Tell us what is on those cards you just showed Juliette. Juliette Bellavita: For example this is MacchiaNera, an Italian blogger, and you have the PageRank for every player, every blog. You know, in Monopoly you can buy some houses or.. Robin Good: ...property. Juliette Bellavita: ...exactly, here you can buy your PageRank, so I have 1 PageRank, my blog has PageRank 1. You buy two... you increase your PageRank, and your popularity grows. This is the sense of the game. That's it.
Robin Good: Good, I'm sure Google likes it very much, because finally there is a market for PageRank, you just pay and you can buy PageRank, that's fantastic!

Buy the Game or Download It For Free

Robin Good: The interesting thing is also how you manage to market and to make this somewhat sustainable, because I'm sure this didn't cost like nothing when you do a game on the Internet or a PDF. This must have costed you not only a lot of time, but also serious money, so tell us: How did you find a way to make this sustainable, and how did you market this? Juliette Bellavita: At the beginning we didn't have an idea about the costs, etc. We thought just to do a PDF. When we started to do the game, so the box, etc, we had some costs and we had a partnership with Blogo.it. We sold the boxes, the game, to Blogo, and Blogo gives the game to their partners, or bloggers. They promote our blog and they give us some money to product the game.
Robin Good: Good. If I understand correctly - because my international readers may not know Blogo - Blogo is one of the most popular commercial blog networks... Juliette Bellavita: It's a nanopublishing platform. Robin Good: ...good, and you have proposed to them - because one of the guy behind Blogo is co-author with you of the idea - you said: "Why don't we offer Blogo this as a sponsorship, branded item, that they could give to their customers, so they get promotion, so they say: "Oh, that's nice", and so we get some money back". Juliette Bellavita: Exactly.

Blogstar Game in Different Languages

Robin Good: You told me just before we did a short interview in Italian before this one, that you're also planning, considering to do this also for other languages, in the world is that right? Juliette Bellavita: Exactly, in Spain for example, because the blogosphere is very interesting or, why not, in the United States. It depends if we can find a sponsor or someone interested in the idea that wants to follow the same model of Blogo for example. So they can pay for the game and send it to their customers, or the people, to just let them know the game and promote the company too.
Robin Good: So, if you're in Spain, Latin America, or even the United States, and you think this is a great idea, Juliette Bellavita is certainly interested in talking to you, because this is really a nice, little, simple idea.

Why Blogstar Game Is a Nice Idea

Robin Good: From the simplest stuff the greatest things come out, and I have to say that Juliette and Marco who have created this game have really done some interesting.

1. First of all because they didn't do it for the money, or for creating a business, although they may create one, or a new line of business,
2. and secondly because you can see from they game that they really did it because they enjoyed themselves, involving all the Italian people, bloggers in something that was not just another technical discovery or a way to get on top of Google search engine page results.

My compliments to Juliette, if you want to leave again everybody with your blog URL and with the Blogstar Game site, this is all for me. I really wanted just to have you here for a few minutes to share such a great invention you brought to theblogosphere. Juliette Bellavita: Thank you!
Robin Good: If you want to check out Juliette personal blog go to margotmood... just like you see on top of her video there, and that's margotmood.blogspot.com, or you can go to blogstaregame.com and check out the game, download it in PDF totally for free, or spend a few bucks and buy it directly, and get it shipped wherever you are. Thanks, thank you very much Juliette! Juliette Bellavita: Thank you, bye!
Robin Good: Have a great day, ciao!

Originally shot and recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on January 30, 2009 as "PR Ideas: How To Engage Your Blogosphere A-Listers With A Board Game - Blogstargame".

Wowsers writes "First the tech illiterates in the UK government want to extend broadband internet connections to every home, whether it makes sense or not, then at the same time they propose a £20 per year (approx $29US) broadband tax which they claim will pay the record and film industries for their failed business models. Coincidence the two proposals are linked? And why should people be forced to pay for the failed film and music industries?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The modern gymnasium is very much a 19th- century creation, no matter how much the fitness freak is kitted out with bad hair, retro headbands, and spandex, or contemporary embedded LCD interfaces and computer-generated body plans. Gyms harken back to a world of classical mechanical physics, plugged into equations of work and energy.

To the strains of Olivia Newton-John's aerobics anthem, the puritan work ethic is transformed into a sweatshop for the body beautiful. The slick machines, treadmills, and cross trainers merely serve to disguise antique apparatuses more at home in a world of steam engines, and to stifle enquiry into thermodynamics and economy.

Then there's artisan Manuel de Arriba Ares. Under the sign of his "eco-gym," Gimnasio Ecológico Lumen, Arriba has turned the demon of entropy on its head. Making use of the very waste and byproducts of the modern entropic economy, Arriba has created a truly practical monument in the form of a supremely low-tech gymnasium. Its fitness machines, created with a good deal of physical effort over three years from raw and junked materials such as wood, rope, and rubber, directly mirror both the design and functionality of those found within its wasteful counterpart.

Located in the small town of Valdespino de Somoza in the north of Spain, Arriba offers free access for all to this functional work of Art Brut, a wonderful Heath Robinsonesque assemblage constructed from remnants of strollers, boats, bicycles, and automobiles salvaged from neighboring dumps.

Helpful signs, painted on the tarnished white remnants of refrigerators, instruct the would-be eco-gymnast on exercises and operation of the intricate machinery, reflecting Arriba's knowledge and experience over many years as a physical education teacher.

Lumen is a "gymnasium that was born of the nature, (and which) will return to her," Arriba philosophizes. The cycle of waste, embodied by so many aspects of the smogged-out city gym, is closed.

From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 12, page 17 - Martin Howse.

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