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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