CWmike writes "A post-beta version of Windows 7, Build 7022, leaked to Internet file-sharing sites also includes an updated version of IE8, according to searches at several BitTorrent trackers. With Microsoft halting new Windows 7 beta downloads on Tuesday, and blocking all downloads as of noon (EST) today, users are again turning to illegal sources to get the new operating system."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

These foxes are having a grand old time on a trampoline. (Thanks, Gabe Adiv!)

These foxes are having a grand old time on a trampoline. (Thanks, Gabe Adiv!)

It's no secret that when new technologies and innovations come along, we tend to look at them through the prism of what we already have. We look at them as a minor improvement on what was done before -- this technology lets us do something faster or better -- rather than at ways that it enables us to do something totally new. Because of that, you often get amusing attempts at reinventing the old with the new that don't seem to take any advantage of what the new innovation really allows. It's simply a weak attempt to take the old and move it into the new. This comes to mind as PaidContent last week discussed the Harper Collins attempt to offer a $10 "video book," which was really just author Jeff Jarvis talking about his book for 23 minutes against a white backdrop. For $10. As Tim O'Reilly noted, the concept of the "video book" sounds like "moving pictures" or the "horseless carriage."

That's not to knock Harper Collins for at least trying something new -- but to note that when you're jumping into a new medium it's important not to identify it by the constraints of the old medium. A video presentation that complements a book by engaging people in a conversation could be quite interesting -- but not at $10 a pop. That's not engaging people in a conversation at all. In fact, it's the same traditional publisher mindset of "let's release something and get people to pay $10 - $30 for this unit of content." It doesn't take into account what the internet and video actually allows you to do that's different. This seems especially ironic, since Jarvis' book is called What Would Google Do, and it's all about making business decisions a la Google. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't think Google would be offering video books for $10 a pop.

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It's no secret that when new technologies and innovations come along, we tend to look at them through the prism of what we already have. We look at them as a minor improvement on what was done before -- this technology lets us do something faster or better -- rather than at ways that it enables us to do something totally new. Because of that, you often get amusing attempts at reinventing the old with the new that don't seem to take any advantage of what the new innovation really allows. It's simply a weak attempt to take the old and move it into the new. This comes to mind as PaidContent last week discussed the Harper Collins attempt to offer a $10 "video book," which was really just author Jeff Jarvis talking about his book for 23 minutes against a white backdrop. For $10. As Tim O'Reilly noted, the concept of the "video book" sounds like "moving pictures" or the "horseless carriage."

That's not to knock Harper Collins for at least trying something new -- but to note that when you're jumping into a new medium it's important not to identify it by the constraints of the old medium. A video presentation that complements a book by engaging people in a conversation could be quite interesting -- but not at $10 a pop. That's not engaging people in a conversation at all. In fact, it's the same traditional publisher mindset of "let's release something and get people to pay $10 - $30 for this unit of content." It doesn't take into account what the internet and video actually allows you to do that's different. This seems especially ironic, since Jarvis' book is called What Would Google Do, and it's all about making business decisions a la Google. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't think Google would be offering video books for $10 a pop.

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Lawyers for the Guantánamo detainee whose case we documented in a previous episode of Boing Boing Video are appealing directly to Barack Obama to release classified information about his treatment while in US custody. They faxed a letter to the White House asking the president to review the case of detainee Binyam Ahmed Mohamed, who they claim was tortured "in truly medieval ways" for more than two years after "extraordinary rendition" to secret foreign prisons. Snip from NYT story:

Attached to the letter was a two-page memorandum outlining the alleged torture; the memorandum was first reviewed by the Pentagon, which redacted it, saying it contained classified information. A copy of the letter and redacted memorandum was provided to The Times by Mr. Mohamed’s legal team, which appeared at a news conference here on Wednesday to publicly press for his release and transfer to Britain, where he lived as a teenager and is a legal resident. At the news conference, one of the lawyers, Air Force Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley, said that Mr. Mohamed had been on a hunger strike since Jan. 5 and was being fed through a tube; she said that when she saw him two weeks ago, he was “skin and bones.”

The Pentagon confirmed that Mr. Mohamed was on a hunger strike, along with 40 other detainees. “We recognize it as a form of protest,” Cmdr. Pauline Storum of the Navy said Wednesday in an e-mail response to questions. She said that Mr. Mohamed “was in good physical and mental condition.”

Mr. Mohamed’s lawyers are also pressing for the details of his treatment to be declared unclassified, contending that what the government considers state secrets are not secret at all, having been revealed in news reports and in the work of investigations around the world. “To reach any other conclusion conflates national security with national embarrassment,” the lawyers say in their letter to Mr. Obama.

(...) The tortured he endured there “would make waterboarding seem like child’s play,” [Air Force Lt. Col. Yvonne] Bradley said. Court papers in the San Francisco lawsuit describe horrific abuse in overseas prisons. Mr. Mohamed claimed that during his detention in Morocco he was routinely beaten and that once his interrogators cut his genitals with a scalpel then poured a hot stinging liquid over the wound. He said he was frequently threatened with rape, electrocution and death.

Guantánamo Detainee’s Campaign Reaches to Obama (New York Times)

Previously: Boing Boing Video: "OUTLAWED" excerpts, pt. 1 -- Guantánamo Detainee Who Survived Torture. (Thanks, Wesly Varghese)

Lawyers for the Guantánamo detainee whose case we documented in a previous episode of Boing Boing Video are appealing directly to Barack Obama to release classified information about his treatment while in US custody. They faxed a letter to the White House asking the president to review the case of detainee Binyam Ahmed Mohamed, who they claim was tortured "in truly medieval ways" for more than two years after "extraordinary rendition" to secret foreign prisons. Snip from NYT story:

Attached to the letter was a two-page memorandum outlining the alleged torture; the memorandum was first reviewed by the Pentagon, which redacted it, saying it contained classified information. A copy of the letter and redacted memorandum was provided to The Times by Mr. Mohamed’s legal team, which appeared at a news conference here on Wednesday to publicly press for his release and transfer to Britain, where he lived as a teenager and is a legal resident. At the news conference, one of the lawyers, Air Force Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley, said that Mr. Mohamed had been on a hunger strike since Jan. 5 and was being fed through a tube; she said that when she saw him two weeks ago, he was “skin and bones.”

The Pentagon confirmed that Mr. Mohamed was on a hunger strike, along with 40 other detainees. “We recognize it as a form of protest,” Cmdr. Pauline Storum of the Navy said Wednesday in an e-mail response to questions. She said that Mr. Mohamed “was in good physical and mental condition.”

Mr. Mohamed’s lawyers are also pressing for the details of his treatment to be declared unclassified, contending that what the government considers state secrets are not secret at all, having been revealed in news reports and in the work of investigations around the world. “To reach any other conclusion conflates national security with national embarrassment,” the lawyers say in their letter to Mr. Obama.

(...) The tortured he endured there “would make waterboarding seem like child’s play,” [Air Force Lt. Col. Yvonne] Bradley said. Court papers in the San Francisco lawsuit describe horrific abuse in overseas prisons. Mr. Mohamed claimed that during his detention in Morocco he was routinely beaten and that once his interrogators cut his genitals with a scalpel then poured a hot stinging liquid over the wound. He said he was frequently threatened with rape, electrocution and death.

Guantánamo Detainee’s Campaign Reaches to Obama (New York Times)

Previously: Boing Boing Video: "OUTLAWED" excerpts, pt. 1 -- Guantánamo Detainee Who Survived Torture. (Thanks, Wesly Varghese)

MAKE's Kipkay shows how to make a motion-triggered spy cam. Instructables has the how-to.

MAKE's Kipkay shows how to make a motion-triggered spy cam. Instructables has the how-to.

alphadogg writes "The spreading Conficker/Downadup worm is now viewed as such a significant threat that it's inspired the formation of a posse to stop it, with Microsoft leading the charge by offering a $250,000 reward to bring the Conficker malware bad guys to justice. The money will be paid for 'information that results in the arrest and conviction of those responsible for illegally launching the Conficker malicious code on the Internet,' Microsoft said today in a statement, adding it is fostering a partnership with Internet registries and DNA providers such as ICANN, ORG, and NeuStar as well as security vendors Symantec and Arbor Networks, among others, to stop the Conficker worm once and for all. Conficker, also called Downadup, is estimated to have infected at least 10 million PCs. It has been slowly but surely spreading since November. Its main trick is to disable anti-malware protection and block access to anti-malware vendors' Web sites."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Peter writes-

Recently I've been looking at the International Barcode of Life project. The idea is take DNA samples from animals and plants to help identify known species and discover new ones. While other projects strive to identify the complete genome for a few species, such as humans, dogs, red flour beetles and others, the barcoding project looks at a short 650-base sequence from a single gene. The idea is that this short sequence may not tell the whole story of an organism, but it should be enough to identify and distinguish between species. It will be successful as a barcode if (a) all (or most) members of a species have the same (or very similar) sequences and (b) members of different species have very different sequences.

I was able to acquire a data set of 1248 barcode sequences, all of them Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) from Australia. Each entry gives the name of the specimen (if known), the location it was collected, and a 659 base (i.e. ACTG) barcode.

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Peter writes-

Recently I've been looking at the International Barcode of Life project. The idea is take DNA samples from animals and plants to help identify known species and discover new ones. While other projects strive to identify the complete genome for a few species, such as humans, dogs, red flour beetles and others, the barcoding project looks at a short 650-base sequence from a single gene. The idea is that this short sequence may not tell the whole story of an organism, but it should be enough to identify and distinguish between species. It will be successful as a barcode if (a) all (or most) members of a species have the same (or very similar) sequences and (b) members of different species have very different sequences.

I was able to acquire a data set of 1248 barcode sequences, all of them Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) from Australia. Each entry gives the name of the specimen (if known), the location it was collected, and a 659 base (i.e. ACTG) barcode.

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An anonymous reader writes "I am curious to know what vermin prevention/eradication methods are used in other locations. I am working at a dealership and we have an exterminator man who puts out glue traps and bait stations, but they still come and eat my cable. The latest was a couple of fiber runs — very expensive. I have threatened my boss with a cat for the server room (my office), going so far as to cruise the local Humane Society's website and eye-balling a nice Ragdoll-Siamese mix. Even if I do feel like dealing with a litter box, cat hair in the equipment and pouncings on my keyboards (and I'm not sure I do), that only covers the server room. We have multiple buildings on the campus which get locked up to prevent theft, but it isn't secure enough to keep out the critters and the latest chew spot was in the ceiling. Any ideas?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For the past decade or so, the press and certain politicians have been somewhat successful in building a moral panic about video games and the supposed harm they do to children. The problem is that there's almost no evidence that this is true -- and almost all of the evidence that claims this is true doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Often, the moral panic-inducing results are actually either the researcher or (more likely) the press coming up with a conclusion that does not match with the actual study results.

However, in just the last year, we've finally been seeing prominent researchers and politicians start to push back on this notion of video games causing harm. Last year, two Harvard professors came out with a book reviewing all of the research and adding some of their own, all of which showed no evidence that video games made kids violent (in fact, it found that it was the kids who didn't participate in video games that you should be worried about.

Perhaps even more surprising, though, is that some politicians are now pushing back, as well. A study done in the EU Parliament is now noting that video games are actually good for kids, noting that they can help "stimulate learning of facts and skills such as strategic thinking, creativity, cooperation and innovative thinking, which are important skills in the information society." The report does, unfortunately, still claim that in some cases violent video games may stimulate violence (though, without much proof), but it's still surprising to see a political report on video games that sees them as being useful.

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For the past decade or so, the press and certain politicians have been somewhat successful in building a moral panic about video games and the supposed harm they do to children. The problem is that there's almost no evidence that this is true -- and almost all of the evidence that claims this is true doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Often, the moral panic-inducing results are actually either the researcher or (more likely) the press coming up with a conclusion that does not match with the actual study results.

However, in just the last year, we've finally been seeing prominent researchers and politicians start to push back on this notion of video games causing harm. Last year, two Harvard professors came out with a book reviewing all of the research and adding some of their own, all of which showed no evidence that video games made kids violent (in fact, it found that it was the kids who didn't participate in video games that you should be worried about.

Perhaps even more surprising, though, is that some politicians are now pushing back, as well. A study done in the EU Parliament is now noting that video games are actually good for kids, noting that they can help "stimulate learning of facts and skills such as strategic thinking, creativity, cooperation and innovative thinking, which are important skills in the information society." The report does, unfortunately, still claim that in some cases violent video games may stimulate violence (though, without much proof), but it's still surprising to see a political report on video games that sees them as being useful.

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Why *another* PIC-based clock project on the Net? Builder Alex argues this one is different. It can show different timezones, planetary times, moon phase, Jupiter's GRS transit times,, anything periodical. It has 16 timers that can be paused and reversed independently, each with independent alarm. Oh, and it's egg timer, too. I love his use of an old modem as the project box.

Mars Clock

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Joel Veitch and his pals from Rathergood made "gigantic, nightmarish" kazoos out of gas masks.

I have acquired some old Soviet gas masks, sent over from Berlin. They are absolutely nightmarish, as you can see from this photo. The Soviets weren't happy with simply making them functional, they made them look like something from depths of hell as well. What to do with these wonderful things? Well, I thought I'd have a crack at turning them into KAZOOS! Here is the video documenting my attempt.

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This cardboard stool, printed to appear to be a stack of books, can hold up to 200kg.

Tabouret en carton Leseratte (via Cribcandy)

Brazilian designer Anderson Horta made these delightful Pac-man ghost lamps. Brandon has the details over at Boing Boing Offworld. "Blinky & Pinky & Inky & Clyde"

Crafster user NerdyCrochetGal's retro Nintendo tribute blanket from 2006 is absolutely smashing -- the Tetris-block frame just makes it.

Retro Nintendo tribute blanket (via Wonderland)

One of the absolute highlights of the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference in New York this week was Brian O’Leary (Magellan Media), Mac Slocum (O'Reilly), and Chelsea Vaughn (Random House) presenting a panel called Challenging Notions of "Free", which presented a long-term, quantitative study of the effects of ebook piracy on book sales. There's a lot of hot air bandied about by people who argue that free ebooks generate or cannibalize sales, and it's a hard problem to study, but here at last are some good, crunchy stats and analysis to add to the argument.

The authors have generously given me permission to upload their slide-deck to the Internet Archive under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerial-ShareAlike license, and they've set up a form for anyone who wants to sign up to get the full report for free when they publish it in a few weeks.

Challenging Notions of "Free"

pnorth writes "Officials from New Mexico's Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory have confessed that 67 of its computers are missing, with no less than 13 of them having disappeared over the past year alone. A memo [PDF] leaked by the Project on Government Oversight watchdog brought the lost nuclear laptops to the public's attention, but the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration dismissed fears the computers contained highly-sensitive or classified information, noting it was more likely to cause 'cybersecurity issues.' Three of the 13 computers which went missing in the past year were stolen from a scientist's home on January 16 and the memo also mentioned a BlackBerry belonging to another staff member had been lost 'in a sensitive foreign country.' The labs faced similar issues back in 2003 when 22 laptops were designated as being 'unlocated.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Remember a few years back when the "inventor" of the electric slide claimed to own the intellectual property on the dance and sent takedown notices to those who were using it without paying up? Well, let's take that even further. A whole bunch of folks have been sending in the story that the New Zealand government has agreed to give intellectual property rights on an ancient tribal dance back to that tribal group. The group says they're trying to defend the dance from being exploited commercially, which "undermines" the "significance" of the dance.

I can certainly understand why they might be upset from a traditional angle, but it seems fairly ridiculous that you can tell people how they can and cannot dance. And, in fact, my guess is that eventually this tribal group will regret this decision. If you cannot easily spread and share an ancient culture, you are pretty much guaranteeing that it will die out.

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For those into ambient electronica or computer music, Terre Thaemlitz is an anomaly. In the 1980s, Terre was a very busy DJ in New York City's underground house music scene. In the 1990s, he created pioneering ambient electronica, often collaborating with the likes of Scanner and Bill Laswell. Then, he released a slew of eclectic projects on Mille Plateaux and his own label, Comatonse, that were as much about deconstructing consumer culture, gender identity, the human/machine interface, and politics, as shaking your booty or curling up on a La-Z-Boy with your headphones on. In fact, when he's not cracking cynical snaps like a downtown drag queen, Terre sounds like a college professor. Here's a clip from a profile I wrote about him a decade ago (photo by Bart Nagel):

Thaemlitz is a transgender/transgenre computer musician. A pomo-sexual producer wading through Marxist theory while a soundtrack of Styx, Stevie Wonder, and Japanese techno-pop plays in the background at home. A creator of cultural commentary in the form of computer-generated hard-listening anti-Muzak.

"The overall theme of my work has to do with the fragmentation of identity, and the way that dominant ideologies teach us to conceptualize the singular self, the individual, when really we're forced to play many different roles every day," says Thaemlitz, cruising through his run-down Bay Area neighborhood in a jacked-up Buick Skylark. "I play a musician. I play the anti-musician. I play a fag. I play a drag queen. I play an ex-husband. A business administrator. Queer. Straight. Gay. But we don't really have a popular ideology that directly embraces such fragmentation."

Terre's latest project is the Dead Stock Archive, a collection of every audio release Terre has made under his real name or aliases. It includes 2 DVD-ROM data disks with more than 61 hours of music, all album texts, unreleased audio, all video releases to date, and all cover at. Several packages are available that include the likes of photograph inserts and limited edition posters. For example, one version comes in an aluminum case with a zipper, another in a plush hamburger-shaped soft case packed in a picnic box. The price for this magnificent objet d'art/music is $275.

From the product description:

For over 15 years, Terre Thaemlitz has been producing digital audio in a variety of genres - from ambient to electroacoustic to direct digital synthesis to computer composed piano solos to the self-described "Fagjazz" deep house sound - with projects focusing on themes ranging from anti-Muzak campaigns to transgendered passport and border control issues.

In recent years, iTunes and other major online distributors had been making several of Terre's projects available for commercial download without any contracts, and without disclosing to whom they were paying sales royalties. Clearly, such distributors had no direct interest in Terre's audio projects, but simply wanted to increase the chances of making a sale from their ever-expanding commercial online archives. Now that the files have finally been taken offline, Terre presents this alternative offline archive containing everything from the best to the worst by this "musician's musician."

The "Dead Stock Archive" is intended as a treat for the completist fan, as well as a "fuck you" to the corporate audio thugs who are so successfully moving us toward paid subscription download culture by claiming a need to protect information from illegal sale, all the while themselves partaking in greed-based piracy. But no matter how wide a selection they offer, no archive shall ever be complete. It would be a mistake to allow the mass of noise available to prevent us from hearing the silence of that which is commercially absent.

Terre Thaemlitz: Dead Stock Archive

Video duration: 6:41. Flash video embed above, click "full" icon inside the player to view it large. You can download the MP4 here. Our YouTube channel is here, you can subscribe to our daily video podcast on iTunes here. And here are the archives for Boing Boing Video.

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Today's episode of Boing Boing Video is our mini-documentary of the Global Game Jam 2009, a worldwide, networked gamebuilding marathon in which participants have exactly 48 hours in which to conceptualize, design, and build a web-based electronic game.

Boing Boing Video's Jolon Bankey was the head organizer for GGJ Costa Rica, and team members there sent in video reports as the 48 hour game-in unfolded. I attended the Los Angeles edition with Matty Kirsch. Boing Boing Gadgets editor Rob Beschizza represented us at GGJ Pittsburgh. And Boing Boing friends around the world uploaded video sitreps, shoutouts, and random moments of weirdness with which we've produced this piece. We received video submissions from places as diverse as Australia, Scotland, Israel, Turkey, and Venezuela.

Play some of the games! You can browse winning entries, and all of the others who participated, and play on Mac, PC, or other OSes: Game Entry Browser.

Photos below: At top, Jolon's 7-year-old son Gibson Bankey (clearly destined to be a future gaming titan) passes wrathful judgment on entries at the Costa Rica Game Jam. Below that, the winners of that competition (Team Vara Blanca for the game "Muu") proudly holding their trophy. Image by Laura Pardo, here's her entire (lovely) photoset. Bottom 2 photos are iphone snapshots I took during the BB Video shoot at the LA Game Jam, including our BBV guest host Matty Kirsch. Here's my photoset.

Boing Boing Video wishes to thank Global Game Jam founders Susan Gold, Gorm Lai and Ian Schreiber. Special thanks to the GGJ organizers and participants who contributed footage to Boing Boing Video: Caracas, Venezuela (Ciro Durán); Capetown, South Africa (Patrick Marais); Glasgow, Scotland (Romana Khan); Tel Aviv, Israel (Yuval Sapir); London, England (Fiona French); Los Angeles, PA, USA (Joseph Spradley); Newport, Wales (Mike Reddy); Perth, Australia (Simon Witt); Pittsburgh, PA, USA (Tracy Kobeda Brown); San Jose, Costa Rica (Jolon Bankey, Rene Zuleta, Shirley Monge, Daniela Calderon); Waco, TX, USA (Casey Jones); Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, NC, USA (Michael Lee).

Previously:
* BB Video: Global Game Jam Preview
* Global Game Jam continues! Here's live video (without kittens)
* Global Game Jam has begun! (live video stream)
* Global Game Jam (48 hour videogame dev marathon) this weekend!

Image of Steorn's energy machine from story about Steorn at Depleted Cranium.

Steorn, the Ireland-based company that says it has a technology that produces more energy than it uses (aka, perpetual motion), has redesigned its website with a new video containing testimonies from scientists and engineers excited about the technology, dubbed Orbo. It's also announced a program to give free, non-commercial development licenses to 300 engineering companies.

[T]he Steorn site now features a page briefly explaining how Orbo works, and announces a series of talks to be given at engineering universities around the world, beginning in the Middle East this month, continuing to Europe in the summer, and finishing in the United States in autumn. It looks like Steorn is going ahead with the plans they announced in December, to begin the commercialization of Orbo in February. If it weren't for the fact that Orbo is supposed to be impossible, and that there still remains not a single photo or video of a spinning, self-sustaining device anywhere on Steorn's site, this would look like any other exciting but routine product launch. Orbo's promise of free energy feels closer than ever today, but yet again it's still too early to be certain that this isn't all just smoke and mirrors. Hopefully we'll learn more soon as these 300 engineers sign up and begin to try to replicate Orbo on their own.

Steorn opens Orbo to developers

An anonymous reader writes "When the mainstream media first announced Barack Obama's 'victory' in keeping his BlackBerry, the focus was on the security of the device, and keeping the US president's e-mail communications private from spies and hackers. The news coverage and analysis by armchair security experts thus far has failed to focus on the real threat: attacks against President Obama's location privacy, and the potential physical security risks that come with someone knowing the president's real-time physical location. In this article, a CNET blogger digs into the real risks associated with the President carrying around a tracking device at all times."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BB pal Greg Long of Gama-Go is a regular at Trouble Coffee in San Francisco's Sunset district. He had fun there this morning and emailed Mark and I some photos (click for larger) and the following note:

Trouble Coffee serves a) coffee b) whole coconuts and c) big slices of cinnamon toast.

That's it.

Today they introduced me to cold press coffee which is ground espresso beans soaked for 24 hours and hand-mixed three times & then all the grounds settle & you're left with this rather amazing, never warmed mellow drink. Almost a liquor in flavor. Strong as shit.

But the real treat was the new art show that went up. This fella by the name of Alberto Cuadros has installed a show based on his dialogs with hobos. I shit you not.

Quite honestly, it's the best art show I've ever seen in a "coffee shop."

Trouble Coffee Company

In commemoration of Honest Abe's 200 birthday, Michael Leddy of Orange Crate Art ran this quote from the great President on avoiding procrastination:

Leave nothing for to-morrow, which can be done to-day. Never let your correspondence fall behind. Whatever piece of business you have in hand, before stopping, do all the labor pertaining to it which can then be done.

From "Notes on the Practice of Law," in The Portable Abraham Lincoln, edited by Andrew Delbanco (New York: Penguin, 2009), 33

I love this scratch-built old-school Indie race car for kids. It was built on an aircraft-style stringer frame with a riveted sheet aluminum skin. There are fun details on it, like a sliced-in-half 50s kitchen canister for the front bumpers, a malt shaker for the headrest, and a maraschino cherry jar for the radiator cap (seen in finished pic above).

From the fertile mind of Joseph Ihnat, part 1 - Poppen's Special kid's racer

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Last year, Congress finally got fed up with the fact that publicly funded research was being locked up in various scientific journals. The whole journal business is something of a scam. Unlike other publications, the folks who write the papers for journals pay the journals to get their content published. On top of that, the "peers" who review the works aren't paid for their work either. In other words, these journals get a ton of free labor... and sometimes that labor pays them. And, then, on top of that, they charge ridiculously high prices for anyone to subscribe, claim the copyright on all submitted works, and are incredibly aggressive in enforcing that copyright. An academic I knew, at one point had to consider doing an experiment a second time just to get the same results, because mentioning the earlier results of his own study might violate the copyright of the journal. And, remember, much of this is happening with research that was funded by taxpayers.

So, Congress decided that any research that was funded by NIH (which funds about $30 billion in research each year) had to also be openly published one-year after it was published in the journal. It's hard to see how this damages the journals at all. They still retain a significant monopoly right on the works -- and have a year's head start. Yet, the journal publishers have been screaming bloody murder, and even trying to force academics to pay thousands of dollars to cover the "cost" of republishing the article in an open archiving database.

And, of course, those publishers have been complaining like crazy to Congress. Last year, Rep. Conyers (who also recently introduced the RIAA's preferred legislation, and was heavily backed by the American Intellectual Property Law Association in his most recent election) introduced some legislation to repeal this requirement, though the legislation went nowhere fast. However, he's wasted very little time introducing identical legislation this year. Right before Conyers brought this legislation back, Stanford Professor John Willinsky published a well-worth reading article explaining why the publishers' objections to the requirement to openly publish makes no sense. Their general argument is that this is the government interfering with private businesses. But, of course, that's not true at all. As Willinsky notes, the only reason that particular private business exists as it does is because the government interfered in the form of giving them copyright:

What is held to be "unfair" in the bill is government interference with the publisher's exclusive ownership over research. This is not, however, a case of keeping the government's clumsy hand off a free market. The scholarly publishing market depends on government interference in the first instance. The government allows publishers to exercise monopoly rights over this research through copyright law, a form of market interference....

Furthermore, Willinsky mentions the original, Constitutional purpose behind said copyright: "To promote the progress of science and the useful arts..." Congress gets to determine what promotes the progress, and if it's shown that open publication of publicly funded works promotes that progress, then the journals should have no argument at all. But, argue they will... so, Public Knowledge and The Alliance for Taxpayer Access are both asking people to write their elected representatives to oppose this attempt to once again lock up the very research that we all funded as taxpayers.

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QuietR10t writes "A new technique has been developed for detecting and tracking illegal content transferred using the BitTorrent file-trading protocol. According to its creators, the approach can monitor networks without interrupting the flow of data and provides investigators with hard evidence of illicit file transfers. 'Our system differs in that it is completely passive, meaning that it does not change any information entering or leaving a network,' says Schrader." I wonder if it can specifically identify legal content, too.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As part of a promotion for the DVD release of The Wackness, the film company has hidden a golden ticket in one of the first 1,000 DVDs. The winner gets a trip to Amsterdam and a free bag of pot.

WIN A TRIP TO AMSTERDAM
AND A BAG OF MARIJUANA!

Yes, you heard us correctly! We’re offering the chance for you to win a fabulous weekend break for 2 to the city of smoke itself, the beautiful Amsterdam. But that’s not all… the lucky winner will also be able to pick up a complimentary bag of skunk from legendary Amsterdam café, Hill Street Blues.

Hidden within one of the first 1,000 DVDs of The Wackness is a Golden Ticket. Find the Golden Ticket and you win!* It’s that simple.

Q-Burns Abstract Message, aka Michael Donaldson, has very graciously allowed Boing Boing Video to use his work in our daily video episodes and in BB's (currently-dormant) audio podcasts. I love his stuff, and was excited to hear of a new project he did to help an organization that works to promote health care and sustainable technology in Africa. Michael explains:

OPEN Remix is a charity album conceived by the partnership of renowned African vocalist Youssou N’Dour and global non-profit organization IntraHealth International. IntraHealth’s primary mission is to create sustainable, accessible health care by mobilizing local resources. The purpose of the OPEN Remix album is to put a spotlight on open source technology and how it can be used to advance health care in Africa. (...) I was honored to be asked by N'Dour and the project’s organizers to do a remix of the flagship song "Wake Up."

I had a blast with this mix and worked on it for a solid month, adding many of the instruments and endlessly tweaking the sound in an attempt to help it live up to the gravity of the project. You’ll hear my trusty Fender Stratocaster and Jazz Bass guitars, a bit of tape echo, some Roland Juno-106 action, and the gentle backing vocals of Neneh Cherry. I think you can tell I’m quite proud of this and I think it’s safe to say this production may foreshadow some of the future music you’ll be hearing from me.

Another fascinating aspect of this project is that since it is rooted in the concept of open source technology N’Dour and IntraHealth have opted to give the songs away and to encourage sharing. In other words, you are more than welcome to download my remix for free and pass it around, post it, Tweet it, embed it, etc. In fact, I’m encouraging you to do just that. I’ve also got the remix on my MySpace music page in the player so you can add it to your MySpace playlist if you’d like.

* Q-BAM Remixes Youssou N’Dour (q-burnsabstractmessage)
* Press release on the music project: "IntraHealth OPEN Initiative and Youssou N'Dour Release Charity Album to Fund Open Source Training for Health Workers in Africa," and video press release is below. website: Intrahealth International, and here is Youssou N'Dour.

This handmade corset was inspired by the uniforms on Star Trek: The Next Generation. It's available on Etsy for $200 and can be made in any of the Star Trek colors.
Star Trek Inspired Corset (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)

If you don't get it just by reading the post title, honestly, you should probably just skip to the next post. Video Link (woodennickelshorts, thanks @kittenhotep!)

Boing Boing reader Arlo Rose points us to something beautiful:

It's a web site by someone that's a community manager at a very large website. They post the ridiculous pleas of kids under the legal age set forth by COPPA (thirteen). Pure hilarity.

"COPPAKIDS: Born too late. OMG YOU GUYS LET ME ON."

Gallup poll shows that 39% of people in the U.S. believe in the theory of evolution. Other graphs on the page show that level of education is correlated with a belief in evolution (belief drops to 24% among frequent church attenders), and 44% of people don't know which scientific theory Charles Darwin is associated with.

In short, the Pastafarians are winning. Hurray!

On Darwin’s Birthday, Only 4 in 10 Believe in Evolution

wiredog writes "From The Washington Post comes word that three special masters have decided that MMR vaccines do not cause autism. 'Special master George Hastings said the parents ... had "been misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment." ... "the evidence advanced by the petitioners has fallen far short of demonstrating ... a link."'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A big shout-out to Leonardo's Basement, which has contributed mightily to Make: television and the DIY effort here in the Twin Cities. Look for their projects created through their Studio Bricolage program, at Make: Day, March 14th, 10am to 3pm, at the Science Museum in St. Paul.

Studio Bricolage is an inventive program for adults who like to make things alone and with creative groups. They offer events and classes. For more information, visit their website at www.studiobricolage.org. Studio Bricolage is part of Leonardo's Basement, a design and build program for kids and families. More details at www.leonardosbasement.org.

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Also from Chung Da Lam, this cool, innovative ways of folding paper to create CD cases. While you're on his site, also check out his wonderful papercraft projects on his Paper Art page.

Chung Da Packaging Design

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Historically, jokes have always been things that were shared and passed on. The power of a joke is not in the idea behind the joke, but in the telling. Yet, in this era when people have it drilled into their brains over and over again that every creative thing is "ownable," we're now seeing this great tradition of joke sharing and joke telling stifled by claims of "ownership." The latest such example, found via Michael Scott, is that two people are suing over jokes in the Pink Panther movies. Specifically, Jean Epstein and Gary Stretch have sued "MGM, Sony, Fox, producer Robert Simonds, star Steve Martin and others" because they say the Pink Panther movies violate their copyright on certain jokes. Apparently, Epstein and Stretch made a short film that they placed on YouTube and iFilm, which included a few jokes that are similar to jokes in the movies. So, be careful next time you're "performing" a joke you heard somewhere else. Perhaps you'll get sued for copyright infringement.

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(Image: Love is a Mix Tape 003 by Flowers and Machinery, more here.)

"Corn Weenie" (aka "Learn How to Speak Hawaiian") is one of the weirdest and most wonderful gems of the '80s underground cassette era. Direct MP3 Link here. WFMU's original blog post about the "found audio art" masterpiece is here. A couple weeks ago, Ken from WFMU announced The Great Corn Weenie Remix Challenge, and it is still under way. Send new remixes to ken@wfmu.org. I read this announcement last week, intending to blog, and am happy to learn they're still accepting submissions. Background:

"Michael Proft, a musician, painter and film projectionist at San Diego's Ken cinema recorded this onto a cassette in the mid-Eighties, although the original purpose of the recording is still a mystery. Proft is exhorting over that track "Tamure" by Charles Mauu & The Royal Polynesians. You can see Proft's paintings here. Please, someone write Michael, let him know the joy and annoyance he has brought to us all and let's sign him up for an exclusive WFMU voiceover contract.

I woke up this morning with a voice singing "CORN WEENIE / REALLY REALLY" in my head, and had to plug in the speakers and play it loud when I first got in to the studio today, to the horror of all others present.

The Great Corn Weenie Remix Challenge (WFMU, thanks John Andrew Walsh!)

Make: television is currently airing on 201 public TV stations reaching 71 Nielsen markets and more than half the TV households in the United States, including 14 of the top 20 markets. In addition, 11 more stations have premiere dates in late February & March, with many others planning to premiere in spring or summer, dates TBD. Online we're on: iTunes, YouTube, vimeo, blip.tv, direct downloads, bittorrent (Legal Torrents and Pirate Bay). Thank you everyone who watches the show, downloads it and makes the projects we feature!

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From the MAKE Flickr pool

Flickr member xmasons shares this easy recipe LED blinkage using a 4060 binary counter chip.

The circuit's low price and part count make it a good choice for adding some pizazz to models and props. Check out Starship Modeler's tutorial and try experimenting with different configurations.

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An anonymous reader writes "Citing privacy concerns, the Cambridge, Mass. City Council has voted 9-0 to remove security cameras scattered throughout the city. 'Because of the slow erosion of our civil liberties since 9/11, it is important to raise questions regarding these cameras,' said Marjorie Decker, a Cambridge city councilor. Rather than citing privacy, WCBVTV is running the story under the headline 'City's Move To Nix Security Cams May Cost Thousands.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Some professors at Georgetown University, like some from other schools, are banning students from using laptops in their classes, blaming the devices for students not paying attention in lectures. Lots of students these days use laptops to take notes, and plenty use laptops to amuse themselves during class, particularly with the proliferation of WiFi on college campuses. But it's hard to see how this is really any different than previous generations, who were forced to allay their boredom without electronic devices.

When I was an undergrad, we only had the student newspaper with which to keep ourselves occupied, and the crossword puzzle was a popular pursuit, and I don't remember too many calls from professors to ban the newspaper because of that. If a student doesn't want to pay attention, they're not going to pay attention and be engaged in the class, with or without the laptop; that's no reason for professors to prevent students who use laptops for notetaking or other legitimate pursuits from doing so. Some professors seem really hung up on the idea of forcing people to pay attention and to care about the classes they teach, a feeling I've never really understood. Spending time playing games with uninterested students wastes the time of the interested ones, and if a student is really paying that little attention, it will come back and bite them at some point. Furthermore, if students surfing the web during class is such a huge problem, why are universities installing WiFi networks in classrooms?

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

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The Critters arrived! The Critters arrived! Within a week of uploading my model I got a happy little box delivered from Shapeways. They came out great! I wasn't sure if they would be able to stand properly, but they can just fine. Here's the gratuitous unboxing:

This is the model I had built in Maya, based on Mark Frauenfelder's character design:

Here are a couple of closeups, with some Lego bricks for reference:

You'll notice an odd topographical map-like texture on the second Critter. Not sure why he looks that way, maybe he's a cartographer. I'm going to finish him with some sandpaper and then paint him.

The material is lightweight, but doesn't feel overly delicate. It's even possible print functional mechanical parts with this system, which I'll cover in a later post.

My experience with Shapeways was excellent. I think we're at a turning point for accessible, affordable 3D printing and rapid prototyping. With services like this one, and Thingverse, as well as the RepRap project we have very little excuse for not realizing our virtual objects in the physical world.

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Greg Chudecke writes "The New York Times recently ran an article on game companies that get input design input from gamers. The article is branded as "The Brave New World of Open-source Game Design". The title may be a little misleading as it isn't exactly like the game design is open source for editing, however it is interesting that gamers are getting an opportunity to shape the games they play."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Greg Chudecke writes "The New York Times recently ran an article on game companies that get input design input from gamers. The Article is Branded as "The Brave New World of Open-source Game Design". The title may be a little misleading as it isn't exactly like the game design is open source for editing, however it is interesting that gamers are getting an opportunity to shape the games they play."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yesterday on Boing Boing Gadgets: • Robot faced keytoppers started the robotification of Brownlee's home at the front portal. • We were serenaded by the sound of a thousand iPhone App Store farts. • Honda claimed they could, like, totally send a dude to the moon. • Secondrun.tv released a neat Media Center Extender to allow better streaming of Hulu on home theater PCs. • Brownlee considered gorgeous restored reel-to-reel tape decks as objects of art. • Obama may have pushed a bill through to delay the digital television transition, but 40% of all television stations are shutting off their analog transmissions next week anyway. • Someone finally got the iPhone external juice pack slim and right. • lolwut? What the hell is this thing even supposed to be? • Steve McQueen's zombie endorsed an absolutely gorgeous watch. • Lamborghini entered the stiletto heel game. • Palm's Pre continues to shape up as everything the iPhone is not, except sexy: they're killing off PalmOS, setting up deals with International Carriers, and will allow installation of applications through USB. • And if you haven't read it yet, Joel's thought piece on why the PSP failed and what Sony can do to ace the PSP2 is a must-read... or at least skim. Link

BobB-nw writes to tell us that Palm has decided to kill their PalmOS operating system and is instead betting their future on a still mostly unknown Palm webOS. Very little is known about the new Palm webOS, but it will supposedly support HTML5 and enable a local data store so that applications can be used both online and off. All of this is rolled into a Linux framework with a message bus based on JSON. Will be interesting to see where they take it.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NVIDIA® teamed up with MAKE and created the "Modification Station" a special section on MAKE that celebrates "SPEAK VISUAL" - from PC mods to amazing motion graphics this section had some of the best collections of amazing mods and visuals. For the contest any maker who had an amazing PC mod, gamer station or PC hardware creation, or cool graphics they created could win amazing prizes -- from a new computer to the latest graphics cards from NVIDIA to books from MAKE! And... here are the winners! Over 378 entries total! We will be contacting all the winners shortly.

Grand prize

Deja 2.0, by Mr.Red. Prize: Digital Storm PC!, Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHZ (Quad Core) processor, ASUS P6T Deluxe (Intel X58 Chipset) motherboard, 3GB DDR3 1333MHz Corsair memory, 500GB Western Digital (16MB Cache, 7200 RPM, SATA) hard drive, NVIDIA GeForice GTX 280 1GB video card.

Runners up
All runners up will receive: BFG GeForce GTX 260 OC MAXCORE graphics card combines the power of 24 more processing cores (versus the standard GTX 260) with BFG's out-of-the-box overclocking to rip through DirectX 10 games at blazing fast frame rates and enable realistic physical motion and massively destructible environments with NVIDIA’s new PhysX technology. This graphics card delivers an amazing visual computing experience you have to see to believe.

Computervision by DSchrubbe.

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Retro PC/TV mod by LancerOZ.

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ATTN2Detail by zittware.

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DJ storm by nav.sparx.

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Project 13 by Sheldog23.

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Book winners

Building The Perfect PC 2nd Edition - Regardless of your technical experience, Building the Perfect PC will guide you through the entire process of building or upgrading your own computer. You'll use the latest top-quality components, including Intel's Core 2 Duo and more. And you'll know exactly what's under the hood and how to fix or upgrade your PC.

Make Projects: Small Form Factor PCs is the only book available that shows you how to build small-form-factor PCs -- from kits and from scratch -- Included in the book are projects for building personal video recorders, versatile wireless access points, digital audio jukeboxes, portable firewalls, and much more. This book shows you how to build eight different systems, from the shoebox-sized Shuttle system down to the stick-of-gum-sized gumstix.

vishadnet.

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Tech-Daddy.

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ZapWizard.

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case blazzers.

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kevin_groove.

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MI-Tazz.

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stein@marksind.

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Ross171.

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whatsisface.

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A few people have directed my attention to copyright lawyer Mark Fischer's review of Larry Lessig's most recent book, Remix. The review is worth reading -- and there are some points on which I agree with Fischer -- particularly with the near impossibility of separating commercial use from non-commercial use. While Fischer seems sympathetic to the idea that there are some problems with copyright law, he keeps going back to one central idea that is the core of his problem with Lessig's book: that allowing others to remix content without getting permission potentially harms the "original creator."

This is a myth that is all too often found in IP law -- both in patents and in copyrights. This concept of the "original creator" of a piece of work. All works are built on those that came before. All works are inspired by and use bits and pieces of what they've learned or what they've seen, heard and felt. Pretending that there is a true original creator who deserves credit, money or control is a problem -- because it means no new creative works could be done without getting permission. That would be a tremendous hindrance on creation -- rather than progress (as the Constitution intends).

But because of this false belief in an original creator, Fischer creates some tradeoffs that don't really occur. Specifically, he notes:

If we move toward making content free for copying, distribution and remixing, the professional creators and their distributors will have an even tougher future. Erosion of the copyright system comes at a price. If we have to choose between encouraging original creativity and remixing, why not err on the side of encouraging the originators?

There are multiple problems with this statement. It makes the assumption that allowing free copying of your works makes it harder to earn money. Yet, that's not what we're seeing at all. Those who put in place smart business models have found that it's even easier to make make a lot more money than in the previous method. Erosion of the copyright system does not come at a price. It merely changes the business model around, and opens up tremendous new opportunities. And that's for everyone because it makes the process of building on the works of others easier -- and since all creativity really does come from building on the works of others, then creativity has the ability to flourish.

So, let's get rid of this myth that there's some "original content creator" and that said "original content creator" needs to be "protected." Neither point is true. Every content creator is building on the works of others, and there are plenty of business models that can be put in place easily that don't require "protection" at all. It may be more difficult for someone who makes their living helping enforce those protections to see it, but we're seeing it every day. Why block off all those innovative new content creators just because of a couple of myths?

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Hi everybody!

As you probably know Twitter is getting ready to support OAuth, and this is a good thing, cause it'll make it easier to trust websites with access to your account cause you won't have to give up your password. But OAuth is hard to implement, it's complicated, and because I'm basically programming the OPML Editor on my own, if I want to support it, I have to write the code. Which is okay cause it's interesting, and it'll mean I'll have a very deep background in OAuth when it's done.

I've been through one of these before. Flickr has a similar authentication system, although it's simpler than OAuth (probably fewer cooks and less compromise in the design). So last night I got coding finally and made a lot of progress, thanks to some help from a tutorial at Hueniverse. But as I was finishing it up I was pretty sure it wouldn't work when I tested it against a server running in Ireland, and sure enough it didn't.

At this point what you do is put up a source listing ahd ask other programmers to have a look. I bet there are a dozen things I'm not doing that I should be. Based on Leah Culver's code, I think I may have to set some headers, but I'm not doing any of that. What else?

Anyway, here's the listing.

http://scripting.com/misc/programming/oauthlisting.txt

Gratitude for any help will be psychically and demonstrably expressed!

We happened to be on top of the slide on the north end of South Park. It was sunny and brisk. We were eating Mexican food. His idea made us stop eating and start talking.

#

We happened to be on top of the slide on the north end of South Park. It was sunny and brisk. We were eating Mexican food. His idea made us stop eating and start talking.

#

Richard Rutter demonstrates how @font-face can work today, using the beautiful (and free) Museo typeface. #

Richard Rutter demonstrates how @font-face can work today, using the beautiful (and free) Museo typeface. #

rsmiller510 writes "The EE Times reports this week that Dell has released a hybrid laptop running both Linux and Windows clearly aimed at business travelers. Linux for quick tasks and Windows for more intensive ones, but will such a machine really fly in the business world?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

rsmiller510 writes "The EE Times reports this week that Dell has released a hybrid laptop running both Linux and Windows clearly aimed at business travelers. Linux for quick tasks and Windows for more intensive ones, but will such a machine really fly in the business world?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I finally put together my Newton's Reflecting Telescope Kit by Gakken. It was a lot of fun to build and it works great. This kit would be a perfect gift for anyone getting into astronomy. By the time I was finished, I had a really good understanding of how these types of telescopes work.

A neat working replica of Newton's Reflecting Telescope. Features a 10x magnitude. Includes it's own base. Instructions are in Japanese but features highly detailed assembly pictures, sorry no English translation at this time. Easy to build. Made of high impact plastic.

I took a series of pictures of the build to give you an idea of what is involved in making this kit. Keep reading for some tips & tricks on how to build your own.

I love the magazine that is included with the kit. It's in Japanese, but it's still cool to look through. This issue has a few funny pictures, see page 79!

The instructions, like the magazine, are in Japanese. This really isn't a problem since they are filled with detailed illustrations of each step.

The only issue I had was figuring out what screws were used in each step. Luckily, this is really easy to figure out. There are 3 different kinds, large, medium, and small. I labeled the screws A, B & C. In the instructions I looked for the corresponding symbol and marked them appropriately.

The first step involves making the reflecting mirror. It goes together really easily.

It can be challenging to put this assembly together without touching the mirror.

The base consists of 4 parts that are snapped and screwed together.

This is the support bar and the sphere of the universal joint. This allows for the entire telescope to rotate 360 degrees.

Making the tubes can be tricky. Use a pen to pre-bend the paper into a semi circle. This makes the process a lot easier. The card-stock tubes are surprisingly sturdy when wrapped around the end caps. Be careful with the supplied double-sided tape. It is very sticky and you only have one chance to get it right. Fortunately, it isn't difficult and the instructions are very clear.

Here are both tubes all assembled and ready to put together. The kit is almost done.

Now you can slip the (2) tubes together and attach them to the support rail. Next, attach the eyepiece with the supplied double-sided tape.

Next, attach the (2) pieces of foam, supplied with the kit, to the (2) support legs. Finally, the (2) legs are attached with screws to the base and the telescope.

All done! I planned on adding my wireless video camera to the telescope, but I had some issues mounting it to the eyepiece. However, I do have an old web-cam that will definitely work. I'll keep you updated on my video modification.

In the Maker Shed


Newton's Reflecting Telescope Kit

Related:

DIY Newtonian Reflector Telescope

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Youtuber ffoitl shares this refreshing take on the MIDI synthesizer, utilizing the acoustic side effects of a relay switch -

a musical instrument inspired by elisha gray's "musical telgraph" one of the first electric/electronic musical instruments ever.
it's basically a relay oscillator than be "tuned" to various frequencies via midi controlled capacitors.
in the video i use a tenori-on as a midi sequencer. the video of the tenori-on is not totally in sync with the rest of the video but you should get an idea.
the sound is recorded with a self-built piezo contact mic and a coil taken from a solenoid.

Cited as inspiration, Elisha Gray's invention is acknowledged as the first electric synthesizer -

In 1876, After narrowly losing the race to patent the telephone, Gray created the first single note oscillator from a self vibrating electromagnetic circuit. The Musical Telegraph transmitted the sound of steel reed oscillations over telephone line. Anyone for a remake?

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As was widely expected, Congress voted last week to delay the switch-off of analog TV signals, sort of. It did move the hard deadline of February 17 until June 12, but it is also allowing TV stations to switch off their analog broadcasts any time before then, and many stations say they'll do so as soon as they can, beginning next week. Over a third of the nation's TV stations plan to move ahead with the switch, as planned, eager to shed the additional cost of broadcasting both in digital and in analog. So instead of a hard deadline, some stations will drop off of the analog air next week, others not until June, and others somewhere in between -- a situation that hardly seems easier to understand for the confused and lost among us that the delay was supposed to help. Furthermore, how does this sort of staggered transition help sort out the converter box coupon mess?

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

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raffnix writes "Today, Finland-based paper group Stora Enso has announced that Google is buying the buildings and most of the Summa Mill site, where production of paper was ceased last month in January 2008, for approximately 40 million euros ($51.7 million). Obviously the space is most likely going to serve as a data center, which has now also been confirmed by Reuters."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chung Dha Lam of Maasluis, Netherlands, made some easy, funky business cards and shows you how to make your own in this video. He used recycled cereal box cardboard and rubber stamps to make it all his own. These would be perfect for makers with funky professions, or for making friends at Maker Faire.

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MAKE contributor Dhananjay V. Gadre wrote in with this cool project:

I just completed a new project: a fire-free and fire-safe LED matchstick. To light this matchstick you strike it against a normal matchbox filled with neodymium magnets. The LED matchstick has an inductive sensor that detects the magnetic field as you strike the matchstick against the matchbox and it lights up a LED in a flickering fashion. The power to the matchstick is through a 3F/2.7V supercapacitor and a DC-DC converter. As the LED lights up, the supercapacitor discharges and eventually the matchstick splutters off just like a normal matchstick.

The matchstick is controlled by a Tiny13 microcontroller. Still need to put it in a perspex tube so that its easy to handle and is not damaged.

Fire-free and fire-safe LED matchstick

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Zebano writes "Since changing the US constitution is too much work, the Iowa senate is considering a bill that would send all 7 of Iowa's electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote in a presidential election. This would only go into affect after enough states totaling 270 electoral votes (enough to elect a president) adopted similar resolutions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Representative Steve Austria (R-OH) has the skinny on FDR: the man was a time-travelling socialist.

"When (President Franklin) Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression," Austria said. "He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That's just history."

Most historians date the beginning of the Great Depression at or shortly after the stock-market crash of 1929; Roosevelt took office in 1933.

"That's just history." Ah, the House of Representatives, the House of Drunken First Blathering.

U.S. Rep. Austria blames Depression on Roosevelt (via Taplin)

New NYC based hacker group HTINK has a day of workshops coming up for the electronically curious - perfect for those looking for a some orientation in the Arduino world. Eric writes -

This is a combination of 3 workshops, being offered over 5 hours. Anyone can come buy and build a freeduino kit while the other workshops are occuring, and the entire time people will be available to help get your arduino environment set up and your freeduino blinking an LED! You do not need ANY previous experience to attend these workshops, all you need is the materials specified and yourself!

Workshop 1: Freeduino kit build
Build an arduino clone kit and receive help setting it up on your laptop! This workshop will be offered twice, once at 1:15 PM and again at 3:15 PM.

Workshop 2: Pretty blinking LEDs!
We will build a set of 16 full color (RGB) LEDs under full software control using the TLC5940 controller chip. Students are required to have only an arduino and will leave with a cool looking blinky thing. This workshop will be offered once, at 3 PM.

Workshop 3: Motors and sensors
Students will learn how to use a servo, stepper, and DC motor with the arduino. Also reading sensor data will be covered. Kit materials include
everything you need (except the arduino) to build your own little robot! This workshop will be offered once, at 5 PM.

See the event site for details. All participants must have a laptop, and USB cable. Spare cables will be available for purchase at the event.

Saturday, March 14, 2009
Bug Labs
598 Broadway
4th floor
New York, NY 10012

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rememberclifford writes "A survey of about 3,000 people who were tagged in a "25 Random Things About Me" note on Facebook found that memes spread through social networks in a remarkably similar way as diseases do. A biologist who looked at the data says that "'25 Things' authors can be seen as 'contagious' under what's known as a 'susceptible-infected-recovered' model for the spread of disease," with a propagation factor of 0.27 in this case. But like an infection, the whole thing died out as quickly as it exploded once the number of 'victims' — people who were willing to write 25 things about themselves — was depleted." The '25 Things' meme was at least as annoying as a light flu.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This slide deck is a good resource for anyone looking to build a robot based on TI's Beagle Board:

At the Homebrew Robotics Club in Silicon Valley, on Nov 19, 2008, Nathan Monson introduced the BeagleBoard, focusing on the hardware and software features that make it popular among robot hobbyists.

Building Robots with the BeagleBoard -- HBRC, Nov 19, 2008 [via Texas Instruments on Twitter]

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Way back in 2003, I put forth a potential business model for the music industry that encouraged free file sharing. If I believed in the old saw that "ownership" is everything -- perhaps I could have tried to patent it as a business method patent (I'm joking, people). Of course, I'm much more excited about seeing it put to use -- and we've definitely seen various musicians over the past few years adopt variations on this business model put into place. But I find it especially amusing that one throwaway idea I mentioned in that post seems to actually be getting some use: the backyard concert. Specifically, the business model I put forth was that the musicians could give away the music for free, but could offer various (scarce) goods to sell: with a big one being access to the artist. And, I thought, what better form of access than a personal concert? You could do backstage passes, but why not also have some sort of option for the musicians to actually play at your house. If you're a major fan, how awesome would that be?

Last year, Jill Sobule was the first well-known artist we saw who actually offered that. And, now, Boing Boing is reporting that John Wesley Harding is doing something similar. Like Sobule, Trent Reznor, Kristin Hersh, the Beastie Boys and many others, Harding is offering a variety of options for ways to support him -- starting with a download plus CD with bonus live disc for $16 (a bit high, honestly). But at the top of the list is a $5,000 option for... a backyard concert. Sure, perhaps no one will actually take him up on it, but I have to admit I'm thrilled that multiple musicians have now "stolen" this idea and at least are testing it out (though, my original idea was to make it more of a raffle: if you buy into something else, you get a random chance to win a backyard concert).

That said, I'm not all that impressed with the overall offering. It doesn't include a free component, which makes all of the paid options a lot less valuable. If you get more people into the music, they're more willing to buy all those other scarcities you're offering. And, the basic prices seem a bit high. When Reznor did his experiment, the "basic" two disc CD was $10 for 36 songs and there was a $5 option and a free option as well. Starting at $16 (not including S&H) seems a bit high. Still.... great to see that backyard concert option gaining traction.

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Remember Sean Tevis, the Kansas geek who financed his run for the state House of Reps by asking 3,000 net-people to send him $8.34 each -- and who won lost (from Rikchik in the comments, "Correction - Tevis didn't win, though he came close. The guy introducing the bill is the incumbent who beat him.") the election after raising a staggering sum of money in a short time? Well, his "colleagues" in the Kansas House of Reps aren't impressed.

Representative Scott Schwab (R-Olathe) has introduced a bill to require politicians to gather and disclose the personal information of small (less than $50) donors, if that politician raises more than $1,000. This is basically the Sean Tevis Campaign Finance Bill, and it will only affect politicians who raise their funds through distributed, grassroots campaigns. As Tevis points out. the main reason for campaign finance disclosure rules is to track money's influence in politics: "You give $1 to a candidate. It’s a pretty safe bet that they won’t feel indebted to you. If you give them $100, they might. You give a candidate $1,000 they will probably drop everything to take your call." Do Kansans have to worry that net-people who paypalled $8.34 to Tevis will lean on him for government pork?

The $1,000 threshold creates an unequal protection of privacy.

If you donate $1 to a candidate, you can expect that your personal information will remain private. If that candidate, however, crosses the arbitrary $1,000 threshold, which is beyond your control, then suddenly your reasonable expectation of privacy that other small donors enjoy is stripped from you.

For example:
• John gives $1 to Candidate A
• Mary gives $1 to Candidate B
• Candidate A *does not* raise more than $1,000 in small donations.
• Candidate B becomes very popular and she raises more than $1,000 in small donations.

The effect of this is that:
John’s personal information is safe.
Mary’s personal information is not safe.

My Response to House Bill No. 2244 aka the “Sean Tevis Bill” (via A Whole Lotta Nothing)

MAKE will be at the NYC Toy Fair 2009 - last year we had some MASSIVE coverage from the event and hope to bring you a DIY/Science view of the show again, while we skip a lot of the "toys" we do head right for the science and learning companies - last year one of our favorite companies was Thames & Kosmos - they'll be our first stop this year. Check out their kits here and the ones we stock in our science section in the Maker Shed. Pictured here, Stephanie from Thames & Kosmos - they asked if we'd be there and we asked for some photos of the new kits in action!

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An anonymous reader writes "If you had a GenShock, you may not mind those potholes in the road any longer because this new prototype shock actually harvests energy from bumps in the road to save on fuel. A team of students at MIT have invented a shock absorber that harnesses energy from small bumps in the road, generating electricity while it smooths the ride more effectively than conventional shocks. Senior Shakeel Avadhany and his teammates say they can produce up to a 10 percent improvement in overall vehicle fuel efficiency by using the regenerative shock absorbers. They also already have a lot of interest in their design, specifically the company that builds Humvees for the army are already planning to install them in its next version of the Humvee."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Steel Yard in Providence RI has just announced their Spring and Summer Community Courses. The Potential of Sheet Metal: Cold and Hot sounds kind of interesting:

Registration is now open for the Steel Yard's Spring/Summer 2009 Course Season! Highlights for the upcoming months of warmth include, Sculptural Ceramics, Glass Casting, Building Bike Trailers, and Making Jewelry: Becoming a Small Business. As always, there will also be plenty of other offerings in Ceramics, Glass, Metalworking, Jewelry, and Bike Maintenance. Courses fill up quickly, so visit our website and sign up soon.

The Steel Yard Blog: Spring/Summer Community Courses at the Steel Yard

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, the talented designer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sez, "My partner, Mati McDonough and I have a show of new work opening Friday at the a.Muse Gallery in San Francisco. We called the show 'Little Vagabonds' after a lyric in a Jonathan Richman song, since he has been an influence and inspiration to us both over the years.

Little Vagabonds: New Work by Hugh D'Andrade & Mati McDonough, A.Muse Gallery, 614 Alabama St, SF 94110

Opening Friday, February 13, Showing February 13 - April 1, 2009

New Work by Hugh D'Andrade & Mati McDonough (Thanks, Hugh!)

Radical Hindus in India are attempting to cleanse the nation of foreign soft-drinks by promoting an "ayurvedic" beverage made from cow urine:

The bovine brew is in the final stages of development by the Cow Protection Department of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), India's biggest and oldest Hindu nationalist group, according to the man who makes it.

Om Prakash, the head of the department, said the drink – called "gau jal", or "cow water" – in Sanskrit was undergoing laboratory tests and would be launched "very soon, maybe by the end of this year".

"Don't worry, it won't smell like urine and will be tasty too," he told The Times from his headquarters in Hardwar, one of four holy cities on the River Ganges. "Its USP will be that it's going to be very healthy. It won't be like carbonated drinks and would be devoid of any toxins."

The drink is the latest attempt by the RSS – which was founded in 1925 and now claims eight million members – to cleanse India of foreign influence and promote its ideology of Hindutva, or Hindu-ness.

India to launch cow urine as soft drink (Thanks, Sherryart!)

Harrison sez, "This is a black and white 8mm film of my sister's wedding taken by her friend Sarah Halpern. Normally wedding videos tend to only be interesting to the parties involved or the producers of America's Funniest Home Videos, assuming something amusing happens. However, I believe that Sarah has put together something haunting and visceral. I swear that I see our father's ghost when I watch this."

Wedding Video (Thanks, Harrison!)

Apparently, the Wall Street Journal has eliminated the two research librarian jobs at the paper with no plans to replace them. The idea, apparently, is that reporters should be doing their own damn research from now on. I actually have rather mixed feelings on the news. At a time when newspapers should be focused on providing a better product to remain relevant, you have to wonder if removing research services makes sense. However, the question remains as to whether or not the position is really needed. This is not -- at all -- to suggest that research librarian aren't quite good at what they do and provide a truly valuable service. But, it is true that the tools for research have become much cheaper and accessible for anyone.

And, therein lies the challenge. If the WSJ were willing to replace the lost librarians with a crowd-sourced or "open" research process, that might be quite interesting. While not let the community help with the research? In many ways that could be a lot more effective and useful. But, somehow I doubt that's what's going to happen. Traditional newspapers still have this fear of tipping off anyone as to what they're working on until the "final story" is ready to go. So, they'll probably just remain as closed as usual. At the same time, though, why not create a more centralized "research" service that various news organizations can tap into, so that they don't duplicate efforts. By making more information more accessible, shouldn't it improve researching ability?

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Techradar reports that researchers at the University of Portsmouth in England are working on a project to create a game emulator that will "recognise and play all types of videogames and computer files from the 1970s through to the present day." One of the major goals of the project is to preserve software from early in the computer age. David Anderson of the Humanities Computing Group said, "Early hardware, like games consoles and computers, are already found in museums. But if you can't show visitors what they did, by playing the software on them, it would be much the same as putting musical instruments on display but throwing away all the music. ... Games particularly tend not to be archived because they are seen as disposable, pulp cultural artefacts, but they represent a really important part of our recent cultural history. Games are one of the biggest media formats on the planet and we must preserve them for future generations."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sometimes you need a handy mobile storage device to move files around between locations. You could use a flash drive or an external disk, but why not make use of that 16GB phone that you carry with you all the time?

iPhoneDisk is a MacFUSE based filesystem for the iPhone. Simply install MacFUSE, then install iPhoneDisk, and your iPhone will be usable as a general storage device. When you connect it via USB, it will show up on your desktop just like a USB drive would. You'll always have a convenient external disk on hand, and it's one less thing you need to carry around with you.

iPhoneDisk
MacFUSE

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CNETNate writes "The largest chain of cinemas in Britain, Odeon, has become the first chain to fully roll out 3D projection technology in its theaters. These new projectors will deliver 3D images at a resolution of 2K (2,048x1,080 pixels). Many major cities in the UK will now be able to project the new 3D movies coming out of Hollywood, without it being referred to as a novelty offered in one or two locations."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Germany has a new minister of economic affairs, named Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. That's a mouthful, and apparently a number of German media outlets went to the guy's Wikipedia entry for some help. But some prankster had added a "Wilhelm" in the middle, which got printed in several places. The change on Wikipedia was noticed and corrected, but then reverted to the incorrect Wilhelm version -- with one of the press stories cited as the source. So, somebody inserts an incorrect "fact" into Wikipedia, the "fact" gets reprinted elsewhere based on the Wikipedia entry, gets correctly removed from Wikipedia, then incorrectly reinserted using one of the incorrect articles as "proof" of its veracity. That sounds pretty similar to establishing your newsworthiness for inclusion in Wikipedia by getting a newspaper article written about how you're not in Wikipedia. All's well that ends well, though, since the minister's correct name now appears in his entry. But as Wikipedia continues to be perceived by more and more people as a very authoritative source, this sort of incident is likely to happen again.

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

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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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In 1993, I was honored to be asked by my friend, artist and musician John Bergin, to write the precis for his graphic novel From Inside. It was an exciting time. Kevin Eastman, fat with cash from the meteoric success of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, created the Tundra imprint and published such ground-breaking work as Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz's Big Numbers, Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell, Stephen R. Bissette's Taboo, and Dave McKean's Cages. Bergin and his friend James O'Barr brought over The Crow, Kerosene, and the Bone Saw collection. And then there was From Inside. In the introduction, I began:

John Bergin's work exists in a world of perpetual darkness and droning ambiance. His artistry lies not so much in his ability to maintain this consistent dark vision (which he does with a vengeance), but in his ability to build a rich and complex world inside such a singular dimension. He has the ability to dance right on the edge of suffocating nihilism, while providing just enough oxygen to sustain life.The beauty of his art uplifts you, while its devastating message crushes you to dust.

From Inside has always been a film, even when it was a comic book. When I first got the galleys and began thumbing through it, I saw storyboards, I saw frames and camera angles, I saw sweeps and transitions. The experience on the page was very cinematic. So it makes sense that John would want to go the other way and make a film that feels like reading a comic book in motion. And no, we're not talking about a comic book being adapted to the big screen as a full-blown animation. John worked with the original art from the book and did the ol' Ken Burns Effect on the panels, adding some animation elements, and 3D models and set pieces. The result feels like a mash-up between a static comic book, a pop-up book, and full-blown 3D animation. Its "bookness" is more intact than other comics made into films. The main characters of From Inside are Cee, a young pregnant woman, and a seemingly endless steam train. John has always had a "thing" for trains and that adoration comes through in the immense detail of the 3D models and animation, the texture maps, the sounds and smoke effects. It's a giant beast of a machine (literally in some scenes). It's mind-boggling to consider that John did nearly all of this work himself (the credits for the over-one-hour film are ridiculously short) on a Apple G5 Dual 2.7 running Maya, Photoshop, and AfterEffects. Some shots took weeks to render. One took over a month. John ended up spending 2-1/2 years of his life on this effort. The story of From Inside opens with the pregnant Cee on the train as it traverses a post-apocalyptic wasteland. As we get into the sonorous rhythms of the train, we hear the gentle voice of Cee:

I have tried and tried to remember how this wasteland came to be. I don't remember where I got on this train and I don't know where it's going. What difference does it make? When the end of the world has come, it's too late to wonder why.

From there, the train slows and stops at one whistle stop of horror and devastation after another. Cee's experiences on and around the train bleed into the dreams and nightmares she's having in the little womb-like compartment she's been given by the engineers. Through her narration, we learn of life on this helltrain and are made privy to her most intimate fears, her grieving over the loss of her husband, and her total apprehension over bringing a child into this world. And it's that last bit that From Inside is really about. It's a nightmare meditation on fears of being pregnant, questioning the sanity of bringing a child into an insane world, and the generalized, frequently irrational, fears young pregnant couples have over the devastating impact a newborn will bring down upon their lives. However it will work out in the end, it will surely be cataclysmic to your pre-child life. And the certainty of that can be terrifying. If you're looking for happy endings here, look out. (John jokingly calls it "the most depressing film ever made.") Like the novel, John rations use of the oxygen throughout. When the film ended, it was all I could do to keep my head out of my oven. But in the end, I was more satisfied than bummed -- I'd had the unique opportunity to climb inside of a book, a world, that has intrigued me since the day I was introduced to it. You can watch a preview of From Inside on the movie's website and read the blog John has kept throughout the project. The film is currently traveling the animation and film festival circuit, and not surprisingly, scooping up a number of awards. See the News section of his site for the screenings schedule.

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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I love sites like Bookcrossing (where books are left out in public and their journeys, from reader to reader, are tracked vis the web) and Where is George? (when stamped dollar bills are tracked in a similar way), so I was tickled to have someone send me info about NamelessleTTer, a collaborative art bookmarking project, where bookmarks are made and stashed inside of library books, books in stores, etc.

The goal is to provoke curiosity (to encourage people to visit libraries and bookstores in hopes of discovering one of these bookmarks), to bring a new and exciting aspect to book reading in a world that is becoming increasingly digital, and to interact with other people.

The bookmarks usually offer some commentary or comic relief on the title in which they're placed. Here are a few bookmarks from the site and the books in which they're found: Left in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

 

Left in Where Is God When It Hurts?

 

Left in: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

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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Like McSweeny's, Hotel St. George is a painfully hip lit website and print publisher that satisfyingly delivers on its pretensions. Their website is stunning, one of the more impressively-designed sites I've seen. And their print publishing efforts are truly unique, infused with wonder and playful, brainy ideas for presenting and telling stories. I'm currently reading writer and filmmaker Alex Rose's The Musical Illusionist and Other Tales ($14.95). It's one of the most imaginative and unconventional collections I've read in years. It's really fired up my imagination. Here's the back cover copy which, while typically breathless, accurately describes the whimsy and weirdness contained within.

Disappearing manuscripts. Profane numbers. Extinct bacteria. Cities without shadows. A language spoken entirely in rhythms. A man deaf solely to the waltzes of Chopin. These are among the many anomalies to be found in the Library of Tangents, a vast underground archive whose beguiling exhibitions are detailed by Alex Rose in his exquisite debut collection, The Musical Illusionist. A masterful fusion of science-historic precision and magical-realistic caprice, this Pandora's Box of curious tales stands in the tradition of Borges, Calvino and Pavic, blending the playfulness and mythic wonder of folk tales with the complexity and richness of modern thought. Together, these interlaced parables chart an inebriating realm of possibility, the secret passageways that lie between words and meanings, neurons and thoughts, space and time, fact and fiction, sound and music—and in doing so, activate that rare, dreaming rapture one felt as a child, entranced.

The book is as beautiful as it is eccentric, with real scientific illustrations, religious art, maps, and cryptographic manuscripts helping to sell the bait and switch of the "truth" where each story begins with the farcical world where each story ends up. The latest offering from Hotel St. George is Correspondences ($50, incl. shipping), by Ben Greenman, a limited-edition series of letterpressed stories on thick accordion-fold paper tucked inside of pockets, inside of a slip case. Three two-sided accordions hold six stories. A seventh story is contained on the packaging and there's also an included post card that you can return with your idea for finishing the seventh story. Worthy submissions are being posted on the HSG website. This is a beautiful piece of book art that will especially appeal to collectors of new letterpress work.

We're getting close to the start of the big Pirate Bay trial in Sweden that hopefully will settle the question of whether or not running a torrent tracker search engine is legal in that country. Apparently, the trial is being held in a rather small courtroom, and there was some fear that this would significantly limit media access (especially since all media requests were supposedly being screened to make sure that the reporters "had no connection to the movement" -- whatever that means). The good news, however, is that the court has agreed to the request from The Pirate Bay to stream the audio from the trial. Should be worth paying attention to what happens...

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Slatterz writes "The first phase of Australia's controversial Internet filters were put in place today, with the Australian government announcing that six ISPs will take part in a six week pilot. The plan reportedly includes a filter blocking a list of Government-blacklisted sites, and an optional adult content filter, and the government has said it hasn't ruled out the possibility of filtering BitTorrent traffic. The filters have been widely criticized by privacy groups and Internet users, and people have previously even taken to the streets to protest. While Christian Groups support the plan, others say filters could slow down Internet speeds, that they don't work, and that the plan amounts to censorship of the Internet. At this stage the filters are only a pilot, and Australia's largest ISP Telstra is not taking part. But if the $125.8 million being spent by the Australian Government on cyber-safety is any indication, it's a sign of things to come."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new research study says that identity fraud rose 22 percent in 2008 from the previous year, blaming lost or stolen wallets, not data breaches, for the majority of incidents. It's important to note the terminology here: the group that conducted the research considers identity fraud -- when stolen information is actually used for financial gain -- as distinct from identity theft, which is simply when identity information is stolen. It stands to reason, then, that the occurrence of identity theft is actually far higher. Also, the numbers on how criminals obtained the information may be slightly skewed. Respondents to the survey were asked if they knew how their information was stolen, and only 35% responded that they did. Of that 35%, only 22% said it was stolen online or via a data leak. Again, it stands to reason that people whose information was stolen because their wallet was lifted or lost, or via some other noticeable method, would be more aware of it than if, say, a retailer gave up their credit card number or other info. Also, is it helpful to consider a pickpocket using a stolen credit card to be analogous to a massive data breach? While the end result might be similar for affected consumers, the method of the crime, as well as the reasons why it was allowed to happen, are very, very different. To equate pickpocketing to data breaches runs the risk of underemphasizing the risk that slack corporate or governmental security poses to large numbers of people. Gee, that doesn't sound familiar, does it?

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

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Today on Offworld, Jim Rossignol came through with his regular Ragdoll Metaphysics column and, just as I'd hoped, gave the clearest explanation of the recent Goonswarm/Band of Brothers corporate dissolution in Eve Online as any I've read to date. It's a concise wrap-up for "the rest of us": how it happened, what it means in terms of dollars and man hours lost, and how it will shape the future of the game's universe. Elsewhere we got an extended look at the upcoming iPhone puzzler Heroes and Villains (above), showing what exactly the developers meant when they called it "Lemmings meets The Lost Vikings meets Awesome", and saw what it might have been like if Grand Theft Auto IV was on the Spectrum ZX. Finally, we saw another behind the scenes look at the making of Xbox Live Arcade beat-em-up Castle Crashers, were pleased to hear that the upcoming Left 4 Dead DLC will be free, coveted Pac-Man ghost lamps that we don't think actually exist, and, as linked before and most wonderfully, revealed that four Giant Robot artists and four indie game all-stars will be creating four new games to be publicly unveiled at a San Francisco exhibition at the end of GDC.

Syuzi Pakhchyan, author of Fashioning Technology, will be hosting a soft circuit workshop in Los Angeles on February 22!

The first half of the workshop will be an overview of different conductive textiles and threads available commercially as well as a demo of a variety of soft switches, sensors and controls. For the second part of the workshop, we will be deconstructing an electronic toy and using it to create a wearable. The wearable will be constructed using soft circuit techniques introduced earlier in the class. The class should be casual and fun. Sunday, February 22nd, 11-4pm

Soft Circuits Workshop
Sunday, February 22nd, 11-4pm
972B Chung King Road
Limit: 12 people
Fee: $50
Material Requirements: Simple Electronic Toy, Garment (T-shirt, Sweatshirt, etc) for wearable

From the Maker Shed:

Buy Fashioning Technology by Syuzi Pakhchyan in the Maker Shed today!

This book demonstrates how to blend sewing and assembly techniques with traditional electronics to assemble simple circuits using conductive thread, solder joints for snaps, and switches for buttons. With the sewing machine as a viable substitute for the soldering iron, you can craft a new generation of objects that are interactive, quirky, and fashion-conscious.

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willclem writes "According to Reuters, it seems that Cuba has launched it's own variation of Linux in order to fulfill it's government's desire to replace Microsoft operating systems. "Getting greater control over the informatic process is an important issue," said Communications Minister Ramiro Valdes, who heads a commission pushing Cuba's migration to free software."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At the TED conference last week, Gever Tulley gave a three-minute talk about his Tinkering School, a summer program that he's created for kids. He's created a comic-book version of his talk on tinkeringschool.com.

Gever's on to something with his comic-book format. He adds:

The idea of converting a presentation to a comic book has been floating around in my head for a couple of years. I feel like it’s working and seems to capture more of the feeling of the presentation than a slide-deck with speaker’s notes.

Comic-book formats could be used more for presenting or teaching practical skills and techniques.

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We've been pointing out for some time that any business that relies on traditional display advertising to make money is in for a world of hurt because almost no one pays attention to those ads. There's a simple reason for this: they're not at all relevant or useful. They're often annoying. And, most importantly, they're not what anyone is on a page to see. When people surf to a web page, they're looking for the useful content -- and most advertising is not useful content.

This seems rather obvious, but it hasn't stopped some folks who tend to rely on such bad display advertising from trying to rationalize why that market is rapidly shrinking. The NY Times quotes MSNBC.com's president, Charles Tillinghast, who says the real reason that display advertising is drying up is because the IAB agreed to standard sizes for display advertisements earlier this decade. To him, that meant that the display ads were distributed everywhere via ad networks, creating over-supply and commoditization, driving down prices.

While I don't deny that there may be an oversupply -- I doubt that a more limited supply would have made a big difference. The problem isn't with the supply. It's with the demand. Most people don't want such useless advertising, so they ignore it (sometimes with help from Adblock). If you want to make advertising work, the issue isn't getting rid of standardization, or worrying about commoditization, it's about making the advertisements into good content that people actually want to participate with, rather than annoying "ads" that they want to avoid.

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Open source hardware club ships Gumstix-based handheld - huh, sort of a build to order BugLabs...

An open source hacker community has launched an online store to sell home-made gizmos, including a GPS-equipped baseboard (pictured) for the Linux-ready Gumstix Verdex processor module. GizmoForYou builds custom gadgets according to members suggestions, and sells the open-spec devices online, says the group.

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GovTechGuy writes "The federal government is on the verge of reaching an agreement with YouTube that would allow agencies to make official use of the popular video-sharing service. A coalition of federal agencies led by the General Service Administration's Office of Citizen Services has been negotiating with Google, YouTube's parent company, since summer 2008 on new terms that would allow agencies to establish their own channels on the site. Agencies have not been able to post videos to YouTube (although many already have) because, under the current terms of service, people who post content is subject to their state's liable laws. Federal agencies must adhere to federal law. On Tuesday, government officials said the negotiations were "very close" to being completed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Straight out of the 2005 archives, the Mod Your Rod special section in MAKE Volume 03 has got to be one of my favorites of all time. The section opener folds out to reveal the cool illustration above (by the super-talented Nik Schultz).

James Bond depended on Q to trick out his cars. But with MAKE's guide to car hacking, you'll learn how to turn your ride into a fully loaded, grease-eating, MP3-blasting, wi-fi transmitting monster machine.

The five projects in this section:

HACKABLE PLATFORM ON WHEELS: Damien Stolarz teaches you how to install a computer and a relay box for throwing switches to control almost every component in your car, from the power windows to the engine, even when you're not in it. (Plus, read how Matt Turner installed a Mac mini in his VW to make the Macswagen.)

UBER TESTER: Dave Mathews walks you through making your own 9V-powered, handheld, 4-in-1 car wiring diagnostic system.

STOMPBOX MOBILE HOTSPOT: Tor Amundson offers up step-by-steps on turning your car into a wi-fi hotspot and then takes it further to use GPS and webcam input to map your location online and auto-generate a photo travelog.

MAKING BIODIESEL: Rob Elam shares the best way to learn how to make your own backyard biodiesel, starting with a one-liter batch.

HARDWIRED IPOD: Cut the static by connecting your iPod to your stereo's aux jack. Damien Stolarz shows you how.

If you don't have this classic back issue, you can pick one up at the Maker Shed. Volume 03 also features everyone's favorite projects: the VCR cat feeder, the Night Lighter 36 spud gun, the Haunted House Controller, and more.

In the Maker Shed:

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Flash video embed above, click "full" icon inside the player to view it large. You can download the MP4 here. Our YouTube channel is here, you can subscribe to our daily video podcast on iTunes here. And here are the archives for Boing Boing Video.

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First things first: The Boing Boing Video episode above is a paid ad for Cheetos. This is the second in a six-part series of security bulletins from the long-lost Communist enclave of Soviet Unterzoegersdorf.

Background on the series is here. This sponsorship allows us to run all of the other BBV episodes we're producing this month ad-free, without commercial interruption.

Neither Cheetos nor Federated Media (the agency that sells our video sponsorships) has seen what we're doing before we air it, and gave us pretty much zero editorial restrictions. With effectively no creative oversight from responsible adults, we went for the most irreverent and ridiculous option we had. That meant monochrom.

IN THIS EPISODE: A suspicious package has arrived in Soviet Unterzoegersdorf via parachute. Matter of national security. S.U.Z.A.K., the Soviet Unterzoegersdorf Academy of Sciences, investigates. The box contains a substance that resembles packing material, but emits a cheesily pleasing odor. Snack, or biological weapon? ENJOYING THE CAPITALIST VIDEO PLEASE, COMRADES.

(Snapshot, inset: This was an iphone pic I took of the two boxes full of Cheetos I shipped to Soviet Unterzoegersdorf earlier this month. FedEx charged me $140 to overnight $10 worth of cheesy snack foods. They were held up in customs for days, because authorities thought we were smuggling drugs. Seriously. We loosely based the ad content around the actual process of getting Cheetos to the monochrom guys.)

Previously: BB Video: (This is an ad) Soviet Unterzoegersdorf, pt. 1 of 6 / Cheetos Boredom Busters.

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