Interesting to compare this film of Balinese life in 1910 with this video of London at around the same time. (Warning: video contains scene with topless people.)

(via Filled With Chocolate Pudding)

Glyn Moody writes "Microsoft has filed a suit against TomTom, 'alleging that the in-car navigation company's devices violate eight of its patents — including three that relate to TomTom's implementation of the Linux kernel.' What's interesting is that the intellectual property lawyer behind the move, Horacio Gutierrez, has just been promoted to the rank of corporate vice president at Microsoft. Is this his way of announcing that he intends going on the attack against Linux?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yehuda Berlinger points out that a board game company in South Africa that has a Cricket-themed board game called "Googly" is suing Google over trademark, claiming that Google's registration of the google.co.za domain name violates its trademark. Of course, as the site writing about the story notes, no moron in a hurry would ever confuse the two (though, I'm unaware of whether or not South Africa accepts the moron in a hurry test for trademarks). My guess is that this is really just a publicity stunt by the board game maker, (correctly) realizing that this little lawsuit would get them some press.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Although it's been years since I've done much papercraft to speak of, it's always been a craftform that's fascinated me. When I was a kid, I used to get those Dover Publication papercraft books, of castles and other historical buildings, and I'd spend countless hours cutting, folding, and gluing. I made an entire Medieval castle and village as a D&D miniature setting. I still have a couple of the buildings, now shabby with age, but they give me little memory tickles, of the countless hours each one represents. They are now part of our family "Island of Misfit Toys," a mantle display of broken, but not forgotten, bits of Christmases past we venerate each year.

Crown Publishing has just published The Paper Architect, an awesome-looking book of fold-it-yourself buildings and structures. It contains 20 structures, including the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower, and the White House. The fine folks at Crown have been kind enough to give us five copies to GIVE AWAY to YOU! To be eligible, just leave a comment in this post. Tell us about some of your favorite papercraft projects or otherwise why you think you NEED this book! Be sure you include your email address in the comment form field (it won't be published). All eligible comments will be closed by 3pm PT Thursday, Feb 26. Winners will be announced on Friday here on the MAKE blog. Good luck!

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Crafts | Digg this!

Slatterz writes "Google has apologised for the two-and-a-half-hour Gmail outage on Tuesday morning, and admitted that the cause was down to data center maintenance. 'Lots of people around the world who rely on Gmail were disrupted during their waking and working hours, and we are very sorry. We did everything we could to restore access as soon as possible, and the issue is now resolved,' said Gmail site reliability manager Acacio Cruz in a blog post. Google had been testing new code designed to keep data geographically closer to its owner, which brought about disruption when maintenance in one data center caused another facility to be overloaded. This had a cascade effect, according to Google, and it took the company an hour to get it back under control."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Roy Blount Jr. is a funny man. He appears regularly on the radio show Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me..., and is one of their funnier panelists. But, unfortunately, I don't think he was joking when he wrote a silly Op-Ed for the NY Times defending the Authors Guild's stance that having a Kindle use text-to-speech to read aloud is somehow a violation under copyright law. Blount, who's the President of the Guild, seem to be arguing not from a legal perspective, but from a "but this is how we want it to be" perspective. That's because he has almost no legal argument at all. Using text-to-speech to read text you legally own aloud is not copyright infringement. It's not a "fixed" version of the material, and it's not a public performance. So, rather than come up with a legal justification for such a ridiculous claim, Blount resorts to this: "audio books are a billion-dollar market."

This is the "but the old way of doing business made us so much money, so any innovation must be illegal" argument. You know what else was a big market at one time? Horse & buggies. And Gramophones. And 8-tracks. But technology made them all obsolete at some point or another, and that wasn't illegal. You don't get to cling to an old business model just because it made you lots of money. Sometimes new technologies come along, and they provide a better experience for people, and the market changes. Already it's a stretch to say that a TTS read-aloud of a book really "competes" with an audio book, but even if it did one day, that doesn't necessarily make it illegal just because Blount and the Authors Guild wishes it were so.

Finally, Blount responds to criticism that the Authors Guild's stance goes against readers for the blind or the ability to read aloud to your kid at night. He basically just says "no, that's not true." But he doesn't explain why. That's because there is no good explanation, based on what the Authors Guild has said concerning "audio rights." Basically, the Authors Guild is trying to pretend copyright says what it wants it to say, rather than what it actually says. And, when people have pointed out examples of how the Authors Guild's interpretation of copyright is bogus, their response is "well, we didn't mean it for that." They are, of course, missing the point. Those examples aren't to show the full impact of what the Authors Guild is claiming. They're to show that the Authors Guild is wrong in what it thinks copyright grants them. For a group of "Authors" they seem to have trouble with basic reading comprehension.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Drummer Josh Freese is offering the ultimate premium for the release of his new solo album:

-Signed CD/DVD and digital download -T-shirt -Go on tour with Josh for a few days. -Have Josh write, record and release a 5 song EP about you and your life story. -Take home any of his drumsets (only one but you can choose which one.) -Take shrooms and cruise Hollywood in Danny from TOOL's Lamborgini OR play quarters and then hop on the Ouija board for a while. -Josh will join your band for a month...play shows, record, party with groupies, etc.... -If you don't have a band he'll be your personal assistant for a month (4 day work weeks, 10 am to 4 pm) -Take a limo down to Tijuana and he'll show you how it's done (what that means exactly we can't legally get into here) -If you don't live in Southern California (but are a US resident) he'll come to you and be your personal assistant/cabana boy for 2 weeks. -Take a flying trapeze lesson with Josh and Robin from NIN, go back to Robin's place afterwards and his wife will make you raw lasagna.

$75,000 (limited edition of 1) (via Kottke)

Bruce Schneier's irregular "Doghouse" column features security companies making risible, redonkulous claims about their technology; the latest gang is from Singularics, who sound like unbalanced saucer-cultists who've spent too much time near the math department of their college:

Our advances in Prime Number Theory have led to a new branch of mathematics called Neutronics. Neutronic functions make possible for the first time the ability to analyze regions of mathematics commonly thought to be undefined, such as the point where one is divided by zero. In short, we have developed a new way to analyze the undefined point at the singularity which appears throughout higher mathematics.

This new analytic technique has given us profound insight into the way that prime numbers are distributed throughout the integers. According to RSA's website, there are over 1 billion licensed instances of RSA public-key encryption in use in the world today. Each of these instances of the prime number based RSA algorithm can now be deciphered using Neutronic analysis. Unlike RSA, Neutronic Encryption is not based on two large prime numbers but rather on the Neutronic forces that govern the distribution of the primes themselves. The encryption that results from Singularic's Neutronic public-key algorithm is theoretically impossible to break.

The Doghouse: Singularics

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,

This is a bit unconventional, but I have launched a front-port campaign to be nominated Public Printer of the United States. I'm inspired by Gus Geigengack, a working printer who convinced FDR to name him to the post.

I am thrilled to have such a distinguished committee backing my efforts, including the Honorable Cory Doctorow and the Honorable Mark Frauenfelder from Boing Boing.

To endorse my nomination, simply comment on any blog post (like this one!), tweet me, or send me email. The endorsements will be harvested, set into a book, and released as a free PDF file with paper copies dispatched to the White House Office of Personnel.

Thank you for your support.

Yes We Scan

My latest Make column is up, "Love the Machine, Hate the Factory," written for the steampunk theme issue:

For me, the biggest appeal to steampunk is that it exalts the machine and disparages the factory (this is the motto of the excellent and free *Steampunk* magazine: "Love the Machine, Hate the Factory"). It celebrates the elaborate inventions of the scientifically managed enterprise, but imagines those machines coming from individuals who are their own masters. Steampunk doesn't rail against efficiency -- but it never puts efficiency ahead of self-determination. If you're going to raise your workbench to spare your back, that's *your* decision, not something imposed on you from the top down.

Love the Machine, Hate the Factory

MajikJon writes "After strong sales of the straight-to-DVD Futurama movies, Fox is reportedly considering bringing back Futurama for a 6th season. This according to Billy West in a recent statement at the Anime Supercon in Florida. Here's me with my fingers crossed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

And it arrived today.



Just beginning to figure it out.

Do I have to pay to read my own blog?

And if so, who gets the money?

I don't recall receiving any checks from Amazon.

Goatbert writes "I just read on the Consumerist about an XBOX Live user being banned for identifying herself as a lesbian. Despite appeals, Microsoft has stood by its position that merely mentioning that you are gay or lesbian is grounds for terminating your XBOX Live membership."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MusicFIRST, a recording industry lobbying group that already has some controversy surrounding it due to contributions from groups not allowed to be involved in lobbying, is continuing to push forward with its campaign to claim that radio is a kind of piracy and demanding legislation that forces radio stations to pay extra to play music. For most of the history of radio, radio stations have paid songwriters and publishers royalties for playing music on the radio, but they didn't pay the musicians (really: the record labels). In fact, the money often (illegally) went in the other direction, with the labels paying the radio stations to play certain artists to help promote them.

However, these days, with the recording industry unable to adapt to the changing marketplace, they've taken to demanding that others (individuals, ISPs, video games, Apple, webcasters, etc...) simply give them money instead. Their latest target, of course, is radio stations. It started with that silly claim that radio is a form of piracy -- then advanced to a bill, being introduced by a Congressional Rep, John Conyers (whose last campaign was heavily funded by those connected to the labels and this lobbying group), to force radio stations to pay the record labels as well.

MusicFIRST's latest effort was to drag its dog and pony show to Congress, where it paraded a bunch of musicians in front of Congresscritters to whine about how unfair it was that radio stations helped promote their music without paying them. Of course, it looks like MusicFIRST should have talked to the musicians a bit more carefully first. One of the musicians they trotted out, Matt Maher, less than 24 hours before going before Congress, noted on his Twitter account how such royalties could hurt radio stations and worried that it would cause some stations to shut down. Apparently, someone went a bit off the reservation and made exactly the opposite point that MusicFIRST wanted him to make....

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Facetious writes "It seems Microsoft doesn't believe the data from Net Applications regarding Linux any more than Slashdot readers do. In a recent presentation, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed a slide showing, from Microsoft's internal analysis, that Linux client use is clearly ahead of Apple's."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are the archives for Boing Boing Video.

---

Today's episode of Boing Boing Video is an excerpt from Concrete TV, a long-running NYC public access show and video art project that remixes vintage television, movie, and "found video" clips in a non-narrative collage form. The resulting remixes are set to music, and create an experience that is alternately hypnotic, dreamy, and disturbing for the viewer. A DVD retrospective of 18 long-form Concrete TV episodes is available for purchase online, with "over 9 hours of sex, art, and violence." Special thanks from Boing Boing to Ron "Concrete Ron" Rocheleau, the creator, director, and producer of this legendary video art project. More info and DVD purchase links here, site contains some NSFW content (we've edited this Boing Boing Video excerpt to remove sexually explicit material, but there are some scantily clad hotties dancing around).

California's biggest cash crop is marijuana. San Francisco assemblyman Tom Ammiano wants to legalize it and tax it to help relieve some of the state's financial woes. From the Los Angeles Times:

"I know the jokes are going to be coming, but this is not a frivolous issue," said Ammiano, a Democrat elected in November after more than a dozen years as a San Francisco supervisor. "California always takes the lead -- on gay marriage, the sanctuary movement, medical marijuana..."

Ammiano's measure, AB 390, would essentially replicate the regulatory structure used for beer, wine and hard liquor, with taxed sales barred to anyone under 21.

The natural world would benefit, too, from the uprooting of environmentally destructive backcountry pot plantations that denude fragile ecosystems, Ammiano said.

But the biggest boon might be to the bottom line. By some estimates, California's pot crop is a $14-billion industry, putting it above vegetables ($5.7 billion) and grapes ($2.6 billion). If so, that could mean upward of $1 billion in tax revenue for the state each year.

"Taxing pot could become a political toking point"

A bunch of folks have sent in an article from the latest issue of Wired Magazine about Warner Music's fight with the publishers of music video games, Rock Band and Guitar Hero. To be honest, the article doesn't cover much more ground than stories from last year, when Warner Music's Edgar Bronfman Jr. first demanded more money from the game publishers. But, it does include one juicy tidbit. After reposting Bronfman's silly quote demanding more money:

"In response, Rock Band publisher MTV Games is now boycotting Warner artists, according to a source close to the negotiations."

This is yet another example (in an increasingly long line) of how Warner Music's recent actions have done plenty to harm its artists. You may recall that a similarly ridiculous whine from Warner Music execs that YouTube wasn't paying enough money resulted in YouTube pulling all Warner Music videos from the site, pissing off many Warner Music artists. Other reports have noted that if musicians were blocked from getting their music in these video games, they might look to move to other labels as well.

And, of course, Warner Music's fight with the video game publishers is doubly stupid. Reports have shown that having your music in one of those games greatly increases sales of the music itself. So... the end result? Pissed off musicians who get less people hearing and interacting with and buying the music. It's amazing that Warner stays in business at all, with management foresight like that.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

krou writes "It may not be exactly what people have envisioned or tried over the years, such as the flying car in Bladerunner, or the previously reported Terrafugia Transition, but the BBC is reporting that a flying car (creatively dubbed the Skycar, but different from this Skycar) has flown from London across into Africa. They modified a parajet fan that can fly a man into a bigger fan with a canopy that is capable of flying a car."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "The president of the Authors Guild has launched a rant in the NY Times about how the Kindle 2 provides Text-to-Speech capabilities that, oh the horror, allow the user to have any text on the Kindle read to her. Roy Blunt, Jr. moans that this is copyright infringement of audio books, and that Kindle users should be forced to pay royalties on audio even though they've already paid for the text version of a book! Amazingly he harps on about how TTS technology has become so good that it may replace humans — and then uses this to argue that it's unfair for Kindle to provide TTS! I think the Authors Guild need a new president — someone less of a Luddite, and more familiar with copyright law." (See also the Guild's executive director's similar claims that reading aloud, royalty-free, is an illegal function of software.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jennifer says:

Slate just published a special series from Timothy Noah about why America hasn’t been attacked since 9/11. For over six weeks, Noah studied literature and interviewed terrorism experts about why the dire predictions of a 9/11 sequel proved untrue. He concludes that it’s impossible to answer with certainty, but he comes up with eight theories—ranging from fairly reassuring to deeply worrying—on why we haven’t been attacked.

Beginning today and over the next seven days, Noah will explain one theory a day. Today he examines the “Terrorists-Are-Dumb” theory.

Why America Hasn’t Been Attacked Since 9/11

One of the early business models we had suggested for the recording industry way back in 2003 was the idea of letting fans "subscribe" to a band -- giving them all sorts of benefits, while still making the music itself free. The idea was that you would effectively join an exclusive club, that would get you access in one way or another. It's been surprising that we haven't seen this sort of business model take off all that much, with most of the success stories so far focusing on tiered album release plans. However, it looks like Apple is moving just a little bit towards such a "subscription" offering, with its experimental "iTunes Pass" solution for the latest Depeche Mode release.

It is, as always, great to see new experiments in terms of music business models -- but, again, this one seems to get the business model backwards. Effectively, Apple and the band (or, rather, its label) are asking Depeche Mode fans to pay $9 extra for some vague promises of future benefits that aren't at all defined. And, all of it seems to be focused around the digital content (the stuff that people are a lot less interested in paying for, and which can be used -- for free -- to promote more scarce parts of a business model). Also, the "pass" isn't much of a subscription, since it only lasts for a few months. I'm sure some diehard fans will pony up, but it's not exactly a compelling reason to buy at all.

To design a good subscription plan, you could simply let anyone get the pure music for free, but offer tiered yearly plans that provide extra benefits: earlier access to the content (get the latest single before your friends!), access to a private chat room that the band actually hangs out in, opportunities to buy tickets to shows before anyone else, a chance to win backstage passes to meet the band, and (my personal favorite) an opportunity to win a private show or a "backyard" concert. Then, the more the music is out there and enjoyed, the more worthwhile it is for fans to sign up to this program. Will there be free riders? Absolutely. Will there be more free riders than members? Probably. Does it matter? Not at all. Because you'll have a situation where everyone is happy. The band is making more money than before, the band has more fans than before with more people listening to their music, and the band's true fans are more closely connected to the band. And, oh yeah, no one's suing anyone or demanding payment. It's really not that difficult.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Here's another remote dog feeder, this one using an IOBridge I/O module to handle the networking and a simple servo-controlled dispenser made from a compact disc.

iPhone enabled internet dog feeder

More:

• Internet dog feeder
• HOW TO - The Internet Dog Feeder

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Gadgets | Digg this!

nandemoari writes "Microsoft has warned users that yet another critical vulnerability has been found in its popular Office spreadsheet program Excel. The flaw could allow remote hackers to open and run malicious code on an unsuspecting user's computer through an infected spreadsheet file. Products affected include Office 2000, Office 2002, Office 2003, Office 2007, Office 2004 for Mac, Office 2008 for Mac, and the Open XML File Format Converter for Mac."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In 2000, Elaine Davidson received a Guinness World Record for having 462 body piercings with almost half in her face. Now, she has more than 6,000 body piercings. From The Telegraph:

She said: "I don't enjoy getting pierced, but to break the record you have to get to a high level...

"My family don't even like tattoos or piercings.

"But I am happy. I decided to change myself and be me."

"World's most pierced woman adds to her collection" (The Telegraph, via Fortean Times), More photos of Davidson at BMEzine

Microsoft's increasing regulatory headache from the European Commission concerns its Internet Explorer browser that comes standard with Windows. We've said before that this investigation is prima facie silly given the vibrant and increasing competition in the browser market, but it looks like things are just going to get worse for Microsoft. First, it was Mozilla deciding to complain that Microsoft was creating an unhealthy browser market by bundling IE with Windows. Now, Google is jumping onto the bandwagon and arguing that Microsoft's policy limits competition and harms innovation.

This is primarily problematic because the browser market is anything but uncompetitive. Firefox has created what is widely considered a better product, and, wouldn't you know it, gained considerable market share around the world (as high as 30% in some regions). More recently, Google introduced its own browser, Chrome, that launched to accolades and much user adoption. By introducing regulators into the browser market, these companies will all be distracted from providing users with the best possible product.

But what's even more confounding is Google's involvement. Obviously the company desires control of most browsers so it can set the defaults in its favor, but it is increasingly obvious that Google should not be bringing regulatory attention to the Internet -- especially when it comes to antitrust questions. Although claims of Google's "monopoly" are as specious as Internet Explorer's, making noise about antitrust is likely to come back and bite Google, especially given the rising number of political enemies they have.

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

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

stoolpigeon writes "The geek world is dominated by those of the male persuasion. For those of us working in a technology related field, or who spend a considerable amount of time pursuing high tech leisure, we usually find women to be in the minority. I've seen considerable discussion over the years on how to change this imbalance but I think it is safe to say that right now that it remains. Many women are interested in using technology, they just don't want to dive in to quite the same depth. Or they may not be interested in the way most men approach it. Columnist and tech-writer Christina Tynan-Wood has attempted to come to their rescue with her book How To Be A Geek Goddess." Read below for the rest of JR's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Announcing our new bundles available exclusively in the Maker Shed. This time it's our Learn to solder bundle. This bundle includes a bunch of great products that will get you on your way to being a soldering pro in no time. Keep an eye out for a lot more great bundles exclusively in the Maker Shed.

The Learn to solder bundle includes:

• (1) Learn to Solder Kit $14.95 value
  
• (1) Solder Practice Kit $9.95 value
  
• (1) Maker's Notebook $19.99 value
  
• (1) MAKE Volume 01 $14.99 value (featuring a learn to solder article)
  

All of these items are bundled together for the discounted price of $39.95. That's more than 30% off if you were to purchase them individually.

More about the Learn to solder bundle in the Maker Shed

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Maker Shed Store | Digg this!

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. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are the archives for Boing Boing Video.

---

A disclaimer for the capitalist entertainment pellet above: This Boing Boing Video episode is a paid ad for Cheetos. This is also the 4th in a 6-part series of security bulletins from the long-lost Communist enclave of Soviet Unterzoegersdorf.

IN THIS EPISODE:

After eating most of analyzing the delicious, crunchy contents of a mysterious box parachuted in to Soviet Unterzoegersdorf by unknown forces, our agents realize that they have been duped into participating in an internet viral marketing campaign.

Meet the agents in person: On March 7, monochrom will be in San Francisco for a release party celebrating an upcoming game based on the alternate universe of Soviet However-You-Spell-It. Details here. Their game has nothing to do with Boing Boing Video's Cheetos sponsorship campaign, per se, and Cheetos is not a sponsor of the game. But these guys tend to incorporate weird bits of reality into everything they do -- so, it's entirely possible that Cheetos will appear in the game anyway. Or not. Whatever. They're meta like that. Snip:

Let the proletarians sing with joy! Let us celebrate a glorious triumph! We will release Part II of the Soviet Unterzoegersdorf 2D adventure game for free download!

//// Speech and demonstration by His Excellency Commissar Nikita Perostek Chrusov
/// Science fair of Soviet Technology
// Cake and live music
/ Political dissenters will be dealt with.

The computer game is a tribute to the proud yet imperiled republic of Soviet Unterzoegersdorf (pronounced «oon-taa-tsee-gars-doorf»), the last existing appendage republic of the USSR. The tiny enclave maintains no diplomatic relationship with the surrounding "Republic of Austria" or with the Fortress "European Union".

The downfall of her motherland -- the Soviet Union -- in the early 1990s had a particularly bad effect on the country’s economic situation. Now the picturesque communist state is facing a serious lack of resources, lack of space, and lack of population. To make matters worse, party secretary Wladislav Gomulka was kidnapped and brought to US-Oberzoegersdorf. We must use every tool at our disposal to rescue Gomulka! Including plenty of classified soviet technology, a proud tradition of bureaucracy, the recognition of North Korea, and a pond full of radioactive byproduct.

Background on the series here. All other BBV episodes we're producing this month are ad-free.

Previously:
* BB Video: (This is an ad) Soviet Unterzoegersdorf, pt. 1 of 6 / Cheetos Boredom Busters.
* BB Video: (This is an ad) Soviet Unterzoegersdorf, pt. 2 of 6 / Cheetos Boredom Busters.
* BB Video: (This is an ad) Soviet Unterzoegersdorf, pt. 3 of 6 / Cheetos Boredom Busters.

Not pictured above: a Make: television cameraman (or John Park for that matter). Why would we ever expect any camerman in his/her right mind to risk life, limb, or most importantly, expensive video recording equipment for the sake of some jumpy footage of a roller coaster in action?

In this week's Maker Workshop segment of Make: television, John Park uses an Arduino microcontroller and a hacked Wii controller to make a Personal Flight Recorder... which is, of course, perfect for measuring the stomach-churning G forces of roller coasters like the one pictured above.

Fortunately, this slightly less frightening roller coaster also expels a healthy amount of G forces. And thanks to the steady hands of our camerman Mike Phillips (seated on the coaster conveniently right under the big yellow arrow), we have a very watchable, non-stomach-churning Maker Workshop segment to prove it.

Visit makezine.tv this Saturday, 2/28 to see Episode 9 featuring CCRMA's Computer Making Music and the Personal Flight Recorder.

Check out all of the previous episodes at www.makezine.tv/episodes

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Make: television | Digg this!

Today, February 25, 2009, is the date on which Tibetan New Year -- Losar -- begins. Many Tibetan exiles around the world are observing Losar in a different manner this year. Some are forgoing traditional observances to instead protest human rights abuses by the Chinese government inside Tibet. There are reports that Chinese authorites are effectively making Losar celebrations inside Tibet compulsory, and reactions have led to violent clashes.

Some links to coverage: a post about civil disobedience today from the exiled Tibetan poet Woeser. In the LA Times, China expects Tibet to celebrate, or else -- snip:

On Feb. 14, a 39-year-old Tibetan monk set off a furor when he walked through a public market in the Tibetan plateau's Lithang county carrying a photograph of the Dalai Lama and chanting, "No Losar." Hundreds of people reportedly joined the protests, which continued into the next two days, according to the Dharamsala-based Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy. The group said that Chinese police detained 21 people, some of whom were badly beaten, and that the county has been locked down for the holiday.

Reports say that as many as 20,000 additional soldiers and paramilitary troops have been deployed in Tibetan areas and that in Qinghai province, village leaders were threatened with arrest if they urged people not to celebrate the holiday.

Even among Tibetans, there is a vigorous debate about the campaign to boycott Losar. The holiday, which dates back to pre-Buddhist times, is the most beloved in the Tibetan calendar and involves elaborate rituals and meals. Families traditionally make a soup with special dumplings in which they hide various items -- chile pepper, wool, charcoal -- and family members read their fortune by which dumpling they pick.

More news: Wary Tibetans set for muted New Year celebrations [Reuters article reposted on Phayul, a Tibetan news portal], and Students for a Free Tibet have daily updates from Hong Kong now via Skype. One of their episodes is embedded above. (thanks, Oxblood)

A new study suggests that thinking quickly can boost your mood. It's not clear precisely why this is the case, but it seems that people believe that fast thinking is a sign of a good mood. Also, thinking quickly might trigger the brain's dopamine system which is tied to pleasure. From Scientific American Mind: Researchers at Princeton and Harvard universities made research participants think quickly by having them generate as many problem-solving ideas (even bad ones) as possible

in 10 minutes, read a series of ideas on a computer screen at a brisk pace or watch an I Love Lucy video clip on fast-forward. Other participants performed similar tasks at a relaxed speed.

Results suggested that thinking fast made participants feel more elated, creative and, to a lesser degree, energetic and powerful. Activities that promote fast thinking, then, such as whip­ping through an easy crossword puzzle or brain-storming quickly about an idea, can boost energy and mood, says psychologist Emily Pronin, the study’s lead author.

"Rapid Thinking Makes People Happy"

mmmscience writes "Researchers at UCLA have accomplished a task that has long vexed stem cell researchers: They've created the first electronically active neurons from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. This is a great leap forward for stem cell researchers, who can apply these neurons to the study of neurodegenerative diseases."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

RIP, Philip Jose Farmer, one of the great, towering talents of science fiction, the man whose Riverworld books transported me farther than any other sf I'd read at that point.

Philip José Farmer passed away peacefully in his sleep this morning.

He will be missed greatly by his wife Bette, his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, friends and countless fans around the world.

January 26, 1918 - February 25, 2009. R.I.P.

We love you Phil.

The Official Philip José Farmer Home Page (via MeFi)

I have 18K followers on Twitter. Probably twice that here on the blog. With that many people tuned in no matter what I say someone will be offended.

If I say the weather is nice, someone will say I'm not being sensitive to people who live where the weather is bad.

I could say I'm getting a cold, people who have cancer say I'm being insensitive.

Does everyone have to adopt every point of view one hundred percent of the time? Of course not. There are six billion people. Do the math. We'd all blow up if we tried. None of us are god, not even the President of the United States (who btw gave a fantastic speech last night). If I called the President and said "Mr. President great speech but last night you were insensitive to the plight of people like me," do you think I'd get past the White House switchboard? "Send us an email so we can file it with the 100 million others we get every day."

Insensitive! Sure. And necessary.

I've been writing publicly for a long time, so I've had plenty of time to think about being insensitive. People have accused me of it for 15 years. Since I was one of the first to blog, my sin is original, legendary, unique. The reason I hear so much of it, I've concluded, is that I'm accessible. If you send me an email and it doesn't get trapped in a spam filter somewhere (try leaving out the links) I will read it. You can reach me. I'm an icon to enough people, a reason to hate or object or be offended, and unlike other human objects, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, The Dalai Lama, or Pope Benedict -- I will read what you say. They probably get 10000 times more angst than I do, but most of it doesn't reach them.

When I started out I thought -- I'm going to do it differently, I'm really going to say what I think all the time. Bad idea.

Now when I get one of these emails or tweets or blog comments, I've learned not to respond with what I really think.

A friend of a friend runs a major independent film festival. You'd know its name. People ask all the time what he thinks of their movie. He never says. He always waffles, finds something about the movie that's praiseworthy. "I thought the scenery was fantastic!" or "The wardrobe person should win an Oscar" when he really thinks "This thing is a dog." He's learned, as I have, that people don't actually want to know what you think -- they want you to like it, to give them support, time, money, to think like they think, to see the world through their eyes, to give words of encouragement so everyone can see how wonderful they are because this wonderful person thought so.

I've learned if I say nothing that gets me the least angst. So that's what I usually do, say nothing. And every time I do it, my blood pressure goes up a teeny bit, and another hair either falls out or goes gray. Or maybe it goes gray and then falls out.

Last night the President said we need to assume responsibility. People who bought stock in a bank that is now underwater (liabilities greater than assets) have worthless stock. These banks must go into receivership, the worthless assets removed, and a new company launched, probably with the same name, and new stock issued, and sold to the public. That is what must happen for the financial system to reboot. Very little will be lost, since the stock of two main banks, Citi and BofA, are now worth a total of $36 billion. We, you and I, have already spent much more than that to try to get them stabilized and we will have to pay even more. Next time the shareholders get taken out. If they don't want it to happen, quickly find a management team that can make the math work without the people bailing you out. There is no third way.

Insentive to the shareholders? Perhaps. But they're not the only ones who matter. There are the depositors, the voters and taxpayers, other banks that aren't insolvent. Students who need loans to go to school. Hospitals who need credit to make payroll. Etc etc and on and on. On a scale of one to ten being sensitive to the needs of BofA shareholders isn't even on the scale, it's such a small number it's impossible to measure.

When I needed heart surgery in 2002 and the doctor told me my life was over if I didn't get it, you might say he was being insensitive, but he was telling me something that I knew was true that I needed to hear. Three days later after the surgery, recouperating, the surgeon told me if I resumed smoking I would be dead in three years. Again, insensitive (he said it with a smile on his face believe it or not), but I'm glad he said it. The way he said it made it easier to quit. Sometimes the truth hurts. You can't blame people for saying things they believe, even if it hurts you to hear it.

Bottom line: All adults have issues to deal with. These are trying times for everyone, and some more than others, for sure. But your problems are yours and mine are mine and you're not responsible for mine and vice versa.

PS: I liked that the President, up front, referred to us as "the men and women who sent us here." Nothing abstract about that. We're not The American People, or poll numbers, or users (who generate content), all of which are ways of making all of us inhuman. If you want people to be responsible adults, begin the pitch by calling them "men and women." Works for me.

PPS: Reminds me of a moment on Diane Rehm's radio show a few years back. Some pundit said her listeners wouldn't understand some reasonably obvious idea. She interrupted and said basically "Bullshit, my people are smart and educated and that's basic stuff." I yelled out loud to the radio "Right on!" -- I totally understood what the guy was talking about. I am extremely well educated and well-read. You have to try a lot harder if you want to stump me.

Named for Lou Reed's "challenging" solo album, Metal Machine Music is a new DVD documentary about the history of industrial music from its birth in the 1970s through the commercial success of Nine Inch Nails. According to an article on alt.sounds, the 2.5+ hour disc includes interviews and rare footage from Throbbing Gristle. Cabaret Voltaire, Depeche Mode, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, NiN, and others. One of the DVD "extras" is an extended interview with Genesis P-Orrdige about his creative roots. I can't wait to see this! From alt.sounds:

The likes of Genesis P.Orridge and Throbbing Gristle in London, Cabaret Voltaire in Sheffield however, were... performing a UK brand of what would soon be termed ‘industrial’, and these seeds collectively not only assisted and influenced the rapid rise of that period’s Punk assault, they also moved electronic music into a new era. This new era would run its own course and influence greatly an American drift in the mid-1980s towards a home-grown, danceable variety of electro-industrial rock, with the remarkable Nine Inch Nails at its heart and soul.

Metal Machine Music: Nine Inch Nails and the Industrial Uprising

It's been quite a week or so for people with fancy titles and no actual evidence to spout off about just how evil and dangerous social networks are. First, there was the totally ridiculous claim that Facebook could increase your likelihood of cancer. Then, there was the news that using Twitter meant you had no identity, and now a "professor of synaptic pharmacology" is claiming that Facebook and Twitter are threatening to "infantalize" our brains. This is based on what... exactly? Well, it appears nothing more than a hunch. There isn't any actual evidence presented, and some of the facts appear to just be wrong. For example, she claims that these services mean kids read fewer books, and that means they'll empathize less. Well, there are a couple problems with that... such as the recent research that showed that people are reading more books than in the past. And... I'm curious as to the proof that actually communicating with real human beings online is less likely to create empathy than reading fictional books?

Oddly, while she complains about less empathy due to less reading, she then complains about people showing empathy via social networks, saying that social networks encourage bad behavior by providing people "constant reassurance -- that you are listened to, recognised, and important." Confused? You're not the only one. Then she pulls out the same old line that's been trotted out for years about how since these interactions are all online (gasp!) they seem to count less... and somehow that will lead people to no longer want to interact in person. This is an argument we've heard for over 15 years online, and it's never been supported by the slightest evidence to back it up. Most people who actually use the internet to communicate have found that it's increased opportunities to meet and talk to people in person, not diminished them. It's amazing how many experts can be trotted out who so fear a technology it's clear they've not really used it very much.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

---

Visual Studio Team System helps teams of every size collaborate better for faster app development. Learn More at microsoft.com/defyallchallenges/team

Brooklyn’s new culinary movement - a lot of handmade action and guys with turn of the century beard action, industry is seeping back - and it's starting with food it seems...

These Brooklynites, most in their 20s and 30s, are hand-making pickles, cheeses and chocolates the way others form bands and artists’ collectives. They have a sense of community and an appreciation for traditional methods and flavors. They also share an aesthetic that’s equal parts 19th and 21st century, with a taste for bold graphics, salvaged wood and, for the men, scruffy beards.

Rick Mast, 32, said he and his brother were initially attracted to the borough because it was cheaper than Manhattan. “But now I think the real draw is the creativity,” he said. “In Brooklyn, to be into food is do it yourself, to get your hands dirty, to roll up your sleeves. You want to peek in the kitchen in the back, as opposed to being served in the front.” ....

The Brooklyn Kitchen carries major brands, but it is the sole retailer for knives from Cut Brooklyn, a local specialty knife maker.

“It’s difficult to keep those guys stocked,” said Joel Bukiewicz, Cut Brooklyn’s owner and solitary employee. “It’s like sweeping a dirt floor.”

Maybe that’s because Mr. Bukiewicz takes 10 to 12 hours to fashion one eight-inch chef’s knife. In an average week he will make between four and six knives. He first learned how to make hunting knives in Georgia, and started creating kitchen knives in his small Gowanus workshop in 2007.

“There’s an appreciation here for craftsmanship and people who work with their hands,” Mr. Bukiewicz said. “I had no idea there was going to be this convergence of artists, artisans and food culture in Brooklyn.”

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!

Here's a great how-to on building a "liquid fueled" rocket using little more than a fat Sharpie marker, a can of compressed air, and a few more supplies found down on the Cube Farm. The resulting rocket can fly up to 75 feet!

But hey there, John Glenn of the IT Department, BE CAREFUL! This is actually a project you don't want to take lightly. Launch it outdoors, wear safety goggles, don't "burn" yourself on the compressed air (it's *very* cold). Generally, be smart, and use common sense whenever dealing with any type of projectile and components under pressure.

What you need:
A Sharpie
Canned Air
Electrical Tape (Substitute Packing Tape)
Ball Point Pen
Rubber Band
Bottle Cap
Leatherman

The innards are removed from the Sharpie and a port for the canned air tube is fashioned from a ball point pen tube and secured to the thrust end of the rocket.

The fins are made from electrical tape.

Plug the compressed air into the port on the business end the rocket, fill will gas from the can, and... BLAST OFF!

TIP: On the Comments to this Instructable, a maker suggests cutting off the bell-shaped end of another Sharpie and adding it to the thrust end of your rocket to form a De Laval nozzle for better thrust performance.

See the full Instructable for more details.

---

Editor's Note: We're extremely pleased that Cheetos is a sponsor on MAKE! Each week, we have a fun "Take a Break with Cheetos" sponsored post for part of the day, only the links below are part of the campaign - we're going to have fun with this! This week was a blast with office supplies! - Gareth

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Flying | Digg this!

This video appears to show a large snake regurgitating a small hippo that it was unable to digest. (Thanks, Tara McGinley!)

Since 1939, scientists have thought the "barreleye" fish Macropinna microstoma had "tunnel vision" due to eye that were fixed in place. Now though, Monterey Bay Aquarium researchers show that the fish actually has a transparent head and the eyes rotate around inside of it. From the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute:

(Bruce) Robison and (Kim) Reisenbichler used video from MBARI's remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to study barreleyes in the deep waters just offshore of Central California. At depths of 600 to 800 meters (2,000 to 2,600 feet) below the surface, the ROV cameras typically showed these fish hanging motionless in the water, their eyes glowing a vivid green in the ROV's bright lights. The ROV video also revealed a previously undescribed feature of these fish--its eyes are surrounded by a transparent, fluid-filled shield that covers the top of the fish's head.

Most existing descriptions and illustrations of this fish do not show its fluid-filled shield, probably because this fragile structure was destroyed when the fish were brought up from the deep in nets. However, Robison and Reisenbichler were extremely fortunate--they were able to bring a net-caught barreleye to the surface alive, where it survived for several hours in a ship-board aquarium. Within this controlled environment, the researchers were able to confirm what they had seen in the ROV video--the fish rotated its tubular eyes as it turned its body from a horizontal to a vertical position.

"Researchers solve mystery of deep-sea fish with tubular eyes and transparent head" (Thanks, Justin Ried!)

An anonymous reader writes "I have been in a software engineering position at a large company for approximately seven years. Recently, for a variety of reasons, I accepted a new job working for a local software company. I have given my employer three weeks' notice, instead of the standard two, as a courtesy. In return, it has been implied that, in spite my record of above-average performance appraisals and promotions, I will be marked as leaving the company 'on bad terms' if I refuse to extend my departure date further. With only three weeks remaining, I am hesitant to rock the boat by contacting our HR department, but this concerns me and seems like an extremely unethical practice. I live in an 'at-will' employment state, so I know that they have no legal recourse to keep me. I am concerned about the references they could give in the future; having spent a large majority of my career at this company, I will be dependent on them for references to verify my career experience. Has anyone ever run into this kind of situation before?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

oomlout is a rising star in the OSH world, check out their kit that is under development. For the OSH biz geeks - think about how interesting it will be to "license" their design, instead of just being a reseller - you'd download their files, laser cut up some stuff, print some labels and now you're a distributor (assuming you stock parts and Arduinos). It's the future kids! You'll route around paying atom-tax shipping goods around!

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

Warner Music has led the way for the big record labels to combat any innovation: it tends to sue every new startup that does anything remotely innovative with music, and as part of any "settlement" demands they either shut down or give a big equity stake to Warner Music. It's extortion by lawsuit -- and it's designed to prevent any sort of innovation. However, it looks like EMI is quickly following suit. Despite its new (non record industry) owners who declared that it was time for EMI to take a new approach to the industry, and even hiring some tech industry hotshots, the company just can't stop suing small innovative startups. It's sued MP3Tunes for letting people store and listen to their own, legally purchased music. It's sued Hi5 and VideoEgg for having user-uploaded videos that include music -- despite the DMCA's safe harbors that remove liability from them.

Even worse, however, is EMI's habit of trying to drag other parties into the lawsuit. For example, in the MP3Tunes lawsuit, beyond suing just the company, EMI sued founder Michael Robertson personally. The latest case is another example of that. EMI has sued both Seeqpod and Favtape. EMI is a bit behind Warner Music on this one. Warner sued Seeqpod last year. Favtape is similar to a number of other rather useful online services for creating playlists. It actually uses Seeqpod as its main search engine. Seeqpod is merely a search engine for music, looking across a variety of public sources for music. It doesn't host any of its own music, and has no way of knowing whether or not the music it finds is authorized or not. It's quite difficult to see how Seeqpod is doing anything illegal at all, and since Favtape is simply built on top of that, using Seeqpod's APIs, it's even less obvious how Favtape is doing anything wrong. In fact, this raises some very troubling legal issues: if you use someone's APIs, are you legally liable for the actions of the company powering the underlying service? That would create a massive chilling effect on innovation if true.

But, of course, EMI is making the situation even worse. Rather than just suing the companies, it's also suing investors and the founders personally. This isn't just highly unusual, it's a clear attempt to pressure these companies into settling, as no matter how legitimate your stance is, it's quite a scary thing to be sued personally, and potentially have personal assets at risk. Suing the founders personally is legal bullying. It's a clear abuse of the legal system to try to force a settlement, rather than an actual attempt to raise a legal issue.

Suing the investors is equally as ridiculous -- and is a clear attempt to try to get those investors to push the companies to settle. This tactic has been used in the past a few times by the big record labels, initially with Universal Music's attempt to sue Napster's investors. Most recently, Universal Music tried to do the same thing with Veoh, but a court slapped them down. Hopefully, the investors in question will point this ruling out to the court in question in asking for a quick dismissal. Furthermore, hopefully a judge will sanction EMI for abusing the legal process to bully these companies and individuals.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

nandemoari writes "A new variant of the Conficker/Downadup worm has been detected. The worm opens a backdoor on an infected machine and allows hackers remote control of infected PCs. Dubbed Conficker B++ (and not to be confused with Conficker B), the new variant of the worm opens a backdoor with auto-update functionality, allowing a hacker to distribute malware to infected machines. It's difficult to know exactly how long Conficker B++ has been circulating, but researchers first noticed it on February 6 of this year." If this seems familiar to you, it probably is.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes "It wasn't so long ago, but Slate's Farhad Manjoo notes that The Internet of 1996 is almost unrecognizable compared with what we have today. No YouTube, Digg, Huffington Post, Gawker, Google, Twitter, Facebook, or Wikipedia. In 1996, Americans with Internet access spent fewer than 30 minutes a month surfing the Web and were paying for the Internet by the hour. Today, Nielsen says we spend about 27 hours a month online (present company excepted, of course!)." I thought in 1996 all we did was idle in IRC channels while we wrote code in other terminals.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Recently on Offworld, we saw EA partner with an indie developer to create an official 2D version of Mirror's Edge, played a new 'multi-single-player' game where you team up with the ghosts of your previous lives, downloaded Commodore 64 games on the Wii, and saw Braid coming to the Mac. We also saw a new iPhone game that crosses wacky wallwalkers with LittleBigPlanet's ragdoll charm, more retro-futurist Space Invaders Extreme for DS, Unreal Tournament mixed with Mario, and LittleBigPlanet and Rock Band officially announced for the PSP (!). We also rounded up all the best iPhone "Lite" games you should be playing, read about how 'The Wrestler's Wrestle Jam game was made, made our own Earthbound toys and Metroid plushes, and heard about Tetris Be@rbricks and Metal Gear toys. Finally, we daydreamed of a world where indie games were the new punk, and did our part to spread two new memes: one where you describe game plots from end to beginning, and one where you imagine a restaurant designed by your favorite game developer.

If you're unfamiliar with Carl Malamud, you haven't been reading much news lately. He and his work to open up government documents and information to the public have been covered by the New York Times, the Washington Post and various other publications in just the last month alone. But that's not to suggest what he's doing is recent. For years, Malamud has gone above and beyond in making government information more accessible and more useful to everyone -- rather than just politicians and big companies.

Now, he's positioning himself to be put in charge of the Government Printing Office to be able to do the same thing from the inside of our federal government, rather than from the outside. It's hard to think of anyone quite as visionary in terms of how government information can be presented to the public in a transparent and useful manner. He's looking for support for his campaign, and you can read all about what he would do if given the chance at YesWeScan.org:

For over 20 years, I have been publishing government information on the Internet. In 2008, Public.Resource.Org published over 32.4 million pages of primary legal materials, as well as thousands of hours of video and thousands of photographs. In the 1990s, I fought to place the databases of the United States on the Internet. In the 1980s, I fought to make the standards that govern our global Internet open standards available to all. Should I be honored to be nominated and confirmed, I would continue to work to preserve and extend our public domain, and would place special attention to our relationship with our customers, especially the United States Congress.

Access to information is a human right and the United States of America is the world's leading producer of information. As the publisher of the United States, GPO plays a vital role in promoting useful knowledge, promoting the progress of science and useful arts, and promoting and preserving the public domain.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

From across the pond, Instructables user AndyGadget designed a sled (or sledge) made from pvc tubing:

We have a couple of the cheap plastic sledges which are pretty fast, but not at all steerable and break easily. I wanted a sledge which was strong, steerable and fast. I chose the waste pipe to give a minimal contact area on hard snow but a larger area as the snow deepens. The tube is also slightly flexible to allow bending for the steering.

This is his second version, hence the grass in the background.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

William Robinson writes "Comet Lulin, formally known as C/2007 N3, which is on a visit to the inner solar system, will make its closest approach to earth tonight, about 38 million miles away. To the naked eye, the comet looks like a fuzzy patch of hazy light in the southeastern sky near Saturn, at the tip of Leo the Lion's hind leg. After this brief visit, Lulin will be heading back out to its kin in the Oort Cloud."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• Olympus's new camera flips out and shoots people.
• We learned who discovered Mat's geocache!
• Guinness checked out the world's most expensive vacuum cleaner.
• Someone got Windows 3.1 on a Nokia cellphone, via Dosbox.
• Leather. Billiards. Secret drawers.
• There are no hidden cameras in digital TV converter boxes.
• More evidenced surfaced that Circuit City's liquidators can't be trusted.
• The human vending machine has chocolate for you.
• Kindle 2 was unboxed, and the NYT gave it a Good review.
• We liked Aranwen's ornate steampunk wristwatch.

Now here's a good example of musicians adding value to their tangible music release - Jari writes in regarding the new record from the band Shogun Kunitoki. The custom record features printed art that deisplays an animation when lit by the accompanying 555/LED owl kit, otherwise known as "Mystical Shogun Kunitoki Strobe Light" of course. That is an awesome little PCB they've designed - here's hoping animal-circuit boards become the new 'thing'!

Those old Red Raven animation discs he mentions are quite the cool artifact/collectible nowadays. WFMU posted some good examples and info here.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Digg this!

Cameron Logie writes "The UK Government has today announced full backing for greater adoption of Open Source solutions in the public sector. According to the article at the BBC News site, 'Government departments will be required to adopt open source software when "there is no significant overall cost difference between open and non-open source products" because of its "inherent flexibility."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mathew Ingram draws our attention to a thoughtful analysis of the journalism business model question, where it's noted that even a smaller amount of online advertising could clearly support journalistic endeavors -- especially if you take out the costs of printing newspapers and delivery. The problem, according to the analysis, is that advertisers have been way too slow to move from print advertising to online advertising. If there were a way to speed up the process, there would hardly be any complaining at all.

From a numerical point of view, this sounds right, but it may be missing a big piece of the puzzle. Throughout all of these debates, no one has explained why those advertisers should support newspaper websites. Those newspapers have done little to add real value over the past few years, while plenty of other online sites have actively embraced their communities, and done so in a way where advertisers can derive much more value putting ad dollars towards those communities, than the "hands-off" communities created by so many newspaper sites. The problem isn't that advertisers have been slow to switch to online advertising, but that the newspapers have done a terrible job building sites where it's worthwhile to advertise, and haven't done much at all to provide advertising options that are valuable. Instead, they treat it like a backlit version of the newspaper, where they'll show display ads. Yet, advertisers are quickly learning that display ads are ignored, and they also recognize that newspapers have done little to nothing to cultivate true online communities. So why should they advertise on a newspaper site when they can get much better returns elsewhere?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

BigTimOBrien writes "In this interview with O'Reilly Broadcast, Carl Malamud discusses his grassroots effort to build support for his appointment as Public Printer of the United States, running the Government Printing Office — an agency that opened its doors the day Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated. Malamud has published his plans and platform on yeswescan.org: 'For over 20 years, Carl Malamud has been publishing government information on the Internet. In 2008, Public.Resource.Org published over 32.4 million pages of primary legal materials, as well as thousands of hours of video and thousands of photographs. In the 1990s, Malamud fought to place the databases of the United States on the Internet. In the 1980s, Malamud fought to make the standards that govern our global Internet open standards available to all. Malamud would continue to work to preserve and extend our public domain, and would place special attention to our relationship with our customers, especially the United States Congress.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For all you budding Foley artists out there, Epic Sound posted a growing list of what items to use and how to use them for creating specific sound effects. Some cool (and gross!) ideas kicking around in there -

Alien pod embryo expulsions etc. Certain kinds of canned dog food make useful sounds as the food comes out of the can. The chunky stuff isn't so good, but the tightly packed all-one-mass kind makes gushy sucking sounds when the air on the outside of the can is sucked into the can to replace the exiting glob of dog food. This sound can be used as an element in certain kinds of monster vocalizations, alien pod embryo expulsions, etc. Ashley Walker

Yup, I've thought of similar things during pet feedings of the past - oof! Read more ideas for DIY sound effects over on the Guide to Sound Effects. [via Synthtopia]

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Digg this!

Geek Squad's Founder and Chief Inspector, Robert Stephens, sent Make: television some info about an upcoming event that he's judging called the Overnight Website Challenge. The event sounds really cool and all of the effort goes to helping 12 nonprofits. Mark Hurlburt is one of the event's organizers,

"The event is kind of a creative marathon. 120 people get together and spend 24 hours in a room making something that has a direct and measurable impact on the ability of the nonprofits to accomplish their mission. It's all about putting the nerdy and the needy together in one room and watching amazing things happen!"

For more info on this event, check out overnightwebsitechallenge.com

For live updates during the event, visit blog.nerdery.com

Geek Squad is a major funder of Make: television, check out the story behind their sponsorship at www.makezine.tv/about/sponsor

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Make: television | Digg this!

The Time Traveler sez, "Broken Sea Audio, a nifty non-profit audiodrama troupe has been threatened with litigation if they continue to adapt 'public domain' stories that were written by the late Robert E. Howard: 'Broken Sea Audio Productions, headquartered in New Zealand, has shut down all their Robert E. Howard projects after receiving another threatening letter from the lawyers for Conan Properties International LLC (aka Paradox Entertainment). CPI is the limited liability company that claims all licensing powers over works by Robert E. Howard worldwide.'

"CPI says that since Broken Sea's productions reach countries where these stories are not in public domain (a doubtful claim in itself) they have to remove all Conan material from their site. Under this logic, any country could hijack public domain from the rest of the world by just claiming a copyright never expires and could also claim fair use does not exist. 'Take that etching of Charles Dickens off your website.' could be the new rule."

Damned right -- IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that if Broken Sea Audio's free Conan readings infringed upon CPI's copyrights in Outer Freedonia, CPI's remedy would be to sue Broken See in Outer Freedonia, and that that unless Broken Sea has assets in Outer Freedonia, the suit would probably end badly for CPI.

CONAN attacks fans (Thanks, Time Traveler!)

<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/doQvWsJRCPs&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&fmt=18
" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="600" height="486">

Here's a vid of a hamster, in a hamster ball, controlling a iRobot Create.

The hamster controls the robot by running in the ball in whatever direction he/she likes. The ball is supported on three rollers and an optical sensor measures which way and how fast the ball is spinning. Those values are fed into a microprocessor that controls the drive wheels to make the robot mimic the motion of the ball.

iRobot YouTube Channel

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Robotics | Digg this!

David Rowe on Open Hardware business models (video)

In 2005 David started working on open hardware techniques for telephony. The idea of open hardware (people collaborating to build free hardware designs just like open software) was a big experiment, especially when it came to commercial products.

Much has happened since then. New projects, and even businesses have spun out of the project. Coolest of all - open hardware products are now in volume production. People are buying and using these products - often in preference to products developed using traditional closed development models. Open hardware works!

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Open source hardware | Digg this!

Flickr member Kitty's Pictures shares these shots of her homebrew develeopment blocks. Who can resist an array of mini-modularity?

uC prototyping blocks, aka "Dev Blocks." These are small single component boards that are ready to plug into a breadboard.

Here the connectors are interlocked.

From left to right:
Piezo element
Bi-color LED (red/green) x2
SPST, N-O momentary switch w/ pulldown resistor
Light dependent resistor (LDR)
DS18B20 I2C digital temperature sensor
LM35 temperature sensor (10mV/C)

I've made some similar boards with header pins for my most commonly used prototyping parts and small circuits. It's definitely a good move if you find yourself a non-plussed about breadboarding.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Digg this!

Retromodo: Berlekamp's switch game.. I hear you :)

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

One of our complaints with the massive outlay of government spending through things like TARP and the "stimulus plan" is that they were both rushed through with little thought or oversight -- and no chance for those outside of Washington to weigh in on those plans. I'm not necessarily against all such spending, but history has shown that rushing into such spending without having a chance to think through the details is a recipe for disaster. Already, we've seen that the government has massively overvalued some assets and that the promised "transparency" has been lacking. Now, even the guy in charge of making sure that the TARP program isn't abused is admitting that, with the way it's been set up, the program is ripe for fraud. He's expecting the government to be bilked out of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars in criminal schemes, and notes that less than 5% of those receiving funds from TARP have fulfilled their obligations in letting the government know what's been done with the money. I keep hearing that the government had to do something, but that doesn't mean we needed to hand over trillions of taxpayer money in such a haphazard fashion.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Here's a short news-piece on the stuff that's left behind by people when they lose their foreclosed homes, stuff that ends up in landfills because charity trucks can't get there fast enough to haul it away. It's an enormous amount of waste, but I understand the perspective of the foreclosed, who are moving to uncertain places and have to apply lifeboat rules to the stuff they take, since it's all a liability (space in a truck, space in a rented storage, space in a neighbor or family-member's home) until it lands somewhere permanent.

KCET: The Trashout Squad (via Dynamics of Cats)

Kindle 2 taken apart via Giz.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Gadgets | Digg this!

The Safari 4 beta looks pretty slick, but what do you do if you aren't quite ready to give up your trusted browsing companion? Neil Lee has the solution for running both Safari 3 and the new version 4 beta on the same Mac:

Apple dropped the first public beta release of Safari 4 today, and installing it overwrites the old version of Safari as well as the system Webkit frameworks. This means it's not possible to run the current Safari 3 release and the beta on the same system. That is, not possible without some fiddling.

Here's a quick how-to get both Safari 3 and 4 beta running on the same system. You will need to use the terminal for part of this, and we will download an older copy of Webkit, which is Apple's development builds of Safari.

This is a pretty big deal for me, since I'll need to start testing sites I develop in both versions of Safari. I already need to run a few virtual machines to test applications under different versions of IE and Flash, so it's sort of a relief that the Safari versions will work out side-by-side on the same box.

How to run Safari 4 beta and Safari 3 on the same mac

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in hacks | Digg this!

Bunnie Huang reports on his trip to a mind-crogglingly gigantic mobile phone market in the industrial city of Shenzhen, on the PRC/Hong Kong border:

The other crazy thing about the mobile phone market is that it’s not the only one. Windell said he found another market just as big but with a greater focus on finished phones, and then just today I walked into what looked like the New York Stock Exchange of mobile phones. This last find was really fascinating; there is a spot in the heart of the market where you have chain smoking traders sitting in booths piled high with finished mobile phones in plastic sleeves ready for sale on the gray market. It’s so packed and frenzied that from across the building when I looked over in that area I thought maybe a small disaster had occurred and people were gathering around to watch it. Each trading booth had a price list sitting in front; it’s the only place in China where I’ve seen a written price for a phone (but presumably you haggled over prices anyways). People were scampering around the the exchange, carrying sleeves of five, ten, twenty mobile phones. I probably saw at least a few hundred phones move through the exchange in the few minutes that it took me to walk a corner of it; I imagine thousands, if not tens of thousands, of phones move through that exchange in one day. Near that area are dozens of booths selling batteries for these phones … and the best part about these battery booths is that there is a girl sitting in each with raw lithium ion batteries and a pile of Nokia stickers, and she is literally building the fake batteries right before your eyes. She even has the holographic Nokia authenticity stamp; the finished batteries look exactly like the real thing. I asked one of them to sell me a sheet of the holo-stamps, but she wanted 1 USD per stamp because “they were of a high grade” or “the real thing” (I couldn’t quite understand the chinese words she used). I was trying to argue her down on price and apparently if I didn’t want to pay her price I could find a lower grade of stamp in other booths for less but she would not carry such shoddy merchandise in her booth. Ironic.

Mobile Phone Mega-Market in Shenzhen

(Image: the Cellphone Monopoly Supermarket in nearby Guangzhou -- not nearly as impressive as Shenzhen's SEG Market, but funnier!)

Here's a fun presentation we did about MAKE and all the things we've tinkered with in iTunes, iPods, iPhones and more! It's been about 5 years and we've hacked iPods, created enhanced podcasts, 3D PDFs, MAKE in PDF in iTunes - you name it, we've tried it! We were even the first TV show in history to debut in iTunes, blip.tv, vimeo, YouTune and LegalTorrents! If you haven't already subscribe in iTunes (click here).

I wanted to post this for other magazines and brands too - we're not doing anything ya'll can't do - and the results for us have been great - we'd love to see more amazing how-to videos, PDFs and more in iTunes!

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Announcements | Digg this!

Hugh Pickens writes "With the discovery last year of the first wreck of an Elizabethan fighting ship off Alderney in the Channel Islands, thought to date from around 1592, marine archaeologists are revising their ideas on how the English defeated the Spanish Armada. Replicas of two cannon recovered from the Alderney wreck were recreated in a modern foundry, and tests carried out showed that the Elizabethans were throwing shot at almost the speed of sound. Elizabeth's 'supergun,' although relatively small, could hit a target a mile away. At a ship-to-ship fighting distance of about 100 yards, the ball would have sufficient punch to penetrate the oak planks of a galleon, travel across the deck, and emerge out the other side. Tests on cannon recovered from the Alderney wreck also suggest that the ship carried guns of uniform size, firing standard ammunition. 'Elizabeth's navy created the first ever set of uniform cannon, capable of firing the same size shot in a deadly barrage,' says marine archaeologist Mensun Bound from Oxford University, adding that that navy had worked out that a lot of small guns, all the same, all firing at once, were more effective than a few big guns. '[Elizabeth's] navy made a giant leap forward in the way men fought at sea, years ahead of England's enemies, and which was still being used to devastating effect by Nelson 200 years later.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro continues to keep us informed on the more ridiculous aspects of the push by both the recording industry and certain politicians in New Zealand to push through that country's highly controversial policy to cut off file sharers based on accusations rather than actual convictions for file sharing. First up is that the country's Prime Minister appears to be flat-out lying when he claims that New Zealand has to implement such a plan to remain in compliance with international obligations. That's simply not true. He claims that other countries, like Australia and the UK have already implemented similar plans, but that's also not true. Both countries have considered such a plan, but the UK, for instance, has already said that it will not require ISPs to cut anyone off the internet. To claim that New Zealand has to do so or that other countries have already agreed to the same thing is simply untrue.

Even more disturbing, though, is how the recording industry is pushing back against complaints from ISPs in the ongoing "negotiations" around this bill. Computerworld New Zealand has a leaked memo from the RIANZ, the RIAA's New Zealand wing. In it, the industry complains that it's not reasonable to allow those accused of file sharing to have more than five days to file a counter-notice to fight back against bogus accusations of file sharing. The RIANZ whines that this would allow file sharers to prevent being cut off from the internet. It makes it clear that it thinks the process from notification to getting cut off should be as short as is possible. Apparently, the recording industry isn't a fan of due process.

Then, apparently with a straight face, the RIANZ claims that the evidence it presents to ISPs is "highly reliable, well-tested and accepted worldwide." Tell that to all of the folks who have been falsely accused of file sharing because the evidence is not reliable, not well-tested and hardly accepted worldwide (in fact, US courts have increasingly questioned the weak evidence presented by the industry). The RIANZ also seems to claim that the three strikes policy is a "standard followed in other countries." That sounds nice, aside from the fact that no countries have actually approved such a law. Oh, right, also the RIANZ is upset that ISPs think that it should have to pay the costs associated with sending these notices. So, the recording industry doesn't want to pay the costs, doesn't want to give users much time to respond and is lying about what other countries are doing and the quality of its evidence. And New Zealand politicians are buying it.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Bunnie visited the cell phone market in China...

One thing that’s true about the technology markets in China is that the more you learn about it, the less you find you know. Liam Casey, “Mr. China” himself, and the CEO of PCH, came in and said exactly that our first day on the tour. I had a first-hand experience with that while I was acting as a tour guide of the SEG market in Shenzhen. I knew that the SEG market was big, and that it had a lot of stuff, but somehow I managed to miss the massive mobile phone market for the two years that I had been shopping there. A friend of mine in PCH tipped me off to the market, so at the end of the walking tour of the main market that I was familiar with, we decided to head out and try to find something that none of us, including me had previously seen.

My eyes fell out of my head when I saw it.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Cellphones | Digg this!

MAKE is going to be at Greener Gadgets later this week. One of the kits we will have on display at the show is the Fuel Cell Car & Experiment Kit by Thames & Kosmos. It looks like a really well made kit that includes everything you need to get started with fuel cell technology. It even comes with a digital multi-meter! I have never played with a fuel cell before, so it should be an interesting kit to try out at the show.

Assemble and experiment with a unique reversible hydrogen Fuel Cell. This fuel cell kit provides a playful introduction to one of the most significant technologies of the 21st Century. With this kit you can build a model car that actually runs on water! 96-page full-color book. Ages 12 and up. By Thames & Kosmos.

More about the Fuel Cell Car & Experiment Kit

More:

More about MAKE at Greener Gadgets

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

Traditional media publishers have no clue as to how they are going to make revenues from online distribution and many of them, are quickly drying up their last reserves. As a matter of fact, as content media expert John Blossom reports in this article, many potential growth markets for online content have not yet been leveraged only due to a lack of truly inventive approaches to revenue generation. Photo credit: Andrea Danti

Be it news, databases, entertainment or any other form of media, the winners will be those that can meter out the value of their content production to facilitate on-demand aggregation far more efficiently than they have to date.

Instead of investing zillions of money in new publishing technologies, online publishers need to focus on the aggregation and distribution of targeted content, satisfying precise on-demand requests from their audiences.

"Media companies have under-invested in online revenue generation and are now faced with the uncomfortable duty of trying to think their way out of both an ad recession and an idea recession."

Here all the details:

Dead Business Models Walking: Will Major Media Companies Survive the Bust?

by John Blossom

Intro

For years major media companies have tried to finesse their transition into online markets. They've made investments in portals and ad-serving systems. They've built up online communities and search engine optimization schemes to maximize revenues from engaged audiences. In fact, publishers have done a lot of good things to make a stronger transition to online revenues. Yet in spite of these efforts, one thing that they haven't done is to prepare for the day when they'd have to rely on online media to carry their bottom lines. It appears that this day has come. And most publishers aren't ready. By a long shot. Where do we start? The highly leveraged newspaper deals of the past few years that were based on fantasy projections of "cash cow" revenues? As formerly solid mid-market papers such as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer are prepared for sale (and possibly going online only), as major papers such as the Chicago Tribune abandon broadsheet sales on newsstands in favor of a truncated tabloid edition, as television producers wrestle with online portals that threaten to take the steam out of broadcast and cable deals, as music companies stumble into another year of falling CD sales and wrestling matches with social media playlist aggregators, as... well, you get the picture, I assume.

The Importance of Online Revenues

Nobody has a real clue as to how they are going to get robust revenues from online distribution and many old channels of distribution are drying up quickly in a slow economy. In trying to keep old cash cows alive, the potential growth markets for online content have been stunted from a lack of truly inventive approaches to revenue generation. Online display ads? Spare inventory is running at half the rates of last year. Online subscription? It works for The Wall Street Journal and plenty of enterprise services, but few others have been willing to risk the lack of exposure to search engines and social media. In the meantime, media organizations eager to trim staffs after consolidation deals are left with less and less editorial staff to generate attention-getting content. The presumption that online revenues for traditional media properties would ramp up at a pace that would offset declines in revenues from traditional outlets is essentially false. Media companies have under-invested in online revenue generation and are now faced with the uncomfortable duty of trying to think their way out of both an ad recession and an idea recession. This is not to say that there aren't bright exceptions to this rule - many great brands continue to thrive, albeit on a slimmer slice of revenues and market attention than before - but there is a fundamental revenue gap that is not going to close any time soon for many publishers. David Carr highlighted this in his recent New York Times article, mentioning with only part of his tongue in his cheek that publishers should take advantage of oversized iPods expected this fall to facilitate pay-as-you-go downloads of content. Carr is on to one essential point: ads on their own properties can't pull the full freight for most publishers in their traditional media, and neither should they pull the full freight in online media.

Content Aggregation and Production

The main problem, though, is that media producers seem to be searching continually for some magic-bullet device portal that will solve their problems and recreate, at one level or another, the "walled gardens" that they had relied upon for revenue generation in the past. These artificial scarcity plays, though, generally strike audiences as, well, artificial, and rarely float on their own without exceptional features and content from a broad spectrum of sources. Even then, the next great portal or platform comes along and the game is off. Will the revenue gap ever close to the satisfaction of today's publishers and media producers? Probably not. Smart publishers know now much technology has passed their brands by and how much technology has enabled other brands to sweep into their audience's mindshare, but it's an uphill battle. They are up against billions of dollars invested in new publishing technologies that have not benefited their own products before benefiting the content produced by Content Nation and by any number of professionally-oriented startups that have their own take on content aggregation and production. Latest example: The Printed Blog, a startup that is launching a twice-daily free newspaper in Chicago based on content aggregated from popular local blogs. Even print itself is not a barrier for technology that can aggregate attractive content sourced from anywhere.

Examples of Business Models for Publishers

OK, enough of the doom and gloom, where's the good news? The good news is that there are business and payment model options for publishers to explore to make better use of their key publishing assets:

Micropayments

Micropayments are not regarded highly in many circles, but they're a logical extension of existing business models such as newsstands (a quarter for the New York Post at the train station? Essentially a micropayment.) and can be implemented more effectively using technologies such as Attributor that track use but don't necessarily limit distribution. A widespread embeddable micropayment system would enable publishers to expose limited content through viral distribution and still enable direct revenues on a transparent "I'll try anything once" impulse buying system that monitors access passively. It may turn out to be only a few cents per view - something along the line of messaging units on mobile phones - but it could create a fundamental offset in revenues that could begin to build a bottom floor for revenues that keep the doors open.

Agnostic Aggregation

The most successful plays in online publishing are far more willing to treat anyone's content as potentially interesting content for their audiences. This may frustrate traditional journalists at times, but since there are fewer of them making a decent living these days to be aghast at the idea of their content being beside an independent blogger, perhaps it's not such an unthinkable thing in the long run (yes, there are probably guild / union issues, but realistically it will happen). Having spent years trying to define technology that would enable aggregation to be controlled along the lines of traditional media business development, perhaps media companies can invest a little more heavily in aggregation plays that do not require top-heavy approaches to aggregation.

Focus on Talent Support

With all of the talented journalists and media producers out there, you would think that someone would decide to recognize that the trend is towards "the talent" powering publications as independents and focus more on getting their content in the best channels possible. If it's important for a journalist to be able to follow a particular story independent of daily publishing pressures, then why not make it easier for journalists to do so with high-visibility distribution on a wider variety of channels? Exclusive access to specific editorial teams no longer seems to pay the bills, anyway. I think that we're likely to see a content bidding system emerge not unlike that used for online ads which will allow independent journalists to sell off the rights to their work to key media outlets on an on-demand basis. If making money in publishing is about getting the right content in front of the audience at the right time, why not make it easier for both the content producers and the content distributors to optimize the content side as efficiently as they do the ad side?

Whatever way you look at it, today's publishing environment has put the spotlight on The New Aggregation that I presaged several years ago and has forced publishers to think about specific assets that they have and to use them more effectively as individual components that can serve markets in a variety of ways - not just through their traditional branded outlets in traditional ways. Be it news, databases, entertainment or any other form of media, the winners will be those that can meter out the value of their content production to facilitate on-demand aggregation far more efficiently than they have to date. The brand isn't the bundle - the brand is the ability to bundle what's most important today.

Originally written by John Blossom for Shore and first published on January 13, 2009 as "Dead Business Models Walking: Will Major Media Companies Survive the Bust?".

About the author John Blossom's career spans more than twenty years of marketing, research, product management and development in advanced information and media venues, including major financial publishers and financial services companies, as well as earlier experience in broadcast media. Mr. Blossom founded Shore Communications Inc. in 1997, specializing in research and advisory services and strategic marketing consulting for publishers and consumers of content services.

Photo credits: The Importance of Online Revenues - 3dfoto Content Aggregation and Production - mipan Examples of Business Models for Publishers - picpics Micropayments - Aleksey Poprugin Agnostic Aggregation - Andrzej W?odarczyk Focus on Talent Support - Chad McDermott

The Story of the Match ~ a Great World Industry - Modern Mechanix 1930.

Modern methods and modern machinery have trans formed the making of matches from a dangerous, disease-producing business into one of the world’s great industries. Here we have the story of how science has made the present-day match possible. HOW many matches have you used today? You should, according to America’s premier match making company, have struck seven, if you got the daily share allotted to every man, woman and child in the United States. In other words it takes 840,000,000 matches a day to supply the fire making needs of a nation of 120,000,000 people. That’s at the rate of 306 billion, 600 million for normal years of 365 days.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Modern Mechanix | Digg this!

We've had a whole series of posts in the past showing various studies explaining that so called "txt spk" isn't harming kids. In fact, the studies have shown that kids these days tend to have a better ability to read and usually recognize when it is, and when it's not appropriate, to use such slang speak in their writing. Yet, every time we post such a study, we get angry comments from people who insist that kids writing in txt spk somehow are destroying the fabric of society. A few folks have sent in the latest report of a study that shows, once again, that txt spk isn't harming reading/writing ability. In fact, it shows the opposite. Those who tend to use txt speak more often have better reading skills than those who don't. I'm sure we'll still get angry responses, but considering how many different studies have shown the same thing, at some point, you're going to need to realize that txt spk isn't killing kids' abilities in reading or writing.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Boingboing's current guestblogger Paul Spinrad is Projects Editor for MAKE magazine and the author of The VJ Book and The Re/Search Guide to Bodily Fluids. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Wendy, their two young children Clara and Simon, and their cats Ron and Nancy. 

People are always looking do diversify their investments, and I'd like to see a mechanism for directly investing in culture rights. For cultural products that exist already and are protected by copyright, you need to get a specialist lawyer to negotiate with the various offices that handle rights, and it's all opaque. Maybe rightsholders could make more money off of their properties by opening the process up and forming a public exchange.

Not only would a rights exchange make it easier to buy rights for actual use, like for the songs and recordings in Sita Sings The Blues, it would also support speculation. If you know about some other forgotten but amazing recording or movie that you're sure people will want to re-issue, sample from, derive from, or whatever, then great-- buy away, or pool with others who want a piece. Even if you think something is lame but feel many others would go for it, speculate!

A market like this is an obvious idea, and I'm guessing it's been discussed many times, so I wonder what the barriers have been. Some professional rights handlers would lose their jobs-- are they a powerful lobby? Did anyone ever consider using Max Keiser's Hollywood Stock Exchange as a funding vehicle? Rights are more complicated than stocks, but online stock trading sites have figured out easy interfaces for buying, selling, puts, calls, selling short, and other flavors of transaction. Boilerplate is boilerplate.

A culture market would also be a boon to hipsters whose cultural intelligence and breadth of knowledge would suddenly become a marketable talent. Look for the most successful investment funds to be run by comic book / record / video / book store staff.

The exchange could help fund culture that doesn't exist yet or speed its adaptation to more expensive media. Read a self-published graphic novel lately that you think has great potential, but is not well-known? Invest in its movie rights-- you'll be supporting its original creator, and your investment might pay off. We've been seeing lately that Hollywood producers would rather hear "thousands of people already love this story in comic-book form" than "here's a screenplay-- Gail and Tony liked it, so then I gave it to Marty, and he thought it would do well, especially internationally, so then Louise gave it a read and she said it would work with her ending, so then I gave it to..."

I also think the rights market would be a big win for the U.S. No one has or does culture and information like we do: movies, TV, software, games, etc. Whatever the reasons-- I proudly attribute it to our unique mix of diversity, frontier history, freedom, prosperity, first-mover advantage, and infrastructure-- I think our strength in this will endure.

If you own some rights and do a bad job of exercising them, make a lame product, then you lose your investment, fair and square. If a lot of people own a right collectively, then they can hold shareholders meetings to decide things like who should be offered the female lead role and for how much. Unauthorized use or duplication problems might take care of themselves naturally, through crowd enforcement. The all-seeing eyes 10,000 investors who want to protect their property would sniff out and deal with infringers better than some studio legal department, no matter how hyperactive and well-compensated.

Photo: Yale Joel - LIFE © Time Inc. 

Becky Stern sez, "I made this large-scale model of my femur in plush. I used pictures from inside my knee during surgery and looked at anatomy pictures to get the shape. I had a flap of cartilage that had to be removed, then the doc drilled little holes in the underlying bone to stimulate scar tissue growth for padding in the area."

Plush Femur (Thanks, Becky!)

"Oceania" kinetic art by Casey Curran from casey curran on Vimeo.

Dug North sez, "Artist Casey Curran makes hand-cranked automata using twisted wire -- no welding or soldering involved! The resulting forms are very organic." 'Oceania' kinetic art by Casey Curran (Thanks, Dug!)

Flickr user Tinkerbots creates and photographs beautiful raygun and robot assemblage sculptures made from techno-junk. I am SUCH a sucker for raygun sculptures. Tinkerbots's blasters drive a fishhook straight into my desiderata gland.

REDIVIVUS Rayguns (via Make)

Call me a golf sourpuss, but I say, when the course is designed to be difficult to see, periscopes are cheating. (Caveat: I neither play, nor watch golf and know not one single, solitary thing about the subject).

A NOVEL “skyscraper” periscope shows golfers the blind fairway at the third hole at the Aberoovey golf course in Wales.

The unusual periscope is 30 feet tall. At the third hole of the course the fairway rises so abruptly from the driving tee that golfers can not see the green even though the hole is only 165 yards long. By peering through the periscope, waiting golfers can see in what direction to drive and also note when the putting green is clear.

The periscope is a hollow wood tube fastened to a pole. The top of the instrument is covered with a gabled roof to protect it from rain.

Tall Periscope Aids Golfers (Dec, 1933)

dazedNconfuzed writes "Whatever happened to the 19th IOCCC? The opening thereof was announced over two years ago and the winners' names were posted, but the source code was never released — leaving the results of the 2006 contest unknown as we get well into 2009. Emails to questions@ioccc.org just bounce. Surely the quiet absence of a high point of geekdom becomes news at some point!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jay Rosen points us to the news that a journalist for the Patriot-News, in Pennsylvania, is experimenting with letting the community be his assignments editor. Basically, he's hoping that readers of his work will submit story ideas as blog comments. From there, he'll choose a few that look interesting, create an online poll, and then see what the community thinks is most important for him to work on. It's an interesting experiment, and one worth watching, but I'm not sure if it's enough by itself. It's great that he's tapping into the community, but a mere voting mechanism sort of misses the point of what that community can add. It should go beyond voting to actually helping out -- giving tips, feedback, ideas, facts and opinions. Let the community help research a story. Yes, some of that might happen in addition to the voting, but the voting by itself seems like a bit of a gimmick rather than real participation.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

This sculpture by Constantin Luser is called "Virbrosaurus" and is made of bugles and tubas. Do you think it was chromed after it was shaped? I never really learned how chroming works. Via VVORK.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!

thethibs writes "eWeek is reporting that just as everyone is buzzing about the latest Adobe vulnerability, someone poisoned ads hosted by Ziff-Davis with an older Adobe exploit (affecting versions 8.12 and earlier, and long since patched). Z-D fixed the problem less than 24 hours after its first appearance. The interesting bit of this is that a bunch of people probably got hit with the old Trojan when they browsed to a story about the new one."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Attention Gothamites - If you're not on the appropriate mailing list you may not yet know that the 2/26 Make:NYC meeting @ Bug Labs has been pushed back to the still relatively soon date of March 5th. Well now you do know, so enjoy extra time working on that sweet sweet secret robot elephant project you plan on bringing.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Digg this!

We're always interested in alternative proposals to the current mess with intellectual property, and Dr. James Lyons-Weiler, Director of the Bioinformatics Analysis Core at the University of Pittsburgh, recently asked for our thoughts on his proposal (for which he forgot to send us the link!) about creating an IP share market. The basic idea is that rather than just letting people invest in companies that own certain IP, you would create shares in the IP itself -- so you could buy a piece of a patent, and potentially receive dividends if the patent were licensed. The benefits that he notes are that companies would receive immediate revenue for certain patents, while also getting a clear sense of which patents the market thinks are most valuable. In fact, he notes that this could help organizations invest more wisely in R&D, getting a better sense of which concepts are most likely to be monetizable.

Lyons-Weiler has certainly put a lot of thought into this, and is clearly open to understanding what the downsides of such a proposal might be, so I'm hoping he doesn't mind my criticism of the idea. While the "pros" he list sound reasonably accurate, I would think that the cons greatly outweigh the pros. Most specifically, they focus the investment on the patent (i.e., the invention) rather than the actual innovation that is necessary to make it work in the market place. That's the distortionary effect of patents (putting too much emphasis on the invention over the innovation), and such a market would likely increase that. It overvalues the idea and undervalues the execution. On top of that it would damage one of the areas where many patent system supporters insist patents are most necessary: long-term investing in inventions. Such a market would undoubtedly favor ideas closer to monetization, but supposedly the reason for granting such long patent terms is to give inventors a longer time horizon in which to monetize. So, while it's nice to see new ideas suggested, I don't find this one particularly compelling.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Remember last month when a credit card payment processor was forced to admit a security breach that could impact 100 million people? Well, if you were lucky enough not to get caught up in that breach, there's apparently another one to worry about. Visa and Mastercard are issuing a new warning over a different payment processor whose system was apparently compromised as well. At this rate, it's getting silly to have static credit card numbers, since it seems like we're replacing our cards every few months anyway.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

snydeq writes "Paul Venezia analyzes the four counts San Francisco has levied against Terry Childs, a case that curiously omits the charge of computer tampering, the very allegation that has kept Childs in jail for seven months and now appears too weak to present in court. Count 1 — 'disrupting or denying computer services' — is moot, according to Venezia, as the city's FiberWAN did not go down due to Childs' actions. Venezia writes, 'Childs' refusal to give up the passwords for several days in no way caused a disruption of the normal operation of the FiberWAN. In fact, it could be argued that his refusal actually prevented the disruption of normal network operation.' Counts 2 through 4 pertain to modems Childs had under his control, 'providing a means of accessing a computer, computer system, or computer network in violation of section 502,' according to case documents. As Venezia sees it, these counts too are spurious, as such devices are essential to the fulfillment of admin job requirements. 'If Childs is convicted on the modem charges, then just about every network administrator in the world could be charged with the same "crime,"' Venezia writes. All the authorities would have to do is 'point out that you have a modem or two, and suddenly you're wearing pinstripes of the jailhouse variety.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A number of British children's charities are complaining that some ISPs in the country aren't using the Internet Watch Foundation's blacklist to "block" access to child porn. Firms providing some 5% of the country's broadband connections haven't implemented the blacklist, either because they recognize that it doesn't work, or because of the expense. Keep in mind this is the same blacklist that blocked Wikipedia and screwed up UK edits of the site, and also blocked the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. The charities say that households connected by the non-conforming ISPs have "easy access" to child porn, but given the long history of filters and blacklists of not actually working, it's hard to imagine that the filters have a significant effect beyond breaking access to noninfringing content. There's no doubt that child porn is reprehensible, but by presenting the blacklist as the be-all, end-all solution, these charities risk pulling attention and resources away from better solutions. After all, blocking consumption of child porn seems a less satisfying solution than working to stop its production.

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.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story