Let's say you were an engineer at a major credit card company like Visa, and put in charge of watching over new technologies, and thinking about ways that you could make the credit card process better and more secure for card holders. It probably wouldn't take you all that long to come up with a variety of useful measures for checking to make sure certain transactions were legit -- such as alerting cardholders to transactions via SMS. That's nothing particular special or unique, but it's a nice obvious addition, thanks to the fact that SMS text messaging has now become popular. So, you go ahead and implement it... and promptly get sued by some small company that claims a patent on the "invention" of alerting cardholders of transactions by SMS. I'm sure the angry patent system defenders will be quick to show up in the comments claiming that Visa "stole" this "invention," but I'm having a really difficult time understanding how you can support innovation and allow this sort of result to happen.

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On Saturday, I was on a panel at a meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Mountain View. The program's theme was "The Impact of Information Technology on Society" and I was on a panel on "Creative Arts and the Democratization of Craft".

The chair of the panel was Pat Hanrahan, Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in the Computer Graphics Lab at Stanford. He's a Make subscriber and an enthusiastic fellow.

Among my fellow panelists were Carl Rosendahl, founder of Pacific Data Images, which is now part of Dreamworks. His company produced effects for Antz and Shrek. He gave a presentation on the technology of moviemaking, including the skeleton scene from the old "Jason and the Argonauts" juxtaposed with Davy Jones from Pirates of the Carribean. He also talked about Coraline -- how everything in this stop-motion movie is made by hand. He's a MAKE subscriber. His wife came up afterwards and said proudly "Carl's a maker." He wrote me today to say that we blogged his cool Black Box lightshow. I asked Carl if he'd like to write an article on one of his projects.

Jonathan Berger, professor of music at Stanford and a composer, knew Make and Maker Faire, and several of his students (Noah Thorp) have participated in Maker Faire. He gave an interesting talk on music composition and performance as well as listening to music. I blogged about his slide "Is it live, Memorex or MP3?" as "The Sizzling Sound of Music" on O'Reilly Radar.

The panel also featured Charles "Chuck" Geschke, co-founder of Adobe (the other co-founder, John Warnock, was in the audience). Geschke talked about the transition from analog to digital publishing systems and the development Adobe's tools. While waiting to speak, he thumbed through MAKE and spotted Gareth Branwyn's article on how William Blake on made his illustration on plates. Geschke remarked that his grandfather and father worked in a letter press company in Ohio doing photo engraving. He said that printers and engravers worked with lots of fairly toxic chemicals so he was surprised that his grandfather lived to a ripe old age. I sent Chuck Geschke home with a copy of MAKE to share with his grandkids.

We each gave 20 minute presentations and then took an hour of questions. Afterwards, the CEO of the Academy, Leslie Berkowitz, came up to me and said how glad she was that I participated. She and her grown daughter were Craft subscribers, and she was also sad to see it go out of print and wished us well continuing Craft online. Leslie had come out from Cambridge, MA to attend Maker Faire last year, and is coming back this year.

This tells you something about the reach of MAKE and how it connects to all kinds of people. My wife, Nancy, was at a conference in Miami for mostly educational non-profits working with government and she reported how many people were familiar with Make.

The latest issue of Wired (March) has a number of DIY articles. Clive Thompson talked about the revolution in one-off manufacturing, what he calls micromanufacturing. Makezine.com was mentioned.

In the same issue, Bob Thompson's "Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments" got a nice mention in a column on building a home chem lab.

Also, this weekend, the Sunday NYT magazine had an article by Rob Walker on CraftyChica and the influence of indie crafts. We didn't get mentioned in the article but we've been in the middle of this growth in indie crafting.

I am proud to see the impact of MAKE and CRAFT and Maker Faire, and how so many different kinds of people we are able to reach and connect to as makers. I'm always a little surprised. We're part of an important conversation that seems to be happening everywhere right now.

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arcticstoat writes "Intel has surprised the industry by announcing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Taiwanese silicon chip maker TSMC to manufacture Atom CPUs. Although TSMC is already employed by AMD, Nvidia and VIA to make chips, it's not often you see Intel requiring the services of a third fabrication party. Under the MOU, Intel agrees to port its Atom CPU technology to TSMC, which includes Intel's processes, intellectual properties, libraries and design flows relating to the processor. This will effectively allow other customers of TSMC to easily build Atom-based products similarly to how they might use an ARM processor in their own designs. However, Intel says that it will still pick the specific market segments and products that TSMC will go after, which will include system-on-chip products, as well as netbooks, nettops and embedded platforms."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

My friend Koshi recently won a Minted.com design challenge to create fun birthday invites. I love his graphics. Obviously, the robot's chest number can be changed to the appropriate birthday digit. You can also check out the "night" colorway and address labels on Koshi's blog. They'll be available soon, along with the killer thank-you notes seen above. Robot Attack birthday invitation by Koshi

My friend Usman and I are collaborating long-distance on an Arduino project. He's a software guy (by which I mean he's a guy actually made of software. OK, not really, but almost) and doesn't have time right now to get up to speed on hardware. So, I send him bits of hardware as needed. This is how we did the RFID iConveyor project.

In order for him to test sending signals to the Arduino's digital out pins, I built this plug-in cluster of three LED with integrated resistors.

They're soldered to a set of four right-angle header pins, and all share ground. Usman can plug this into the pins GND, 13, 12, & 11 and he'll be off and running, with no need for a breadboard and jumper wire.

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It looks like journalism is dying.

On Twitter, there are a lot of people arguing, and I wonder why.

Much of the arguing goes like this: We need journalism. How will we do X, Y and Z if there's no journalism? The assumption seems to be that if I, Dave Winer, can't answer that question, then journalism is saved. The papers that are on the brink somehow just need me to be proven incapable of doing what they do, and that's it, crisis averted. It's ridiculously illogical. It makes absolutely no sense. Yet that is what comes back every damned time I approach subject which is -- How are we going to get our news after the newspapers go away?

It's a serious question.

Not an intellectual exercise.

There's nothing really to argue about, is there? If so, I'm missing it.

Dispassionately, please...

1. The Rocky Mountain News, one of two papers in Denver, went under last week.

2. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, one of two papers in Seattle, is on the edge.

3. The San Francisco Chronicle, the only remaining paper in SF is on the edge.

4. At least seven other papers are in the same place.

5. The NY Times was just bailed out by a shady billionaire from Mexico.

6. If you're thinking the government will bail out the papers, think about what we'd be left with. We'd have to come up with something else.

So -- under what scenario do we have newspapers in, say, a year? I don't see one.

How will we get our news? -- It's not an idle question to be debated after dinner with cigars. It's a critical question.

At some point we will have to have this discussion. Imho, the sooner the better.

Ed Boyden is an MIT brain hacker who has been involved in various Institute for the Future workshops over the years. He always, er, blows my mind with his scientific creativity, curiosity, and unusual ideas about how we might reprogram or reengineer our brains. Over at Wired, Quinn Norton introduces Ed and several other fascinating researchers in her article about "the new science of neuroengineering." From Wired.com:

Boyden directs MIT's Neuroengineering and Neuromedia Lab, part of the MIT Media Lab. He explains the mission of neuroengineering this way: "If we take seriously the idea that our minds are implemented in the circuits of our brains, then it becomes a top priority to understand how to engineer brains for the better..."

"Early in life, I wanted to be a mathematician," he says. He walked the path of the quantitative universe, studying math, then physics, then electrical engineering, trying to understand the universe — trying to change it in precise ways. But it was birds and serendipity that brought him to the messy human brain.

"I decided to go to Bell Labs and learn lasers," Boyden says, "but the person I wanted to work with was going home to Germany, so I ended up working with his neighbor, Michael Fee, who was analyzing how the bird brain generated birdsong. That experience was my first work in biology or neuroscience." Boyden had a new all-consuming passion.

Not long after he found himself in the Stanford University lab of Dr. Karl Deisseroth, combining his abilities as an engineer with his new calling as a neuroscientist. There, Boyden was part of a team that invented a new way of controlling brain cells. Employing molecular biology, genetic engineering, surgery, fiber optics and lasers, they created a kind of "light switch" which was then used to control a group of neurons.

"Rewiring the Brain: Inside the New Science of Neuroengineering"

The EFF is reporting on the chilling effects created by Warner Music's regular takedowns of videos of things like kids singing "Winter Wonderland" on YouTube. Due to liability issues, it's a very scary thing to contest a DMCA takedown -- as it could leave you open to paying statutory damages (up to $150,000 per song) and the recording industry's attorney's fees. Some entertainment industry lawyers think this is no big deal at all because Warner Music hasn't actually filed any lawsuits against anyone concerning these videos. But that misses the point (by an astoundingly huge margin). The chilling effects by such takedowns are huge, and are clearly inhibiting creativity -- the very thing that copyright was supposed to encourage. Saying that it's no problem because Warner hasn't filed any actual lawsuits (just takedowns), is the sort of thing that only an entertainment industry's logic could allow.

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An anonymous reader writes to tell us that in an apparent response to privacy complaints, the White House has quietly moved off of YouTube as a method for serving the President's weekly video address. Choosing instead to use a Flash-based solution and Akamai's content delivery network, this comes just days after YouTube began to roll out their own new policies regarding privacy of visitors.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Guest blogger Paul Spinrad just some nice leftover pasta for lunch. 

As discussed, language is a lossy compression scheme. I think the most data of all is lost when language is used as a linear narrative, storytelling, to make the generalizations that we call history.

I read Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden in high school and haven't looked at it since, but the thing that stayed with me (and I may be distorting here) was his description of how mammalian intelligence originated. While dinosaurs dominated the landscape, our shrew-like ancestors survived underground. The dinosaurs could see and hear over distances, so they didn't need to create persistent models of reality-- they just recognized and reacted. But "we" had to build and navigate underground tunnel networks and rely on internal mental maps of them. Our survival also depended on everyone sharing the same map and agreeing on how to maintain and build out the tunnels.

Today, when we turn this strategy towards empirical pursuits like scientific discovery or engineering, the behavior of physical reality itself helps to keep people in agreement on the tunnel questions, except at the margins. But when it comes to historical or moral "reality," there's no external anchor, and our species fights and dies over its conflicting compressions.

We also develop a primary, exclusionary narrative for culture, which is inevitably influenced by politics. So in a world full of creative expression, we learn formulations like, "after World War II, the center of the art world shifted from Paris to New York."

Last year I was on my bike, stopped at a red light, and saw a busker whom I guessed had no fixed address playing a nice old accordion. I asked him about it, and he immediately told me that he was mentioned on some page of some book-- he actually gave me the page number. Here I was, a complete stranger, and the first thing he tells me is how he's connected into a shared structure that neither of us had anything to do with. Whenever we dig a tunnel, we want other shrews to appreciate it.

Photo from Flickr by cotinis 

PMA 2009: Pentax has announced the availability of the DA 15mm F4 ED AL Limited ultra wide-angle lens. Incorporating most of the DA* series lens features, it offers a 23mm (35mm equiv.) angle of view and includes a Hybrid Aspherical lens and an Extra-Low-Dispersion glass optical element to minimize distortion and chromatic aberration. With a light aluminum body and a compact design, this lens will start shipping in April 2009 for $649.95 USD.

PMA 2009: Pentax has released the X70 superzoom with 24x optical zoom. With a 26mm - 624mm (35mm equiv.) zoom range the camera also sports a 12 MP sensor, 2.7 inch LCD and includes features such as Image Stabilization, Auto Picture Mode, HD video recording and P/A/S/M shooting modes. In addition, it can deliver 11 fps of continuous shooting, and its fast Face Detection can detect up to 32 faces in 0.03 seconds.

Jake von Slatt, of Steampunk Workshop, says:

Got an email this morning that made my frikk'n day:

Jake,

If you're the gentleman that posted an article regarding removal and repair of a charcoal canister and stuff - thank you. The article inspired me to keep trying to do my own repair here in Southern CA. I was getting a little taxed by the task. By the way, I decided that my owner's manual is written poorly. I can understand your writing just fine, but the car manual really tries me. I'm an engineer, and I ask my wife to explain things for me when I can't figure them out - she laughs and hints that I may be language challenged. But I told her that I understand Jake's writing just fine... Saving $700 suits me just fine, as well.

Thanks again,

Jim

He's referring to this article.

I did this repair because I was outraged at what the dealer was going to charge me to replace what is essentially a paint can full of charcoal, and when I couldn't find a generic solenoid valve, I decided to try and repair the failed valve myself.

The real triumph is that a search for "toyota sienna evaporative canister" returns my article in the #1 slot. So whenever a dealer quotes $700 for this repair, chances are good that a handy individual will find the information they need to repair it themselves for zero dollars.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is how we win. Thanks for making my day Jim!

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jamie pointed out an Amiga community that took a discovery of how to restore old computer plastic, super-charged it, and then opened the process to the public domain. Time to spruce up those old dusty TRS-80s in the basement. "All of the initial tests were done with a liquid and we realized that for large parts this was getting expensive, so the next stage was to make a paintable 'gel' version that could be brushed onto larger surfaces. This was tried in Arizona in the sun and the UK under a UV lamp and was found to be just as effective as the liquid. We have now released this to the public domain for anyone to use as we can't patent it and we coined the nickname 'Retr0brite' for it, as it summed up what we were actually doing with it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's a takeoff to touchdown re-creation of the USAir flight that made an emergency landing in the Hudson river, with ATC radio transmissions. It's amazing how cool-headed the pilots and FAA people remain during the event.

US Airways Flight 1549 Reconstruction (Thanks, Lew!)

Charging for the sake of charging

Another weekend has gone by with another series of articles from journalists who are complaining about the state of their industry, without bothering to come up with business models that actually work. David Lazarus, the LA Times columnist who a couple of years ago suggested newspapers should sue anyone sending them traffic, kicks things off by insisting that newspapers absolutely should charge for content online. Once again, as with almost everyone else who has suggested the same thing, this is a business model based on wishful thinking. Nowhere does he explain how the newspapers would add enough value to make people want to pay for news online. Instead, they all seem to assume (incorrectly) that people will suddenly flock to paying for news online.

Of course, they may learn that first-hand soon enough. Last week Cablevision announced plans to start charging for the online content in Newsday which no one wants to bother with (seriously, as Jay Rosen pointed out, Newsday is dead last among the top 30 newspapers in terms of the amount of time users spend on the site). Yet, rather than recognizing they need to improve the content, folks from Cablevision seem to think that because it costs money to produce, people will pay. This is a fallacy that we hear all too often in businesses being undercut by new business models. It's based on the idea that fixed costs matter in pricing. They don't. Anyone who has taken a first year economics class should know this, but it's a myth that gets repeated over and over again. Fixed costs are meaningless to the buyer, who only cares about the value they receive from the content. Yet, that didn't stop someone stopping by from a Cablevision IP address to insist that we knew nothing about good reporting or writing. That may be true, but we can see from the data that most people don't think Newsday knows much about it either.

More lemmings take the leap

And, now, it appears that the Hearst Company is looking to go down the same route, trying to charge for content, but again ignoring any reasons why people might want to pay. On top of this, Hearst has the bizarre idea of building its own digital reading gadget. Why do that when more and more people already own perfectly good digital reading gadgets: computers and smartphones. These newspapers aren't looking to add value. They're looking to lock things up in a ridiculous belief that there really is some scarcity they can "protect."

Alternatives abound...

But that's ridiculous. Even as these newspapers are locking up content, the folks who provide wire services are growing, and even local news providers are rapidly expanding as well. Many small local news shops (who are not printing newspapers) are doing fine through this recession, as the local newspapers lock themselves out of the market, and you have to figure that more people will find these alternative providers. Meanwhile, smarter publications are looking to jump into the market. The NY Times, for example, is kicking off its own citizen journalism project in two Brooklyn neighborhoods. If I were running the NY Times now, I'd also look to expand that program to Long Island, just as Newsday plans to take itself out of the market. This hybrid model has lots of potential -- letting experienced journalists interact with lots of folks who are interested in talking about what's happening in their neighborhoods.

The problem, of course, is that companies like Hearst and Cablevision are still blind to the way people view the newspaper. The community that reads the newspaper has always been the newspapers' biggest asset. Newspapers don't make their money from selling the content to readers (that doesn't even cover the cost of printing and delivery). They've always made their money selling the attention of their community to advertisers. But, when they treat that community with contempt at the very same time that the community has many other options, it should be no surprise that the community goes away. In an article about the state of the newspaper business at the Washington Post, the editor at large of Hearst's San Francisco Chronicle admits: "the public was seen as kind of messy and icky and not something you needed to get involved with." And now they want that same icky public to prop them up, when that icky public has so many other options that treat them like humans and allow them to take part in the process? Other options that allow them to help write the news, to share it, to spread it, to discuss it and to shape it -- so why would anyone pay for the same old news that not only fails to offer these features, but actively discourages them with paywalls and unnecessary barriers?

And don't think that others won't rush in to fill up the void left behind -- and don't think they won't be better than some of the professional "journalists" left behind. In a great (but looooooong) post in the Chicago Reader, Whet Moser, points out that a journalist's job isn't just about collecting the news, but explaining it -- and a large part of that was reaching out to "experts" and then trying to take what they had said and repeat it to the audience. But, there's a problem, many of those experts are doing a damn fine job going direct to the public themselves via their own blogs or other publications. They don't need these middlemen who often got the story wrong. And the experts get "paid" by boosting their own reputations, which helps them do plenty of other stuff which pays them in cash. So the world is better informed sometimes when the experts can route around the journalists, contrary to the claims of dying journalists about how we'll all be worse off.

Damage your biggest asset, destroy your product, and complain when others do a better job...

In the end, the fact is that newspapers have been providing people with a poor quality product for too long, neglecting their biggest asset (the community) and have been totally unwilling to recognize the onslaught of competition coming from multiple angles. And, to that, their response has been to say that they'll raise the price on that very "icky" community? And that somehow people will "miss them" when they're gone? That seems unlikely. Jeff Jarvis points out an excellent point raised by John Thornton concerning the decision to charge: can you name a single dying business who raised prices and survived?

You don't build your business by damaging your biggest asset. Raising prices on the very community the newspapers need the most, while offering a subpar product in the face of increasing competition has to be one of the most self-destructive moves in the history of business. And plenty of people know this. Yet, the management of various newspapers is still going down that path. It's like watching the Titantic steer directly into a huge iceberg, even as a bunch of folks with bright shining lights are pointing the way to a clear channel of water. What a shame.

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The last interview I did with a reporter from MSM was in 2006, pretty sure of that, just before Chris and Ponzi's wedding. It so ridiculous that it was almost a comedic (not the wedding, the interview).

I only did the interview as a favor to Ponzi, otherwise I never would have talked with the reporter. She was doing a story on weird uses of electronic gadgets, or at least that's what I was told. I was to talk with her about the gadgetry that Chris and Ponzi were going to use at their wedding.

I spoke with the reporter for about 45 minutes, most of which she spent grilling me about my conflicts of interest. That what was so funny. I was an unemployed wandering programmer-pundit. I didn't have a job or a company. I owned a bit of Apple stock (which I told her about) and some government bonds. Otherwise I had absolutely no business interests whatsoever. But somehow she thought that, by repeating questions, she'd get me to reveal some secret scandal that would uncover a nest of whatever relating to Ponzi's wedding? You're kidding, I kept saying. This is the biggest joke I've ever seen (and at one point I asked her if this was a prank call, something Ponzi dreamed up to "get" me, in which case I thought she was doing a great job).

I kept saying that I don't care if you quote me. I don't have a product to promote. I'm only doing this interview because my friends are getting married and they asked me to do it as a favor, and how could you say no when they're getting married? Oy.

I wasn't quoted in the piece. Basically the story was that Chris and Ponzi exchanged vows in text messages in front of family and friends. That's basically all they said in the story. I don't know who else they talked to but no one was quoted in the story, so all the investigation apparently turned up nothing.

So what do I think of investigative journalism? Well, they had zero chance of uncovering a scandal. If I were doing something unethical, I wouldn't tell the reporter, no matter how many times she asked. And that was the last time I put up with this nonsense. What they do is a joke. Maybe they believe they get stories this way, but I don't.

waderoush writes "Nothing like the open source computing movement has ever caught fire in biology or pharmaceuticals, where intellectual property is king. But drawing inspiration from the people who make Linux software, and the social networking success of Facebook, Merck's cancer research leader has nailed down $5 million to launch a nonprofit biology platform called Sage, which aims to make it easier for researchers around the world to pool their data to make better drugs. 'We see this becoming like the Google of biological science. It will be such an informative platform, you won't be able to make decisions without it,' says Merck's Eric Schadt, a co-founder of Sage. He adds: 'We want this to be like the Internet. Nobody owns it.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An Omaha, Nebraska gentleman has been cited on suspicion of animal cruelty and other charges after police discovered he had put a cat inside this homemade bong. According to the humane society, the cat appears to be OK but will be tested for lung damage. From the San Diego Union Tribune: From the Associated Press:

The (20-year-old) man told sheriff's deputies the 6-month-old female named Shadow had been hyper and that he was trying to calm her down...

Deputies discovered the cat trapped in the device after responding to a domestic disturbance call at a residence the suspect shares with his grandfather, Sgt. Andy Stebbing said.

Deputies resolved the dispute and left the house, but they returned minutes later after discovering there was an arrest warrant on the suspect for possession of drug paraphernalia.

Upon re-entering the house, Stebbing said, deputies saw the suspect smoking marijuana through a piece of garden hose attached to the duct-taped, plastic glass box, in which the cat had been stuffed.

"Neb. deputies say man stuffed cat inside 'bong'" (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)

PMA 2009: Welcome from Las Vegas, where the dpreview.com team is preparing for the start of PMA 2009. Despite the economic situation casting a pall over the show, this morning's announcement from Samsung suggests there's still plenty to get excited about. We'll be delivering our usual live-from-the-stands show reports, so stay posted and we'll bring you the latest info from the show floor.

Over at BB Gadgets, Joel found a fun video using LEGO and stop-motion animation to show RNA transcription.

Sniffle Co. sells some funny-strange buttons and brooches, like this handsome Woody Allen model for $42 AUD (approx US $26).
Woody Allen brooch (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)

After three years of research, including examining 503 pieces of fluff from his own belly button, Georg Steinhauser has discovered a type of body hair that traps stray pieces of lint and draws them into the navel. Dr Steinhauser's observations showed that "small pieces of fluff first form in the hair and then end up in the navel at the end of the day." Chemical analysis revealed the pieces of fluff were not just made up of cotton from clothing. Wrapped up in the lint were also flecks of dead skin, fat, sweat and dust. Unfortunately, further study has failed to yield a hair or fiber that would give Dr. Steinhauser the last three years of his life back.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gas prices have gone down quite a bit since highs last summer, but it still shouldn't take long for anyone to realize that charging someone $81.4 billion (with a b) to fill your gas tank is a mistake. Yet, that's what happened to Juan Zamora when he put what he thought was $26 worth of gas into his car using a PayPal debit card. And then the best part: PayPal customer service people weren't ready to believe him, arguing with him for at least 10 minutes, before realizing that, perhaps, there was a mistake on PayPal's part.

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Here's a really interesting-looking remake art contest announcement we received, with decent prizes, even.

To show how discarded items can be redesigned into works of art as well as functional everyday items.

Prizes
First Place • $2,000 Cash Award
• Future exhibition opportunity in a highly visible San Francisco
venue or museum
• Featured in the online Art Gallery of the SMART Art Competition website
• Displayed as part of the Art Exhibit of the Plastiki Launch Party

Second Place • $500 Cash Award
• HP laptop computer
• Featured in the online Art Gallery of the SMART Art Competition website
• Displayed as part of the Art Exhibit of the Plastiki Launch Party

Third Place • Treasure Chest of Art Supplies
• Featured in the online Art Gallery of the SMART Art Competition website
• Displayed as part of the Art Exhibit of the Plastiki Launch Party

Top 20-30 • An honorable mention

Finalists • Featured in the online Art Gallery of the SMART Art Competition website
• Displayed as part of the Art Exhibit of the Plastiki Launch Party

Deadline
Submissions to be received by midnight PST Friday April 10 2009

Finalists Announced
Friday April 17 2009

Award Ceremony
Plastiki Launch Party (exact date TBA).
First, Second and Third Place winners will be announced at the Launch Party.
The work of the top winners as well as the 10-20 Finalists will be displayed as
part of the Art Exhibit at the Plastiki Launch Party.

Trash Into Treasure Guidelines

SCULPTURES
Over 80% of the materials used in the sculpture must be recovered,
reused or recycled. Exceptions would be glue, nails, adhesives and other
materials needed to hold the sculpture together.

FUNCTIONAL ITEMS
For example: chairs, benches, tables, lamps, modes of transportation,
clothing etc. The majority of materials used must be from recovered,
reused or recycled materials. Note: Furniture must be sturdy, safe and
able to hold a 120 pound person.

PHOTOGRAPHY
Photographs of the following subjects may be submitted: garbage,
discarded items, recyclable materials such as paper/metal/glass,
ingenious uses of trash, the impacts of humans on environmental
landscapes (including the impacts of man made trash as well as the
impacts of the natural resource extractive industries).

VIDEO
Video submissions may be no longer than 3 minutes and must contain at
least one of the following themes: garbage, discarded items, ingenious
uses of trash, recycling, the impacts of humans on environmental
landscapes (including the impacts of man made trash as well as the
impacts of the natural resource extractive industries).

MUSIC
Music submissions composed using instruments made from discarded
items e.g. garbage cans, parts of old cars, oil drums, plastic bags, glass
bottles etc.

How to Submit
All submissions (including required attachments) must be
submitted by: Midnight PST Friday April 10 2009

Note: Online submission forms available at www.smartartcompetition.com

For all additional inquiries please e-mail: heidi@smartartcompetition.com

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Electronica producer Kris Menace and video artists Hextatic tweaked the hell out of Space Invaders for a music video. Watch it over at Boing Boing Offworld. "Space invaders extreme: Hexstatic/Kris Menace arcade mashup video"

A new NASA-sponsored study suggests that small lawnmower-sized robots could be used to build a landing site for a moon outpost. In order to be efficient a landing pad would have to be close to any structures created, but without an atmosphere to slow down the lunar sand it would sandblast the outpost, creating the need for some sort of protection. By using small robots to either build protective berms or collect rocks to "pave" a landing pad, NASA hopes to provide protection against the sand-blasting effects of a landing on the moon.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Boingboing guest blogger Paul Spinrad is enjoying listening to the rain. 

Timothy Leary said "The universe is an intelligence test." This line captures the attitude I had well into my 30's (I'm 43), and I'm happy that it doesn't anymore. Around that age, I started thinking more about mortality and failure and accepting their inevitability-- which in turn made me appreciate the preciousness of life. What did I want to do with my time here on Earth? Did I want to occupy myself playing a big version of Solitaire to prove I could win, or did I want to open up and love? Another famous quote began to make sense to me: E.M. Forster's "Only connect."

If it sounds like I'm leaving out a primary actor in this transformation, you're right. During our courtship, my wife Wendy challenged me again and again, with firmness and understanding, to engage with her honestly and completely, no matter what it meant. She led me to the promised land where we could be ourselves fully while delighting in and being committed to each other-- all those things that people wisely recite as their wedding vows. If you want more detail, buy me a beer.

An essential part of this happy destiny is that Wendy is not what I had hoped for, i.e. not simply a hot girl version of the man I wanted to be. I've read memoirs by successful men where the chapter on love runs: "I met the girl who was obviously perfect for me, and then I applied all my power and craft to win her over. It was tough going, and she tested me, but I succeeded." That's it. You learn nothing about her, and the guy seems to learn nothing about himself. Yawn! For some men, maybe the pride of that conquest is enough to keep a fire burning, but given what Wendy and I have now, it sounds like dullsville. When I contrast it to the dynamic collaboration that I have with Wendy, who shares my values but is otherwise so fascinatingly different, I just smile at how much we have to look forward to.

I did want to be famous once-- what if I had succeeded and then used that power to win someone to whom this mattered? I would deny that she was just a trophy based on how smart and accomplished people considered her to be, conveniently avoiding the underlying question of her real role in my inner life: a prop for my self-image. I like to think that I'm deep enough that we may have eventually found true intimacy anyway, but I can't be sure. Considering the effort it took Wendy to bring me out, I wonder whether I would have just lived my entire life in fabulous black-and-white, believing that emotional availability meant simply choosing someone rather than taking the ongoing risk of sharing emotional truth. But mastering the art of surfing the truth together is exhilarating, a connection out to the universe that makes me feel alive. Thank you, Wendy, my love, for saving me from a caricature of life!

In the Make: Online Toolbox, we try to focus on tools that fly under the radar of more conventional tool coverage: in-depth tool-making projects, strange or specialty tools unique to a trade or craft that can be useful elsewhere, tools and techniques you may not know about, but once you do, and incorporate them into your workflow, you'll wonder how you ever lived without them. And, in the spirit of the times, we pay close attention to tools that you can get on the cheap, make yourself, refurbish, etc.

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For this week's column, I put the call out to the Maker Media staff, maker friends, and my cohort at Dorkbot DC and HacDC. I wanted to know what tools makers couldn't live without, tools they might have gone years before discovering, but once the tool was in the box, they couldn't bear the thought of not having it around. I got a very respectable response, with many passionate declarations for a lot of beloved tools. Thanks to everyone who sent me suggestions. I've chosen ten of my favorites amongst them. If you acquire any of the tools here and they become an indispensable part of your arsenal, or if you just want to second that emotion on a tool listed here, please chime in with comments.

[BTW: If you sent me a tool suggestion that can be considered a clamp, a jig, or a "third hand," I may have held it back for next week's Toolbox, which'll be on those mechanical shopmates.]

Leatherman Tool

Hands-down, the most passionately celebrated tool in the bunch was the Leatherman multi-tool. At least five people suggested it. You hopefully already have one, but if you don't, I can tell you that those who do (me among them) can't shut up about it for a reason. As I've said in previous reviews: look on the belts of every firefighter, law enforcement officer, emergency response person, forest ranger, or anyone else who deals in critical, life-death situations, and you'll find a Leatherman on their hip. If that doesn't tell you something...

Here's what tech-artist Datamancer had to say: "This one is easy: my trusty, beat-up, broken-in Leatherman! No tool enables pure MacGuyveristic, Makerrific ability like this trusty super-tool. On those very few days that I forget to wear it, I feel like an amputee. I use it for everything, even the little snap-out Phillips head screwdriver, which I will actually use instead of a full-sized screwdriver most of the time. The saw is still as razor sharp as the day I bought it and can take down a sapling in about five good strokes. The small leather awl is made of the hardest steel I have ever encountered and the knife blades keep their edge. Come the zombie apocalypse, it'll be me, my Leatherman, and my Mosin-Nagant M44 against the world."

Doug Repetto, Dorbot founder, recounted this funny story: "I had jury duty in NYC a couple years ago, and I was pulled aside after putting my bag through the metal detector. A very tough looking police woman said 'show me your leather, man.' I just looked at her blankly. She said it again: 'show me your leather, man.' Whaaaaa? I had no idea what she was talking about. Did someone put a gag fetish item in my bag or something? Was I wearing something embarrassing under my clothes that I had somehow forgotten about? I told her I wasn't sure what she meant. She said, 'your Leatherman, your multi-tool.' Up until then I had never heard the brand name. Boy was I relieved! But then I forgot to remove it from my carry on bag before a flight and it was confiscated. Ack!"

Hemostats

Besides the Leatherman, another popular tool amongst the makers I talked to were hemostats. When I did a toolbox piece for The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog, back in 1994, several people I interviewed swore by them too. I've been a fan ever since. Hemostats, or hemostatic clamps, come in a variety of sizes, some with straight tips, some angled. They look like a pair of scissors crossed with needlenose pliers, needlenose pliers that clamp. It's useful to have several clamps, of several sizes, on hand. They're called hemostats because they're used in medicine/surgery for hemostasis, or stopping bleeding. But they can also be used to stop any fluid from hemorrhaging, or wires from going where they're not supposed to, or for holding components where they are supposed to, or holding things together for bonding, all sorts of uses. They make handy clip-on heat sinks, too. Good ones used to be rather expensive (being medical equipment), but now they've become popular enough in the tech and hobby realms that you can get them through tool channels for as little as a couple of bucks (tho you're better off getting slightly more expensive ones. The cheap ones are really cheap.)

One-Step Wire Strippers
Another tool mentioned more than once was a pair of "automatic" wire strippers. Stripmaster is a popular brand (seen above). The pair below that are our very own John Park's strippers. He writes: "I've got mine from Fry's (designed in Italy, made in China) and they changed my life! You can strip a wire one-handed with them. The jaws grab your insulation and pull it across a little pair of blades. Stripping one handed in a deft move alters the entire project building landscape for me."

Digital Calipers
This definitely fits into the category of a tool you might not think you need until you own a pair. This used to be an expensive tool as well, but now you can get a pair for under $20. Paul McCord, of Dorkbot DC, writes: "My wife bought me a pair for Christmas because I asked for them. 'What are you going to use them for?,' she queried. Turns out the answer is: everything!" Fellow DC Dork, Matt Billings adds: "I second the digital calipers. I got a decent pair on eBay for $20 a while back. I use them for everything. I had to replace a screw from my dryer and was able to take it to Home Depot to find the perfect match."

Plastic Pry Bars
Jason Schlauch, of Dorkbot DC, writes: "Great for disassembling relatively "soft" items (iPods, laptop bezels, dashboards, cameras) without marring them. Google "plastic pry bar."

Keychain LED Micro-Light
When I did my Toolbox column on portable lighting, I forgot to mention my LED keychain micro-light. I've had one on my keychain for years. The one I have (different from the above) claimed to have a lifetime replacement guarantee. After several years of use, the casing broke. I sent it back, and within a few weeks, I had a new one. Jon Singer, of Dorkbot DC and the Joss Research Institute, writes: "Another little surprise: the Photon MicroLight (or any other brand of 'sub-miniature' LED flashlight that takes a pair of CR-2016 cells, and has a real on-off switch in addition to the usual 'squeeze to light'). I have a white one hanging off my collar, and I probably use it ten times a day. I've replaced not only the battery several times, but also the LED, as brighter ones became available."

Panavise, Jr.

If you've done any electronics work, you likely already have a third hand tool, or several. If you don't, you should. In addition to those invaluable tools, you need one of these, a Panavise, Jr. Universal Vise. Digikey, Amazon, and others sell them for under $30. You use this device to securely hold and position your PCB while the third hand holds the components (and you hold the solder and the iron). Don't breath lead without it!

[One of my respondents was Nate Bezanson, who used to write tool reviews for Toolmonger. He sent me a link to this piece he wrote on the Panavise Model 367 with the extra-wide opening head.]

Spudgers
Ever heard of a spudger? If you work in the telecom field, you probably have. And if you work with any sort of electronics/digital technology, you'll want to know what this strange word points to. Basically a spudger is a small pick-tool used for manipulating wires, throwing DIP switches, removing jumpers, cleaning crud from contacts, any task that requires close-in picking, pushing,prying, or scraping. Spudgers comes with a variety of tips optimized for different tasks. They are also sometimes called a "soldering probe" or the far less dignified "booger picker" or "booger hook." Here's Nate Bezanson's article on bogger hoo... I mean spudgers on Toolmonger.

[BTW: A lot of makers keep a set of dental picks in their toolbox to serve many of the same functions as spudgers.]

Set of Step Bits

R. Mark Adams writes: "I like step bits. Like these. I now know how to make perfect holes in sheet metal -- especially nice for synth cabinets, robot control panels, etc.

Solder Tip Cleaning Genie

This is one of those simple, cheap tools that I just love. I threw it into an electronics order years ago to get free shipping and I haven't wet a sponge for soldering since. It's just a little pot of "metal wool." On the Weekend Project for Feb 27, 2009, Kip shows how easily you can make your own by putting a copper scrubby inside of a small container. Besides not having to dampen your sponge for soldering, the Cleaning Genie doesn't lower the heat on your iron's tip and doesn't retain all the crud from your iron like a sponge does.

 

Butane Micro Torch
I first got one of these like ten years ago and I've had one in my toolbox ever since. Great for heat shrinking, high-temp soldering/desoldering, light brazing, fusing plastic rope, loosening bolts, terminating connectors, lighting anarchist ball-bombs, all sorts of uses. I use one of the cheap Master Appliance MT-11 models (under $10 at Amazon). Jake von Slatt swears by by the 2-in-1 HD Butane Powered Soldering Tool and Torch.

 

In the Maker Shed:



Make: Open Sourcerer - Leatherman Juice CS4 Tool
Our Price: $74.95
MAKE's very own limited edition Leatherman tool, the Open Sourcer. This is our branded version of the Leatherman Juice CS4 Tool. Fourteen tools in one, including pliers, straight knife, wire cutters, scissors, five screwdrivers, a bottle opener and a corkscrew.

More:

• Toolbox: Benchtop power supplies
• Toolbox: Portable lighting
• Toolbox: Portable workbench
• Toolbox: From "miserable old box" to workshop showpiece

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As the closing arguments are being heard in The Pirate Bay lawsuit in Sweden, there seems to be some rather tortured reasoning by the entertainment industry that's quite troubling if the court accepts it. Representatives for the entertainment industry keep claiming that the claims of "losses" from the entertainment industry (including one guy who claimed that all of the industry's troubles could be pinned on "piracy") should be taken as fact, and the professor who discussed numerous studies showing this was untrue shouldn't be listened to. But the most troubling of all may be this:

The police can't possibly go after all TPB's users and the defendants are therefore responsible for the whole damage claim, he argued, adding that they are free to claim money from their users.

So, because they are too incompetent to deal with the actual problem, they should put all of the blame on the four guys they happened to round up. Doesn't anyone realize how ridiculous a precedent that would set? There's also the claim that damages should cover "the damage in goodwill" to the entertainment industry. Has it not occurred to them that the damage in goodwill wasn't from The Pirate Bay, but the industry's idiotic response to services like The Pirate Bay? Hopefully the court sees through such tortured reasoning.

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

Dominic Paul Moore spotted this comic from a 1981 issue of Boy's Life, depicting "a commercial plane circling the twin towers dangerously close." Click image to see the whole page.

Michael J. Ross writes "The owners and the developers of typical Web sites face a quandary, one often unrecognized and unstated: They generally want their sites' contents and functionality to be accessible to everyone on the Internet, yet the more they open those sites, the more vulnerable they can become to attackers of all sorts. In their latest book, Securing PHP Web Applications, Tricia and William Ballad argue that PHP is an inherently insecure language, and they attempt to arm PHP programmers with the knowledge and techniques for making the sites they develop as secure as possible, short of disconnecting them from the Internet." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Maker Profile segment in this past weekend's episode of Make: television featured the talented Makers and musicians of CCRMA. Chris Warren of CCRMA sent us his instructions on how you can build your own Feedback Piano, as seen in the beginning of the segment. The Feedback Piano uses the strings and soundboard of a hacked upright piano, as well as a laptop & sound interface to allow you to play any note or combination or notes in any timbre and have it come out through the piano. Chris writes:

I kept the first feedback piano I ever built sitting in the living room of my house for several months. I was amazed at the way every visitor took to it so quickly, singing into it and marveling at the result. Playing it takes no particular musical skill and yields beautiful sonic results. It's a fairly simple project and can be completed in a single afternoon for relatively little cost.

Check out the instructions after the jump, and visit Chris Warren's website and blog for even more of his cool projects. Learn more about CCRMA at their website.

Watch CCRMA's Maker Profile segment from Make: television Episode 9, or check out all of the premier season.

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Slumdog Millionaire has opened many Americans' ears to contemporary Bollywood music. I've dug 1970s Bollywood soundtracks for years but never really had a point-of-entry into today's popular Indian artists. Last week though, the world music curators at Putumayo released a great new compilation introducing me to quite a few Indian musicians that I want to check out further. And while it does feature two tracks from Bollywood star composer AR Rahman (Slumdog's Oscar-winning musical director), the collection also includes lounge music, folk, classical, and of course high-energy Indian indie pop. For a taste, check out the video above about Kiran Ahluwalia.
Putumayo Presents India compilation

Engadget is reporting that a new "Touch Book" being previewed at DEMO '09 in California by the company "Always Innovating" promises a new take on mobile computing devices. Touting 10 to 15 hours of battery life, this ARM-powered netbook weighs less than two pounds, but the true magic comes with the detachable screen that can function as a completely stand-alone touchscreen tablet. The machine is currently running a Linux OS with a touchable 3D UI, the entire screen is magnetic for mounting on a metal surface, and the whole package is being projected for less than $300.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I think I've boiled down what I've been predicting would happen for 15 years, in a single phrase.

When you get it so distilled it's worth repeating.

Why journalism is dead 3.0: The sources got blogs.

Or they're using Twitter...

I read a piece by Karl Rove in the WSJ that said Obama is doing something Rove and the Republicos do all-too-well -- according to Rove he invented someone to disagree with. Here's how you do it:

1. Talk about how there are "those who say" and then say what they say.

2. Explain how you considered the possibility that they were right, but decided in the end, they weren't.

3. So you come off as entirely reasonable and they come off as the loutish pricks you always intended them to be.

I didn't think Obama was actually doing what Rove accused him of. So I said to Rove, in a tweet: "Obama's 'straw man' has a name, it's spelled R-E-A-G-A-N." A few hours later Rove responded with a DM, saying that Obama didn't understand Reagan, or was deliberately misrepresenting him. I got the last word, reminding Rove that Obama is a politician, so -- BFD.

Is this news or journalism? No, it's not either. If it's anything it's meta-news, news about news. But it's still interesting, imho. We've arrived at a place where a political spinmeister, former adviser to the President can get fact-checked by a random blogger, and get a confusing response. That seems a lot like the job that George Stephanopoulos or Bob Schieffer has. Decide for yourself if what they do is news or not.

A tweet I received, one among many, from a reporter who thinks I need to be reminded again that we will miss them when they're gone. It seems like the last final days of journalism in the US are going to be filled with this bile. Instead, we could be booting up the next version of journalism.

Yes we will miss you when you're gone. Now what?

No, we're not going to ask the government to pay your salaries. I'd like the govt to pay me a salary for what I do. I don't see you rushing to my defense. Oh please pay Dave for writing Scripting News. Everyone would like to be paid for their labor of love.

The reporters rush right by the readers in their pleas. Our only job is to miss or not miss them. This, imho, is the fatal bug in the old way of doing journalism, it's wrong, it never was that way. We were always active participants in news, either by creating it or being effected by it. Before they rush around us to take our money from the government, how about a conversation first, ask us what we want from journalism, what we like and don't like -- and don't assume you know the answer. (The journalists' answer is that we want sports, movie stars, bosoms, car crashes. You know that because that's most of what they give us. Maybe that's why no one is rushing to their defense. Just a thought.)

Dear news people -- WE ARE NOT HAPPY WITH THE JOB YOU'RE DOING.

Isn't that the obvious take-away from the downward spiral of the news industry? Isn't it amazing that the last people they think to blame for their problem is themselves? (Totally understandable of course.)

In any case, please consider the possibility that this point of view is valid. Thanks, big hugs, Dave.

Bookbarn, one of Amazon UK's largest warehousing and fulfilment suppliers, lost its lease on its Bristol warehouse, so they flung open the doors and invited the public to come in and take all the publishers' consigned books they had on hand, as that was cheaper than returning them to the publishers who still owned them. (Update: It's a used warehouse, apparently!)

This reminds me of when I was working at a scholarly bookstore in Toronto and we bought the entire remaining inventory of Progress Books, the Soviet Union's English-language publisher, whose New York warehouse suffered a "mysterious" fire after the USSR fell apart. For weeks, I unboxed and sorted through smoke-reeking, charred expurgated works of Lenin, Marx and others, stacking the saleable merchandise in one corner, the briquettes in another.

Many arrived armed with crates, boxes and even prams to carry their horde away, some managing 150 books in a single visit.

Available genres range from horror, computing and cookbooks to sports, literary classics and religion - most of which were "musty" but otherwise in excellent condition.

By early afternoon, most shelves had been cleared but tens of thousands of books were left scattered around the floors of the warehouse in Bedminster, Bristol.

Books given away for free at one of Britain's biggest warehouses (Thanks, Kathryn!)

For some reason, the King County Sheriff's department tried to block the release of this video showing Officer Friendly beating up a 15-year-old girl.

"We had argued strenuously that the videotape released to the media this morning not be released because it does not tell the whole story of the incident," attorney Anne Bremner said in a statement.

"As we argued to the judge, it will inflame public opinion and will severely impact the deputy's right to a fair trial."

The video shows Schene and Brunner as they escorted the girl into the holding cell. Schene had asked her to remove her basketball shoes, and, as she slipped out of her left shoe, she appeared to kick it at Schene.

Schene then lunged through the door and kicked her, striking either her stomach or upper thigh area, court documents say. He pushed her against a corner wall before flinging her to the floor by her hair. He then squatted down on her and made "two overhead strikes," although it's unclear where the blows landed.

Beating caught on police video: Tape shows officer kicking, striking teenager (via The Agitator)

It's impossible to be a legal innovator in online music these days. No matter what you do, you will run afoul of some kind of music licensing issue. That's because of the way that copyright law is designed. Basically, each time some new technology comes along that doesn't fit with the way copyright law used to work, the copyright holders run to Congress and demand yet another new "right" to be included in copyright -- and anyone who wants to do anything has to now pay for yet another license to cover that right. The end result is a comical house of cards that no one can actually figure out -- and you're pretty much bound to be sued by someone for violating one of those "rights," if you do anything even remotely innovative. At MidemNet, in one of the panels I watched, an executive complained that for every track one startup streamed online it needed to negotiate eight separate licenses. And that's not the worst of it. At a panel last week, execs from all over made it clear that things aren't about to get any better at all. Instead, it's just a bunch of legacy industry execs who keep demanding that the government grants them more rights.

But here's the problem: no one is providing any actual evidence that these rights are necessary. So let's scrap them all.

Plenty of musicians are showing that they can make good money by embracing new business models that have nothing to do with these antiquated licensing schemes. So why not get rid of them all and just let the market work. The end benefit would be great for everyone except the folks in collections societies who have made themselves a fantastic living sitting in the middle collecting money. Musicians would still make money by embracing new business models, and the ability for internet startups to actually innovate without getting sued or having to pay multiples of any possible profits to guys in suits doing nothing, would help grow the music industry many times over.

But, instead, we just hear from the folks representing the industry trying to add new licenses to the mix insisting (falsely) that they are somehow needed for the industry to survive. So we slap on another unnecessary layer that's really just designed to keep the guys in suits rolling in cash, but has nothing to do with helping out the actual musicians or creating more music. Meanwhile, the collections agencies -- the SoundExchanges and the ASCAP's of the world -- insist that a new license layer is a great thing, and they're more than willing to step up to be the ones to collect it. But it's not necessary and the answer is to go in the other direction.

We don't need to add more music licenses. We need to get rid of the old licensing regime. Entirely.

Even copyright attorneys are realizing that this is leading to the death of copyright. Layering licensing right on top of licensing right is building a house of cards that has to collapse. Copyright attorney David Post talks about the ridiculous situation of trying to determine how one would go about getting all the proper licenses for one of the thousands of increasingly viral videos made by people using Microsoft's Songsmith software, combined with vocals from classic music hits. As Post notes, that's definitely a creative endeavor -- the sort that copyright law is supposed to be encouraging. But he notes that copyright doesn't scale. All those different licensing rights make it impossible to actually get all the rights necessary to make that sort of creativity legal. After going through the impossibility of getting the licenses for just one of those videos, he asks how you would do it for the 100,000 Songsmith-inspired videos on YouTube alone -- not to mention those not even found on YouTube, or which will be loaded up in the future.

We've built a copyright system by having politicians incorrectly accept the screaming complaints of legacy industries every time some new technology comes along. So they add another layer of complexity to that house of cards, and we've now reached the point where it's impossible to innovate legally -- and even doing basic creativity puts you at significant risk. Yet, there's ample evidence that none of this is actually needed for musicians to make a living making music. It's time to recognize this and look to just wipe out all of these unnecessary legacy artifacts of a dead system, and clear the decks to let real innovation thrive.

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Morbid Anatomy's Joanna turns us on to the brand new Web exhibition "Brought To Life: Exploring the History of Medicine," staged by the Science Museum of London. The site features 2,500 curios objects all annotated and browsable in various ways. Seen here is an iron model and a similar illustration in Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquadependente's 1723 book, Opera Chirurgica. Brought To Life: Exploring the History of Medicine

A Maryland court of appeals has set what they are calling a new "standard that should be applied to balance the First Amendment right to anonymous speech on the Internet with the opportunity on the part of the object of that speech to seek judicial redress for alleged defamation." The court overturned an earlier ruling that would have required NewsZap.com to turn over the names of anonymous posters who posted negative remarks about the cleanliness of a Centreville Dunkin' Donuts. "In a defamation case involving anonymous speakers, the ruling said, courts should first require the plaintiff to try to notify the anonymous posters that they are the subject of a subpoena. That notification could come in the form of a message posted to the online forum in question, and the posters must be given sufficient time to respond. The plaintiff must then hand over the exact statements in question, so the court can decide whether the comments are obviously defamatory. Finally, the ruling says, the court must weigh the anonymous poster's right to free speech against the strength of the defamation case and the necessity of disclosing the poster's identity."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thomas Leopold, a 42-year-old college professor wanted for downloading child porn is on the lam. He's especially dangerous, say authorities, because he underwent radiotherapy treatment for a thyroid condition before fleeing Britain.

Judge John Price said: "Please warn officers that when he is arrested he might be radioactive."

He added: "This is not a joke."

...

Defending, Jeannie Mackie, said her client was "chronically" ill and warned of the dangers his radioactive condition posed to people coming into contact with him.

She said: "His doctor confirmed that he is dangerous, in terms of radioactivity, for a period of six weeks after treatment and he had treatment on February 3."

Radioactive pedophile suspect at large (Via Arbroath)

In the market for a crying skinned hermaphrodite rotary-dial telephone? If so, you have until Sunday to place your bid on eBay.

Crying skinned hermaphrodite rotary-dial telephone

"Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice" is a forthcoming secret history of the orange nectar. For example, I didn't know that OJ's popularity was seeded by its use as a Vitamin C delivery system for World War II troops. Or that the whole Florida imagery surrounding the drink is mostly a myth these days and that the majority of it comes from Brazil. The Boston Globe interviewed the author, Alissa Hamilton (photo by Bart Nagel):

What isn't straightforward about orange juice?

HAMILTON: It's a heavily processed product. It's heavily engineered as well. In the process of pasteurizing, juice is heated and stripped of oxygen, a process called deaeration, so it doesn't oxidize. Then it's put in huge storage tanks where it can be kept for upwards of a year. It gets stripped of flavor-providing chemicals, which are volatile. When it's ready for packaging, companies such as Tropicana hire flavor companies such as Firmenich to engineer flavor packs to make it taste fresh. People think not-from-concentrate is a fresher product, but it also sits in storage for quite a long time...

So parse the carton for us. For example, what is the phrase "not from concentrate" really about?

HAMILTON: In the '80s, Tropicana had a hold on ready-to-serve orange juice with full-strength juice. Then this new product, reconstituted orange juice, started appearing in supermarkets. Tropicana had to make decisions. Storing concentrate is much cheaper than full-strength juice. The phrase "not from concentrate" was to try to make consumers pay more for the product because it's a more expensive product to manufacture. It didn't have to do with the product being fresher; the product didn't change, the name simply changed. Tropicana didn't want to have to switch to concentrate technology.

Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice (Amazon), Q&A with Alissa Hamilton (Boston.com, via Michael Leddy's Orange Crate Art)

We've already discussed how last year the movie industry had yet another record setting year, despite the fact that the most popular movies in the theaters were also the most pirated. Yet, just a few weeks ago, we were hearing the movie studios whining (and, oddly, the NY Times buying their argument) that "piracy" was "winning the battle" against the industry.

Odd, then, that this weekend the NY Times (without ever referring back to that article from less than a month ago) is noting that attendance at movie theaters is way up since the beginning of 2009. And, no, it's not just that tickets cost more (though, they do), but in real numbers more people are going to the theaters. The article suggests that it's because of the recession. More people want to "escape" from reality and not have to think for a few hours, and a movie theater is a cheaper way to do that than many other options.

But, of course, if we believe the movie studios (and, um, the NY Times as of a few weeks ago), digital "piracy" is killing the business. You would think that, in a recession, the problem would just get worse, since fewer people would be willing to spend money on a movie they could get at home. But, it seems that the opposite is happening. But, who needs evidence? Somehow I doubt that we'll get the NY Times to admit its earlier story was wrong -- nor will the MPAA stop blaming piracy for supposed, but totally unproven, losses. Why bother with evidence when you can make an emotional appeal for the government to prop up your business model?

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nandemoari writes "It seems the world's most popular social networking site was just moments away from acquiring another — and few of us ever knew about it. A Facebook executive has revealed that a planned takeover of Twitter only fell apart because of a disagreement over stock valuations. Despite the rather miserable economy, Facebook is still looking to buy out other firms and says it could make a billion dollars a year from advertising. Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist who put up some of the money behind Facebook, discussed the deal in a Business Week interview. Thiel says the two sides agreed a $500 million purchase price and that Twitter would receive the payment in Facebook stock rather than cash — which is a common solution in large takeovers where there simply isn't the money available for a buyout."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Musicradar.com posted a fun gallery of the "14 Most Outrageous Guitar on the Internet." It includes axes in the form of a satellite dishe, Real Doll, toilet seat, and a Sega Genesis (previously seen on BB). Above is my favorite ('natch), the George Marlin Bigfoot. Unfortunately, they didn't provide credit info on most of the picks. "14 Most Outrageous Guitars on the Internet" (Thanks, Gil Kaufman!)

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.

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Boing Boing Video is proud to debut a second video from the forthcoming music documentary N.A.S.A. (Myspace Link), directed by Syd Garon and Sage Vaughn, who also created the art.

The track is "Way Down," and features RZA (of Wu Tang fame), vocalist Barbie Hatch, and John Frusciante (Red Hot Chili Peppers.)

If you dig the track, you can buy the entire N.A.S.A. "Spirit of Apollo" album on Amazon here. There is not one tosser in the collection, the whole project is amazing. Full credits and tour dates after the jump -- if they're coming to a town near you, you can't miss the show, really.

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Q&A WITH DIRECTOR SYD GARON

Xeni Jardin: Syd, can you tell us about what we're seeing here -- the story this video tells? How did you develop this visual narrative, in relation to the message of the song (about a woman who falls in love with the Devil?)

Syd Garon: Sage was painting these warring gangs of Blue Jays and Cardinals in the trees of Los Angeles and the song was about a forbidden love, you can see how the west side story naturally evolved from that, in fact it seems like it was inevitable. The pitch on this video was Winged Migration meets Straight out of Compton and I think thats how it turned out.

Xeni: How did you and Sage develop the project together, can you tell us about the collaborative process?

Syd: Sam from N.A.S.A approached me to do a video and he suggested artist Sage Vaughn as a good collaborator. We all worked out a story and then Sage painted hundreds of frames over thousands of hours. Once we got the paintings we photographed them and animated everything. Most of the animation was done in After Effects, there were a few impossible shots my friend Paul Griswold did in 3d with XSI. Every now and then a project goes super smooth and everyone is happy and had fun, this was one of those projects.

Xeni: How did you develop the movement of the birds -- the fighting sequences, the cuddling couples -- what did you use as study references, and how did that evolve?

Syd: We were trying to keep things a kind of realistic fantasy. The idea was the birds should be anatomically correct, yet they fought like Crips and Bloods, they couldn't use a gun but they could get a tattoo. It's sounds insane when I write it out but there is an internal logic and it makes sense to us. We also wanted *mostly* realistic flight and behavior even though its animated. Cardinals don't really fall in love with Blue Jays or fight to the death so we would need to find footage of an eagle battle or two Brown-headed Nuthatches preening and Sage would paint them as if they were our hero birds. To find that kind of reference we watched hours and hours of bird movies including "Audubon VideoGuide to 505 Birds of North America on Two DVDs". We watched both dvd's. It's not really roto-scoped its more like we sampled the movement and behavior of real birds and then tried to mimic it with still images.

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Special thanks to Geoff Sherr of Squeak-e-Clean, to Syd Garon, to Susan Applegate, and to the folks at FLUX, and massive mega-props to Boing Boing Video's excellent video hosting provider Episodic.

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Credits: Music Title: "Way Down" Artist: N.A.S.A. (feat. RZA, Barbie Hatch & John Frusciante) Producer: N.A.S.A. (C) 2009 Spectrophonic Sound Under Exclusive License to Anti- Records. Video Directed by: Syd Garon and Sage Vaughn. Original Artwork: Sage Vaughn. Animation: Syd Garon, Paul Griswold, Scott Halford, Ethan Chan, Eric Henry. Executive Producer: Susan Applegate. Tools: Paint on canvas, Adobe After Effects, Softimage XSI.

N.A.S.A. Project tour dates: Feb 28 - MEZZANINE (NoisePop Festival) - San Francisco Mar 2 - HOLOCENE - Portland Mar 3 - NECTAR LOUNGE - Seattle Mar 6 - TRIPLE ROCK SOCIAL CLUB - Minneapolis Mar 7 - THE ABBEY PUB - Chicago Mar 9 - EL MOCAMBO - Toronto Mar 10 - LA SALA ROSSA - Montreal Mar 11 - HARPER’S FERRY - Boston Mar 12 - LE POISSON ROUGE - New York Mar 13 - BARBARY - Philadelphia Mar 14 - ROCK & ROLL HOTEL - Washington DC.

Previously on Boing Boing:
"The People Tree," David Byrne feat. Chali 2Na, Z-Trip, Gift of Gab, from "N.A.S.A.," dir. Syd Garon + Johannes Gamble

Announcing our new bundles available exclusively in the Maker Shed. This time we packaged 4 of our favorite electronics kits, along with a Maker's Notebook, to make one fantastic bundle. This would be a great selection of kits for your next MAKEcation!

The Welcome to MAKE bundle includes:

• (1) MintyBoost $19.99 value
  
• (1) MiniPOV kit $17.99 value
  
• (1) Drawdio kit $19.50 value
  
• (1) Super TV-B-Gone Kit $21.99 value
  
• (1) Maker's Notebook $19.99 value
  

All for the discounted price of $69. That's an amazing 30% off the price if you purchased these items individually. Take advantage of this amazing deal before it's too late.

More about the Editor's Choice electronics bundle in the Maker Shed

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nandemoari writes "As his administration continues to work on an stimulus plan that can save America's economy, Obama's latest course of action will see millions of dollars being allocated to heighten cyber security. The move will assist government officials in preventing future attacks on the United States. The President recently addressed his 2010 budget, outlining funding plans that will grant the Department of Homeland Security $355 million to secure the nation's most essential computer systems. Funds to be Shared Between Government and Private Groups. The money will be spent on both government and private groups, with much of the funding going to the National Cyber Security Division and the Comprehensive National Cyber Security Initiative programs."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The good folks at Podiobooks have taken advantage of the Creative Commons license on my novels and put together a fantastic free recording of my first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (this is the third fan-reading of that book!), this one by Mark Douglas Nelson, who does a stellar job.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

My colleague Brandon from Offworld points us to news that Sucklord (previously covered on BB here) who basically built his reputation doing bootlegged custom molds of official Star Wars figs, has been hired by Topps to curate artist series sketches of SW lore for their latest SW trading card series. Sucklord describes them as "special one-of-a-kind DIY Die Cut sketch cards done by a rag- tag group of art bums and misfits recruited by the Super Sucklord." See the list of artists, and dig the full set here.

Well here's one that I totally did not expect to see: Senator Joe Lieberman is asking why US court documents are locked up behind PACER's paywall. It's an excellent question. These documents are in the public domain and should be available to everyone. Folks like Carl Malamud are trying to make it happen, but it's still surprising to see Lieberman realize that this is a big issue.

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Here's a recap of the most recent editions of our daily Boing Boing Video episodes, in case you missed any of 'em. Our YouTube channel is here, you can subscribe to our daily video podcast on iTunes here.

* Concrete TV, Vintage '80s Video Mashup Art. Vintage '80s video art. Pop culture footage is edited into a blinding pace, set to music, producing a hypnotic, non-narrative, dreamy flow of imagery. download the MP4 here.

* Return of Superbarrio ("La Vuelta de Superbarrio"), an animated short by Bob Jaroc and Andy Ward. A masked superhero in Mexico fights injustice and violence -- something Mexico could use right now, given the awful string of news around narco-crimes and government corruption. You can download the MP4 here.

* David O'Reilly, "Please Say Something" preview (animation) You can download the MP4 here. Excerpt from a longer, new work by the avant-garde animator David O'Reilly -- a tale of love and domestic abuse involving a digital cat and mouse, set in the near future. We have featured David's work on Boing Boing before.

* Soviet Unterzoegersdorf, pt. 4 of 6 / Cheetos Boredom Busters. (This is an ad). download the MP4 here. Analysis of the "containings" of the mysterious, cheesy-crunchy snackstuffs are in, and our military science heroes discover they have been duped into participating into a viral marketing campaign.

(Special thanks to Boing Boing Video's hosting and publishing provider Episodic.)

Apologetics Blog writes "Getting bought by one of the biggest companies in the world turns out to be a rather costly thing. Last year when Microsoft was in talks with Yahoo regarding a possible buy-out, in a report recently filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Yahoo announced that it cost them $79 million to fight off Microsoft. Most of that money was spent on advisors who examined Microsoft's proposals, and the way it would impact on Yahoo's search agreement with Google. The deal fizzled out when federal antitrust regulators said it would challenge any deal made between the two companies."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Imagine pulling up to an empty lot with a CNC-controlled ShopBot router, a rubber mallet, and a pile of 600 sheets of plywood. Add in some unskilled labor and a few days, and you could end up with a livable, permanent structure. Ok, you will need to add electricity, plumbing, and lighting, but thanks to Larry Sass's construction technique, precise interlocking notches and grooves keep the house together tightly without the need for screws or nails. Even the furniture can be built in to the design!

A prototype house was assembled for a MoMA show this summer in New York City.

Here's more information on the project website. Also, previously, this related Maker Faire presentaion: Digitally Fabricated Housing: Build a house with a computer, a ShopBot, and a rubber mallet (Austin, 2008)

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"Trophy," a show up in Philadelphia by the Dufala Brothers, includes these sculptures called "Special Air Mission 28000" and "Long Runner." If you're in the Philly area, I'm sure it's worth a look! I'm still trying to figure out how you mold a shoe sole that long; any ideas? Via Cool Hunting.

"Trophy"

February 27- March 28, 2009

Fleisher/Ollman Gallery

?1616 Walnut, Suite 100

?Philadelphia, PA 19103

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Save the Netbooks writes "We discussed Psion sending C&Ds late last year over international trademarks held on the term 'netbook' and Dell accusing Psion of fraud last week. Since then Intel has joined in by suing Psion in federal court. On Friday Psion counter-sued Intel (court filing, PDF). SaveTheNetbooks.com has an analysis here. Psion has demanded a jury trial, profits, treble damages, destruction of material bearing the mark 'netbook' and the netbook.com domain (among other things), claiming that they are still actively selling netbooks despite also revealing sales figures showing a minuscule market share. It seems that declaring victory may have been a little premature as it will be months before the dispute plays out in court."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chris sez, "These were taken at Forest Haven Children's Development Center [Wikipedia: "notorious for its poor conditions and abuse of patients"] in Laurel, MD which was abandoned in the early nineties. Despite that, we found items from as far back as the 50's or more. It was as if the building closed overnight and everything was left exactly as it was while in operation... pianos, film slides, records, arcade machines and more. The variety of discarded items was staggering."

Forest Haven (Thanks, Chris!)

• The Japanese aren't buying an awful lot of iPhones. But do they hate them?

• See an iPhone running System7. MacPaint! Hypercard!

• Samsung's NX puts a DSLR sensor in a point-and-shoot's body.

• Retrowerk's steampunk watch is hot -- and hard on your wallet.

• Curl up with a TV Test Pillow.

• Sony has a new president--its CEO, now free to make sweeping changes.

• Hearst is to launch its own e-Book reader.

John Duksta writes in with news that DC401, the Providence-based group that hacks electronics among other things, is planning a hacker con:

The hacker spirit runs deep in Rhode Island. We were the first state to sign the Declaration of Independence, the last to ratify the Constitution, and the American Industrial Revolution began here with Slater Mill. Flash forward to today and we've got some really cool things going on in Providence. There's a cool art and music scene, a nascent and growing information economy, a FabLab and a boatload of hackers itching to put on a con.

Like most cons, QuahogCon will be a weekend affair, running Friday through Sunday. We're shooting for Fall of 2009 or Spring of 2010. The primary foci will be InfoSec and Hardware Hacking, but we also want to hear about other cool hacking projects you might be working on. Doing something cool with music and electronics? How about Green Living and Zero Eco-Impact hacks? We want to hear about it!

Announcing QuahogCon

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After scoring some bargain-priced touch screens, James set to work on building the Touchduino -

I used two analog pins and one digital pin for this project. I wired the touch screen to the 3v pin, the Gnd pin and the analog pins 0 and 1 set to input. In the code (digital) Pin 3 is set to PWM out. I wired the output jack to Gnd and Pin 3. The code generates a sine wave that has it's frequency and volume variables mapped to the touch screens X and Y. So for example I have my finger at 0 X, 0 Y then my frequency will be 30 and my volume will be around 1 db. As I move up the X the frequency changes and as I move up the Y so does the volume. The frequencies jump up the pentatonic scale and if you put multiple fingers on it then it adds the values together and you get into the way higher frequencies.

James notes the LEDs are handy for visually mapping the interface - plus they look all nice n' twinkly! More info available on Illuminated Sounds.

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I heard the saddest story last week and I am hoping makers in the San Francisco, CA area can help out. FIND THIS STOLEN BICYCLE! - Saul Griffith (MAKE advisory board member, co-creator of HOWTOONS, instructables, genius award winner...) was speaking at "Compost Modern" about the environment, energy, taking bicycles places - you know, earthy stuff. Saul had rode his wife's bicycle to the event, he got this custom bike for her as a wedding present, it says "For Arwen Griffith" on the frame. It's a yellow "pocket rocket" from Bike Friday - I know these bikes and they're amazing, Saul will only buy something if he plans to have it for the next 100 years and to pass it along to his kids, this was one of those things. Any way - the irony of course is, speaking about good transportation choices at an eco-conference you ride your bicycle to means your bike will get stolen while you do your talk - this bike was stolen across from the Herbst Theater, Saturday Februrary 21st (Saturday) between 1-5pm. This bicycle is extremely rare, custom made and says "For Arwen Griffith" on it. It will be hard to sell and most people who know about bikes will be able to spot this. If you know anything about this bicycle there is a reward and also "no questions" asked - just email me. I told Saul that there are a lot of makers in the Bay Area and there's a good chance we might be able to find this bike. It had a "New York" Kryptonite lock on it, it was gone too.

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nk497 writes "The release of the beta for the next version of Apple's Safari browser last week helped drive Apple's market share above ten per cent. The Safari beta has gained users at a rate of about 0.5 per cent a day since its release, topping one per cent by day four. For comparison, Microsoft's beta of IE took six months to hit one percent, Chrome needed almost a month, and Firefox 3 took a week."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PMA 2009: Samsung has today officially unveiled its new 'hybrid digital camera' system, in the shape of the NX series. Similar in concept to Micro Four Thirds but using a larger APS-C sensor, this new system is designed to combine the performance and quality of an SLR with the convenience and portability of a point and shoot. By replacing the mirror box and optical viewfinder of an SLR with an electronic viewfinder, the NX series is designed to allow smaller and lighter bodies and lenses. The first model of the NX series will be available in the second half of 2009.

Tech artist Aaron Ristau was one of my favorite makers at last year's Austin Maker Faire. He does gorgeous work, fashioning the technological detritus around us into beautiful art objects. He's recently done a serious of steampunk-inspired pieces, including these awesome glasses. He shared this new work with our pals over at the Steampunk Workshop.

New art by Aaron Ristau

From MAKE magazine:

Check out MAKE, Volume 17: The Lost Knowledge issue!

Buy your copy in the Maker Shed
Subscribe to MAKE
Access the Digital Edition (if you're already a subscriber)

In Volume 17, MAKE goes really old school with the Lost Knowledge issue, featuring projects and articles covering the steampunk scene -- makers creating their own alternative Victorian world through modified computers, phones, cars, costumes, and other fantastic creations. Projects include an elegant Wimshurst Influence Machine (an electrostatic generator built entirely from Home Depot parts), a Florence Siphon coffee brewer, and a teacup-powered Stirling engine. This special section also covers watchmaking, letterpress printing, the early multimedia art of William Blake, and other wondrous and lost (or fading) pre-20th-century technologies.

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It has been impossible to miss the wave of stories chronicling the impending death of newspapers. Some have gone so far as to posit that a country without numerous newspapers will be a threat to original reporting because, traditionally, daily papers set much of the agenda for the rest of the media ecosystem. As newspapers go, there, too, goes much of media's reporting ability, or so goes the argument.

But while the next couple years will undoubtedly bring much painful reorganization in news industry, at least one sector is showing success, and even growth. Wire services, who supply stories to newspapers, television and websites, are actually hiring. Even as the Wall Street Journal was laying off workers, Dow Jones newswire and Bloomberg were expanding. The market is so promising that CNN is jumping in, too. So, while newspapers continue down their troubled path, original reporting is finding a new way to reach the public.

And, if you think about it, this makes plenty of sense. The wire services provide news that can be used by multiple different publications -- and for news outside of local communities, it makes some amount of sense to consolidate it down to a few competing wire services. Does every major American newspaper need a bureau in Russia? That's a lot of inefficiency and duplication of effort. Having a few different wire services, enhanced with help from community members who can help lead the reporters to stories, can actually represent a much more efficient, but still quite useful, way of reporting on events. In many ways it's the same disintermediation effect that we've seen in industry after industry -- where the end result is a much more efficient machine which provides a better product for everyone.

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.

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Pascal completed this amazing 250+ hour mod combining an unassuming upright piano with a KORG Triton synthesizer keyboard. It's a surefire way to spice up those holiday sing-alongs! [via Matrixsynth]

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Behold the cardboardy-retro-nessKamil's BeatSequencer v1.0. Though the front panel may have some mechanical stability issues, It reminds me of a miniaturized vintage computing giant.

FYI - Those 24 LEDs are handled via Arduino's shift function and the handy 74HC595 shift register chip.

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I am so digging all of the bot sculptures that Tinkerbots shares in the MAKE Flickr pool. This one is VICTRON aka Slim. Love the model airplane engine on the back.

Tinkerbots

More:
Tinkerbots' rayguns

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Time after time after time after time we've seen US court defend the right to anonymity of people posting anonymous blogs or comments in forums. In fact, we were a bit disappointed to see a ruling in Texas recently go the other way. However, there are still plenty of other courts willing to recognize that right to anonymity. A Maryland appeals court has agreed that online anonymity is worth protecting -- and even set up some interesting guidelines that other courts might follow:

• Require that plaintiffs notify anonymous parties that their identities are sought.
• Give the posters time to reply with reasons why they should remain nameless.
• Require plaintiffs identify the defamatory statements and who made them.
• Determine whether the complaint has set forth a prima facie defamation, where the words are obviously libelous, or a per quod action, meaning it requires outside evidence.
• Weigh the poster's right to free speech against the strength of the case and the necessity of identity disclosure.

All in all, this seems like a reasonable setup, though I tend to think that people are too quick to call certain statements defamatory.

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MusicMiK shares his PCB creation process while working on a couple of phaser effects pedal boards. If you're interested in making your own boards this will of course be of interest. Keep in mind, some of the techniques he demonstrates could be accomplished by relatively simpler means - such as using iron-on transfer or presensitized boards, instead of spray-on photo-resist. Either way it's a nice and thorough little series of vids full of maker-zen. Be sure to check out step 3 for his testing and SMD soldering process.

From the pages of MAKE:

Primer - Printed circuit boards  Vol. 2, pg. 165

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supaneko writes "I am working with a non-profit that will eventually host a massive online self-help archive and community (using FTP and HTTP services). We are expecting 1,000+ unique visitors / day. I know that having only one server to serve this number of people is not a great idea, so I began to look into clusters. After a bit of reading I determined that I am looking for high availability, in case of hardware fault, and network load balancing, which will allow the load to be shared among the two to six servers that we hope to purchase. What I have not been able to determine is the 'perfect' solution that would offer efficiency, ease-of-use, simple maintenance, enjoyable performance, and a notably better experience when compared to other setups. Reading about Windows 2003 Clustering makes the whole process sounds easy, while Linux and FreeBSD just seem overly complicated. But is this truly the case? What have you all done for clustering solutions that worked out well? What key features should I be aware for successful cluster setup (hubs, wiring, hardware, software, same servers across the board, etc.)?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As it appears that the US government will be putting even more money into AIG beyond the $150 billion we've (us, taxpayers) have already spent, Fred Wilson has a good point about why government funded businesses will almost always act inefficiently. The very fact that every move they make is extra-scrutinized for how they're "spending our dollars" makes it almost impossible to act in ways that can help a company actually make the investments and decisions it needs to make. Instead, everything is second-guessed and scrutinized for "how will this look." This results in business decisions that are forced to respond to populist sentiment rather than good business judgment. This again raises questions of why we're propping up businesses that failed, rather than helping new entities open up.

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Announcing our new bundles available exclusively in the Maker Shed. The no soldering required bundle is for anyone that doesn't want to solder, yet they still enjoy electronics. Yep, there are people who don't want to solder. I swear it's true! Well, luckily for them there are some really fun electronic kits that don't require any soldering at all! Just remember these kits are a lot of fun to build, even if you are a soldering pro.

The No soldering required bundle includes:

(1) Blinkybug Kit $14.99 value
(1) LED Clock Kit [Red] $26.95 value
(1) LED Art Kit $14.95 value
(1) Maker's Notebook $19.99 value

All for the discounted price of $57. That's an amazing 25% off the price if you purchased these items individually. Take advantage of this great deal before it's too late.

More about the No soldering required bundle in the Maker Shed

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Bruce Sterling's Webstock talk on Web 2.0 has a whole crapload of incredibly insightful stuff in it, and ends on a note that makes me want to go to the barricades:

That's the key Web 2.0 insight: "the web as a platform."

Okay, "webs" are not "platforms." I know you're used to that idea after five years, but consider taking the word "web" out, and using the newer sexy term, "cloud." "The cloud as platform." That is insanely great. Right? You can't build a "platform" on a "cloud!" That is a wildly mixed metaphor! A cloud is insubstantial, while a platform is a solid foundation! The platform falls through the cloud and is smashed to earth like a plummeting stock price!

Imagine that this was financial thinking -- instead of web design thinking. We take a bunch of loans, we mash them together and turn them into a security. Now securities are secure, right? They are triple-A solid! So now we can build more loans on top of those securities. Ingenious! This means the price of credit trends to zero, so the user base expands radically, so everybody can have credit! v Nobody could have tried that before, because that sounds like a magic Ponzi scheme. But luckily, we have computers in banking now. That means Moore's law is gonna save us! Instead of it being really obvious who owes what to whom, we can have a fluid, formless ownership structure that's always in permanent beta. As long as we keep moving forward, adding attractive new features, the situation is booming!

Now, I wouldn't want to claim that Web 2.0 is as frail as the financial system -- the financial system that supported it and made it possible! But Web 2.0 is directly built on top of finance. Web 2.0 is supposed to be business. This isn't a public utility or a public service, like the old model of an Information Superhighway established for the public good.

The Information Superhighway is long dead -- it was killed by Web 1.0. And web 2.0 kills web 1.0.

What Bruce Sterling Actually Said About Web 2.0 at Webstock 09

Addendum:

Hedgemonicon:

The more I think about it the more apt the comparison between the web and the financial system is.

The web is a tool. Nothing more, nothing less. But its proven to be such a goddamn useful tool that we're using it more and more, and discarding our previous tools. We're replacing bookstores with amazon, mail with email, tv with hulu etc. because this new tool is so GOOD. But in our excitement about it, we haven't stopped to consider some of the drawbacks or limitations it might have.

Likewise, the financial system was built on new tools of statistical analysis. These tools were so GOOD and allowed so much money to be made that we didn't stop to consider the drawbacks or limitations of them. And it turns out there are some pretty severe drawbacks and limitations. They're so severe in fact, that they're currently destroying the entire financial system.

Total reliance on something without considering the drawbacks is a recipe for disaster, and its certainly possible that our use of the web is taking us down that road.

A small mischievous octopus at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium broke a valve in its tank, resulting in a flood.

The guest of honor in the aquarium's Kids' Corner octopus tank had swum to the top of the enclosure and disassembled the recycling system's valve, flooding the place with some 200 gallons of seawater.

"It had grabbed the tube that pulls out the water and caused it to spray outside the tank," said aquarium education specialist Nick Fash. Judging by the size of the flood, Fash estimated that the water flowed for about 10 hours before the first staff member, Aaron Kind, showed up for work.

Octopus floods Santa Monica Pier Aquarium (Thanks, Coop!)

Addenda:

Urshrew:

Note to octopus:

I did not mean to eat your brother. I thought that sushi was squid.

Please spare my family.

Signed,

Me

Chris Spurgeon:

That octopus is now confined to a tiny corner of his aquarium where he's passing the hours bouncing a baseball against the wall.

Serge Tuganov, 28, of Moscow, accepted a $4000+ bet from two women that he couldn't handle a 12-hour sex marathon with them. According to KTLA News, he won by downing a bottle of viagra. But right after the orgy, he died of a heart attack. No info on how many pills might in a "bottle." In fact, not much info in general. "Man Dies After 12 Hour Viagra Fueled Orgy" (Thanks, Derek Bledsoe!)

Addenda:

Takuan:

Death by Snoo Snoo!

Jessemoya:

Well, of course he died. What else do you do with your life after you win a $4,000 bet by having sex with two women for 12 hours? Nothing! That's it, you're done. YOU WIN.

Do you need a quick translation while working online? It can be an e-mail from a colleague, the lyrics of a song, an e-mail, or even a web page. All you need to do is try one of the free language translation services I personally selected and reviewed in this mini-guide. Photo credit: rosendo Oftentimes you might need some information for a work you're preparing, your thesis, or any other reason, but what if those info are not in your own language? Do you need to buy a dictionary and start translating? Sure, you can do that, but you can be way smarter! Lucky for you there are plenty of online services to help you translate texts, documents, web pages, or e-mails. All without spending a dime. I'm sure you're already familiar with the Google Language Tools, but there are a few alternatives I suggest you check out. These translation tools all work pretty much the same way. You just copy and paste the text you need to translate, and then select the language you are translating from / to. Et voilá, you're done! It's as simple as that, even if it may take a while if you are translating an entire web page or a very long document. Curious? Do you want to know more about these free online translation services? Here below the set of key basic characteristics that I have utilized to compare the tools I hand-picked and reviewed, so that you can easily find the best language translation service for your needs:

1. Translation sources: Some of these services not only translate a single word or a text, but even a web page or an e-mail.
2. Word Limit: Usually you can translate for free up to 150 words, but the very best services in these guide have a higher word limit, or even none at all.
3. Special features: What if you have to translate from a language which is not your own? You may not have some special characters in your keyboard (say the ñ in Spanish). But the best tools in this guide have this feature built right in, so you don't have to worry about that.
4. File uploading: It can be quite a hassle to copy and paste text from a long document, but services like SYSTRANet let you upload files right from your desktop.

Here all the details:

Free Online Language Translation

1. SDL FreeTranslation.com
   
   SDL FreeTranslation.com is a free online translation service that you can use to translate blocks of text, or even web pages. Each text can be up to 4-5 pages or about 4,000 to 5,000 words, which is about 8 or 10 pages of a fairly dense document. Worth mentioning is the special character feature that lets you add characters which you don't have on your keyboard without changing its layout.
   http://www.freetranslation.com/
   
   
   
2. WorldLingo
   
   WorldLingo is an online language translation service that allows you to translate texts, documents, web pages or even e-mails from and to a language of your choice. Just submit the text or files that you need to read in another language and let WorldLingo do the rest. WorldLingo is completely free to use, but the maximum length of the text you can convert is set to 150 words.
   http://www.worldlingo.com/en/products_services/worldlingo_translator.html
   
   
   
3. Yahoo! Babel Fish
   
   Yahoo! Babel Fish is a free online service to translate a block of text or web pages. Powered by the SYSTRAN translation engine, Yahoo! Babel Fish is the most popular of these services and allows the translation of texts up to 150 words from and to a large set of languages. Just paste your text or URL inside the translator window and let Yahoo! Babel Fish work for you.
   http://babelfish.yahoo.com/
   
   
   
4. PROMT Translator
   
   PROMT Translator is a free online language translation service that works either with texts and web pages. Unlike other similar services, not many languages are available, but you have advanced features like transliteration or displaying variants for your translated text. You can also check the spelling of your text before submitting a translation, and there's no limit to the words you can translate.
   http://www.online-translator.com/text_Translation.aspx
   
   
   
5. Reverso
   
   Reverso is an online service that provides you with a free translation of a given text. Not many pairs of languages are available, but Reverso comes with the useful special character feature so you can use all those chars which are not available in your country language and keyboard layout. No word limit for your translations.
   http://www.reverso.net/text_translation.asp?lang=EN
   
   
   
6. Google Language Tools
   
   Google Language Tools allows you to translate a text or a web page in another language instantly. The service is completely free, web-based, and supports all the principal languages spoken across the World. Despite being no word limit for the text you can translate, unlike other similar tools, Google Translation Tools has no special character feature, or offers to upload documents from your hard-disk for immediate translation.
   http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en
   
   
   
7. SYSTRANet
   
   SYSTRANet is a free online translation service that allows you to type a text, or even access files directly from your desktop, preserving customization and format. You can then select the language pair, the custom topic dictionary that best fit your content, and an option to introduce some custom terms that you may want to utilize in your translated documents. No limit to the length of the text and the possibility to use special characters make up for a powerful software.
   http://www.systranet.com/
   
   
   
8. WordReference
   
   WordReference is a free online translator and dictionary that helps you translate single words or find their meaning. Just type the words you need to translate and select the source and target language. You can also embed a mini version of the translator in your web page or use the iPhone / iPod Touch app.
   http://www.wordreference.com/index.htm
   
   
   
9. Babylon
   
   Babylon is a free online service to make a language translation. With a clean and easy-to-use interface Babylon allows you to translate from and to more than 800 paired languages, with no limit to the text you can submit. The service is also available for a free download on your desktop, both for PCs and Macs.
   http://translation.babylon.com/
   
   
   
10. LOGOS
    
    LOGOS is a free online service for language translation. LOGOS allows you to translate single words from and into several languages or even use its powerful, built-in dictionary to look up for a definition of the words you want to translate. It is not possible to translate web pages.
    http://www.logos.net/
    
    
    
11. Ajeeb Translation
    
    The Tarim tool by Ajeeb Translation Site provides a free facility for translating between Arabic and English, and back. The service is either a text and a web page translator. A number of useful options are also offered to enhance the translation quality like: better accuracy, less layout, progressive translation, and transliteration.
    http://tarjim.ajeeb.com/sakhr/MainView.aspx?lang=1

Originally prepared by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia, and first published on March 2, 2009 as "Free Online Language Translation: Best Services To Translate Your Documents - Mini-Guide".

Trumpeter Clark Terry talked about how he learned to listen and play music on a re-broadcast of the Billy Taylor Jazz program on NPR, which I caught a portion of in my car.

Terry said that he and his friends built crystal radios to pick up music over the air. The radios were cheap and the sound was not very good. They'd set the radio in a large bowl to amplify the sound. They began imitating the sounds they heard, improvising with makeshift instruments. Terry described a "bass", which was made with the hose from a vacuum, one end of which was placed in a large glass. His first trumpet was made from a garden hose, wound in a coil with a funnel on one end and a bit of pipe on the other as a mouth piece. Terry said they made an awful lot of noise and not much music. However, neighbors who grew tired of the noise pitched in and bought Terry his first trumpet.

Terry's story shows how DIY can jumpstart a career.

Information about the Clark Terry program can be found on NPR in an archive of the Billy Taylor show. (I'm not sure if the program itself is available; I have trouble with RealAudio.)

I also wrote on O'Reilly Radar about our preference for the sound of MP3s in The Sizzling Sound of Music.

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Ella sez, "A friend of mine asked to put her camera on the conveyor belt at a local kaiten sushi restaurant. People's reactions as they discover that they're being filmed are fairly humorous."

Kaiten (conveyor) sushi time in real Japan (Thanks, Ella!)

reifman links to his thorough and thoughtful review of the experience of reading a newspaper on the Kindle 2. "I've been eager to try The New York Times on the Kindle 2; here's my review with a basic video walk-through and screenshots. I give the Kindle 2 version of The Times a B. Software updates could bring it up to an A-. Kindle designers should have learned more from the iPhone 3G. Unfortunately, my Kindle display scratched less than 24 hours after it arrived. As I detail in the review, Amazon customer service was not very accommodating. Is it my fault — or will Kindle 2 evolve into an Apple 1G Nano-like $22.5M settlement? You can read about Hearst's e-reader for newspapers from earlier today on Slashdot."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes "A 2004 study found some 10 million women lacking a cervix were still getting Pap tests. Only problem is, a Pap test screens for cervical cancer — no cervix, no cancer. With this tale, Newsweek's Sharon Begley makes her case for comparative-effectiveness research (CER), which is receiving $1 billion under the stimulus bill for studies to determine which treatments, including drugs, are more medically sound and cost-effective than others for a given ailment. Physicians, Begley says, must stop treatments that are rooted more in local medical culture than in medical science, embrace practices that have been shown scientifically to be superior to others, and ignore critics who paint CER as government control of doctors' decision-making."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's been a great week in the Maker Shed. We started out with another How-To Tuesday: Arduino 101 and ended the week with a quick preview of the Gakken Gravity Clock kit. We are expecting more new kits in the Maker Shed this week, so keep on checking the MAKE blog for details.

How-To Tuesday: Arduino 101 potentiometers and servos

Subscribe to the MAKE podcast | Download for iTunes

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almechist writes "Many Netflix customers are up in arms over the new instant-watch player powered by Microsoft's Silverlight. The official Netflix blog is full of complaints from users who decry not only the new player's quality but also the way it's being distributed, with many claiming they were deceived into downloading it. Once you opt for the new player, the old Windows Media based player won't function, not on any computer associated with the account. The new player is supposedly still beta, but NF members are strongly encouraged (some say tricked) by NF into the so-called 'upgrade,' which is permanent — there is no way to opt out. The marked decrease in video quality seen by those who have switched is perhaps not surprising, since the old player could utilize bit streams up to twice as fast as the new one, but this information is nowhere given out by NF. So far NF has been answering all complaints with variations on 'tough luck pal, you're stuck with it,' but many customers are so disgusted they're ready to cancel their NF membership. This could be a public relations disaster in the making for Netflix."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fantagraphics has just released an anthology of one of the wackiest comic book artists and writers ever, Boody Rogers. His feverishly surreal comics from the 1940s paved the way for the underground artists of the 1960s. When I read these stories, filled with crazy-looking beasts and absurd situations, the thing that stuck out in my mind was how much fun Rogers must have had while drawing them.

You've met Fletcher Hanks . Now meet Boody Rogers! Fans of Boody Rogers' Golden age comic-book stories span generations of cartoonists, from Robert Williams to Art Spiegelman to Johnny Ryan. Spiegelman printed Rogers' work in RAW magazine and recently it also appeared in the anthology book Art Out of Time: Unknown Comic Visionaries (Abrams). Here at last is a single book - Boody: The Bizarre Comics of Boody Rogers - devoted to this cult comics hero, collecting Roger's best Sparky Watts , Babe and Dudley stories, as well as much more. This beautifully designed tome also has tons of vintage photos and unpublished art (including art from the first modern newsstand comic book that Rogers did in 1935). It all begins with a career spanning fun and fascinating interview with the late Rogers, by editor Craig Yoe (Arf).

Boody: The Bizarre Comics of Boody Rogers

.: oomlout :.: One Day Chair Challenge Result? Success....

The chair is complete. What started this morning as as an idea and progressed through computer drawings, and scale models has this afternoon materialized into an honest to goodness chair.

The result is admittedly not a design classic, but what we have learned during its design and ultimate construction has been astounding. Just imagine the possibilities that develop if you can make as many mistakes as we did today, everyday. Each day ending with a product that is just a little bit better than yesterdays. We're excited. We'll leave it on one final point; the business mantra that Stuart has been repeating ad nauseam of late (and the rest of us are starting to subscribe to).

"The secret to success is being able to make mistakes faster" (Stuart McFarlan)

(in terms of attribution he's currently claiming he came up with it but we're pretty sure he's lying, if you know where the proper credit lies drop us a line, Clement and I would love to burst this particular bubble)

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