And here we go again, with yet another post about the troubled business of the newspapers, but this time I've got three separate articles that, combined, give a pretty good explanation for why the newspaper business has been in trouble. Basically, the newspapers failed to innovate, they failed to engage with their communities -- and worst of all, they failed to actually do much reporting.

First up is Frank Rich's column on how the American mainstream press is on "suicide watch." He does a decent job describing the problem, in discussing the industry's fear (or outright disgust) towards any sort of innovation, while others did the innovating for them. He compares how the newspapers have acted to how the movie studios acted when TV first became popular.

But... then, he falls into the same old fallacy. Assuming that those who are talking about new models mean "citizen journalists" with no business model:

Reporting the news can be expensive. Some of it -- monitoring the local school board, say -- can and is being done by voluntary "citizen journalists" with time on their hands, integrity and a Web site. But we can't have serious opinions about America's role in combating the Taliban in Pakistan unless brave and knowledgeable correspondents (with security to protect them) tell us in real time what is actually going on there. We can't know what is happening behind closed doors at corrupt, hard-to-penetrate institutions in Washington or Wall Street unless teams of reporters armed with the appropriate technical expertise and assiduously developed contacts are digging night and day. Those reporters have to eat and pay rent, whether they work for print, a TV network, a Web operation or some new bottom-up news organism we can't yet imagine.

Indeed. But no one has ever said otherwise. No one has said that "unpaid" reporters will replace all of the paid ones. We're just saying that the paid reporters may end up doing their jobs in a different way and getting paid via other business models. And, Rich also seems to be underestimating the ability of the people who are already in those places to be a part of the journalism process -- not necessarily the core component of it, but certainly a part of it.

The second article worth reading is Robert Niles discussion of how the ruling in the 1995 lawsuit Stratton Okamont v. Prodigy scared newspapers away from engaging in online conversations. The ruling effectively found Prodigy liable for anonymous comments on its message board because it had hired a moderator for those boards. While the passage of the CDA the following year -- and specifically section 230 of the CDA granting safe harbors -- effectively erased that decision, "risk averse" newspaper feared to actually engage with readers in comments or forums for fear that it would suddenly make them liable for the content written by the community. Thus, they ignored their own communities and did little to really interact with them.

The final piece may be the most interesting. Walter Pincus talks about how so many newspaper reporters have stopped reporting and really started repeating the messages being handed to them. For all the talk of "investigative reporting," there's very little of that being done. Most reporting isn't reporting. It's not digging up the details and presenting an informed piece that gets at the facts. It's simply parroting what someone told them, and then perhaps presenting an alternate point of view (what Jay Rosen has referred to as "he said, she said" journalism) without any effort whatsoever to actually determine who's right. It's as if journalists have figured that "balanced" reporting is to present two sides to any story, and then leave it up to you to do the actual work. Pincus seems to be one of the first we've seen in this ongoing debate to make the point that we've been focusing on for a while: the newspapers aren't adding value.

Pincus also highlights another point that we've mentioned, but which is almost always ignored in these discussions: the big newspapers put themselves into massive debt over the past two decades. Many are still profitable, but not profitable enough to service the debt. And when they top that off by not innovating, not engaging with their community (which is their most valuable asset) and not actually doing real reporting, but just acting as stenographers, is it really any surprise the business is struggling?

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ausekilis sends us to DarkReading for the news that auditors have identified thousands of vulnerabilities in the FAA's Web-based air traffic control applications — 763 of them high-risk. Here is the report on the Department of Transportation site (PDF). "And the FAA's Air Traffic Organization, which heads up ATC operations, received more than 800 security incident alerts in fiscal 2008, but still had not fixed 17 percent of the flaws that caused them, 'including critical incidents in which hackers may have taken over control of ATO computers,' the report says. ... While the number of serious flaws in the FAA's apps appears to be staggering, Jeremiah Grossman, CTO of WhiteHat Security, says the rate is actually in line with the average number of bugs his security firm finds in most Web applications. ... Auditors were able to hack their way through the Web apps to get to data on the Web application and ATC servers, including the FAA's Traffic Flow Management Infrastructure system, Juneau Aviation Weather System, and the Albuquerque Air Traffic Control Tower. They also were able to gain entry into an ATC system that monitors power, according to the report. Another vulnerability in the FAA's Traffic Flow Management Infrastructure leaves related applications open to malware injection."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In this video clip which is making the viral rounds in the Spanish-speaking online world, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez says "The rich are not human, they are animals in human form." A Boing Boing reader who lives in Venezuela says,

I decided to leave Venezuela soon, if I can, when I saw this. Dehumanizing a group of people is certainly in the manual to start genocide and living in a country where officially a portion of the population are not human by decree is against my ideals. I can live with crime, bad public health and even scarcity, but to live with this crap is not acceptable, even with all the basic needs covered. Yes, I might be too sensitive, but I cannot forget all those other times and places where dehumanizing has brought woes.

How to solve the real estate crisis? Bulldoze brand-new but unwanted homes! This video documents bank-hired wrecking crews destroying model homes in a Southern Californiahousing development that never filled with homeowners, when the economy collapsed and the developer went bankrupt.

The bank involved was fined by the city for each day the homes sat unoccupied, so the bank paid to wreck all the homes. Snip from the local paper's account:

The housing collapse is taking a literal form for one bankrupt housing development. Four model homes and 12 nearly finished spec homes at Bear Valley Road and Highway 395 are being demolished.

The developer filed bankruptcy about 18 months ago and the foreclosed property went to Guaranty Bank in Irvine. A Guaranty Bank official, Real Estate Officer Dean Smith, said they were facing daily fines from the city of Victorville if they didnt do something with the homes and property that not up to code. He said it was a choice of pumping their own money into property site improvements and additional money to bring the home up to code or tear down the 16 homes.

Smith said the bank is not in the building or land development business and because of the current housing market does not see anything happening with the property for at least five years. Our only option is to either proceed with putting more than a million bucks into the land, which weve already taken a huge hit on and lost a lot of money, or, we tear down the houses, Smith said.

Videos: Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5. (thanks, Todd Lappin!)

Update: A commenter points us to the related WSJ story.

safesorry notes that several sources are talking about a recent tale of woe about Richard Wolf, a lonely guy looking for love in all the wrong places. Wolf used his work computer to visit the Adult Friend Finder website and upload personal nudes to prospective "friends." Now he's been convicted under a "hacker" law targeted at employees who steal data or access information they shouldn't. "Richard Wolf acknowledged that his behavior was inappropriate when he used his work computer to upload nude photos of himself to an adult web site and view other photos on porn sites, but he didn't think he should be convicted of hacking for doing so."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

safesorry notes that several sources are talking about a recent tale of woe about Richard Wolf, a lonely guy looking for love in all the wrong places. Wolf used his work computer to visit the Adult Friend Finder website and upload personal nudes to prospective 'friends.' Now he's being charged with a "hacker" law targeted at employees who steal data or access information they shouldn't. "Richard Wolf acknowledged that his behavior was inappropriate when he used his work computer to upload nude photos of himself to an adult web site and view other photos on porn sites, but he didn't think he should be convicted of hacking for doing so."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We first discussed this issue way back in 2003, wondering whether it was really a violation of privacy for police to put a GPS tracking device on a suspect's car. In 2005, a court said it was perfectly legal, though there were concerns about what this meant. We're seeing the same concerns as another court has ruled the same way. The reasoning and the logic is effectively the same: if you are traveling on public roads, anyone could (theoretically) drive behind you and see where you are going -- even without a warrant. So is it really a violation of privacy if that tracking is done by a little black box attached to your car instead of a big black box with four wheels?

Of course, the flipside to that, is that if you are driving you can also see (for the most part) if there is another car following you and that other car cannot follow you onto private property that you own. A hidden GPS device is quite different on those points. So while the courts seem to be coming down on the side of this not being a violation of privacy, I can definitely see where privacy advocates are troubled by these rulings. The fact that they effectively suggest the police can simply put a hidden GPS device on any car for no reason at all raises plenty of questions -- especially in an era when information can and is regularly abused.

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Video Link. YouTuber electricpony made this awesome video using a Stratocaster + Guyatone Micro Octaver + SRB808 Overdrive + EHX Voice Box (Shure SM57 Mic) + Epiphone Valve Junior. Here's more about the voice box gizmo, from Electro Harmonix -- who we've covered previously in a Boing Boing video episode. (thanks, Scott Matthews!)

Related:
* BB Video: Inside Electro-Harmonix, guitar pedal engineers and vintage vacuum tubes
* "Golden Throat" talk box from the golden age

Dotnaught writes "Wladimir Palant, maker of the Firefox extension Adblock Plus, on Monday proposed a change in his software that would allow publishers, with the consent of Adblock Plus users, to prevent their ads from being blocked. Palant suggested altering his software to recognize a specific meta tag as a signal to bring up an in-line dialog box noting the site publisher's desire to prevent ad blocking. The user would then have to choose to respect that wish or not."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is a really interesting iTunes controller created by Emily duff. Inside "Monty", the little yellow monster, is an accelerometer that is controlled by an Arduino. Version 2.0 of Monty is going to add extra features and hopefully go wireless! Check out the link for more information and the source code.

Monty iTunes Controller v.1 uses accelerometer data to control iTunes. Depending on Monty's position, data is sent via the serial port to an AppleScript to communicate with iTunes. The motions are a bit exaggerated currently, because my X and Y values are very small, this will change in v.2 to allow for a greater range of motion.

More about Monty iTunes Controller v.1

In the Maker Shed:


In the Maker Shed: Memsic 2125 accelerometer

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The Angel Lap Pillow is made for men to kneel on while they pee to prevent splashing.

This video is making the viral rounds in Cuban 'net circles, and throughout Latin America in general. "Cuba Tiene Hambre" has also spawned many a reggaeton fan remix. People are loading the audio clip onto phones as a ringtone, too. In the video, a "regular guy" identified as Pánfilo on the streets of Cuba is basically saying "What Cuba needs right now is FOOD. Cuba is HUNGRY." A timely viral phenom to be aware of as America's president makes public overtures to Cuba, and calls throughout the world for an end to the US embargo are renewed. (via Ned Sublette's list)

Here's a video of a woman with alien hand syndrome from 2006.

From Mind Hacks:

As it turns out, the patient says she generally knows it is hers, but when it is draped across her body in a certain position and making involuntary movements she can think it is someone else's limb. In other words, she seems to have fleeting somatoparaphrenia.

The video then shows the hand moving of its own accord and the patient having to use the other hand to keep it out of trouble.

Despite looking like she's in pretty bad shape, frankenerin later posted a wonderful follow-up video where she is back on her feet and feeling fine, although discusses how she's had to adjust her career aspirations owing to the longer-term effects of the brain injury.

Alien hand syndrome video

Back at the end of March, we were surprised that the NY Times, in consolidating its regular site with the site of the International Herald Tribune (which it owned) had broken all the links to IHT.com. Rather than taking them to the article in question on the NY Times site, it simply took them to a landing page. This was just a bad idea all around. It appears that a former reporter for IHT, Thomas Crampton, discovered this over the weekend and has brought renewed attention to the issue by issuing an open letter to the NY Times asking why it "deleted" his career -- in that all of his early work that appeared in the IHT is now gone (some, but not all, of it remains in the NY Times). Additionally, he pointed out that this is also causing problems for Wikipedia, notably with any article that relied on evidence from an IHT article. While we've seen others erase old articles as well (and the Associated Press is famous for forcing all its partners to take down AP articles after just a short time period), it still is amazing in this day and age that anyone thinks it's a good idea to break links to news stories -- especially when the value of archives found via search engines is so high.

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Colliding Particles Part 4 is the latest in a series of short web videos featuring physicists involved in research at the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland.

Episode 4, 'Problems' travels to Paris for a look at some of the theoretical work behind the 'Eurostar' paper. Gavin and his PhD student Mathieu explore the mathematics behind the behaviour of fundamental particles, and we have an update on the 'incident' which is holding up work at the LHC. For an introduction to the 'Eurostar' project, watch Episode 1.

A higher rez version from Vimeo is above. Here's the same stuff on YouTube. (Thanks, Susannah Breslin!)

Boing Boing Gadgets' Steven Leckart found video of the Death Star destroying the USS Enterprise. That's what happens when you let Lucasfilm set up shop in San Francisco, also home to the United Federation of Planets. "Death Star annihilates the Enterprise"

Hugh Pickens writes "A team of Army cadets spent four days at West Point last week struggling around the clock to keep a computer network operating while hackers from the National Security Agency tried to infiltrate it with methods that an enemy might use. The NSA made the cadets' task more difficult by planting viruses on some of the equipment, just as real-world hackers have done on millions of computers around the world. The competition was a final exam for computer science and information technology majors, who competed against teams from the Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine as well as the Naval Postgraduate Academy and the Air Force Institute of Technology. Ideally, the teams would be allowed to attack other schools' networks while also defending their own but only the NSA, with its arsenal of waivers, loopholes, special authorizations is allowed to take down a US network. NSA tailored its attacks to be just 'a little too hard for the strongest undergraduate team to deal with, so that we could distinguish the strongest teams from the weaker ones.' The winning West Point team used Linux, instead of relying on proprietary products from big-name companies like Microsoft or Sun Microsystems."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Video Link. The Art of Bleeding Magic Ambulance crew, featuring Abram the Safety Ape and R2 the robot, respond to the Swine Flu crisis. "Nurses, robots, duct tape, and pork are involved," explains Reverend Al Ridenour. CAST & Crew: Phil Glau, Randy Horton, Selene Luna, Auriana-Lynn, Radhika Hersey, Emmeline Chang, Vima Sophia, Howard Hallis, Dapper Cadaver, Eric Ridenour, Al Ridenour.

Martha Mason, who lived more than 60 of her 71 years in an iron lung, died on Monday. Mason wrote a memoir, "Breathe: Life in the Rhythm of an Iron Lung," and she's also been featured in a documentary film "Martha in Lattimore." There is currently one copy of Breathe on Amazon, listed at $200. From the NYT:

From her horizontal world — a 7-foot-long, 800-pound iron cylinder that encased all but her head — Ms. Mason lived a life that was by her own account fine and full, reading voraciously, graduating with highest honors from high school and college, entertaining and eventually writing.

She chose to remain in an iron lung, she often said, for the freedom it gave her. It let her breathe without tubes in her throat, incisions or hospital stays, as newer, smaller ventilators might require. It took no professional training to operate, letting her remain mistress of her own house, with just two aides assisting her.

“I’m happy with who I am, where I am,” Ms. Mason told The Charlotte Observer in 2003. “I wouldn’t have chosen this life, certainly. But given this life, I’ve probably had the best situation anyone could ask for.”New York Times:

"Martha Mason, Who Wrote Book About Her Decades in an Iron Lung, Dies at 71" (Thanks, Shawn Connally!)

jamie pointed out what appears to be an unfortunate policy for Apple's app store that is refusing anything to do with BitTorrent. The example is a remote control app that allows a user to interface with their Transmission BitTorrent client. This certainly isn't the first complaint over app store policy. Issues from the return policy to the "objectionable content" of Nine Inch Nails have some developers concerned over what Apple is doing to the market. Of course, many are quick to remind that it is Apple's store and they are free to do whatever they want with it.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After Colorado State Senator Greg Brophy announced that he wanted a vanity license plate that read ACLUSUX, the ACLU of Colorado Executive Director Cathryn Hazouri sent him a letter:

If you apply for that license and are refused, please contact the ACLU because we stand ready to represent you if you want to pursue your right to have that license plate. . . After all, censorship is censorship and the ACLU doesn’t draw any distinction between speech with which we agree and speech we may not like. That would be content discrimination and would violate one of our major principles of protecting free speech."

ACLU defends ACLUSUX proposed license plate (Via The Agitator)

Abraham Abulafia says: This is a rare audio of R. E. Schultes, the remarkable founder of Ethnobotany, talking about hallucinogenic plants.

Audio of R E Schultes on Hallucinogenic Plants

We've been hearing a lot about "cyberbullying" lately. Cases like the Lori Drew incident have got politicians and teachers all over looking to pass vague new rules and laws (or twist existing ones) to punish behavior they feel is wrong. The problem is, no one really seems to be able to define the term, at least not in a way that really distinguishes it from simply being a jerk online, so it's encouraging to see a paper from a vice president of Stetson University, Darby Dickerson, calling on educators to slow down and define cyberbullying before creating policies about it, though I'm not sure he gets to the heart of the issue. Dickerson observes that people have been using the term often and easily, without any real consensus on what it includes and what it doesn't. In the absence of a generally accepted scholarly or legal definition, he calls on universities to take four steps before creating a cyberbullying policy:

1. consider the types of activity that might be included within the term,
2. consider the type of harm,
3. consider the level of intent required by the offender,
4. determine the extent that it will address off-campus conduct.

This is good advice and Dickerson does a pretty good job of outlining the concerns. He notes that conduct such as "cyberstalking" or "cyberthreats" might be included, while issues of fraud probably shouldn't be, arguing that "not all misconduct that occurs online should be labelled as cyberbullying." He cautions institutions to remember "free speech and related constitutional concerns." He's skeptical of extending the term to include simply being a jerk online, and he questions labeling students as cyberbullies who don't display real malice or hostility. He also raises lots of important questions about what it means to be "off-campus" in cyberspace. Dickerson concludes by urging institutions to clearly define the term before enacting policies, highlighting many important questions that must be answered first.

Yet... Dickerson ignores one major consideration: why have a separate policy for cyberbullying anyway? It seems to me that in order to consider these issues sanely, we need to stop pretending they're separate things simply because we apply a "cyber" prefix to them. What's a "cyberthreat?" How is that different from a threat in general? Is a "cyberthreat" just a threat made online? What if it's made with a cell phone instead? What about a plain old telephone? Yes, the medium must be considered ("you're going to die" is different when shouted in a playground than written in letters cut out of a magazine...), but do we create separate terms or policies for each medium? We do often need to re-examine our laws and policies in the face of new technologies, but it rarely makes sense to have separate "cyberpolicies" instead of ensuring that existing policies are adapted to handle the new technologies. Why not ensure that existing harassment policies cover real harassment that occurs online instead of creating a new "cyberharassment" policy? Without a consideration of the difference between cyberbullying and bullying in general at the heart of this discussion, people run the risk of spending their energy blaming the technology and grandstanding, creating new policies with troubling unintended consequences rather than addressing the real issue, which often may well just be plain old bullying in a new context. The new context can certainly present new challenges that might warrant policy changes, but people should be careful not to get distracted from the issue of bullying just because it has "cyber" tacked onto the front.

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

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An anonymous Pastafarian says:

Eat the body of the FSM! Hallelujah! Sweet and chewy pasta strands, and His all-seeing eyes. Partake of Him with friends.

Candy Flying Spaghetti Monster

UK artist Hush, whose work draws from manga, street art, and old-school pop art, recently had a show at Hollywood's Carmichael Gallery of Contemporary Art. Here's a timelapse video of his Hymn To Beauty installation. (Thanks, Alex Pang!)

The ITP Spring Show 2009 was another great display of "interactive sight, sound and technology". MAKE stopped by to check out all the cool projects, and we took some pictures and videos that we will be posting over the next few days. You can still check out all the great work tonight, May 11th, from 5-9pm. If you're into interactive art and technology, it's a must see show.

Check out my Flickr photo set

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Drivintin is one of many who have written to tell us about how The Pirate Bay has taken an interesting approach to the 30 million SEK fine levied in their recent court case (which they said they wont pay). "The bill inspired anakata to devise a plan involving sending money to Danowsky's law firm, but not to pay the fine of course which they say will never be payed. Anakata's clever plan is called internet-avgift, internet-fee in English. Anakata encourages all Internet users to pay extremely small sums around 1 SEK (0.13 USD) to Danowsky's law firm, which represented the music companies at the Pirate Bay trial. The music companies will not benefit from this, instead it will cost them money to handle and process all the money."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The mysterious Imaginary Foundation issued a series of skateboard decks featuring their stunning surrealist designs. They're an affordable $60/each. Seen here, "Somewhere."
Imaginary Foundation skateboard decks

brothke writes "In The Road to Big Brother: One Man's Struggle Against the Surveillance Society, Ross Clark journals his struggles to avoid the myriad CCTV cameras in his native England. That's difficult given the millions of cameras in public locations there. Before going forward, the use of the term 'Big Brother' in both the title and throughout the book is erroneous. Big Brother has its roots in George Orwell's novel 1984 and refers to an omnipresent, seemingly benevolent figure representing the oppressive control over individual lives exerted by an authoritarian government. The term has been misappropriated to describe everything from legitimate crime-fighting, to surveillance cameras, to corporate e-mail and network usage monitoring. Localities that deploy CCTV cameras in public thoroughfares in the hope of combating crime are in no way indicative of the oppressive control of Orwell's Big Brother. Should we be concerned that such a scenario play itself out in Ross Clark's UK or in the US? Likely no, as US government agencies are widely decentralized and isolated. Just getting the networks within a single federal agency unified is a daunting task; getting all of the agencies to have a single unified data sharing mechanism is a pipe-dream. Look at it this way: the US Department of Defense has more networks than some countries have computers." Read below for the rest of Ben's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last month, we parodied the mainstream press' criticism that everyone else "owed" them money because they were the original creators of a story, by noting that the press never paid the newsmakers for creating the story in the first place. Danny Sullivan has now taken a more serious look at this, noting that for all the talk about how Google is "stealing" from news publications, those same publications never seem willing to admit how much they rely on Google for their jobs these days -- and perhaps one could make an argument that these publications actually owe Google for helping make them more productive. After all, the newspapers claim they want a "fair share" of the money Google makes since it's using their content for "free." But, the same argument works in reverse. If it's "fair," then shouldn't Google get a share of the money the news publications make, since its reporters use Google's tools "for free"?

Obviously, the real point is that both sides benefit, and each is responsible for putting in place business models that work. Google has done that successfully. Many news publications have not. But no one should be claiming its "unfair" or that someone else owes them money.

Meanwhile, Sullivan's piece also goes into great detail about how a random AP story he found was written after an AP reporter found some stories on some blogs, and used them to do more research and publish his story. But were the blogs on which he found the story credited? Of course not. Did they get "their fair share"? Of course not. Hell, unlike Google linking to publications' stories, these bloggers didn't even get any traffic or attention from the AP reporter, who simply wants to pretend he came up with the story from nothing.

And the AP wants to claim that it's being treated unfairly?

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I'd never even heard of this robot, or the "i90" system it's built on, until tonight. The Hawk is now ready for sale, according to the website, but it doesn't say for how much. I'm guessing it's a bundle, since the fully-equipped i90 base unit (with webcam, wireless network, GPS, etc.) is nearly ten grand.

Hawk Robot

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With today's Free Summit broaching the subject of the "dangers" of free, TechDirt has an interesting perusal of why free often can't work without a good business model and why it often gets such a bad reputation. "I tend to wonder if this is really a case of free gone wrong or free done wrong. First, I'm always a bit skeptical of 'free' business models that rely on a 'free' scarcity (such as physical newspapers). While it can work in some cases, it's much more difficult. You're not leveraging an infinite good -- you're putting yourself in a big hole that you have to be able to climb out of. Second, in some ways the model that was set up was a static one where everyone focused on the 'free' part, and no one looked at leapfrogging the others by providing additional value where money could be made. The trick with free is you need to leverage the free part to increase the value of something that is scarce and that you control, which is not easily copied. [...] Still, it's an important point that bears repeating. Free, by itself, is meaningless. Free, with a bad business model, isn't helpful either. The real trick is figuring out how to properly combine free with a good business model, and then you can succeed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Perry Watkins believes he has made the smallest car in the world. It's called the Wind Up. The body of the car comes from a kiddie ride. World's Smallest Car Revealed

Artist Liz Glynn and her assistants built a small model of Rome in a day from cardboard and wood at New York's New Museum. And then destroyed it. From Archaeology magazine:

What inspired you to rebuild Rome? The truism "Rome wasn't built in a day" was being used a lot in political contexts, in relation to Iraq--the Iraqi reconstruction--and also the challenges of rebuilding New Orleans. I was interested in proving that it could be done and shifting the scale so that this massive period in history became accessible in a really hands-on way. I took upending the truism as a challenge and set out to see what that would involve. It was an experiment at first. I didn't really know what would happen.

How'd the experiment turn out? It can be done! It's really a question of scale. I tried to do it once with very minimal research, but when I just started looking into the history of Roman architecture and how "empire" was really manifest in the buildings, and the cycle of building, I found that you could trace many aspects of the political and military history of Rome. They were really rendered directly in the architecture. For me, it became an interesting way to look at all these issues of empire in a physical form.

"Rome WAS Built in a Day!" (Thanks, Bob Pescovitz!)

It's almost sad to watch ex-Drug Czar John Walters made of fool by Harvard senior economics lecturer Jeffrey Miron, who effortlessly knocks down every ludicrous anti-marijuana myth Walters sets up.

What Do You Know, Ex-Drug Czar John Walters Is Still Full of Sh*t!

The Software & Information Industry Association is a great organization -- at least from a comedy standpoint. They got themselves some press a couple of years ago by offering a "bounty" for people who turned in vendors that sold them counterfeit software, but the offer was so full of fine print that it was completely pointless. They then showed a complete ignorance of the law by threatening to sue eBay because counterfeiters peddle their wares there, despite the safe-harbor provisions that protect platform providers. But perhaps the most entertaining story about the SIIA was the one about how their propaganda campaigns were driving people to turn away from proprietary software (you know, the kind produced by SIIA's members) and go with open-source software instead. Now, the group's adding to its comic legacy by unleashing a tidal wave of lawsuits against pirated clip art. The group's lawyer says the suits are "going to be big," while another SIIA exec says it is "making every effort in this challenging economic climate to protect the interests of both the software and graphics industries," adding that when stuff like clip art gets pirated, "everyone loses -- from individual consumers, to the economy as a whole." Since they're protecting the American economy and all, maybe they're just angling for some government bailout money?

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

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Douglas Rushkoff is a guest blogger.

My friend and colleague Janine Saunders just finished this 9-minute video, Life Inc: The Movie, which previews and visualizes some of the core concepts of my upcoming book.

You can watch a medium-quality version by clicking on the embedded link above, or go to:
Archive.org for the highest quality stream/file (Quicktime), YouTube for another option, and the movie's home, LifeIncorporated.net, for a few more choices of playback, as well as some excerpts and information about the whole Life Inc. project.

eldavojohn writes "At some point in the history of video games, violence became uncomfortably real for censors and some parents. In addition to that, realistic use of narcotics has entered mainstream games. While gamers (of adult age) have by and large won the right to this entertainment, a large amount of games have arisen lately that challenge a different aspect of video games — inappropriate or sensitive topics. We've covered it before on Columbine to Fallujah, but I noticed through GamePolitics recently a large trend in severely controversial video games. Where do you stand on these titles?" Read on for the rest of eldavojohn's thoughts.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Awkward Family Photos is what its name says. (Thanks, Vann Hall!)

As the effort to save Wardenclyffe continues, I thought this Instructables on wireless power was an appropriate real-world example of the shear awesomeness and audacity of the late Nicola Tesla's vision.

[via Instructables]

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Gavin Hyatt of Witney, Oxfordshire went to the hospital with a bleeding belly button. The doctor said "It was like something from Alien. I didn’t believe Gavin when he said something was coming out of his belly button until I saw him." That something was a 4cm parasitic twin that had been stuck inside Hyatt for the last 30 years. Hyatt told The Sun:

"At first I thought I had been stung by something due to the burning pain in my belly button.

"But there was no sign of anything on the skin. Then I felt a large lump just above my navel, which was so painful that I nearly passed out.

"I couldn’t sleep and made an emergency appointment with the GP the next day.

"There was a red patch around the area which was hot to the touch. Dr Santos felt it and said it was a hernia."

Hyatt is keeping his twin in a small plastic jar.

Parasitic twin erupts from 30-year-old man's belly button (Via Arbroath)

An anonymous reader writes "Various members of the OpenOffice.org community have been submitting their first revisions of proposals to the OpenOffice.org Call for Design Proposals to redesign the user interface of Open Office. As part of Project Renaissance, attention is being drawn to the OpenOffice user interface, and it's 'user-friendliness.' Among the designs, is FLUX UI, which won an award at the Sun Microsystems Community Innovation Awards Program. Anyone can, and is encouraged, to check out the proposals (scroll to bottom of page) and leave your comments so that the designers can improve their designs for the final deadline for proposal submissions to the community."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It took three years for farmer Hiroichi Kimura and his wife to cultivate heart-shaped watermelons. This year, they shipped 20 of the fruits, which "symbolize their passion for farming and their affection for each other." They sell for 15,750 yen apiece.

Heart shaped watermelons (Via Japan Probe)

It's exciting to see this project progressing: first, Joe Bowers sent us his Arduino-based note visualizer (it blinked LEDs in sequence with the game's notes). Now, he's grafted the Guitar Hero controller's board onto it. Joe mentioned having some difficulty sensing notes when the flame effects burst around the fret board. He's had pretty good success sampling the light sensors ten times per second and averaging the values. The bot can play Foghat's Slow Ride on expert mode with 94% accuracy! If this were mine I'd just sit and watch it play all day long.

The third label in this photo made me laugh out loud:

OhBowz

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Remember a week ago when we wrote about pharma giant Merck and publishing giant Elsevier working together to publish a fake journal that talked up various Merck drugs and was used by doctors to show that the drugs were safe and useful? Well, you knew the story wouldn't end there, right? Slashdot points us to the discovery that there is actually a whole division at Elsevier that would publish such journals and tried to duck this fact before sort of (but not fully) admitting it:

In a statement to The Scientist magazine, Elsevier at first said the company "does not today consider a compilation of reprinted articles a 'journal'". I would like to expand on this ­statement: It was a collection of academic journal articles, published by the academic journal publisher Elsevier, in an academic ­journal-shaped package. Perhaps if it wasn't an academic journal they could have made this clearer in the title which, I should have mentioned, was named: The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine.

Things have deteriorated since. It turns out that Elsevier put out six such journals, sponsored by industry. The Elsevier chief executive, Michael Hansen, has now admitted that they were made to look like journals, and lacked proper disclosure. "This was an unacceptable practice and we regret that it took place," he said.

The pharmaceutical industry, and publishers, as we have repeatedly seen, have serious difficulties in living up to the high standards needed in this field, and bad information in the medical literature leads doctors to make irrational prescribing decisions, which ultimately can cost lives, and cause unnecessary suffering, not to mention the expense.

Doesn't that make you feel safe about the drugs you take?

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zokier writes "Microsoft has released a new programming language called Axum, previously known as Maestro and based on the actor model. It's meant to ease development of concurrent applications and thus making better use of multi-core processors. Axum does not have capabilities to define classes, but as it runs on the .NET platform, Axum can use classes made with C#. Microsoft has not committed to shipping Axum since it is still in an incubation phase of development so feedback from developers is certainly welcome."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just Posted! Our preview sample gallery from the Sigma DP2. We were lucky enough to be loaned a full production version of Sigma's latest camera on a recent trip to Japan for just long enough to put together a quick gallery of sample images. We used a variety of subjects and color modes, and ISOs from 100 to 800. Click through to get an idea of the image quality this new large sensor compact can deliver.

nk497 writes "The release candidate for Microsoft Windows 7 will expire June 2010, and the software giant will let users know they need to pay to upgrade by shutting down the system every two hours for three months. According to Microsoft: "The RC will expire on June 1, 2010. Starting on March 1, 2010, your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. Windows will notify you two weeks before the bi-hourly shutdowns start. To avoid interruption, you'll need to install a non-expired version of Windows before March 1, 2010. You'll also need to install the programs and data that you want to use.""

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

nk497 writes "The release candidate for Microsoft Windows 7 will expire June 2010, and the software giant will let users know they need to pay to upgrade by shutting down the system every two hours for three months. According to Microsoft: "The RC will expire on June 1, 2010. Starting on March 1, 2010, your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. Windows will notify you two weeks before the bi-hourly shutdowns start. To avoid interruption, you'll need to install a non-expired version of Windows before March 1, 2010. You'll also need to install the programs and data that you want to use.""

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of the session's at today's The Free Summit is going to be by Alex Iskold, talking about the "dangers" of free -- a subject he has written on in the past. While I starkly disagree with his position, it is one worth thinking about, and I'm looking forward to his talk. His position (in that article, at least) is that free has consequences, and those consequences can be quite negative. Personally, I find the whole "good or bad" debate to be meaningless when it comes to economics, because economics tends not to care. It's describing what is happening, and I'd rather focus on how to get the best out of that, rather than complaining about why it's somehow bad. But, that said, Alex has a good point that we should at least understand the consequences. We just disagree on how to view those consequences.

Along those lines, our keynote speaker of the day, Chris Anderson, recently posted a story of "free gone horribly wrong" written by Jon Lund, the head of the Danish Internet Advertising Bureau. It's a fascinating and worthwhile read, all about a sudden influx of "free newspapers" in Denmark that weren't just free on street corners, but were freely delivered to homes. Basically, it created a bubble, with everyone getting overwhelmed with multiple free newspapers delivered to their doors every day. The market was overly saturated and it hurt everyone and the whole thing collapsed.

It's definitely an interesting tale -- and one that I think fits with some of what Alex will say. But, I tend to wonder if this is really a case of free gone wrong or free done wrong. First, I'm always a bit skeptical of "free" business models that rely on a "free" scarcity (such as physical newspapers). While it can work in some cases, it's much more difficult. You're not leveraging an infinite good -- you're putting yourself in a big hole that you have to be able to climb out of. Second, in some ways the model that was set up was a static one where everyone focused on the "free" part, and no one looked at leapfrogging the others by providing additional value where money could be made. The trick with free is you need to leverage the free part to increase the value of something that is scarce and that you control, which is not easily copied. That wasn't the case here. Everyone just copied each other, rather than trying to offer something different and better.

Still, it's an important point that bears repeating. Free, by itself, is meaningless. Free, with a bad business model, isn't helpful either. The real trick is figuring out how to properly combine free with a good business model, and then you can succeed.

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Michael sez, "When Canadian politicians are videotaped in committee hearings, those tapes are deemed 'proprietary content' that can't be redistributed by the very people who put them in power: the Canadian public and the advocacy groups who monitor their activities."

The notion that videos of committee hearings constitute proprietary content that when used without permission raise the potential for allegations of contempt of Parliament will undoubtedly come as news to many Canadians. Using these excerpts in YouTube videos, webcasts, or podcasts has emerged as an important and powerful tool for business and consumer groups to educate the public on policy issues and legislative proposals.

Yet, House of Commons lawyers maintain that many of these activities violate the law and have sent notice and takedown demands to YouTube seeking the removal of videos that include House of Commons and committee proceedings. These include clips that involve satire and parody, since they are seen to "distort" the video itself.

SCPHA hearings held earlier this year revealed that Canada's elected officials safeguard Parliamentary video with highly restrictive licencing requirements that are typically limited to use in schools or for private study, research, criticism or review. Relying on Crown copyright, the policy states that any other use - including any commercial use - requires the express prior written approval of the Speaker of the House of Commons.

MPs miss chance to embrace YouTube generation (Thanks, Michael!)

Instructables user eqqman made this ratchet noisemaker, also known as a "gragger," used in the celebtration of Purim.

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Flickr member Mandiberg shows off a product sure to top holiday wish lists this year -

If you take a bunch of those ubiquitous iPod headphones you have sitting around from all of your broken iPods, and your ex-GF's broken iPod, etc, and weave them together, you can make something really quite nice. Gold plate the shuffle for a broach, and its really nice. Especially b/c it actually plays music. Working on a little pre-amp splitter so all 12 speakers will work at full volume. Props to Clara Jo for assistance.

Take a closer look over at the elegant iPendant on Flickr.

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Barence writes "Baby monitors and wireless TV transmitters are responsible for slowing down Wi-Fi connections in built-up areas, according to a report commissioned by British telecoms regulator Ofcom. The research smashes the myth that overlapping Wi-Fi networks in heavily congested towns and cities are to blame for faltering connection speeds. Instead it claims that unlicensed devices operating in the 2.4GHz band are dragging down signals. "It only requires a single device, such as an analogue video sender, to severely affect Wi-Fi services within a short range, such that a single large building or cluster of houses can experience difficulties with using a single Wi-Fi channel," the report claims."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Eric's styrolight looks quite scifi -

I made a chandelier from the molded styrofoam packing material Apple used to use for shipping their laptops. Approx. 35" x 35" x 12".

The unique lighting fixture went on to win the Sustainable prize in Design Within Reach Austin's M+D+F competition - congrats!

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Did you know you can get into the Maker Faire for free if you're willing to volunteer four hours of your time? And, it doesn't have to be during the Faire itself.

You can imagine how much work is involved in setting up and talking down an event of this size. We need folks in the days leading up to and the days following, to help with set-up and breakdown. We know that times are tough for many, but we don't want anyone to miss out on the fun who wants to attend. So, if you've got four hours you can spare, check out our volunteer program page, or email volunteers@makerfaire.com.

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WAY back in the day, in the early '90s, my Hypercard programming partner, Peter Sugarman, published a concept piece in Mondo 2000, in my "Street Tech" column, on "keyboard chaps," a two-piece split keyboard you could strap onto your thighs so you could type just as soon as twiddle your fingers. I've seen several attempts over the years at similar systems, but few come as close to Peter's original concept as these (although these are built into the pants themselves, not strap-ons, like Peter's design). I want my keyboard chaps!

Pants Status: Keyboarded

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KentuckyFC writes "People can be accurately classified according to their email habits, say scientists from Yahoo Research in NYC, who have been studying the way 125,000 people use email on university campuses in the US and Europe. The team found that people fall into two clearly distinct types of emailer. The first group, "day labororers", tend to send emails throughout the normal working day between 0900 and 1800 but not at other times. On the other hand, "emailaholics" tend to send emails throughout the waking hours from 0900 to 0100. These groups are pretty stable: roughly 75% of users stay in the same group over a 2 year period. That gives a pretty good way of classifying individuals that could be used by demographers. Interestingly, the technique can also be used to spot spambots which do not fit into either group."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We noted several days ago that Minnesota was trying to force ISPs to block gambling web sites, going down a path trodden by several other states. That path, of course, has always ended in failure after the courts have weighed in. It looks like the courts will now get their chance to rain on Minnesotan politicians' parade, as a trade group has sued the director of the state's Department of Public Safety's Alcohol and Gambling Enforcement division to stop the ban. The group uses the suit to remind the director that he doesn't have the authority to mandate the blocking by ISPs, something the court will likely reinforce.

Meanwhile, online gambling's biggest friend in Congress, Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, has again introduced legislation that would legalize and regulate online gambling in the US. It sounds pretty much the same as his earlier attempts, all of which have failed, and would take the eminently reasonable step of allowing Americans to gamble in a regulated environment where they're protected by rules and law, as opposed to the current situation where they're pushed into the gray market (or worse), and have no protection. Frank also says he'll introduce separate legislation that will stop the enforcement of the UIGEA, which says that banks must stop processing any transactions that fund online gambling. At least one big casino company seems to think Frank's got a good chance of finally getting his law through: Harrah's, which recently hired the former CEO of major online gambling company PartyGaming to head its online efforts ahead of legalization.

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

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brumgrunt writes "At first glance, JJ Abrams' Star Trek has won over audiences as well as critics as it stormed to a $72.5m US opening weekend. However, Den Of Geek sounds a note of caution. Can it hold an audience for a second week? How do its numbers stack up? And as Wolverine looks like its struggling to reach $200m off an $85m opening weekend, is Star Trek yet the huge hit blockbuster that some of the headlines are suggesting?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ali sez, "A birdhouse for sale in a German [ed: Swiss?] mail order catalogue, mimicking a CCTV camera. The model is called 'Wolfgang S.' a reference to the hawkish German Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schauble who likes spying on everyone in the name of security."

Magazin: Nistkasten Wolfgang S. (Thanks, Ali!)

I've been catching up with a bunch of Daniel Pinkwater books lately, most recently The Neddiad: How Neddie Took the Train, Went to Hollywood, and Saved Civilization, his 2007 young adult novel that contains (in no particular order): circus animals, Pullman trains, sleight of hand, Navaho shaman, triplanes, the Grand Canyon, shoelaces, ghosts, cowboys, fat alien cops in grey station wagons, swordfighting, torture, rescue, a Roman coliseum, elder gods, and tar-soaked fossils.

The Neddiad concerns the cross-country migration of Neddie Wentworthstein, who one day mentions to his war-enriched shoelace-magnate father that he'd like to eat in the Brown Derby in Hollywood (because, hey, restaurant shaped like a hat!), prompting his father to realize that he, too, had always dreamt of dining in a hat. The family immediately moves to Los Angeles, taking the train, and Neddie loses the family in Arizona, meets a shaman, is given a holy relic, meets a cowboy and a ghost and a best friend, finds his way to Los Angeles, and saves the world.

So, it's your basic Daniel Pinkwater plot: hilarious, goofy, sweet, wildly imaginative, and filled with food and adventure. I loved every page. As Neil Gaiman writes in his blurb, "Pinkwater is the uniquest. And so are his books. Each uniquer than the last... A delight in oddness. A magic that's not like anyone else's."

He's so right. I do believe that Daniel Pinkwater is my favorite writer, living or dead.

The Neddiad: How Neddie Took the Train, Went to Hollywood, and Saved Civilization

Douglas Rushkoff - author of the book Life Inc: How the world became a corporation and how to take it back - is a guest blogger.

I'll be posting an excerpt from my upcoming book, Life Inc., every Monday morning until the book publishes on June 2. Last week, I published the introduction. Today, the first half of Chapter One. I'll also be keeping the excerpts up as PDFs at LifeIncorporated.net.

CHAPTER ONE
ONCE REMOVED: THE CORPORATE LIFE- FORM

Charters and the Disconnect from Commerce

If You Can't Beat Them...

Commerce is good. It's the way people create and exchange value.

Corporatism is something else entirely. Though not completely distinct from commerce or the free market, the corporation is a very speci?c entity, ?rst chartered by monarchs for reasons that have very little to do with helping people carry out transactions with one another. Its purpose, from the beginning, was to suppress lateral interactions between people or small companies and instead redirect any and all value they created to a select group of investors.

This agenda was so well embedded into the philosophy, structure, and practice of the earliest chartered corporations that it still characterizes the activity of both corporations and real people today. The only difference today is that most of us, corporate chiefs included, have no idea of these underlying biases, or how automatically we are compelled by them. That's why we have to go back to the birth of the corporation itself to understand how the tenets of corporatism established themselves as the default social principles of our age.

There were three main stages in the evolution of the corporation, and each one further imprinted corporatism on the collective human psyche. The corporation was born in the Renaissance, granted personhood in post-Civil War America, and then, in the twentieth century, branded as the benevolent guardian and savior of humankind.

Most history books recount the development of the corporate charter as a natural, almost evolutionary step in the advancement of commerce. To a certain extent, this is true. After the fall of the Roman Empire, early Middle Ages Europe fell into disarray. Europeans lived in isolation from one another, dominated by self- suf?cient and self-governing rural manors. Feudalism, as the prevailing political system came to be called, wasn't a particularly fun way to live--certainly not for the peasants who made up a majority of the continent's population. Landowning lords gave tracts of land to vassals in return for military allegiance. Vassals, in turn, ruled the peasant farmers, who were usually permitted to subsist on the remnants of their crops. Unlike in the Roman Empire, laws varied widely from place to place.

The lack of an overriding system of commerce left the lords out of a signi?cant but growing business sector: the activity occurring between the people of different manors and beyond. By the 1200s, technological developments such as water mills and windmills as well as increased travel and commerce led to the resurgence of towns and cities outside the lord's direct control. Towns became centers for the manufacturing, exchange, and circulation of goods, and provided a stark contrast to the to-each- his- own way of life in the manors and villages. In their new urban setting serfs found legal freedom, opportunities for work, and a place to start afresh. Citizens of cities became known as "burghers," a term that spread throughout medieval Western Europe and provided the basis for the later word "bourgeoisie."

It was only a matter of time before the burghers would grow wealthier and potentially even more powerful than the aristocracy. Instead of depending on the ownership of a ?xed tract of land farmed by peasants and protected by an expensive army of vassals, this new class of merchants and manufacturers could increase production, commerce, and acquisition almost in?nitely. The marketplace where they transacted could grow as large as it needed to accommodate more and more trade, simply by spilling outside the city center. The town then naturally expanded around the new location, and this cycle would continue until the town would eventually blossom into a full- ?edged city, which would in turn require more goods and commerce, and so on. Lords attempted to regulate all this trade and growth by controlling and taxing local markets, but people always found ways around these boundaries and restrictions.

One such boundary crosser was the merchant, who resurged in about the thirteenth century to serve as an intermediary between town and country, providing the ?rst links in the chain connecting the movement of goods between producer, merchant, and retailer. On non- market days, cobblers, blacksmiths, and artisans were accustomed to selling their wares through the windows of their workshops. By allowing merchants to set up their own shops and sell these items for them, the artisans got more time to do what they did best. Shop owners did not specialize in actually making anything, but in generating pro?t through selling. Business for business's sake was born. Over the next few generations, along with the traders, moneylenders, and investors who backed them, these retailers would become the core of the urban bourgeoisie. While the nobility declined in land ownership, ?nances, and power--as well as numbers--this new class of pure merchants had access to international trade, investment, and an alternative economy.

Worse yet for the aristocracy, as merchants set sail they were to bene?t from the vast resources of other territories. While the new bourgeoisie were becoming members of the ?edgling global marketplace, the traditional aristocracy was essentially landlocked. What of?cial authority they had left to offer their subjects was diminishing as rapidly as their wealth, in?uence, and numbers.

The aristocracy longed for a way to participate in the new economy--a way to invest that didn't put them or their good names at any risk. For their part, the new merchant class had certainly increased the speed and breadth of wealth creation--but this also made for a highly competitive and ?uid business environment. Sudden wealth could be followed by a sudden wipeout if a single ship got lost at sea or a ?re took down an entire workshop. Merchant businesses were still mostly family run, and rarely operated more than a few voyages before a shipwreck or other calamity took them down. They needed a way to institutionalize their success while they were on top, right after their ship had come in.

This is the landscape on which the Renaissance was to take place and a new way of conducting business was to emerge. The overriding priority was not to promote economic activity, global cooperation, or colonial expansion, but rather to freeze all this development in a particular position, and prevent the cast of characters at the top from changing too much over time. But locking down wealth was a lot harder for everyone now that so much innovation was going on-- especially when success tended to come with a loss in competence. In fact, while the Renaissance is often celebrated for its emphasis on specialization and expertise, nothing could be further from the truth.

The division of labor is not the same thing as the specialization of labor. On the surface, it may appear that a society of merchants, managers, and various levels of laborers is more specialized than one of shopkeepers and artisans. But it was not to the manager's advantage to hire highly specialized laborers who could demand higher wages. Instead, managers standardized processes in order to hire the least quali?ed and most replaceable laborers around. Far from encouraging specialization, competence, or innovation, all this mercantile and industrial activity actually favored generalization.

As the population grew and the demands for goods increased, open land became privatized. This uprooted rural peasants, forcing them into the generic labor market. Previously, the life of a rural peasant had been below or altogether removed from money and the market found in urban centers. Peasants made do with what they could produce with their own hands and barter locally. It was a life of great limitation, but also of self- suf?ciency. As the commercial economy spread, the peasant had to turn the only marketable skill he had-- physical labor--into his means of survival. Evidence of this sort of wage labor can be traced all the way back to Portugal in 1253. Just like the Home Depot parking lot where Mexican immigrant laborers gather today, there were designated meeting places, usually a square at sunrise, where a foreman representing an employer would meet with day laborers and hire them right off the street.

Meanwhile, the managerial class sought to diversify itself as quickly as possible, undermining any specialization of its own. Once a low-level shopkeeper or wage earner had saved enough money to make the ?rst step into more advanced levels of commerce, his ?rst move was to commission the very work he used to perform. Then he began diversifying his wares and ?nancial activities. The higher the capitalist was on the economic ladder, the broader and more varied were his investments and enterprises--and the more disconnected he was from his business's skills and the people performing them.

So both the aristocracy and the most successful of the mercantile class required a new mechanism through which they could invest their almost "generic" capital in the form of pure ?nancial and legal power. This mechanism had to offer the ability to invest in a business with total discretion, anonymity, limited liability, passive participation, and little or no expertise.

Traditional family businesses, which shared labor, risk, and capital by blood ties, were no longer suf?cient to the task. New kinds of laws, contracts, and standardized currencies would be required to extend these agreements to people of different families and regions. Florence, with its key location on the Mediterranean (as well as its widely accepted currency, the gold ?orin), became the birthplace of the ?rst "limited partnership" ?rms. The precursors to full- ?edged corporations, they distinguished between the liability of the ?rm's directors and of those who merely contributed capital, who would only be responsible for the amount of their contribution. Furthermore, contributors were not subject to being listed among the business partners, allowing noblemen, and even monarchs, to hide their commercial interests. The concept of the limited partnership quickly spread throughout Europe, funding daring investments from mines and plantations to colonialist adventures. Through this new opportunity for quiet and passive participation, the nobility became mad for investing.

As the operators of these huge projects sought to secure even more capital from a wider range of regions and social classes, they formed a more advanced form of limited partnership called the joint stock company, which could generate investment from shareholders on an open market. This broke business open, allowing for the creation of businesses by virtually anyone capable of getting investors. It almost heralded an era of business meritocracy, which would have generated unprecedented churn in the class structure. The wealthiest merchants were now as vulnerable to upstarts as the aristocracy.

Finally, the monarchy had something it could offer the bourgeoisie who threatened to unseat them.

A Child Is Born

Although monarchs might have lacked the vast ?nancial resources of joint stock companies, they still enjoyed a structural advantage over any of them: central legal authority. Taking a cue from the Church, which had a tradition of "incorporating" groups of monks into single entities, royals exercised their authority to sanction a new kind of chartered body: the corporation. It was genius.

The corporation was not a business or a government entity, but a combination of the two. Its government supporters--the monarchs-- had the authority to write the trade laws and grant monopolies; its business participants--the chartered companies--would enjoy the exclusive right to exploit them.

By granting a speci?c joint stock company a legal charter to do business, monarchs could give it a monopoly control of its business sector. So a shipping company that once competed with others for the resources of a set of islands now enjoyed exclusive, royally mandated control over that domain. No other corporation could do business in that region, and even locals or colonists would be prohibited by law from competing against the corporation extracting their resources or selling them goods. Another corporation would be granted monopoly control over glass production; another would win beer, and so on. By issuing corporate charters, kings could empower those most loyal to them with permanent control over their colonial regions or industries.

The joint stock companies' problem with competition from rising new businesses or local activity was solved. And in return for granting legally enforceable monopolies over particular industries and regions, monarchs got ?scal support and pro?t participation far exceeding the worth of any cash investment they could have made. As a Dutch lawyer explained in a letter describing the very ?rst charter of this sort, for Holland's East India Company, "The state ought to rejoice at the existence of an association which pays it so much money every year that the country derives three times as much pro?t from trade and navigation in the Indies as the shareholders."

For merchants whose businesses previously lasted only as long as a single expedition, the arrangement offered a way to earn more permanent status, military protection from the Crown, and the right to exploit new regions and peoples with authority and impunity. Equally important, they could lose no more than their initial investment. The "limited liability" granted in a charter meant that a corporation's debts died with the bankruptcy of the corporation. And bankruptcy protection was granted by the state.

By inventing this virtual entity--the chartered corporation--the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie entered into a mutual codependency that changed the character of both. Through these ?rst great trade monopolies, such as En gland's Muscovy Company of 1555, the British East India Company of 1600, or the Dutch United East India Company of 1602, monarchs found a way to extend their reach without the cost or liability of an of?cial military expedition. Better yet: for the monarchs, the merchants running the corporation would now become loyal subjects, dependent on the Crown for their legitimacy, protection, and escape clauses.

The chartered corporation was a bold grasp for permanent rule and permanent wealth that constituted a stalemate between the two groups. The contracts that monarchs and mercantilists wrote not only stopped their own decline from power; they stopped time, locking in place a set of corporatist priorities that to this day have not signi?cantly changed. Instead, these priorities work to change the world and its people to conform to the rules of corporatism.

People who had always engaged in business with one another would now be required to do so through monopoly powers. All lateral contact between people and businesses would now be mediated through central authorities. Any creation or exchange of value would have to be run through these centrally mandated companies, in a system enforced by law, controlled by currency, and perpetuated through the erosion of all other connections between people and their world. Moreover, the emphasis of business would shift from the creation of value by people to the extraction of value by corporations.

Hugh Pickens writes "Space shuttle Atlantis is slated to lift off Monday on the fifth and final servicing mission to Hubble with four mission specialists alternating in two-astronaut teams will attempt a total of five spacewalks from Atlantis to replace broken components, add new science instruments, and swap out the telescope's six 125-pound (57-kilogram) batteries, original parts that have powered Hubble's night-side operations for nearly two decades. 'This is our final opportunity to service and upgrade Hubble,' says David Leckrone, senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope. 'So we're replacing some items that are getting long in the tooth to give Hubble longevity, and then we'll try to take advantage of that five- to 10-year extra lifetime with the most powerful instrumental tools we've ever had on board.' Some of the upgrades are relatively straightforward and modular: yank out old part, put in new. But they're big parts: The 'fine guidance sensors' sound delicate but weigh as much as a grand piano back on Earth. But what's different this time is that the astronauts will also open up some instruments and root around inside, doing Geek Squad-like repairs while wearing bulky spacesuits and traveling around the planet at 17,000 mph. 'We have this choreographed almost down to the minute of what we want the crew to do. It's this really fine ballet,' said Keith Walyus, the servicing mission operations manager at Goddard. 'We've been training for this for seven years. We can't wait for this to happen.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This proof-of-concept robotic teddy bear bartender dispenses drinks, but only after he tests your BAC (blood-alcohol content).

SOBEaR v02 :: the responsible robot bartender

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Anarchduke sends in a Reuters story quoting unnamed sources who say that the European Union has decided to find Intel anti-competitive. The finding should be announced in the coming week. "...the Commission will say Intel paid PC makers to delay or scrap the launch of products containing AMD chips. The Commission will characterize the payments as 'naked restrictions' to competition, the sources said. ... Intel set percentages of its own chips that it wanted PC makers to use, the sources said. For example, NEC Corp was told that 20 percent of its desktop and notebook machines could have AMD chips, the sources said. All Lenovo notebooks had to use Intel chips, as did relevant Dell products. The figure was 95 percent for Hewlett-Packard's business desktops, they said." Previous infractions by Intel include giving illegal rebates to computer makers back in 2007 and paying retailers not to sell AMD-based computer systems.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OddSteph caught this CCTV-headed performer on London's South Bank yesterday -- reminds me of the Little Brother cosplayers I met in Seattle last year!

img_0771-1

Guilherme created what may be the most inexpensive iteration of Arduino yet -

This is a 100% functional version of the Arduino. We eliminate the PCB and use paper and cardboard as support and the result is.. the PAPERduino :D

This is the the first version of the layout design, next we will try more designs, and another materials. You just need to print the top and the bottom layout, and glue them to any kind of support you want. We hope that you start making your own boards. If you do, please share your photos with us, we would love to see them ;)

Very cool - a wooden Arduino would be quite awesome as well! Check out Guilherme's site for the printable design and parts list.

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My little nephew Jaxon (2.5 years) is crazy for Eric Herman's "Elephant Song" and the accompanying video on YouTube -- and now my daughter (1.5 years) has caught the bug. It's some funny stuff, provided your sense of humor is still at toddler level (as mine apparently is!).

The Elephant Song - Cool Tunes for Kids by Eric Herman (Thanks, Jaxon!)

We've had a bunch of stories about UK law firm Davenport Lyons, who build up quite a reputation for sending "shakedown" style letters to people accused of copyright infringement. However, the letters were sent out so broadly that they were sent to many innocent people, leading to widespread claims that the whole thing was a shakedown. Rather than actually gathering evidence, the company was just making money by getting a certain percentage of recipients to pay up. Highlighting this point: the law firm never actually took anyone to court over those letters.

As the firm was exposed, it led some customers to back away, realizing the harm it was doing to its own brand. The firm hadn't made much noise on this front lately, but the folks over at TorrentFreak heard about a bunch of very similar letters going out recently and, after investigating them, noticed way too many similarities to Davenport Lyons -- including an identical customer list and the fact that a Word doc on this new firm's (ACS Law) site was created in a copy of Word registered to... Davenport Lyons.

Apparently, rather than reforming, they just decided that it would be better to try to appear as someone different and start pulling the same trick all over again.

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This how-to shows you how to add a bluetooth wireless headset inside of a full-face motorcycle helmet.

Bluetooth Motorcycle Helmet DIY Design

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Starting today T-mobile will start pushing the latest Android update to folks with G1 smartphones. One of the more interesting features of Android 1.5 "Cupcake" is the ability to author widgets. This is a boon for people looking for an easy way to remotely monitor a service without having to resort to developing a full-blown app. The above video shows off some of the early widgets currently available through the Android Market.

[via phonedog]

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Writing in Inc. about what a crummy story Circuit City was before it died, Joel "On Software" Spolsky describes what may just be the perfect electronics store, B&H at Ninth and 34th in NYC.

And what a roof it is: The whole operation is a crazy Willy Wonka factory. If you want to check out a product that's not on display, a salesperson orders it by computer terminal from a vast stockroom in the basement. Moments later, as if by magic, the product arrives at the retail counter, via an elaborate system of conveyor belts and dumbwaiters. You can try out the gear, see if you like it, and, if you do, the salesperson puts it in a green plastic box and places it on another conveyor belt, which runs, above your head, to the pickup counter. There, an employee bags your purchase. Meanwhile, your salesperson gives you a ticket, which you take to a payment counter. After you have paid, you get a different ticket that you take to the pickup counter to get your merchandise.

At first, this all seemed like incredible overkill to me. But then, as I thought about it more, I developed a theory as to why B&H operates this way. With all the expensive electronics and cameras and lenses and laptops floating around the store, the system creates a series of checks and balances -- typically, five employees are involved in every purchase -- in order to reduce shoplifting and employee theft. That it works at all is not the most amazing thing about B&H, however. The most amazing thing is that the prices are so low that I don't even bother to comparison-shop anymore.

No, wait: The most amazing thing is that the salespeople at B&H really know their stuff. When I recently bought a portable digital recorder, the salesperson knew that some gear was not compatible with flash memory cards larger than 2GB and spent a few minutes surfing the Web to make sure that the 8GB card I wanted would work with it.

Why Circuit City Failed, and Why B&H Thrives (via Consumerist)

(Image: B & H=Headquarters, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from The Talented Mr. Nimo's Flickr stream)

There are all sorts of bad ideas around trying to get people to pay for news, but perhaps the worst is the idea of micropayments. Micropayments are trotted out every other year or so as the "savior" to paid content by people with little understanding of economics. The problem is that micropayments never work in a competitive market. First, the "cost" is much bigger than the nominal sum, because of the mental transaction costs ("is this worth buying?") that add friction to the process. Second, and more importantly, it's a self-defeating move. In adding micropayments, you automatically decrease the value of the content. This may sound paradoxical, but what matter is why and how people value content. These days, many people value content for the ability to engage with it, comment on it and share it with others. Micropayments take away that ability, and thus decrease the value of the content. In some sense, adding a micropayment option gives people fewer reasons to pay! Micropayments have been tried over the years, and every time someone announces them the press goes all nuts about how they're the business model of the future for content. And then the projects go nowhere for a few years, whither and die. And the press never seems to notice.

So, it should probably come as little surprise that it's the press itself that's going to try such a plan. The Wall Street Journals' managing editor, Robert Thomson says that the WSJ is going to start offering a micropayment offering for individual articles. Of course, it sounds like it's not always micropyaments either:

"It's a payments system -- once we have your details we will be able to charge you according to what you read, in particular, a high price for specialist material."

A "high price," by definition, isn't a micropayment of course. And it's just as likely to fail miserably. Putting a paywall in the way of people, and they'll find the content elsewhere. Put a paywall in front of good content, and it just opens up the opportunity for other, smarter, publications, to provide the news for free and run away with all the advertising money.

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mx12 writes "I'm currently an undergrad in computer engineering and have been thinking about getting my masters. I have a year left in school. Most of my professors seem to think that getting a masters is a great idea, but I wanted to hear from people out in the working world. Is a masters in computer engineering better than two years of experience at a company?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Live teaching and learning marketplaces are a new emergent set of online exchanges where independent teachers and educators can easily share or sell their know-how with those looking for it. Independent guides and experts can deliver live and recorded lessons using a full set of web conferencing and e-learning components. Photo credit: Wong Sze Fei From video conferencing to document and presentation sharing there is no shortage of features enabling passionate and talented teachers to spread their talent and know-how to an audience of eager learners. These new online learning and teaching exchanges offer for the first time the example of a distributed and un-ininstutionalized educational venue that offers plenty of opportunity for learners while offering independent knowledge experts a qualified venue to share and commercialize their expertise without needing to be hired by a university. If you are wondering how can quality of teaching be guaranteed in such an environment, the answer lies in an effective mechanism, adopted by most of these teaching marketplaces, whereby students themselves are allowed to rate their own teachers. The other advantages that these online learning and teaching marketplaces offer, are many, both from a learners and teachers perspectives.
For learners:

• It's cheaper than enrolling to a university course or going to a private teacher.
• You are not limited inside pre-packaged learning paths, but you can rather follow your interests and cultivate your passions.
• You can learn at your own pace, wherever you want, and finding the time which is most comfortable for you.
• You don't have to get through an exam or test to prove that you are learning something. You are self-responsible for your education.

For teachers:

• You can sell your own instructional material and share your knowledge with other passionate peers.
• You can teach from the comfort of your place, earning money and limiting the costs of teaching to your Internet connection fee.
• You get in touch with a far larger audience than the students you could physically meet.
• You are not subjected to any institutional rule or approach in the way you teach, and you're greatly facilitated to use live interaction and multimedia content with your students.

If you want to explore in greater detail these new emergent online teaching and learning marketplaces, I have prepared for you a list of the most interesting live teaching platforms out there, complemented with a comparative table which compares each service main features:

• Live classes: live audio / video conferencing integration
• Social evaluation: connection and mutual evaluation between learners and teachers
• Content distribution: redistribution and sharing of lessons outside the learning platform
• Advertising: ads displayed on free version
• Premium price / features: first price level to access extended features

Here all the details:

Live Teaching And Learning Marketplaces Comparison Table

Live Teaching And Learning Marketplaces

1. WiZiQ
   
   WiZiQ is a web-based knowledge-sharing platform to facilitate live learning and teaching. Users can give or attend virtual classes and share instructional content with other people that have similar interests. WiZiQ supports full audio and video conferencing, and any learning material created inside the service can be redistributed via link or embed on web sites and blogs. Learners can rate their teachers and provide feedback about the quality of classes. WiZiQ free version includes: public chat, lessons with a maximum of 50 participants, ads displayed during navigation, and session recordings available for 30 days. Educators and students that need advanced features like private chat, lessons with up to 500 participants, ad-free browsing, or 1-year recording sessions can subscribe to the premium account for $49.95/year.
   http://www.wiziq.com/
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Sclipo
   
   A social learning network where users can connect and share similar educational interests: That's what Sclipo is about. Aimed to both teachers and learners, the service takes advantage of a video conferencing facility that allows users to attend (or give) live classes up to 100 participants. The integration with Facebook Connect makes easy for learners to find and get in touch with peers, but also for teachers to post instructional material on Facebook profiles. Like in other similar learning platforms, learners can rate their teachers when the lesson is over. Sclipo is ad-supported and all main features are fully available for free, though to sell paid lessons and content or get no advertising, users need to upgrade at least to the first level of premium accounts for $4.95/month.
   http://www.sclipo.com/
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Moontoast
   
   The aim of Moontoast is to build an online human knowledge marketplace where passionate users can connect and sell their expertise by giving live audio / video classes. When a user buys credit to attend a lesson (1 credit = $1), both teachers and Moontoast earn money. Teachers can be rated by students, so it's easy to find the right teacher by checking feedback from the Moontoast community. Material shared inside Moontoast cannot be redistributed elsewhere. The service is ads free and there are no premium accounts for the time being even if developers are planning to add extra features soon.
   http://www.moontoast.com/
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. MindBites
   
   MindBites is both a self-publishing platform and a virtual community where anyone can share knowledge and capitalize on her expertise. Users are free to explore MindBites and look for passionate peers, but can also purchase specific video lessons from teachers that distribute their content inside the MindBites marketplace. Each registered user can provide feedback and rate the content purchased or watched. Like Moontoast, you have no subscription plans, but rather credits you can collect for $0.99 each and use to compensate the teachers. Lessons you buy can be viewed online or downloaded, but not be redistributed unless explicitly released under a CC license. MindBites is free to use and users will not see any ads browsing through the site.
   http://www.mindbites.com/
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. ForteMall
   
   ForteMall is a web-based learning / training marketplace which provides both a global knowledge-sharing platform, and all the instruments to manage online learning transactions and exchanges. Teachers and learners can connect with each other in live conferences and trade their skills and expertise using the secure payment feature that relies on companies like PayPal. Teachers can also share instructional content on other web sites through a dedicated widget. ForteMall users can rate the quality of the service and the work of teachers. The web service is built on a freemium model, which means that basic services are all free, but optional features are available upon request. Teachers that desire more visibility for their courses can pay extra money to have their lessons featured inside special categories, listed on the homepage, or the name of their courses written in bold. Prices available inside the FAQ section of the site.
   http://www.fortemall.com/
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
6. Ailola
   
   Ailola caters to both students and teachers who want to share and sell their expertise online. Learners can connect with other passionate peers and share their knowledge, while teachers have access to a worldwide elearning market to sell instructional content and give live classes. Real ratings by other students provide insights about the quality of the instructors. Audio and video conferencing tools are standard for all Ailola registered users. Instructional content traded or transferred inside Ailola cannot be redistributed on other web sites or across the web. The service is free to use and ad-supported.
   http://www.ailola.com/
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
7. xLingo
   
   xLingo works as an exchange community which facilitates people around the world to connect and learn a foreign language. Users can e-mail each other, participate in forums or group discussions, and even start their own mini-blog to share and receive help. Audio and video streaming, as well as the option to rate the work of other users, is not supported for the time being. The service survives thanks to advertisement, but users can get rid of ads and get more storage for their xLingo mailbox by purchasing a premium membership priced at $20/year.
   http://www.languageexchange.org/
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
8. EduFire
   
   EduFire is a distance education platform and social network service that allows live tutoring online through text and video chat. Originally promoted as a language learning engine, EduFire has later broadened its offering by adding text preparation courses and a wider range of topics. Learners are free to join in and share their experience. Teachers can charge a variable fee to put their learning material for sale and pay Edufire for providing audio and video streaming tools. Edufire is not ad-supported, and registered users are welcome to rate and provide feedback on the content published.
   http://edufire.com/
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
9. Eduslide
   
   Eduslide offers a public learning content management system to create, upload and access slides of whichever topic you like. Unlike other competitors that focus on live video conferencing or video content production, Eduslide just keeps it simple and allows registered users to create presentations to showcase and share their knowledge. Each content is open and subjected to ratings from the Eduslide community. Eduslide is an open source project, meaning that anyone can download the source code and build upon it to improve the service. Eduslide is ads-free and does not provide any way to embed or redistribute published elearning material.
   http://www.eduslide.net/

Originally prepared by Robin Good and Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia, and first published on May 11th, 2009 as "Live Teaching And Learning Marketplaces: The Emerging Online Social Learning Networks For Professional Independent Educators".

Recently on Offworld Tom Armitage donned Plants Vs. Zombies (above) his official game for the weekend, admitting that its "charming character design and inventive array of zombies ensures that it's never long after a play-session before you're double-clicking on it again," and I take a longer look at my first week with my own most-played tower defense game -- ngmoco and Rough Cookie's spherical iPhone Star Defense -- and how everything I was skeptical of might became the very reasons it'll win me over. I also gave my first-hand diary account of sneaking across the digital Canadian border to be part of Microsoft's unveiling of its massively-multiplayer Xbox 360 version of the game show 1 Vs. 100, which will be played for real prizes (in the form of Microsoft Points) and looks geared to be the first successful run of a truly interactive TV show (commercial breaks and all). Elsewhere we took a quicker look at games due out in the coming months: Konami's revival of its long-running Contra series for WiiWare, a Mr. Driller team reunion with Sony's PS3/PSP number-puzzler Qruton, and Sonic the Hedgehog creator Yuji Naka's latest rhythm game for Wii, which asks that you not even hold the controller at all. And we saw the first look at a comic-book-style SimCity game Maxis never made, the first details of BioShock 2's multiplayer campaign, listened to a live glitch-out chiptune performance and chiptunes done instead on ukuleles, and, for the daily 'one shot's: a space invader weathering a placid Paris winter, a rusted ironworks decayed arcade, and the first look at UK comics legend 2000 AD and Judge Dredd's new home on the LittleBigPlanet.

This week's Rebooting the News podcast is up.

Jay and Dave talk about paying for the news, Ted Nelson as inspiration, "Giant Pool of Money."

As usual, subscribe to this feed in your podcatcher to get all the shows.

SilverMind writes in to note a blog entry at Byte Size Biology describing in detail a few hours spent with Wolfram Alpha (which we have discussed before). "After playing around with Wolfram Alpha for a few hours, I can safely say the following: it's different, it's incomplete, it's idiosyncratic, and it's funky cool. And no, it will not dethrone Google, nor does it aim to do so."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Well, we took the feedback people gave us when we posted news of the Twitter contest, designed to try and grow our Twitter community. Folks complained that our channel was little more than an RSS re-feed of Make: Online postings. So, we decided to kill the auto-feed and have the editors of MAKE and Make: Online post original content to the channel throughout the day. We started that mid-week and got an instant and positive response, with lots of folks re-tweeting the news and RTing many of our MAKE tweets. It was definitely time to do this, so thanks for the kick in the collective pants!

So, what sorts of things are we going to be covering on the MAKE Twitter channel?

* We will still be linking to select articles we post here, ones we want to make sure people have on their radars.
* MAKE-worthy items we can't fit here on the site. We get dozens and dozens of submissions each day. For some of the content we can't fit here, we'll post on Twitter.
* News of goings on at MAKE, CRAFT, Maker Faire, Maker Shed, and Make: Online.
* Special Twitter-only deals in the Maker Shed.
* RTs of #makers we are following.
* RTs of anything else on Twitter (and elsewhere) we think might be of interest to #makers.
* Periodic lists of the #makers we're following who we think you might want to follow too.
* And announcements of Twitter-based contests results, such as:

Winners of this week's Maker's Notebooks: @DrSquidopolis, @pickledpandas, @mikeweiss79, @missjennyjenny, @matthewgood - DM your mailing addy!

And:

Winner of this week's Shed prize: An Arduino MEGA: @simplyshang. Direct Message your mailing address!

Congrats to this week's winners! Sign up @make to be eligible for next week's five Notebook giveaways and a kit from the Maker Shed. Not sure what this week's will be, but I'll post as soon as we choose something.

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An anonymous reader writes "Last month, Google officially announced the Android 1.5 update, dubbed 'cupcake.' The new software is apparently ready to roll out to Android-powered devices beginning tomorrow. Make no mistake, Android 1.5 is a major upgrade — they could have called it 2.0. The software brings a host of new capabilities, some of which can't be found on rival mobile platforms, including video recording and sharing."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BattleBricks posted awesome building instructions on how to get your own iPhone controlled LEGO robot working!

This is a demonstration of iPhone to Lego NXT Robot communication via the Safari browser and Lego's Light Sensor. To build this, you'll need a laptop, two iPhones, and a Lego NXT Robotics Kit. First, build your robot. Second write some Java LeJOS Robot code. Third write some Google Web Toolkit web application code. Fourth, plug in your iPhone into the robot, and use either a browser or another iPhone to drive the Lego Robot!

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thefickler touts an interview in tech.blorge with Lenovo's Worldwide Competitive Analyst, Matt Kohut, who spoke about his vision of the future of netbooks, which involves Windows 7, bigger screens, built-in 3G, touch integration, and lower prices. Linux fans will be disappointed to hear that Kohut thinks Windows 7 will dominate future generations of netbooks because it offers a better, more familiar solution, with the benefits of touch. Quoting Kohut: "The other challenge has been, in order to keep the price points down, a lot of people thought that Linux would be the savior of all of these netbooks. You know, there were a lot of netbooks loaded with Linux, which saves $50 or $100 or whatever it happens to be, based on Microsoft's pricing and, again, from an industry standpoint, there were a lot of returns because people didn't know what to do with it. Linux, even if you've got a great distribution and you can argue which one is better or not, still requires a lot more hands-on than somebody who is using Windows. So, we've seen overwhelmingly people wanting to stay with Windows because it just makes more sense: you just take it out of the box and it's ready to go."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.