Last night, a bunch of the MAKE team went to San Francisco to put on a little Maker Faire preview for attendees of the Google I/O conference at the Mascone Center. Besides MAKE/Make: Online, and Maker Shed, there were folks there from adafruit industries, Instructables, Evil Mad Scientist Labs, Sternlabs, Cyclcide, and more. We had a good time, met some interesting people, and convinced (hopefully) a bunch of them to join us for the Faire this weekend.

Here is one of the cool devices demoed at the Google I/O Conference Sandbox, It's a dynamic Lego Bar Chart built using the Lego Mindstorms NXT System.

Lego Bar Chart

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On Boing Boing Gadgets, this wrenching video in which Eve Ensler explains that Congolese militias use rape to enforce discipline among a slave workforce that mines columbite-tantalite ore, a common raw material for many devices.

"We create those atrocities through our consumption," says Ensler.

She is proposing that electronics manufacturers and their customers--us--began to concern themselves with the notion of "Rape-Free" products in which the raw, mineral components of consumer electronics are traced back to sources that can be verified to have procured them ethically. (She allows that "Rape-Free" is probably not a moniker that would be comfortable plastered on boxes and signs.)

It's without a doubt one of the most horrible but compelling things I've heard in a while. I've been considering a parallel notion lately about the shocking rate we're using a limited mineral supply to make what are essentially disposable bits of gadgetry. While I don't doubt that every effort will be made by profit-driven corporations to develop ways to produce goods even if rare minerals are fully depleted, the gulf between now and a future where minerals can be safely reclaimed and reused is fretfully wide.

Eve Ensler and "Rape-Free" Gadgets

Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

superglaze writes "Google has unveiled a distributed, P2P-based collaboration and conversation platform called Wave. Developers are being invited to join an open source project that has been formed to create a Google Wave Federation Protocol, which will underlie the system. Anyone will be able to create a 'wave,' which is a type of hosted conversation, Google has said. Waves will essentially incorporate real-time dialogue, photos, videos, maps, documents and other information forms within a single, shared communications space. Developers can also work on embedding waves into websites, or creating multimedia robots and gadgets that can be incorporated within the Google Wave client." Jamie points out this more informative link.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

superglaze writes "Google has unveiled a distributed, P2P-based collaboration and conversation platform called Wave. Developers are being invited to join an open source project that has been formed to create a Google Wave Federation Protocol, which will underlie the system. Anyone will be able to create a 'wave,' which is a type of hosted conversation, Google has said. Waves will essentially incorporate real-time dialogue, photos, videos, maps, documents and other information forms within a single, shared communications space. Developers can also work on embedding waves into websites, or creating multimedia robots and gadgets that can be incorporated within the Google Wave client." Jamie points out this more informative link.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While some in the copyright community feel that things like the DMCA safe harbors are bad, it's worth watching what happens in situations where they don't exist. South Korea just changed its copyright law, such that sites that don't filter for copyrighted material can potentially be liable. So, what is the response? Google is now forbidding the uploading of any music files to avoid liability and possible shut down under the law (the law is a three strikes law that doesn't just apply to users, but to sites that the users use) (found via Techmeme). Lucas Gonze does a good job laying out the damage this causes:

The problem is not the freedom to use copyrighted content. I don't know of any such freedom. The problem is the right to play.

A guitar teacher will be unable to post lessons, and a guitar student will be unable to post homework. Two musicians working together at a distance will be unable to share unfinished multitracks. An unsigned classical quartet will be unable to post samples of their work. Only the tiny few who work on commercially published recordings will still be able to be heard, and even only the small proportion of their recordings that are completed commercial works will be heard.

Most musicians are amateurs with no financial interest in copyright. The proportion of amateurs to professionals is so overwhelming that the word "musician" is a synonym for "amateur." Whenever copyright is wielded on behalf of the professionals in a way that makes it harder for amateurs to make music, it is hurting musicians.

Oh, and don't forget, the entire reason why South Korea is suddenly putting in place draconian, self-damaging, protectionist, copyright policies is because the entertainment industry went on a huge lobbying campaign claiming that South Korea was a haven for piracy, and then had the US gov't include requirements for much more stringent copyright laws in a free trade agreement -- despite the fact it was about the opposite of free trade. The entire purpose wasn't free trade, but protectionism of the US entertainment industry. Soon after that passed, we noted that it would require shutting down any service that permitted unauthorized reproduction... and we're seeing the impact of that now.

South Korea has been a leader in internet technologies. It had real broadband (both wired and wireless) to nearly every home well before almost every other country. As such, it has a thriving internet industry... but it has also had a thriving entertainment industry made up of execs who embraced the internet. Folks like JY Park, who recognizes that selling music directly is the past, but by embracing that fact, is building a media empire. But, of course, the folks back in Hollywood don't want to compete and don't want to change... so they got the US gov't to force South Korea to put in place these ridiculous copyright laws that help them and harm pretty much everyone else.

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A 62-year-old man visiting his relatives in the US was held for four hours by immigration officials after they could not detect his fingerprints because of a cancer drug he was taking. The man was prescribed capecitabine, a drug used to treat cancers in the head, neck, breast, and stomach. Some of the drug's side-effects include chronic inflammation of the palms or soles of the feet, which can cause the skin to peel or bleed. "This can give rise to eradication of fingerprints with time," explained Tan Eng Huat, senior consultant in the medical oncology department at Singapore's National Cancer Center. "Theoretically, if you stop the drug, it will grow back, but details are scanty. No one knows the frequency of this occurrence among patients taking this drug and nobody knows how long a person must be on this drug before the loss of fingerprints," he added.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A 62-year-old man visiting his relatives in the US was held for four hours by immigration officials after they could not detect his fingerprints because of a cancer drug he was taking. The man was prescribed capecitabine, a drug used to treat cancers in the head, neck, breast, and stomach. Some of the drug's side-effects include chronic inflammation of the palms or soles of the feet, which can cause the skin to peel or bleed. "This can give rise to eradication of fingerprints with time," explained Tan Eng Huat, senior consultant in the medical oncology department at Singapore's National Cancer Center. "Theoretically, if you stop the drug, it will grow back, but details are scanty. No one knows the frequency of this occurrence among patients taking this drug and nobody knows how long a person must be on this drug before the loss of fingerprints," he added.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

EdIII writes with this awesome snippet from Hack a Day: "'[phreakmonkey] got his hands on a great piece of old tech. It's a 1964 Livermore Data Systems Model A Acoustic Coupler Modem. He recieved it in 1989 and recently decided to see if it would actually work. It took some digging to find a proper D25 adapter and even then the original serial adapter wasn't working because the oscillator depends on the serial voltage. He dials in and connects at 300baud. Then logs into a remote system and fires up lynx to load Wikipedia. Lucky for [phreakmonkey] they managed to decide on a modulation standard in 1962. It's still amazing to see this machine working 45 years later.' Although impractical for surfing the Internet today, there is something truly cool about getting a 45-year old modem to work with modern technology. The question I have, is what is the oldest working piece of equipment fellow Slashdotters have out there? I'm afraid as far back as I can go is a Number Nine Imagine 128 Series 2 Graphics card on a server still in use at my house which only puts me at about 14 years."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

EdIII writes with this awesome snippet from Hack a Day: "'[phreakmonkey] got his hands on a great piece of old tech. It's a 1964 Livermore Data Systems Model A Acoustic Coupler Modem. He recieved it in 1989 and recently decided to see if it would actually work. It took some digging to find a proper D25 adapter and even then the original serial adapter wasn't working because the oscillator depends on the serial voltage. He dials in and connects at 300baud. Then logs into a remote system and fires up lynx to load Wikipedia. Lucky for [phreakmonkey] they managed to decide on a modulation standard in 1962. It's still amazing to see this machine working 45 years later.' Although impractical for surfing the Internet today, there is something truly cool about getting a 45-year old modem to work with modern technology. The question I have, is what is the oldest working piece of equipment fellow Slashdotters have out there? I'm afraid as far back as I can go is a Number Nine Imagine 128 Series 2 Graphics card on a server still in use at my house which only puts me at about 14 years."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The various music collection societies keep insisting that they're just the important middlemen helping make sure artists get the royalties they're due. Except, for some reason, they keep getting caught not actually giving that money to artists, but hanging on to it themselves. Billboard reports that the Dutch collection society, Buma/Stemra, is happily telling people that revenue rose by 2% last year -- though, oddly, the Billboard report leaves out one rather interesting detail. Reader Marcel de Jong notes that Buma/Stemra invested a bunch of the money it collected for artists into the stock market and then lost a chunk of it, so it's paying artists less money than it collected for them. What's unclear is if Buma/Stemra would have paid out more if it had made money... and also why it's gambling on the stock market with money it supposedly collected for artists.

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An anonymous reader writes "Ariel Rabkin has a piece over at News Corp.'s Weekly Standard arguing that the US should maintain its control over the Internet. After reading his piece, I have a hard time arguing that it should be handed over to some international body."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Ariel Rabkin has a piece over at News Corp.'s Weekly Standard arguing that the US should maintain its control over the Internet. After reading his piece, I have a hard time arguing that it should be handed over to some international body."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Atlantic Light Works has released PercepTool, a tone mapping plugin for Photoshop CS3 and CS4 that attempts to duplicate the brain's interpretation of light and shade. Developed with photographer George DeWolfe, it takes either mono or color images and re-maps the tone response to offer a more 'realistic' rendition with greater depth. It is available priced at $89.95 or for trial download, for both Windows and Mac platforms.

JacobSteelsmith writes "Microsoft is attempting to re-brand its Live Search, also known as Kumo. Bing, as it's known, is another attempt by Microsoft to lure consumers away from Internet search leaders such as Google. Microsoft has posted a quarterly loss in its online advertising business, compared to Google's sales, $4.7 billion in the first quarter. According to the Live Search blog, Bing goes 'beyond the traditional search engines to help you make faster, more informed decisions' by combining a 'great search engine' with organized results. It also adds unique tools to help the user make important decisions. It is being touted as a 'decision engine.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

JacobSteelsmith writes "Microsoft is attempting to re-brand its Live Search, also known as Kumo. Bing, as it's known, is another attempt by Microsoft to lure consumers away from Internet search leaders such as Google. Microsoft has posted a quarterly loss in its online advertising business, compared to Google's sales, $4.7 billion in the first quarter. According to the Live Search blog, Bing goes 'beyond the traditional search engines to help you make faster, more informed decisions' by combining a 'great search engine' with organized results. It also adds unique tools to help the user make important decisions. It is being touted as a 'decision engine.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

JacobSteelsmith writes "Microsoft is attempting to re-brand its Live Search, also known as Kumo. Bing, as it's known, is another attempt by Microsoft to lure consumers away from Internet search leaders such as Google. Microsoft has posted a quarterly loss in its online advertising business, compared to Google's sales, $4.7 billion in the first quarter. According to the Live Search blog, Bing goes 'beyond the traditional search engines to help you make faster, more informed decisions' by combining a 'great search engine' with organized results. It also adds unique tools to help the user make important decisions. It is being touted as a 'decision engine.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It seems that whenever there's any kind of violence involving kids, someone rushes to blame video games. Steve L points us to the latest such case, where it's taken to something of an extreme. Apparently a 2-year-old boy stabbed his 5-month-old brother with a knife. It sounds like he didn't do much damage, but police immediately claimed that violent video games owned by a much older teenaged brother "may have played a role." The only problem? The 2-year-old neither plays the games nor watches his older brother playing them. But, why not blame the video games?

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(Rudy Rucker is a guestblogger. His latest novel, Hylozoic, describes a postsingular world in which everything is alive.)

My son, Rudy Rucker, Jr., and his business partner Alex Menendez run Monkeybrains, an independent ISP (Internet Service Provider) in San Francisco. As well as more conventional clients, they use their two gigabytes-per-seconds to host such off-beat sites as Rotorbrain's hardware hacking blog, and the site for the Cyclecide Heavy Pedal Bike Rodeo.

Here's a video interview of Rudy and Alex on the tenth anniversary of Monkeybrains..discussing how an indie internet biz can stay afloat.

Rudy's latest project involves building his own wireless can antennas, as described on Dorkbot.

snydeq writes "Mozilla Jetpack makes it so easy to filter, modify, and mash up pages that it might end up pitting developers and users against content producers in a battle for the Web, writes Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister. By allowing users to modify the behavior, presentation, and output of Web apps and pages to their liking, Jetpack gives users the ability to 'patch the server, in a sense,' McAllister writes, bringing us one step closer to a more democratic Web. Good news for developers and users; not so good for SaaS providers and media companies that have a vested interest in controlling the function, presentation, and distribution of Web-based content and apps. In other words, as Jetpack produces fruit, expect more producers to call for 'guardrails for the Internet.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

snydeq writes "Mozilla Jetpack makes it so easy to filter, modify, and mash up pages that it might end up pitting developers and users against content producers in a battle for the Web, writes Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister. By allowing users to modify the behavior, presentation, and output of Web apps and pages to their liking, Jetpack gives users the ability to 'patch the server, in a sense,' McAllister writes, bringing us one step closer to a more democratic Web. Good news for developers and users; not so good for SaaS providers and media companies that have a vested interest in controlling the function, presentation, and distribution of Web-based content and apps. In other words, as Jetpack produces fruit, expect more producers to call for 'guardrails for the Internet.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

...you’ll have access to our library of high-quality fonts. Just add a line of JavaScript to your markup, tell us what fonts you want to use, and then craft your pages the way you always have. Except now you’ll be able to use real fonts. This really is going to change web design.

#

It's been quite troubling that for years various schools have simply accepted propaganda and totally inaccurate "teaching materials" about copyright and used them to teach students. These programs have been created by both the RIAA and the MPAA, at times. More recently, a lobbying organization backed by both of those organizations, the Copyright Alliance (which has a long history of making up the most fantastic myths about copyright) has been pushing a copyright curriculum on schools. Tragically, unsuspecting schools have been using the pure propaganda put out by the Copyright Alliance as if it were some sort of impartial and accurate educational material on copyright. It's not. Not even close. Last year, one of the world's foremost experts in copyright, William Patry, took the Copyright Alliance's founder to task for having "chutzpah in abundance" in basically making up what copyright and fair use is about, and presenting himself as some sort of expert on the subject.

Unfortunately, schools that are using these materials often don't realize that they're simply accepting corporate propaganda, assuming that a front group like The Copyright Alliance is some sort of impartial player in the space, even though its curriculum is laughably bad, positioning any kind of copying as a high risk activity that should be avoided. Luckily, the EFF has finally launched a much more accurate and reasonable curriculum that was actually created by those who know the subject matter, rather than corporate execs and lobbyists. The EFF's curriculum is available at Teaching Copyright and is under a Creative Commons license. Unlike many of the propaganda copyright curricula, Teaching Copyright focuses on the broader picture, recognizing the fact that copyright is not for protecting creators, but is a deal between creators and the public to encourage creation within certain important limitations. It covers important concepts such as the public domain and fair use that are either ignored or downplayed in most of the curricula put out by the industry. This is a welcome addition to materials for schools to use to educate students on copyright.

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Harry writes "It's no surprise that Steve Jobs' name is among those credited in Apple's patents for MacBooks, iPods, and other iconic gadgets galore. But the man holds patents for packaging, a staircase, iPod cases, and several intriguing products that Apple hasn't built to date. They all add up to an interesting portrait of the world's most famous tech CEO."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Harry writes "It's no surprise that Steve Jobs' name is among those credited in Apple's patents for MacBooks, iPods, and other iconic gadgets galore. But the man holds patents for packaging, a staircase, iPod cases, and several intriguing products that Apple hasn't built to date. They all add up to an interesting portrait of the world's most famous tech CEO."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Conference Board of Canada, a Canadian think-tank that was caught regurgitating a US lobby-group's press materials in a tax-funded report on the Digital Economy, has withdrawn its copyright-related reports, stating "these reports did not follow the high quality research standards of The Conference Board of Canada."

This is a major climb-down for the Conference Board, who refused to admit any wrongdoing after being caught plagiarizing materials from US copyright lobbyists, the International Intellectual Property Alliance, and even stood pat after it was revealed that they'd discarded and suppressed contradictory reports written by their own experts.

Statement from The Conference Board of Canada

The Conference Board of Canada has recalled three reports: Intellectual Property Rights in the Digital Economy; National Innovation Performance and Intellectual Property Rights: A Comparative Analysis; and Intellectual Property Rights--Creating Value and Stimulating Investment. An internal review has determined that these reports did not follow the high quality research standards of The Conference Board of Canada.

Statement from The Conference Board of Canada (via Michael Geist)

I've been feverishly experimenting some new ideas this week, the most interesting of which is a mashup between Twitter and Disqus.

This should make Fred Wilson happy, since he is an investor in both companies. But that's not why I did it.

Here's why I did it. The 140-character limit is driving me crazy.

I need a place to express ideas that just don't fit into 140.

There are some, believe it or not.

So here's an example. Early this morning Mike Arrington posted a teaser on his exclusive personal Twitter account. "Get ready for a very, very big news day." Well, Mike ought to know, everyone's telling him stuff they tell no one else.

So I wanted to post a comment asking What's up? What does everyone think this means.

So that's what I did.

http://twdsc.us/2.html

Note the URL. Cute, huh? It's a pre-shortened url. No need to push it through any of the commercial shorteners. New trend started by my friend Andrew Baron with his new superhot beta startup mag.ma.

Anyway. So far there are 11 comments with some very interesting theories about what's up. If nothing else, it's an inventory of ideas out there that people are expecting as announcements any day now. Google's realtime search engine (would be great if it supported RSS both ways and weblogs.com compatible pinging). Microsoft's new search engine Bing (for which expectations are really low, so it should be easy for them to impress). And on and on...

Add your own two cents.

And my next sub-project is to create a bookmarklet that makes it super-easy for anyone to start a comment thread on any Twitter post they like.

So Fred, whatcha think?

PS: Proof again that Twitter is the great coral reef of the latter part of this decade. It's so easy to attach something to it, that might turn into a branch or perhaps an entirely new species!

PPS: I'm working my way through James Burke's fantastic series Connections. Just watched episode 4, which ends with the beginnings of the modern computer. Hollerith, who invented the famous card that many people used to program Fortran and Basic (such as yours truly) decided to make them the same size as the dollar bill of the day. Because there was already so much machinery that existed to process them. Oh yeah. That's the kind of tech I love. Build on what's out there. More coral-reef thinking! Yehi.

My bike's paint job is looking pretty sorry these days, which I guess makes it less likely to get stolen, but doesn't get much drooling out about town... Instructables user Panda Face shares some awesome bike painting tips for a pro-looking job minus a large chunk of cash.

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brumgrunt writes "Why do TV shows, such as 30 Rock, The Simpsons, Heroes, and Everybody Loves Raymond, persist in so ferevently stereotyping comic book fans and stores? Den of Geek has pulled together eight examples, with video evidence to back them up ..." Minus one point for doubling up on Malcolm in the Middle. Plus 10 points for referencing Spaced, which I hope you all have seen.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

brumgrunt writes "Why do TV shows, such as 30 Rock, The Simpsons, Heroes and Everyone Loves Raymond, persist in so ferevently stereotyping comic book fans and stores? Den of Geek has pulled together eight examples, with video evidence to back them up..." Minus one point for doubling up on Malcolm in the Middle. Plus 10 points for referencing Spaced which I hope you all have seen.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dave Title points our attention to a public elementary school in New York City (PS22) that is making news for putting together a chorus that sings various pop songs (and sings them well!). The videos are quickly spreading around YouTube: Apparently, Stevie Nicks was so touched by seeing them sing the Fleetwod Mac song above, that she's asked the group to sing at a Fleetwod Mac show in NYC. But, of course, Title wonders how the RIAA feels about all of this:

However, this seems like a video ripe for takedown by the RIAA. These kids did not get the rights to perform this song and they are now spreading their cover for free! This is just the sort of activity the record industry seems to keen on stopping - whether it is a chorus of school-kids or a couple of people doing a karaoke version of the latest Beyonce tune.

Of course, the idea that this video could somehow create a direct negative impact to the sales of Fleetwood Mac songs is simply absurd. That won't stop groups like the RIAA from spitting out takedown notices and DMCA claims faster than you can say, "hey, that was cute."

Admittedly, the world of copyright law is beyond complicated but we need to find a way to let people legally play with all the content released into the world. People are going to play with it no matter what so it’s really just a question of whether or not energy is spent prosecuting people or facilitating them. I wonder which choice would make more money in the long run.

Indeed. Hopefully the RIAA knows better, but, remember when the Girl Scouts were threatened for singing songs around the campfire?

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The New York Times Magazine ran an excerpt from Matthew B. Crawford's new book, Shop Class as Soul Craft. Crawford has a Ph.D. in political philosophy. He owns and operates a motorcycle repair shop.

His book is about the the importance of using your hands to make and repair things. He compares the kind of life many people in developed countries lead -- inside cubicles, working on things that are several levels removed from the physical world -- to a life of skilled labor that requires ingenuity and experience, and provides the kinds of challenges that human beings were made to relish.

I'm writing a book about the rewards of DIY, and Crawford's book really resonated with me.

A gifted young person who chooses to become a mechanic rather than to accumulate academic credentials is viewed as eccentric, if not self-destructive. There is a pervasive anxiety among parents that there is only one track to success for their children. It runs through a series of gates controlled by prestigious institutions. Further, there is wide use of drugs to medicate boys, especially, against their natural tendency toward action, the better to "keep things on track." I taught briefly in a public high school and would have loved to have set up a Ritalin fogger in my classroom. It is a rare person, male or female, who is naturally inclined to sit still for 17 years in school, and then indefinitely at work.

Shop Class as Soul Craft

jakeb writes "After a massive three-year development effort KOffice 2.0.0 has been released (packages for Kubuntu are available) aiming to be a lightweight, cross-platform office suite that supports third-party apps and extensions. With its new design (everything, including the core components, is a module) and bindings, you don't need to know C++ to hack on KOffice, as extensions can be written in Python or Java, among others. TechWorld has an interview with KOffice marketing coordinator Inge Wallin about the vision for an easy-to-use office suite that supports click-to-install extensions like Firefox. Will this be the key to KOffice rising above all other free office suites? The KOffice devs think so. An online repository of extensions, templates, and content for KOffice? I like the sound of that."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

jakeb writes "After a massive three-year development effort KOffice 2.0.0 has been released (packages for Kubuntu are available) aiming to be a lightweight, cross-platform office suite that supports third-party apps and extensions. With its new design (everything, including the core components, is a module) and bindings, you don't need to know C++ to hack on KOffice, as extensions can be written in Python or Java, among others. TechWorld has an interview with KOffice marketing coordinator Inge Wallin about the vision for an easy-to-use office suite that supports click-to-install extensions like Firefox. Will this be the key to KOffice rising above all other free office suites? The KOffice devs think so. An online repository of extensions, templates, and content for KOffice? I like the sound of that."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Check out the full schedule of presentations and demos for this weekend's Maker Faire. I'm happy to have such a wide range of speakers on a variety of topics.

There are three stages: Stage A is in Fiesta Hall used for short talks; Stage B is a smaller stage in Fiesta for workshops; Stage C in Expo Hall has a mix of panels and talks. (In addition, a full slate of Craft Demos will take place in Expo Hall and Make Demos will happen in Fiesta in the Maker Shed area.)

Here are some of the highlights:

Adam Savage returns to Maker Faire again where he had a standing-room only audience last year. This year, he will talk about "Colossal Failures" on Saturday from 2 pm to 3pm in Stage A.

Remaking American Manufacturing is one of themes to be addressed by speakers this Saturday at Maker Faire. Liam Casey who works in Zhenzhen, China helps American companies utiltize the Chinese manufacturing system. Liam believes that this unique system of manufacturing will increasingly become available for individual makers. His talk, "Getting Out of the Garage" will be Saturday at noon on Stage A.

Rod Brooks of MIT and founder of iRobot will discuss how the future of American manufacturing might depend on a new generation of industrial robotics, which is the focus of his new company, Heartland Robotics. Rod's talk, "Remaking American Manufacturing with Robotics", is Saturday at 3:00 pm on Stage A.

Mitch Free, founder and CEO of MFG.com, will be talking about new ways of manufacturing products and how to take advantage of this new world of American manufacturing. His talk is at 3:30 pm Saturday on Stage A.

Esther Dyson, daughter of Freeman Dyson and a technology analyst and investor, will talk about her fascination with space. Esther recently completed a five-month training as a cosmonaut in Star City, Russia, just outside of Moscow. She'll talk about her own experience training as well as her interests in the private space industry. Her talk, "What's a nice lady like you doing in (a) space like this?", will be Saturday at 1pm on Stage A.

The host of Make:TV's Maker Workshop, John Park, will talk about the show and demonstrate the Personal Flight Recorder project that was demonstrated on a rollercoaster ride in the show's first season. John will be speaking Saturday and Sunday at 3pm on Stage C.

Jeri Ellsworth will talk about how she created her own path in life and channeled her creative energy as an engineer, designing the highly acclaimed Commodore C64 30-in-1 Joystic. Her talk, "From Juvenile Delinquent to Self-Taught Electrical Engineer", is Saturday at 4pm on Stage A.

Learn about stereoscopic 3D animation techniques from Special Awesome, makers of 3D stop-motion film Coraline. They will be talking about their equipment and their techniques at 1pm Saturday on Stage C. Alex Andon will talk about raising jellyfish and making jellyfish aquariums in his talk Sunday 12:30 pm on Stage A.

Jerry Glasser, an experienced pilot and flight instructor, will talk flying the SR-71 and other aircraft in his talk, "Flying the World's Fastest Aircraft" on Sunday at 2pm on Stage A. Earlier on Sunday at 11 am on Stage A, McKinley Siegfried and her father, Rand, will talk about how she built her own airplane.

Phil Torrone is organizing a discussion on the business of Open Source Hardware. The panel, "Making Open Source Hardware into a Kit Business", will happen Sunday at 1pm on Stage C.

Tito Jankowski will talk about "DIY Biology" on Saturday 1pm to 2pm on Stage B. Tom Igoe, author of "Making Things Talk" and a member of the Arduino team, will give a hands-on talk "LED Mania" on Sunday from 1pm to 2pm on Stage C. Nathan Seidle of Sparkfun Electronics will give two hour-long workshops on electronic prototyping, Saturday at noon and Sunday at 4pm on Stage B.

There are many, many more presentations and demos scheduled so please check out the full schedule. You can find schedules for each day with full listings, plus one-page at-a-glance schedules (PDF) for each day. In addition to all these great presentations and demos, Maker Faire will have over 500+ fascinating maker exhibits.

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Barence writes "Google is considering removing the beta tag from Gmail — and other online services — a mere five years after it was first launched. Google has become somewhat synonymous with seemingly endless beta cycles. Many of the company's most famous services, including Gmail, Docs and Calendar all still carry the beta tag. Google now admits the eternal beta cycles could be damaging consumer and business confidence in its online apps. "It's a minor annoyance and something you'll see addressed in the not-too-distant future.""

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Matt_dk writes "NASA scientists modeled freezing conditions on Mars to test whether liquid water could have been present to form the surface features of the Martian landscape. Evidence suggests flowing water formed the rivers and gullies on the Mars surface, even though surface temperatures were below freezing. Dissolved minerals in liquid water may be the reason."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apparently the outcome of the latest season of American Idol caused some controversy when the contestant generally regarded as the underdog of the two finalists was crowned the winner, provoking an angry backlash from his rival's fans. Now, they're pointing the finger at AT&T, alleging it helped skew the vote. This isn't the first time telecommunications have caught this sort of flak, as it's been a regular occurrence during the show's run that people have faced jammed phone lines when they've tried to vote. But this time, it's a little different. Apparently AT&T reps were at a couple of viewing parties organized by fans of the winning contestant, Kris Allen, and brought along a bunch of phones with them -- since, of course, only people on AT&T's wireless network can vote for the show's winner via text message. Then, the reps supposedly showed people at the parties how to "power text", or send in several votes at once. It seems unlikely that the votes spawned from the two parties were enough to tip the balance in Allen's favor, but the appearance of impropriety on the part of one of the show's major sponsors may be a bit more damaging.

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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Jesse Rutherford writes:

Have you ever wanted to plug in a professional studio mic to your ipod touch/iphone? There may be a commercial solution, but I couldn't find one. Even if there is one, I figured I could build one cheaper than a ready-made one. You could also use this for a line-in (my original reason for the project), but the source really needs to be taken down to mic level from line level for good sound quality.

The hardest part was finding the 3.5 mm 4 conductor plug (found it at Jameco). The soldering to the plug was a bit tricky too. I needed a cable with at least 4 conductors inside, and I wanted to build this for next-to-nothing, so I used some CAT5 ethernet cable I had. CAT5 has 8 conductors, so if you know of any other common cable with at least 4, you can use that.

Audio breakout cable for iPod/iPhone

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vigmeister writes "From Techgeist, 'Linux just got a major slap in the face today from Asus. One of the highlights of Linux going mainstream was the wildly popular Asus Eee PC preinstalled with a customized Linux distro geared towards web applications. While I personally never got what the big deal was, I was still happy for all the Linux people out there waiting for this day, but it looks like the cause for celebration won't be lasting much longer. Asus and Microsoft have teamed up and have made a site called It's Better With Windows. The page touts how easy it is to get up and ready with Windows on an Asus Eee PC, while slyly stating that you won't have to deal with an "unfamiliar environment" and "major compatibility issues.' While it is silly to state such a thing since Asus built the Linux distribution specifically for the Eee PC, I give Microsoft two points for snarky comments.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Coupla old dudes built a three-wheeled unmanned vehicle for pulling a person controlling the rig from rollerblades, via push-pull rod steering.

Feng-GUI Research - The Red Sea Mobile

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For years, we've been pointing out that there's really no such thing as an anonymized dataset. There's almost always ways to associate data back to people. We've seen it happen over and over again as companies claim they're releasing an anonymous dataset, only to discover later that it's not so difficult to re-nomynize it. In fact, there was even a recent paper on how to re-identify people based on an anonymous data set. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that yet another "anonymous dataset" has been shown not to be very anonymous. This time, it's about GPS data that was supposed to be scrubbed of identifying info, but some researchers have found that it's not hard to put that data back together, knowing that the two main places people go are home and their office. With that info, you could pretty easily uniquely identify people. Among the many reasons why this could be important? All those silly efforts by politicians to force drivers to install GPS devices in order to tax their driving habits. They always insist the data won't be used for tracking, but even if they're well intentioned, you can see how the data can be abused.

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The Netherlands (where most drugs are cannabis is legal) has so few criminals that it is now faced with the choice of shutting down its prisons and laying off the staff, or importing criminals from other countries like Belgium on a contract basis:

During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led to overcapacity in the prison system. The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees.

Deputy justice minister Nebahat Albayrak announced on Tuesday that eight prisons will be closed, resulting in the loss of 1,200 jobs. Natural redundancy and other measures should prevent any forced lay-offs, the minister said.

Netherlands to close prisons for lack of criminals (via Futurismic)

spidweb writes "The common theory is that games like World of Warcraft are addictive. But what are the exact qualities that make it so? Are there specific elements of the design that can be pulled out, distilled, and used at will to give a game drug-like properties? Is it wrong to do so? A new article at IGN RPG Vault attempts to isolates the exact qualities that go into making an addiction-based design. From the article: 'If a game uses rewards of any sort to entice you to experience highly repetitive content, you should see what it's trying to do and which of your buttons it's trying to press. If you don't mind, that's cool, but you should understand it.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's evidence that we're about to see a big new push in "privacy" laws at both the state and federal level, and while privacy is important, these laws often do the exact opposite of what they're intended to do. They, like so many laws, do a lot more to give politicians headlines so they can say they protected constituents' privacy, but the reality is quite different. A recent Forbes article explored what a mess privacy regulations have become, basically creating huge bureaucracies in order to comply with the laws, but having little to do with actually protecting privacy. Instead, the added regulations have just created the need for people to sign various consent forms that they don't understand, and limited certain types of useful information sharing, while making it that much more difficult to accomplish certain basic tasks. And, on top of everything, in some cases it's actually increasing the privacy risk, by requiring the collection of certain "private" info in a database that now makes it that much more vulnerable.

No one denies that protecting privacy is important -- but that's not what's being done. Instead, politicians are rushing through legislation to make it look like privacy is being protected, when all it really does is create extra burdens on both companies and users without any corresponding privacy benefit.

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Death Metal writes "The EU passed the Data Retention Directive years ago, a law that demands ISPs and search engines hold onto data long enough to help the cops (but not long enough to cause privacy problems). But Sweden never passed it into national law, and the European Commission has now sued the country to make sure a bill appears."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A few folks have submitted various versions of the news that Honolulu has concluded a city election of council members using only internet or telephone voting. Similar systems have been tried elsewhere, but for the most part, there's been fear to use them more widely in the US, over worries about hacking. Of course, at a time when we still can't even get basic stand-alone e-voting machines to work properly, I think there's still plenty to be worried about before jumping ahead to internet voting. There is a note at the end of the article, saying that the company that provided the technology, called Everyone Counts, says that the code for the systems used in the election are available for auditing. However, a quick glance of the company's website doesn't seem to reveal any code. So unless I'm missing something (in which case, please let us know in the comments!), it sounds like the code isn't open, but only available for auditing by a limited group of folks... just like traditional (buggy, problematic) e-voting systems.

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The latest installment in the British MP expense scandal, in which Members of Parliament have been revealed to have spent millions in "expenses" on things like having their moats cleaned, buying porn and/or tampons for their spouses, hiring private security guards, paying nonexistent mortgages, etc:

A Tory MP called Sir John Butterfill from Bournemouth West, Dorset used his expense account to add a servant's wing to his country house. At first he denied that these people were servants, calling them his "gardener and his wife," but later, he said, "the mistake I made was that, in claiming interest [from the expenses allowance] on the home, I didn't separate from that the value of the servants' ... er the staff ... wing. I claimed the whole of that and the whole of the council tax related to that."

He will repay £40,000 to cover the tax, after designating the property to the inland revenue as his main residence but designating it to the Commons authorities as his second home, allowing him to claim allowances.

As for the servants' quarters in Woking, Butterfill will be handing back £20,000.

Together, it will cost him a mere £60,000 to leave Westminster with a clean bill of health at the general election.

John Butterfill claimed £17,000 MPs' expenses for servants' ... er, staff quarters (Image: www.johnbutterfillmp.co.uk)

A US manga collector has plead guilty to possession of child pornography because some of the many thousands and thousands of comics he owns depict children in sexual situations. He now faces up to 15 years in prison and a life of being treated as a child molester, though there's no evidence he is a pedophile or has ever interfered with a child in any way.

The 39-year-old office worker was charged under the 2003 Protect Act, which outlaws cartoons, drawings, sculptures or paintings depicting minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct, and which lack "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." Handley's guilty plea makes him the first to be convicted under that law for possessing cartoon art, without any evidence that he also collected or viewed genuine child pornography. He faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison...

"This stuff is huge in Japan, in all of Asia," Lunning says. Handley, she adds, "is not a pedophile. He had no photographs of child pornography."

Handley remains free pending a yet-to-be scheduled sentencing date. Mike Bladel, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Iowa, declined to state what kind of sentence the government would seek, but claimed there were hundreds of obscene panels in the seized manga...

"He was a prolific collector," says the lawyer. "He did not focus on this type of manga. He collected everything that was out there that he could get his hands on. I think this makes a huge difference." U.S. Manga Obscenity Conviction Roils Comics World

A long and deep study of user behaviour in the UK by a Cambridge prof confirms that when an honest person tries to do something legal that is blocked by Digital Rights Management technology, it encourages the person to start downloading infringing copies for free from the net, since these copies are all DRM-free.

Akester's new paper, "Technological accommodation of conflicts between freedom of expression and DRM: the first empirical assessment," does pretty much what its title implies. Akester spent the last few years interviewing dozens of lecturers, end users, government officials, rightsholders, and DRM developers to find how DRM and anticircumvention laws affected actual use...

Everybody that Akester spoke with had some problem of their own. Film lecturers, who are allowed to put together clip compilations under UK law, still can't (legally) bypass the CSS encryption on DVDs.

Lecturers who don't know how to bypass the DRM are faced with an unappealing choice: those "unable to extract a clip from a commercial DVD lodged in their library collection are forced to tailor the content of their lectures to the VHS materials at their disposal. They contend that this happens frequently, given that most commercial DVDs are DRM protected."

Landmark study: DRM truly does make pirates out of us all

Rishab sez,

Here's something neat - all the links posted by @Boingboing on Twitter, and for each link, all the things people are saying about them on Twitter. Its a result page from Topsy, a new site that lets you search through what people are saying about things. Topsy sees the Internet as a stream of conversations between people. It ranks each search result based on how much people are talking about it, and the influence of the people discussing it. Like Cory Doctorow's Whuffie, Topsy computes influence as something you can earn and spend. It does this based on how much you talk about other things and people, and how much other people talk about you. Of course @Boingboing is "Highly Influential" on Twitter (which is all Topsy's index has, for now).

Topsy (Thanks, Rishab!)

Art sez, "Public Knowledge is asking for nominations for its annual awards for achievement in intellectual property, internet protocol and information policy. We're sure Boing Boing readers would have lots of good ideas."

It's that time of year again: time to nominate individuals for our annual IP3 awards. As you may know, each year, Public Knowledge selects three individuals to receive the IP3 Award. These winners are people who have advanced the public interest in each of the three "IPs:" Intellectual Property, Internet Protocol, and Information Policy. Previous IP3 winners have included everyone from EFF lawyer Fred von Lohmann and Virginia Congressman Rick Boucher to the band OK Go and Gnarls Barkley member DJ Danger Mouse. Be sure to nominate your picks by June 22nd and look out for list of winners in October.

Nominations Now Open For the 2009 IP3 Awards (Thanks, Brad!)

Yehuda writes "Wired reports, 'Yet another breach of sensitive, unencrypted data is making news in the United Kingdom. This time the breach puts Royal Air Force staff at serious risk of being targeted for blackmail by foreign intelligence services or others. The breach involves audio recordings with high-ranking air force officers who were being interviewed in-depth for a security clearance. In the interviews, the officers disclosed information about extra-marital affairs, drug abuse, visits to prostitutes, medical conditions, criminal convictions and debt histories — information the military needed to determine their security risk. The recordings were stored on three unencrypted hard drives that disappeared last year.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brad sez, "At this year's Balticon, Earl Newton left his Parsec award for best video podcast unattended just long enough for the star of Calls For Cthulhu (the runner up for said award) to defile it in the most humorous puppet-on-inanimate-object way possible."

Calls For Cthulhu - Balticon Sex Scandal (Thanks, Brad!)

This seems like a fun weekend project with to teach kids about how batteries work in a hands-on fashion. Instructables user egbertfitzwilly has published a how-to for a simple aluminum can, saltwater, and charcoal battery.  

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Jeff Vandermeer sez, "My video narrated by a visitor supposedly lost for days, showing just how ridiculously large and multi-faceted the Chamblin Bookmine is. Using stop-gap photos I recreated my path through the bookstore in Borgesian fashion. With incidental music by The Church. In a day and age when most bookstores are dying, this organic behemoth, which changes every day due to the volume of incoming and outgoing books, is still going strong..."

The Chamblin Bookmine: A Bibliophile's Fevre Dream... (Thanks, Jeff!)

The history of copyright law is pretty straightforward: basically every time some new technology comes along that shows just how obsolete copyright law is, rather than recognize that fact, entrenched interests warn politicians about how they'll just die if they don't get new protections, and another layer of protectionism is slapped onto the law -- not (as copyright law intends) for incentives to create new works, but as a policy to protect an old industry. That's created a house of cards, where copyright law keeps getting stretched and twisted every time it's adjusted. In 1909 the problem was player pianos. A big part of the reason for changing copyright law in 1909 was the fear that player pianos would destroy the market for sheet music and even (potentially) live performances. So the law was changed... but the player piano soon died. But the copyright law it gave us stuck around. When radio came about, we got changes to copyright law to deal with that. When the internet came about, we got the DMCA. So what's next? Perhaps the internet's new big buzzword: "the real-time web."

We've already talked about how it was only a matter of time until someone was sued for "lifecasting." With video recording and streaming technologies getting cheaper and cheaper, there are a number of services out there that let people broadcast anything they're doing. For many of them, it's a lot of fun... but in almost every case, some copyright lawyers could make an argument that it represents copyright infringement. If you are videotaping, and you walk past a TV broadcasting a copyrighted show, some would argue that's infringement. If you happen to hear some music, that's infringement. Yes, there may be a fair use defense, but this is hardly a situation where people are going to want to go to court just to defend the fact that they walked past a TV.

In reality, this should (again) demonstrate the silliness of copyright laws right now. The fact that merely walking past a TV while streaming video could be considered a copyright violation should be seen as a joke. It's legal if I see it with my own eyes, but if I include a virtual eye that lets others see it as well... that's infringement? Yet, there are already lawsuits over this sort of thing, and Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee has a thoughtful article wondering if copyright holders are going to start complaining that the DMCA is insufficient to deal with these sorts of situations.

As it stands now, the DMCA already goes too far in allowing someone to claim they are a copyright holder and demand a takedown of content they believe is infringing. To retain the DMCA's safe harbors and avoid potential liability, a site then has to take down the content. This gives copyright holders (or even those who claim to be copyright holders) tremendous power to force content offline for at least a few days. Yet, the fear is that in a "real-time" world, that's not fast enough. If I'm watching a baseball game, and turn on my camera, by the time MLB or whoever the broadcaster is discovers it and sends out the takedown, the game is already going to be over. They could still sue me and perhaps that acts as a deterrent, but we've see how little a deterrent mass lawsuits have had in the music industry.

So what happens next? My guess is that we'll see some sort of push to change copyright laws again to try to deal with this "problem." Perhaps even something that would put liability on any company that enables "real-time" streaming. The content companies won't want the burden of actually changing their business model, so they'll try to dump the burden of enforcing the old business model on the innovators. Hopefully, though, there are enough folks out there who won't simply let such a change go through unchallenged.

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Today's episode of Boing Boing Video is a vintage 1970s television ad for a brand of jeans called "Big Yank." When I first watched it, I was immediately convinced that this ad was all about the giving of wedgies -- to one's self, to others, no matter! Wedgies, wedgies, wedgies. Or maybe the ad was about something even more inappropriate. At any rate, I thought it was funny.

The video comes to us as a special courtesy of Oddball Film and Video, a San Francisco-based firm that maintains a truly amazing and extensive archive of weird old moving images. They do regular screenings, too. BB Video will be bringing you more from their superbly surreal collections in the weeks to come.

Where to Find Boing Boing Video: RSS feed for new episodes here, YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video.

(Thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic, and to Robert Chehoski and Stephen Parr of Oddball Film + Video)

dacut writes "After successfully repairing the Hubble Space Telescope, astronauts aboard the shuttle Atlantis found themselves with a free day due to thunderstorms which delayed their return. They attempted to pass the time by watching movies, only to find that their laptops did not have the proper software, and Houston was unable to help. No word, alas, on what software was involved, though we can assume that software/codec updates are a tad difficult when you're orbiting the planet at 17,200MPH."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reader Ima Fish alerts us to a column that mostly bemoans the death of the big "live album" that helped some bands break through, with the article blaming YouTube for the loss. The idea is that, since everyone's going to these shows, taping them and putting them online, it's killing any incentive to put out official live albums. Of course, it's not clear if that's really true. For years, the Grateful Dead allowed taping and swapping of the bootlegs -- and yet still did amazingly well by selling live albums. Also, I still know plenty of bands that put out live albums. Perhaps the bigger issue is just that the whole concept of "breakthrough albums," whether live or not, isn't as big a deal as it used to be. Either way, the bigger question might be whether or not this even matters. As the author of the article finally notes at the end: "As I type this, I've been listening to more than a dozen bootlegged clips of that Yeah Yeah Yeahs show from Coachella off of YouTube. Having witnessed the show live, I am now able to relive it, albeit from the slightly disjointed perspective of someone else's handheld gadget. And guess what? It makes me want to see the band again--and buy their music."

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For my second cigar box guitar, I bought a six foot length of 1 x 2 oak from Home Depot. I made sure the piece of lumber was flat and straight. It weighed a lot more than the pine wood I’d used in my first cigar box guitar, and felt a lot better in my hands. I also bought a small metal miter box from a hobby store to cut the fret slots in the neck. This time, I made perfectly straight fret cuts.

I shaved off the part of the neck that attached to the cigar box so that the surface of the fret board was flush with the top of the cigar box, unlike on my first cigar box guitar. Remembering Mister Jalopy’s dictum, “screws not glues,” I screwed the neck to the cigar box with three fasteners. This way, if I need to make changes or later want to swap in a new cigar box, it will be a simple matter to remove the screws.

I made a couple of small mistakes, like drilling a hole in a spot that hit a screw going in a perpendicular direction to the hole, but this guitar build went very smoothly. The action is low, but not so low that it buzzes, and I can play the strings all the way up to the highest fret (the 20th) without interference.

Many thanks to Steve Lodefink and the gang at Cigar Box Nation for the advice on this!

Photos of cigar box guitar no. 2

Jack Spine writes "When you are powering nuclear particle beams that could drill a hole through 30 metres of copper, you don't want to be paying a premium for electricity. However, Cern scientists are determined that the delayed experiment will get some workable results, and so are preparing to run the machine throughout the winter."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In our Spy Tech issue of MAKE, Volume 16, artist and concept designer Greg MacLaurin showed us how to make a Ghost Phone (of the Judy Garland persuasion). Ghost Phones are "interactive modifications of the ancient and nearly arcane dial telephone system." By hiding an MP3 player inside a telephone, you can have a one-sided conversation with a ghost from the past. At Maker Faire Bay Area this weekend (May 30th and 31st), Greg will share the concept behind this art project, discuss the methods and perspective for recording the dialog, and demonstrate ways to hide the tech and make it all the more mysterious. That's one of my favorite things about Maker Faire: want to know how someone made something? Ask them! Wanna know why they made it? Ask them!

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A few weeks back, we wrote about a court ruling that said that Yahoo was protected against actions by users, thanks to Section 230 safeharbors, but that the company had effectively given up some of that protection by promising to remove some content. While the bigger issues in the case seemed to have been decided reasonably, some noticed that many of the finer points in the ruling were both sloppy and troubling. Eric Goldman ran down the details of the problems with the ruling. Now it appears that Yahoo is appealing not the major point of the case, but those specific troubling points made in the ruling, which could severely limit the effectiveness of using Section 230 to protect against frivolous lawsuits.

The issue may certainly sound like inside baseball, but it's important to anyone who runs an online service of any kind. Traditionally, when receiving a mistargeted lawsuit that tries to pin liability on a service provider, rather than the actual user, it's common to file a motion to dismiss based on section 230 safe harbors. However, in this ruling, the court said that you couldn't raise section 230 in a motion to dismiss, and that it could only be used as an "answer" and thus required a more involved (and potentially much more costly) procedure of asking the court for a ruling in the case, rather than just a dismissal. That would significantly raise the cost to many site owners in trying to dismiss these sorts of mistargeted lawsuits. It's nice to see a long list of defenders of the public and the internet sign on to explain to the court why this dicta is incorrect. Public Citizen, EFF, CDT and the Citizen Media Law Project all joined in with an amicus brief. Hopefully the court realizes the earlier sloppy ruling was a mistake, and the ability to dismiss using Section 230 safe harbors remains.

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Dale Dougherty says:

One of the more surprising entries coming to Maker Faire this year is from Seabat Studios from Fayetteville, Arkansas. It's called Swamp Kirin, a 9-foot tall, hoof to horn tip, four legged, moss covered thing. Swamp Kirin towers over the masses as it ambles lazily through the crowds. There is no age limit to the wonder that this creature is capable of inspiring.

Above is a video of the Swamp Kirin in action. Link to video.

Seabat Studios is Haley Duke and Mark Krause. If you're coming to Maker Faire, look for Swamp Kirin to make regular appearances near the Boiler Bar Theatre.

Maker Faire (makerfaire.com) is Saturday & Sunday, May 30-31st at the San Mateo Expo Center in the SF Bay Area.

Swamp Kirin coming to Maker Faire

Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that a team of Japanese scientists has integrated a new gene for green fluorescent protein into the common marmoset, causing them to glow green under ultraviolet light, creating second-generation, glow-in-the-dark monkeys in what could be a powerful new tool in human disease research. Though primates modified to generate a glowing protein have been created before, these are the first to keep the change in their bloodlines. If a fluorescent protein gene can be introduced into the monkey genome and passed onto future generations, other genes could be too opening up a world of possibilities for medical research, such as the generation of specific monkey colonies containing genetic defects that mirror human diseases aiding efforts to cure such diseases as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. However many people are likely to find the routine use of monkeys in medical research far less acceptable than that of rodents, drawing action from animal rights activists. "I'm worried that these steps are being taken without any overall public discussion about whether we want to go down that road. We may find ourselves gradually drifting towards the genetic engineering of human beings," says Dr David King, from the group Human Genetics Alert. "'Slippery slope' is a quite inadequate description of the process, because it doesn't happen passively. People push it forward.""

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rob Hyndman points us to the news that a law firm has been hit with a $72.6 million judgment for legal malpractice, after a company who had hired the law firm to handle its patent applications claimed that the law firm screwed up the applications, making it that much harder for the company to shake down other companies for cash. The inventors, in this case, claim to have come up with a "man down" alert system (for firefighters and the like), and had this law firm patent it for them. Of course, similar technology appeared on the market soon after, and so these guys sued and were "only" able to collect $9 million -- which they deemed to be way too little. So they sued the law firm... and won. So, apparently, these days you don't even need to have a good patent to make money. You can just blame your law firm for screwing up your patent if you weren't able to shake down enough other companies.

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