The fight in the UK over how the recording industry will deal with future business models continues. The industry has been pushing hard for ISPs to start kicking people offline, believing (oddly) that pissing off a lot of people and making them lose their internet connections will magically make people want to buy music again -- rather than the reality: which is that it will piss off even more people and make them even less inclined to spend money on the industry. Yet, UK politicians have so far stood firm against a three strikes policy, sometimes claiming that merely sending warning letters should be enough to scare unauthorized file sharers straight. So, of course, it didn't take long for a new industry study to come out saying that a high percentage (around 67%) of file sharers would likely ignore such letters unless they were backed up by other measures, such as a three strikes regime.

So, of course, the industry is using this to demand more than just warning letters be mandated by UK law. But, once again, it appears the industry is getting the wrong message. Rather than realizing what the study is actually saying -- that unauthorized file sharing won't stop -- it seems to think that if it just finds that magic legal bullet, suddenly file sharing will go away and people will start spending again. What they should have recognized is that this study says that people will go to great lengths to file share, even if they know it's illegal, because they do not believe it is wrong or unethical. And, as such, if the industry reps were thinking this through, they might realize that this represents a giant opportunity to build business models around embracing such fan activities, rather than trying to hold back the tide.

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Al writes "An engineer from Nokia's UK research labs says that the company is developing technology that can harvest ambient electromagnetic radiation to keep a cellphone going. The researcher says that his group is working towards a prototype that could harvest up to 50 milliwatts of power--enough to slowly recharge a phone that is switched off. He says current prototypes can harvest 3 to 5 milliwatts. It will require a wideband receiver capable of capturing signals from between 500 megahertz and 10 gigahertz--a range that encompasses many different radio communication signals. Other researchers have developed devices that can harvest more modest power from select frequencies. A team from Intel previously developed a compact sensor capable of drawing 6 microwatts from a 1.0-megawatt TV antenna 4.1 kilometers away."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cartoonist Lucy Knisley drew this fabulous poster of a zombie invasion to sell at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Arts Festival in New York. She promises to sell it online soon, too. Make sure to admire the larger version here.

Radley Balko and Jeff Winkler of Reason put together a fun gallery of the "The Top 10 Most Absurd Time Covers of The Past 40 Years," with appropriate commentary.

From William Randolph Hearst's ginned up hysterical stories about marijuana to the "10-cent plague" comic book scare of the 1950s to The New York Times warning of "cocaine-crazed Negroes" raping white women across the Southern countryside, the media has always whipped up anxiety and increased readership via thinly sourced exposes of the next great threat to the American way of life.

And since the British sociologist Stanley Cohen defined the moral panic phenomenon in the early 1970s as hysterical overreactions to imagined threats to social order, no publication has done a better (by which we mean worse) job of scaring the crap out of post-baby boomer America than Time, the top-selling newsweekly that's dropping subscribers like the mythical meth mouth drops teeth.

The Top 10 Most Absurd Time Covers of The Past 40 Years

When it's not been busy trying to get into the scalping business itself, Ticketmaster has been trying to push scalpers aside. It claims it does this for altruistic reasons, but those claims generally fall on deaf ears, with many people believing it's simply trying to capture the scalpers' revenues. It's escalating the battle now by expanding its use of paperless tickets for concerts, and will use them for the upcoming Miley Cyrus tour, after an earlier series of shows sparked a flurry of complaints about scalpers. Ticketmaster has been testing the program for a little while, and trying to sell it as a convenient solution: instead of getting a paper ticket for a show, buyers don't receive one before the show, and instead must present the credit card they used to purchase their seats to get in. On its surface, this seems like a fairly effective way of cutting out scalpers by making their transactions with their customers much more difficult. But it's still not clear why Ticketmaster sees such a need to interfere with the market -- beyond its own self-interest, of course. It's hard to imagine that Ticketmaster really cares that scalping goes on, except for the fact that it's not making any money from it.

One inevitable (and legitimate) complaint about this system is that it not only takes out scalpers, but other secondary transactions, too. Want to buy tickets as a gift, or for your kid? You'll have to take the recipient to the show and go up to the gate with them. Buy tickets for yourself, but then can't go to the show and want to give them to a friend? You're out of luck, unless you and your credit card can get there (and, of course, there are no refunds). It seems likely that Ticketmaster will have to do something to rectify this, particularly given the political scrutiny they've attracted lately, and the solution seems obvious: Ticketmaster sets up a secondary market that lets people resell their tickets and reassigns them to a new credit-card holder (taking a cut for all the hard work, of course). The company has been growing its reseller business, in particular making efforts to become the "official fan resale" partner of various sports leagues and teams, and it's hard to see it not using paperless tickets as a way to expand this business. Ticketmaster hates scalping -- unless it's the one doing the reselling. But if it wants to benefit from the free market, the market should really be free, and not one established and controlled by Ticketmaster.

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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AS220 Labs, Providence's shared workspace/teaching space/community junkpile is presenting at the next Providence Geek Dinner, Wednesday June 17:

The Labs help to build technically literate audiences and communities of artists by hosting workshops and providing access to tools and techniques such as those of the Providence Fab Lab (in partnership with MIT).

Fresh back from Maker Faire, where he garnered the Editor's Choice Blue Ribbon for Drawbot, AS220 Labs Director Shawn Wallace will give an overview of the Lab's unique programs (including the Make and Break series and June 12-14's 3D Printing Summit) and fascinating projects (over a dozen including Fluxamabob). Shawn will also explain how community members (that's you!) can get plugged in.

June Geek Dinner - Wed. the 17th 5:30-8:30pm @ AS220 featuring AS220 Labs

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Here's an oldie-but-goodie from 2004: Kar-Han Tan, James Kobler, Rogerio S. Feris, Paul Dietz, and Ramesh Raskar, then of the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory (MERL), produced a custom digital camera and software that derives line drawings of a scene, or an object, by analyzing the shadows in four otherwise-identical pictures that are illuminated from different quadrants. The MERL has a technical report from 2005 describing potential medical applications of the technology, and photo.net has a good general overview of the process. Raskar has since gone on to the MIT media lab (so you know he's doing something right), and his page there includes more up-to-date work on the technology.

Thanks to Jon Wolfe for bringing this to my attention.

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Daniel Carter, our Art Director, writes:

James Provost, an illustrator from Vancouver, attended Maker Faire, and it inspired him to create a sweet set of "DIY spot illustrations" which he's posted on his site and on Flickr. I love the illustrations -- very MAKE!

Thanks, Daniel (and James)! Sweet, indeed.

James Provost, Technical Illustrator

James Provost's photostream

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ajmcello78 writes "We're a mid-sized aerospace company with over a hundred thousand documents stored out on our Samba servers that also need to be accessed from our satellite offices. We have a VPN set up for the remote sites and use the Samba net use command to map the remote shares. It's becoming quite a mess, sometimes quite slow, and there is really no naming or numbering convention in place for the files and directories. We end up with mixed casing, all uppercase, all lowercase, dashes and ampersands in the file names, and there are literally hundreds of directories to sort through before you can find the document you are looking for. Does anybody know of a good system or method to manage all these documents, and also make them available to our satellite offices?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

No longer do I have to be homesick for my beloved Chitown thanks to the fine folks over at Wurlington Brothers Press, who publish the Build Your Own Chicago series of scale model postcards. Each card can be cut and assembled into a miniature paper model of a prominent Chicago landmarks. Inspired by the "Micromodels" designed by Geoffrey Heighway in the 1950s, all the Wurliington Brothers Press postcards are designed and drawn by Matt Bergstrom. Pictured above is the Red Line and the El Tracks. Check out their awesome selection. They even offer some as freebie PDFs. If you're of the NYC persuasion, they also have a Build Your Own New York selection.

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I'm writing up the beginning of this post while on an airplane, flying from New York to San Francisco. By the time you've read it, I'll have added some stuff to it after I landed. The issue is one of customer service and sounding human. Late last week, I saw this amusing online customer service chat transcript between a Zappos customer service representative and a guy who wanted to see if their customer service really was as good as advertised. Zappos is famous for its hiring and training practices (including paying people to quit after a month). With the customer service team, there are no scripts and reps aren't measured on how many calls they get through like many other customer service centers, but on how well they help customers. That is really evident in the transcript. Here's an excerpt, though you should read the whole thing:

You are now chatting with Jonathan
Jonathan: Hello Timmy. How can I help you?
Timmy: do you know how wide the G-Shock Atomic Solar - AWG101 SKU #7403774 is?
Timmy: i mean, how big a wrist it would fit?
Timmy: Timmy has a big fat wrist
Timmy: Timmy need watch grande
Jonathan: I'll see what I can find out for Timmy.
Timmy: awesome. and can we please continue to talk about Timmy in the 3rd person? Timmy likes to boost Timmy's ego by talking about Timmy that way
Jonathan: Jonathan would be happy to neglect the use of pronouns for the duration of this conversation.
Timmy: Jonathan and Timmy shall get along just fine
Jonathan: Will Timmy be able to measure Timmy's wrist?
Timmy: Timmy's wrist is big, but not Biggie-Smalls big. Timmy doesn't have the required measurement instruments.
Timmy: Timmy is 6'4" 220lbs if that helps Jonathan
Jonathan: Luckily, that is roughly the size of Jonathan's brother, so that does help.

Now, as I mentioned, I'm writing this from an airplane, where I had hoped to have in-flight internet access. I had it last week on the flight from San Francisco to NY and it was fabulous. And, yes, I've seen the wonderful and enlightening Louis CK bit where he talks about how ridiculous it is that anyone would complain that in-flight WiFi broke, because just think of how amazing it is (by the way, in later interviews, Louis admitted that it wasn't the guy sitting next to him who complained -- but he was really discussing his own reaction to the WiFi breaking). I'm not at all upset that the WiFi broke. It would have been cool (and useful in terms of productivity), but I am amazed that it could work at all, and I know it's new so bound to have some hiccups. That's fine. This post isn't about the fact that the WiFi broke. It's about the way Aircell/GoGo handled it.

It's not at all clear what the problem was exactly. When I first opened up the browser, the proxy server page wouldn't load at all. After a few minutes it did load, and at the top it said: "click buy to get started." Only problem? There was no "buy" to click. Just a big empty white box. However, there was a link to sign in if you already had an account -- which, thanks to my flight last week, I did. So I clicked that, and put in my username/password, and was told that it couldn't authenticate it. I checked my email to confirm the username, and even though I'm sure of the password, tried to go to "recover forgotten password" just in case... and was told it didn't recognize my username or the email address. Fine. It seemed pretty clear that their authentication system had broken down, too. I tried to go back to the main page, but it told me I couldn't until I had purchased my account...

However, I did notice a link to "contact customer service" and discovered that even though I couldn't connect to the full internet, I could have a "live chat" with a customer service rep on the ground named "Georgia." I'm asked my name, and I give it (even though it should have been obvious from the email address I had to give to login to the chat). After Georgia asked for my name and I gave it, it took about 2 minutes for a reply. No problem... I'm sure Georgia is dealing with others as well. But I'm not even sure if she's still there. Then I'm asked the problem, which I describe and am told:

"I apologize for the inconvenience and I'll be glad to help you with that."

Sounds great. So I wait. And wait. And wait. And then start wondering... am I supposed to do anything? I assume it's being looked into, but it's not at all clear. I wasn't told to wait. I was just told that she can help. But is she? So after about 5 minutes of nothing, I say "Hello?" and get a quick apology followed by a statement that they are aware of a problem on my flight and will be monitoring it, and if I'm unable to connect, they'll send me a gift code for future flights. Ok. That's fine again... but what does that mean directly for me. I ask "so should I just try again later?" and am told "I would suggest you reboot and try again."

Wait... what? I was just told the problem was with GoGo's system, so why would it make sense to tell me to reboot? I point this out in a polite manner, and am told: "It may help, yet it may not be resolved until after your flight is over." Beyond the odd use of pronouns (first "it" refers to rebooting, second "it" refers to the problem with their system), this again sounds like someone with a script, rather than anyone trying to sound human or recognize how silly it is for me to reboot after she's already admitted the problem is on her end.

Given that I was clearly communicating with someone on the ground, I figured it was worth asking if there was some way around the authentication issue, since clearly I could connect to a very limited subset of the internet on the ground. I'm then told "all ways to sign in and sign up are not properly working." Aha, so it really is a problem with their system, and not my own, but why couldn't they have just explained that problem initially so that I understood? I tell her that I'll just try to sign on later, and am asked "Is there anything else I can help you with?" Now, I understand this is rather standard closing question... but it seems rather silly in this context. Considering there's no connectivity and that's the only thing this company provides, I'm not sure what else I could possibly be helped with.

Now, this wasn't a bad customer service experience (even if it didn't resolve the problem, though that wasn't "Georgia's fault"). But it was striking to me the contrast between what I had just read with the Zappos transcript and this one. Is it really that difficult for customer service reps to sound human?

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Salon's got a great feature on Nick Popovich, the "Learjet repo man," a pilot who specializes in repo'ing airplanes from deadbeat drug lords in the jungles of South America, heavily armed American white-supremacist gangs, and collapsed pyramid-scheme pilot schools. Some of the planes he flies are barely airworthy, neglected by their owners, and once, back in Papa Doc's Haiti, he didn't get the plane off the ground (instead he was captured, tortured and imprisoned, only gaining his freedom once Papa Doc was overthrown).

These days, Popovich is fielding assignments as fast as he can handle them. "We've got a lot of business right now," he says. "We recently recovered planes from Okun and Nadel." Popovich is referring to Edward Okun and Arthur G. Nadel, two Bernie Madoff-manqués that have been accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from unsuspecting clients who thought they were safely investing their money ($300 million in Nadel's case, the largest alleged hedge fund fraud in Florida history). Among the booty that Popovich was hired to return were two Gulfstream IIs and a Learjet...

Using his European scouts, Popovich tracked one plane in Milan; the other was sitting on the tarmac near Terminal One at Charles DeGaulle Airport. The MD-81 was covered in official-looking documentation written in French, so Popovich just ripped everything off and hopped in. Big mistake. The airport cops stopped him as he was taxiing and threw him in a cell overnight. The next day, a French magistrate had handcuffs slapped on Popovich and ordered him returned to Chicago. "I was more determined than ever to grab those damn planes," he says. "You push me, I push back harder."

A few weeks later he snuck back into the country, convinced a captain with an Air Afrique fuel bus to fill up Arpel's Boeing and flew it out. But the Milan plane was trickier. The engine was behaving erratically, and no sane person should fly a bird with a hinky engine. Popovich had a replacement engine in Munich (engine-swapping is a common occurrence in the business) and the only way to get it would be to make the 50 minute flight and pray.

The Learjet repo man

The Narrative Fallacy writes "Every year pilots in the US report more than 5,000 bird strikes, which cause at least $400 million in damage to commercial and military aircraft. Now safety hearings are beginning on the crash of US Airways Flight 1549, where a flock of eight-pound geese apparently brought down a plane, plunging it and 155 people into the frigid waters of the Hudson River. Despite having experimented with everything from electromagnetics to ultrasonic devices to scarecrows, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has yet to endorse a single solution that will keep birds out of the path of an oncoming aircraft." (More below.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ifixit got ahold of a new MacBook Pro 13" and are posting the teardown as they take it apart and explore what's inside.

MacBook Pro 13" Unibody Teardown

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Thanks to all those who wrote in to share their love for origami and entered to win one of three copies of Paper Yachts by Nic Compton and Nick Robinson. The winners are commenters w15p, verticalfuzz, and Sixth Grader (who will donate the book to his/her school library). Congrats! Email becky@makezine.com to claim your prize.

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American chestnut trees are very fast growing and produce a hard wood suitable for furniture. They're good at sequestering carbon. In the early 1900s a blight nearly wiped out chestnut trees. They've never come back. But Douglass Jacobs, an associate professor of forestry and natural resources at Purdue University, has hybridized American chestnuts with blight-resistant Chinese chestnuts. The tress are 94 percent American chestnut, yet retain the blight resistance of Chinese chestnuts.

(Photo by Nicole Jacobs)

Jacobs studied four sites in southwestern Wisconsin that were unaffected by the blight because they are so far from the tree's natural range. He compared the American chestnut directly against black walnut and northern red oak at several different ages, and also cross-referenced his results to other studies using quaking aspen, red pine and white pine in the same region.

In each case the American chestnut grew faster, having as much as three times more aboveground biomass than other species at the same point of development. American chestnut also sequestered more carbon than all the others. The only exception was black walnut on one site, but the American chestnut absorbed more carbon on the other study sites.

"Each tree has about the same percentage of its biomass made up of carbon, but the fact that the American chestnut grows faster and larger means it stores more carbon in a shorter amount of time," Jacobs said.

Jacobs said trees absorb about one-sixth of the carbon emitted globally each year. Increasing the amount that can be absorbed annually could make a considerable difference in slowing climate change, he said.

Reviving American chestnuts may mitigate climate change

Well, that didn't last long at all... After some back and forth (and tremendous pressure from French President -- and known copyright infringer -- Nicolas Sarkozy, France passed a three strikes law that would kick people off the internet for three accusations of unauthorized file sharing. However, it looks like the law may be going nowhere fast. France's Constitutional Council has gutted the law, after finding significant constitutional problems with it. The Council specifically barred the heart of the law: the cutting people off the internet part, noting:

communication and liberty of expression are fundamental rights that only a judge can rule on.

Indeed. The council said that it could be okay to cut off internet users... but only with a judge's permission. It's expected that the law may be adjusted to push these issues in front of a judge -- but that's a much better (though still not perfect) situation, since a judge should at least require evidence rather than simple accusations. Either way, it's yet another defeat for an industry that continues to insist that somehow kicking people offline is going to "save" the industry.

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Barence writes "'Security firms Symantec and McAfee have both agreed to pay $375,000 to US authorities after they automatically renewed consumers' subscriptions without their consent.' The two companies were reported to the New York Attorney General after people complained that their credit cards were being charged without their consent. The investigators found that information about the auto-renewals was hidden at the bottom of long web pages or buried in the EULA." Link To Original Source

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

(Bill Gurstelle is guest blogging here on Boing Boing. He is the author of several books including Backyard Ballistics, and the recently published Absinthe and Flamethrowers. Twitter: @wmgurst)

Writing a book is a long and difficult process. Sometimes, a part of the book that the author really likes is excised by the editor. Well, thanks to Mark and the other Boingboing'ers I get to share it here.

The first draft of Absinthe and Flamethrowers contained a historical sidebar on the ancient practice of human vs animal combat and I don't mean throwing Christians to the lions. Rather, I mean a one-on-one match up between an gunless human and an equivalently sized animal. Turns out this practice, (please note that I also think it's bizarre, and in the Commodus case below, disgusting, and I'm not advocating it) is pretty well known throughout history.

Commodus, the degenerate Roman emperor (so excellently portrayed by Jaoquin Phoenix in Gladiator) would often parade around the Roman Coliseum dispatching animals with a sword or spear. While he certainly wasn't unarmed, he was in close contact.

The dens of the amphitheatre disgorged at once a hundred lions; a hundred darts from the unerring hand of Commodus laid them dead as they ran raging around the Arena. Neither the huge bulk of the elephant, nor the scaly hide of the rhinoceros, could defend them from his stroke. Ethiopia and India yielded their most extraordinary productions; and several animals were slain in the amphitheatre, which had been seen only in the representations of art, or perhaps of fancy. - The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Chapter 4

Fairs and amusement parks at the turn of the Twentieth Century were colorful, vibrant, and boisterous places. They offered an antidote to the strict moral codes of the period and offered exotic products and activities which curious visitors found irresistible: foot long hot dogs and salt water taffy, ferris wheels and roller coasters, and . . . kangaroo boxing.

In the year 1900, the Boardwalk in Atlantic City was well known for its boxing kangaroo (whose name is sadly forgotten in the sands of time.) But by all accounts, it was a hell of a good boxer and was said by more than one spectator that it could give John L. Sullivan himself a run for his money. This was the heyday of man versus kangaroo pugilism.

More recently, there are several mid-20th century diary and newspaper accounts of monkey wrestling matches at county fairs. One man wrote that he went to town one day and came across a carnival where for five dollars a person could enter a cage containing an orangutan. If the person could stay in the cage with the ape for five minutes, they got paid $100. But nobody was able to do it.

"After several hours of strategy sessions and drinking beer, I devised a plan and launched off to encounter the orangutan.

"The monkey looked docile enough, 110 pounds, long skinny arms, just sitting there in the middle of this iron cage. I approached the monkey from the backside and grabbed it in a half nelson. To my surprise and pleasure, she offered no resistance. Then I made the mistake of lifting the orangutan off the ground. I had a big smile on my face. This lasted for about fifteen seconds, and then I noticed that this long, skinny arm had reached up and grabbed the iron bar over my head.

"I didn't pay much attention to it at the time, until a few seconds later, I felt my feet leave the ground. I figured out the orangutan, who weighed 110 pounds (and I weighed about 230 at the time) had just done a one-arm pull up with something like three times her body weight.

"I realized I was in deep and serious trouble, and the grin on my face turned to stark terror. I was no longer squeezing the ape, but actually holding on her back for fear of my life. The orangutan, while she held us in mid air with one arm, reached around with this other long skinny arm and grabbed me from the back of my neck and slung me the length of the cage, through the door which I immediately took exit from the cage."

Much more on this subject at Notes From the Technology Underground

Andrew Hicks, a mathemagician at Philadelphia's Drexel University, has lately made headlines with one of those head-slappingly simple, brilliant, OMG-why-didn't-I-think-of-that sort of projects: He makes mirrors. Not the run-of-the-mill flat mirrors most of us use every day for identifying vampires, but totally unorthodox, heretical, downright blasphemous mirrors with convoluted surfaces that do tricks I didn't even know mirrors can do--like reflecting things the right way 'round! New Scientist has some nice photos, and PhysOrg the story.

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GOOD magazine's infographic reveals that recent bankruptcies dwarf Enron's collapse. That gives Jeff Skilling something to be proud of!

stoolpigeon writes "The US Army's Future Combat Systems program calls for one third of their fighting strength to be robots by 2015. The American pilots seeing the most combat in Iraq and Afghanistan right now do so from flight consoles in the United States, and they are controlling Predator unmanned vehicles. Every branch of the US military has aggressive robotics programs in place. This is not anything unusual. Other nations are also developing and purchasing robotic systems designed to be used in combat. Advances in communications, software and hardware make it inevitable that robotics will have a profound effect on conflict in the future. The development of these systems has been rapid, and while technology hurtles forward, culture and understanding seem to lag behind. Similar to the way our legal codes are playing catch up with new technologies, combat-enabled robots raise questions and issues that did not even exist a short time ago. Wired for War by Dr. P. W. Singer is an excellent opportunity for anyone interested to dive into just what is going on all over the world with regards to robotics and their use by the military." Read below for the rest of JR's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The latest in a long line of questionable "cyberbullying" legislation has shown up in Texas, where the legislature has approved a bill that would make it a felony to create a fake social networking profile with intent to "harm, defraud, intimidate, or threaten" anyone. Of course, that seems rather broad. Oddly, the article doesn't mention the Lori Drew case, which is what this seems targeted at (though, it does mention the Tony La Russa/Twitter legal battle, even though it's difficult to think any court would rule a parody profile as being with intent to harm, defraud, intimidate or threaten). Of course, even if the bill is signed into law, Eric Goldman notes that it would likely have trouble surviving much of a challenge, pointing out the oddity of singling out "social networking sites" and (more importantly) the fact that any such law would likely ban all sorts of protected free speech. Still, "anti-cyberbullying" laws are all the rage these days, and politicians want to make sure they can tell constituents that they're out there "protecting the children," so expect to see plenty more of this type of legislation.

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An anonymous reader was one of several to write with this news: "The French 'Conseil Constitutionnel' just ruled that the recently voted 'Hadopi' law, which enforces a 'three strikes and you're out' system, is actually unconstitutional [article in French; here's an English-language article at Ars]. They mainly make two points: 1) They argue that removing Internet access is equivalent to hindering a person's freedom of speech, and as such can only be decided by appointed judges. This removes all punitive power from the administrative body supposed to enforce the three-strikes rule; all it can do now is warn you that 'they're watching you.' 2) When illegal filesharing is detected, users have to prove their innocence. This is obviously contrary to the constitutional principle of presumption of innocence."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

(Bill Gurstelle is guest blogging here on Boing Boing. He is the author of several books including Backyard Ballistics, and the recently published Absinthe and Flamethrowers. Twitter: @wmgurst)

BoingBoing readers may already be familiar with artist Noah Scalin Skull-A-Day project from a previous post. I met Noah at the 2009 GEL conference in New York City and was immediately struck by his ability to so creatively render an idea in so many different media (vegetables, shoelaces, bed sheets, concrete construction barriers, and so on.)

In early July (July 3 to August 22 to be precise), a solo art show of his work in opens in Richmond, VA. It's at the Quirk Gallery, 311 West Broad Street, Richmond, VA. He'll be displaying his newly available Skull-a-Day wallpaper as well.

It took me a while to see the skull in the wallpaper, but yup, there it is.

This has been discussed before, but apparently one of the big topics at E3 last week was video game publishers again being upset about the fact that they don't get a cut of used game sales. What they never seem to mention, however, is that there's simply no reason for them to get a cut of those sales. When you sell your house, do you get a cut of every sale after that? When you sell a book do you get a cut of every sale after that? Of course not. And for a very good reason. Studies have shown that an active used goods market increases the value of a product. This makes sense. If I know I can resell this widget for $10, I'm more willing to pay $20 for it in the first place. But rather than focus on ways to make it worthwhile for people to buy new video games, the execs want to sit around, complain and scheme for ways to wipe out the used video game market... or at least get a cut of any sale. Once again, we're seeing companies with a sense of entitlement to something they have no rights over.

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destinyland writes "The Chinese credit the 'human flesh search engine' for successfully locating 'the kitten killer of Hangzhou' from clues in her online video. But in February, the same force identified a teenage cat-abuser in Oklahoma — within 24 hours of his video's appearance on YouTube. 'Netizens are the new Jack Bauer,' argues one science writer, and with three billion potential detectives, 'attempts to hide will only add thrill to the chase.' But China's vigilantes ultimately turned their attention to China's Internet Propaganda Office, bypassing censorship of a director's personal information using social networks, including Twitter. The author suggests there's a new principle emerging in the online world: 'The Internet does not forget, does not forgive and cannot be stopped. Ever.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jeremie sez,

The Constitutionnal Council, highest jurisdiction in France gave its decision1 concerning the HADOPI "three strikes" law [ed: France's insane plan to force ISPs to cut Internet service to people who have unsubstantiated accusations of copyright infringment], final stage before the promulgation of the law. It decided that presumption of innocence is more important than the idiotic schemes from the entertainment industries to artificially prolong their obsolete models.

All sanctioning power (ie. disconnecting internet users) has been removed from the HADOPI.

" This is a great victory for citizens who proved they can altogether act to protect their Freedom. HADOPI's "three strikes" is finally buried. All we have now is a big tax-sponsored spam machine for the entertainment industries. But this is not the end of Sarkozy's will to control the Internet. The next law, LOPPSI, is already on tracks and will be about filtering the content on the Internet. Citizens must celebrate this great victory but remain watchful..." declares Jeremie Zimmermann, cheerfully.

Hadopi is dead: "three strikes" killed by highest court. (Thanks, Jeremie!)

My friend Hollis, an editor at Harper, sent me a copy of the beautifully produced, illustrated book I Met the Walrus: How One Day with John Lennon Changed My Life Forever.

Jerry Levitan was 14 years old when he sneaked into John and Yoko's hotel room to interview them. They welcomed him and allowed him to conduct the interview. Forty years later, Jerry wrote a book about the experience.

After hearing John was in Toronto for a "bed in," Jerry tracked him down at the King Edward Hotel and convinced the world's biggest rock star to sit down for an exclusive forty-minute interview. John talked candidly about war, politics, the scandalous Two Virgins album, and the supposed subliminal messages in his music.

Now, forty years later, it's all here: Jerry's once-in-a-lifetime adventure, illustrated by acclaimed artist James Braithwaite and featuring never before seen photographs of John and Yoko. Also included in the book is Jerry's memorabilia from that day — notes from John and Yoko, the secret code to contact him, drawings, John's doodles, and much more. Complete with an audio and video DVD of the interview that inspired the Academy Award-nominated film of the same name, I Met the Walrus is an immortalized one-on-one moment with John--a must-have for Lennon fans around the world, as well as anyone who has ever dreamed of meeting a hero.

I Met the Walrus: How One Day with John Lennon Changed My Life Forever.

KentuckyFC writes "One of the many curious properties of Bose Einstein Condensates (BECs) is that the flow of sound through them is governed by the same equations that describe how light is bent by a gravitational field. Now, a group of Israeli physicists have exploited this idea to create an acoustic black hole in a BEC. The team created a supersonic flow of atoms within the BEC, a flow that prevents any phonon caught in it from making headway. The region where the flow changes from subsonic to supersonic is an event horizon, because any phonon unlucky enough to stray into the supersonic region can never escape. The real prize is not the acoustic black hole itself but what it makes possible: the first observation of Hawking radiation. Quantum mechanics predicts that pairs of phonons with opposite momentum ought to be constantly springing in and out of existence in a BEC. Were one of the pair to stray across the event horizon into the supersonic region, it could never escape. However, the other would be free to go on its way. This stream of phononic radiation away from an acoustic black hole would be the first observation of Hawking radiation. The team hasn't gotten that far yet, but it can't be long now before either they or their numerous competitors make this leap."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Beginning at the end of July, Sirius XM satellite radio subscribers will see an extra charge of about $2 per month on their bill, as the company will begin passing along the music royalty rates it must pay to subscribers. We've written a lot about music royalties and licenses, particularly about how they serve to stifle the very innovation the music industry needs to survive, in favor of upfront demands for cash -- money which seems to have a hard time making its way to artists. This news from Sirius XM not only is likely to raise the hackles of its subscribers, but also raises some questions about the royalty system, and how it affects consumers.

First, the royalty rate for Sirius XM was set by the CRB at 6.5% of gross revenues for 2009, increasing by half a percent per year over the following three years. So why, then, is Sirius XM charging a $1.98 fee -- or 15.2% -- on its $12.95 monthly subscription fee? That seems like much more than "passing along" the royalty rate. As part of the governmental approval for the merger of Sirius and XM, certain conditions were placed on the company, including a three-year price freeze. The company has gotten around this before by separating out services, like online listening, that used to be included in the general subscription fee, then requiring an additional charge for them. Now it looks to be getting a boost by "recovering" a significantly higher percentage of its subscription fees than it must pay out in royalties. The FCC's merger conditions allow the company to pass the royalty fee on to consumers -- but why would they let the company pass on a fee almost three times as high as the actual royalty rate? Mobile phone companies have used similar "fees" to pad their revenues for some time, and the FCC apparently doesn't mind that, either.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, this situation highlights the disparity in how the music royalty rates are applied. Terrestrial radio broadcasters, unlike satellite broadcasters, don't have to pay musicians (or, rather, their labels) royalties. Satellite radio was presumably, an easier target for the likes of the RIAA, given its relative lack of lobbying strength, so the industry cartel defined it as an "interactive" service -- industry-speak for "pay us more money." It's hard to see how satellite radio is really any different than terrestrial radio, except for a different business model, albeit one with the same end, so it's also hard to understand why the two should be treated differently from a royalty perspective. The RIAA and its cronies have been working to change this -- by trying to force terrestrial broadcasters to pay up as well. They call radio "a kind of piracy", again ignoring the fact that radio, whether it's satellite or terrestrial, promotes their products. The National Association of Broadcasters, which represents traditional broadcasters, likely doesn't really mind the fact that Sirius XM has to pay royalties, given its well-documented disdain for the company. But by standing idly by while Sirius XM gets hit with the royalty mandate, it weakens its own argument against its members having to pay royalties. The equitable solution here isn't really to force terrestrial broadcasters to pay up, to level the proverbial playing field. It's to eliminate the royalties that are hamstringing new services and promoting music. Sooner or later, the industry will figure this out -- but at this point, it looks like that realization will come only after it's run itself into the ground.

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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Randy Sarafan made this "Birth of Man" mixing board and provides some great documentation for making your own sound mixer. He even provides some sweet detailing advice including working with acrylic (laser-cutting, bending, painting).

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Your Logo Makes Me Barf is a blog that posts hideous logos. (Via A Welsh View)

whisper_jeff writes "Ars has an excellent write up outlining how Kiwi Camara (Jammie Thomas-Rasset's new lawyer) is following the 'Best Defense is a Good Offense' philosophy and going on the attack against the RIAA. Not content to just defend his client, he is laying siege against the RIAA's entire campaign and beginning the work of dismantling it from the bottom up, starting with the question of whether they actually do own the copyrights that were allegedly infringed. And, if you're thinking this is good for everyone who's been harassed by the RIAA, you'd be right — Camara, along with Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson, plans to file a class-action suit seeking to force the RIAA to return all the (ill-gotten) money they've earned from their litigation campaign." We first discussed the efforts of Nesson and Camara to thwart the RIAA last month.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Via About Colon Blank

D.Billy took this photo of a shoke on the side of an ice cream truck.

Recently on Offworld we got the exclusive drop on Jottobots -- the next 'artxgame' from culture shops/gallery Giant Robot and Attract Mode -- which this time brings longtime Offworld favorite illustrator, artist, and They Might Be Giants collaborator J.otto Seibold together with indie dev and Snapshot producer Kyle Pulver. Their game is going on display this Saturday, the 13th at LA's GR2 gallery: head over to the post for all the details. Elsewhere we saw two more developments for budding indie devs: submissions open for Tokyo Game Show's mini-indie-showcase Sense of Wonder Night, and Collabs, a new subsection of game portal Kongregate that hopes to bring artists and musicians together with developers for future collaboration. We also saw beautiful(-ly nauseating) new screenshots of Valve's Left 4 Dead 2, and the first look at Sin and Punishment 2, the Wii followup to the basically legendary import N64 game from cult favorite dev Treasure, listened to resolutely 1-bit bleeps from Poland's Mister Beep, found a new Tetris construction T-shirt, and got what amounts to a heart-meltingly adorable Shadow of the Colossus/LittleBigPlanet crossover costumes, complete with tiny plush Wander hanging off the arm of an already downsized Colossus. And the day's 'one shot's: Harmonix re-create Abbey Road in plastic at E3, and one artist's attempt at creating box art for the wholly downloadable Art Style games.

eldavojohn writes "Groklaw is examining the possibility of an anti-ODF whisper campaign and the effects it has had on the ODF and OOXML Wikipedia articles. In the ODF article, Alex Brown bends the truth to make it seem like no one is supporting ODF, and that it is a flawed and incomplete standard. From the conclusion, 'So what is one to do? You obviously can't trust Wikipedia whatsoever in this area. This is unfortunate, since I am a big fan of Wikipedia. But since the day when Microsoft decided they needed to pay people to "improve" the ODF and OOXML articles, they have been a cesspool of FUD, spin and outright lies, seemingly manufactured for Microsoft's re-use in their whisper campaign. My advice would be to seek out official information on the standards, from the relevant organizations, like OASIS, the chairs of the relevant committees, etc. Ask the questions in public places and seek a public response. That is the ultimate weakness of FUD and lies. They cannot stand the light of public exposure. Sunlight is the best antiseptic.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over at Boing Boing Gadgets, we interview James White, whose stunning background art graces the new layout.

Instructables user TimBTodd made this collapsible table for his brother's treehouse. This would work nicely in a workshop as well.

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Sailormouth's site includes a nice collection of circuit bent instruments - many heavily reworked and rehoused in custom enclosures. There's also an info section covering in depth many of the related mods in detail with diagrams. Some very handy stuff here, like this page explaining how 4017 sequencers work.

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A few years back, we wrote about the case where a guy was arrested for possessing child pornography after techs at Circuit City found child porn on his computer, while they were installing a DVD player. The guy insisted that the evidence shouldn't be admissible since the techs shouldn't have been snooping through his computer -- and a lower court agreed. The appeals court, however, reversed, noting that the guy had given Circuit City the right to do things on his computer -- including testing out the newly installed software (which is how the tech claims he found the video). The guy appealed to the Supreme Court, who has declined to hear the case, meaning that the ruling stands for the time being. So, basically, if you hand your computer over to someone else for repairs, at least in some jurisdictions, they may have pretty free rein in terms of what they're allowed to access on your computer.

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This beautiful polyhedron was built by Flickr user fdecomite using George Hart's slide-together technique for making complex 3D paper shapes.

Slide-together : now with cards (via Make)

(Bill Gurstelle is guest blogging here on Boing Boing. He is the author of several books including Backyard Ballistics, and the recently published Absinthe and Flamethrowers. Twitter: @wmgurst)

People have good days and bad days. Today, I'm pleased to say, I am having a very good day.Forgive me for tooting my own horn, but how often does this happen to a person?

Top of page C6, Today's New York Times: Here's an excerpt; the full review is here.

For Those Who Like Danger, the Home Book of Things Not to Try at Home

But when it comes to the theory and practice of making your own noisy, mildly dangerous fun in the backyard, America has a new poet laureate. His name is William Gurstelle, and he staked his claim to do-it-yourself greatness in 2001 with his friendly paperback book "Backyard Ballistics." Its subtitle tells you all you need to know: "Build Potato Cannons, Paper Match Rockets, Cincinnati Fire Kites, Tennis Ball Mortars, and More Dynamite Devices." According to the author, it has sold more than 250,000 copies. I keep a well-thumbed copy in the upstairs bathroom.

Mr. Gurstelle, a professional engineer, has now returned with a more contemplative if no less wonky and gonzo book called "Absinthe & Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously." It explores the significance of moderate risk taking to our happiness, well-being and career advancement. (Managers who take the greatest risks are the most successful, he observes.)

It's also a book that contains meticulous directions for making a real, live, beastly flamethrower in your garage -- albeit the propane kind, not the ridiculously dangerous liquid-based variety.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Fdecomite created this paper puzzle using tips from George Hart's 'slide together' instructions - looks to be quite a simple and fun project.

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So, what to do with a slightly-used booth from Maker Faire? Well, if you're Dino, of DinoFab, you make a food prep/passthrough counter for your kitchen. Nice that he's still wearing the shirt, too. Memories.

DinoFab

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If you think your website is under a Google penalization because you suddenly disappeared from Google search results, you can file a reconsideration request to the Google team. In this video, the Google Webmaster Help Center shares some official tips to file your reconsideration request correctly and try to lift the Google penalization on your website. Photo credit: rido With the reconsideration request you can ask the Google team whether your website violated the Google guidelines (an official document that explains how to build your website according to Google standards), and also demand that your website is reincluded inside Google search results. The way you write your reconsideration request and provide detailed information about yourself and your website can make a lot of difference. To get your website back inside Google search results just like before the Google penalization, it is very important that you file your reconsideration request carefully. Be concise, responsible, as detailed as possible and, most importantly, be honest to Google. If you submit wrong or misleading information inside your reconsideration request, Google will disregard your reconsideration request and keep your website under Google penalization. In this short video from the Google Webmaster Help Center, Google employees Brian White and Rachel Searles share some official tips to file your reconsideration request correctly and try to remove the Google penalization charged on your website. If you don't want to watch the entire video or run through the full text transcription, I've also prepared a quick checklist of all the items you should address in order to remove the Google penalization on your website. Here all the details:

Official Tips To File Your Reconsideration Request Correctly

a) If You Know You Are Under A Google Penalization

1. Admit any violation of the Google guidelines.
2. Be as detailed as possible when filing your reconsideration request.

b) If You Don't Know Whether You Are Under A Google Penalization

1. Wait a bit to see if things revert to the previous state before filing your reconsideration request.
2. Review the Google guidelines carefully.
3. Ask your webmaster or other employees for more information about your Google penalization if you do not run your website for yourself.
4. Seek help on the Google Webmaster Forum.
5. Look elsewhere than duplicate content. Most of the time, duplicate content is not the reason for your Google penalization.
6. Refer to malicious links you may have on your site, and show you tried to fix those malicious links when filing your reconsideration request.
7. Make sure you do not violate the Google guidelines anymore.

Tips On Requesting Reconsideration

Duration: 3' 47'' by Rachel Searles and Brian White - Google
Full English Text Transcription

Google Penalization: Official Tips To File Your Reconsideration Request Correctly

Brian White: Hi, I'm Brian White and this is my colleague Rachel. We're in the Search Quality team, in Google, in the webspam group. We're here today with some tips on the reconsideration process.

If You Violated The Google Guidelines

Rachel Searles: All right, let's start with the case where you know your site has violated the Google guidelines. It's important to admit any mistakes you have made and let us know what you have done to try to fix them. Sometimes we get requests from people who say: "My site complies with the guidelines now". That's really not enough information for us, so please be as detailed as possible. Realize that are people reading these requests, including the people in this room. If you don't know what your site might have done to get a penalty, go back to the Google guidelines and review them carefully before requesting reconsideration. Look at the things to avoid and ask questions for people that work on your site if you don't work on it for yourself. If you'd like the advice of a third party, you can also seek help on our Google Webmaster Forum.

Issues That Are Not Related To Google Penalization

Brian White: Sometimes we get reconsideration requests where the requester associates technical website issues with the penalty. An example could be that the server timed out for a while or that bad content was delivered for a time. Google is pretty adaptive to these kind of transient issues with websites. People sometimes misread the situation as "I have a penalty", and seek reconsideration. It's probably a good idea to wait a bit and see if things revert to the previous state. Also, some people attribute duplicate content with leading to a penalty, and usually the problem lies elsewhere. When you're in a partnership with someone else, say another website, and you put these combined efforts together in a way that goes against our quality guidelines and involves both your website and theirs and then the effort reflects badly on both, you have control over your site but sometimes it's hard to get stuff cleaned up on sites that you don't control. We're sympathetic to these situations. Just make your best effort to document and complete your reconsideration request. In the case that bad links were gathered, point us to a URL that shows your exhaustive effort to clean that up.

What To Avoid When Filing Your Reconsideration Request

Brian White: Also we have pretty good tools internally, so don't try to fool us. There are actual people, as Rachel said, looking at your reports. If you intentionally pass along bad or misleading information we will disregard that request for reconsideration.
Rachel Searles: And please don't spam the reconsideration form. It doesn't help to submit multiple request all at the same time. Just one detailed concise report, and just get it right the first time. Your request will be reviewed by a member of our team and we do review them promptly. If you have some new information to add about your site, go ahead and file a new reconsideration request. And finally, if your reconsideration doesn't happen, please be aware that it can take some time to notice that penalties have been lifted. We appreciate your patience.
Brian White: The bottom line is we care very deeply for our search engine users and want them to be happy and not have to complain. Make sure that:

a) The issues are fixed with your site before filing reconsideration and b) Make sure that we don't have to worry about your site violating the quality guidelines in the future.

From the people who are part of the reconsideration process, from our end, thank you.
Rachel Searles: Thank you.

Google video originally recorded by Rachel Searles and Brian White for the Google Webmaster Central YouTube Channel on April 24th, 2009 as "Tips on requesting reconsideration".

Photo credits: If You Violated The Google Guidelines - M.G. Mooij Issues You Don't have To Worry About - dogbone What To Avoid When Filing Your Request - DMK

If you think your website is under a Google penalization because you suddenly disappeared from Google search results, you can file a reconsideration request to the Google team. In this video, the Google Webmaster Help Center shares some official tips to file your reconsideration request correctly and try to lift the Google penalization on your website. Photo credit: rido With the reconsideration request you can ask the Google team whether your website violated the Google guidelines (an official document that explains how to build your website according to Google standards), and also demand that your website is reincluded inside Google search results. The way you write your reconsideration request and provide detailed information about yourself and your website can make a lot of difference. To get your website back inside Google search results just like before the Google penalization, it is very important that you file your reconsideration request carefully. Be concise, responsible, as detailed as possible and, most importantly, be honest to Google. If you submit wrong or misleading information inside your reconsideration request, Google will disregard your reconsideration request and keep your website under Google penalization. In this short video from the Google Webmaster Help Center, Google employees Brian White and Rachel Searles share some official tips to file your reconsideration request correctly and try to remove the Google penalization charged on your website. If you don't want to watch the entire video or run through the full text transcription, I've also prepared a quick checklist of all the items you should address in order to remove the Google penalization on your website. Here all the details:

Official Tips To File Your Reconsideration Request Correctly

a) If You Know You Are Under A Google Penalization

1. Admit any violation of the Google guidelines.
2. Be as detailed as possible when filing your reconsideration request.

b) If You Don't Know Whether You Are Under A Google Penalization

1. Wait a bit to see if things revert to the previous state before filing your reconsideration request.
2. Review the Google guidelines carefully.
3. Ask your webmaster or other employees for more information about your Google penalization if you do not run your website for yourself.
4. Seek help on the Google Webmaster Forum.
5. Look elsewhere than duplicate content. Most of the time, duplicate content is not the reason for your Google penalization.
6. Refer to malicious links you may have on your site, and show you tried to fix those malicious links when filing your reconsideration request.
7. Make sure you do not violate the Google guidelines anymore.

Tips On Requesting Reconsideration

Duration: 3' 47'' by Rachel Searles and Brian White - Google
Full English Text Transcription

Google Penalization: Official Tips To File Your Reconsideration Request Correctly

Brian White: Hi, I'm Brian White and this is my colleague Rachel. We're in the Search Quality team, in Google, in the webspam group. We're here today with some tips on the reconsideration process.

If You Violated The Google Guidelines

Rachel Searles: All right, let's start with the case where you know your site has violated the Google guidelines. It's important to admit any mistakes you have made and let us know what you have done to try to fix them. Sometimes we get requests from people who say: "My site complies with the guidelines now". That's really not enough information for us, so please be as detailed as possible. Realize that are people reading these requests, including the people in this room. If you don't know what your site might have done to get a penalty, go back to the Google guidelines and review them carefully before requesting reconsideration. Look at the things to avoid and ask questions for people that work on your site if you don't work on it for yourself. If you'd like the advice of a third party, you can also seek help on our Google Webmaster Forum.

Issues That Are Not Related To Google Penalization

Brian White: Sometimes we get reconsideration requests where the requester associates technical website issues with the penalty. An example could be that the server timed out for a while or that bad content was delivered for a time. Google is pretty adaptive to these kind of transient issues with websites. People sometimes misread the situation as "I have a penalty", and seek reconsideration. It's probably a good idea to wait a bit and see if things revert to the previous state. Also, some people attribute duplicate content with leading to a penalty, and usually the problem lies elsewhere. When you're in a partnership with someone else, say another website, and you put these combined efforts together in a way that goes against our quality guidelines and involves both your website and theirs and then the effort reflects badly on both, you have control over your site but sometimes it's hard to get stuff cleaned up on sites that you don't control. We're sympathetic to these situations. Just make your best effort to document and complete your reconsideration request. In the case that bad links were gathered, point us to a URL that shows your exhaustive effort to clean that up.

What To Avoid When Filing Your Reconsideration Request

Brian White: Also we have pretty good tools internally, so don't try to fool us. There are actual people, as Rachel said, looking at your reports. If you intentionally pass along bad or misleading information we will disregard that request for reconsideration.
Rachel Searles: And please don't spam the reconsideration form. It doesn't help to submit multiple request all at the same time. Just one detailed concise report, and just get it right the first time. Your request will be reviewed by a member of our team and we do review them promptly. If you have some new information to add about your site, go ahead and file a new reconsideration request. And finally, if your reconsideration doesn't happen, please be aware that it can take some time to notice that penalties have been lifted. We appreciate your patience.
Brian White: The bottom line is we care very deeply for our search engine users and want them to be happy and not have to complain. Make sure that:

a) The issues are fixed with your site before filing reconsideration and b) Make sure that we don't have to worry about your site violating the quality guidelines in the future.

From the people who are part of the reconsideration process, from our end, thank you.
Rachel Searles: Thank you.

Google video originally recorded by Rachel Searles and Brian White for the Google Webmaster Central YouTube Channel on April 24th, 2009 as "Tips on requesting reconsideration".

Photo credits: If You Violated The Google Guidelines - M.G. Mooij Issues You Don't have To Worry About - dogbone What To Avoid When Filing Your Request - DMK

e9th was one of several readers to write with an update to the Futurama rumors we discussed earlier this week: "TVWeek reports that 20th Century Fox Television and Comedy Central have officially confirmed a deal for 26 new episodes of Futurama, due to the strong ratings of its reruns and feature-length specials. Matt Groening is quoted as saying, 'We're thrilled Futurama is coming back. We now have only 25,766 episodes to make before we catch up with Bender and Fry in the year 3000.' According to the press release, the episodes will begin to come out in mid-2010."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Norman Doidge's 2006 book The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science was rightly celebrated on its initial release, and remains fascinating today. It's a chronicle of the checkered history of the theory of lifelong brain plasticity, an on-again/off-again theory that the brain's deepest, most specialized structures can be rewired to accomplish new tasks and to view the world in new ways, all through our lives.

Brain plasticity exists in counterpoint to "localizationism," the theory that the brain is innately divided into functional centers -- the "speech center," the "vision center" -- and that these centers are hardwired to do one thing. It also exists in counterpoint to the idea that what plasticity the brain has, it loses in adult life, so that we become innately more set in our ways as we age.

Doidge, a medical doctor and psychoanalyst, puts forth a good case for the notion that our brain's propensity for wiring in certain ways is only that, a propensity, one that can be overcome by circumstance, force of will, training and injury, for better or for worse. Working like a biographer, Doidge gives us compelling personal histories of patients and doctors who've demonstrated the remarkable plasticity of the brain, right up to a woman who was literally born with one entire side of her brain missing, who nevertheless walks, talks, thinks, votes, holds down a job and so on -- having plastically retasked her remaining half-brain into taking on the tasks more generally assigned to the missing hemisphere.

Doidge's case histories are remarkable in that they demonstrate the spectrum of rewiring that the brain is capable of -- and the spectrum of difficulty associated with different kinds of rewiring. A patient whose balance-determining organs are burned out by a medication overdose, who has spent years falling, hurting herself, sick and depressed, learns to use a prosthetic that transmits positional data to her tongue in mere minutes, trains for hours, and receives days' worth of benefits, eventually recovering her life. On the other hand, stroke victims who've lost the regions of their brains that controlled certain parts of their bodies or certain kinds of thoughts have to train intensively, in a gruelling regime that demands everything they have, but they, too, stage remarkable recoveries in very short time.

From autism to ADD, Doidge's heavily footnoted tour through the cutting-edge of neuroplastic research, therapies and theories inspires on every page, with the message that you can think yourself different -- change the patterns of association, change the underlying physical substrate in your head. Your limitations can be smashed, your talents honed to new heights. An appendix called "The Culturally Modified Brain," even goes some way to discussing the way that our cultural outlooks (long acknowledged to having been shaped by our brains) can also shape our brains -- changing not just how we interpret our sensory data, but the limits and capacity of the neuronal structures that process sensory data.

Ultimately, this is one of the most hopeful and fascinating popular science books I've read, a book showing how science underpins the idea of positive thinking as a force for good.

The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science

The Brain That Changes Itself official website

diegocgteleline.es writes "Linux kernel 2.6.30 has been released. The list of new features includes NILFS2 (a new, log-structured filesystem), a filesystem for object-based storage devices called exofs, local caching for NFS, the RDS protocol (which delivers high-performance reliable connections between the servers of a cluster), a new distributed networking filesystem (POHMELFS), automatic flushing of files on renames/truncates in ext3, ext4 and btrfs, preliminary support for the 802.11w drafts, support for the Microblaze architecture, the Tomoyo security MAC, DRM support for the Radeon R6xx/R7xx graphic cards, asynchronous scanning of devices and partitions for faster bootup, the preadv/pwritev syscalls, several new drivers and many other small improvements."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Obijuan used his MakerBot to create parts for a robotic catipillar, with "pitch-pitch" movement. His design can be found on Thingiverse!

REPY-1 Modules - Robotic Catipillars Action! [via MakerBot Blog]

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Kohenkatz writes "As noted in PreCentral.net's forums, the 'webOS Reset Doctor' has been leaked. It includes the webOS root image. From the article: 'Code-inclined individuals on the PreCentral forums have already cracked open the ROM and are getting an unfettered glimpse at the Palm's new platform, which, for the layman, means it should open the doors for some crazy Pre hacking and possibly hint, by way of unfinished / unused code, at what's to come for the platform — and, if we're really lucky, maybe someone will be able to look at this and move us one step closer to an unlocked Pre that could jump onto Verizon's network. Amusingly, you also get to see all the comments left by the devs in the code, guaranteeing a few good chuckles from others who can relate.'" People have already uncovered icons for MSN and AOL, as well as references to the Palm Eos, a rumored successor to the Centro line.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Remember how Elsevier and Merck were caught putting out a fake journal that had articles favoring Merck drugs, implying peer reviewed articles that weren't? Soon afterwards, it came out that Elsevier had a whole division for such things. However, following an internal investigation, it looks like Elsevier is backtracking a bit and saying that, while the group's practices were problematic, most weren't as egregious as the "Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine (AJBJM)" that was created by Merck and Elsevier. Instead, most of the others were sponsored by multiple companies, rather than just one. Still, the company admits that it never should have called the custom publications "journals" and is changing its publication rules -- having editors from its real journals create the guidelines for any custom publication offerings. Either way, this whole episode is a serious black mark on Elsevier and the reputation of any of its journals -- real or "fake."

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There's a big Open House at TechShop, Menlo Park, this Saturday, 6/13/2009 from 10 AM to 6 PM.

There will be a presentation and workshop by Bob Johansen (Fellow from the Institute for the Future) discussing points from his book on leadership skills for makers.

They're also offering TechShop Maker Faire Membership Specials, going on until 6/15. These are memberships for $75 per month, $375 for 6 months, and $675 for a year. They're apparently selling fast, so get while the gettin's good. Jim Newton tells me they might be full by the end of the week.

TechShop Post-Maker Faire Open House #2

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theodp writes "TIME has seen-the-future-and-it-is-Twitter. Slate, on the other hand, is more fascinated with the phenomenon of orphaned tweets, the messages left by people who sign up for Twitter, post once, then never return (not unlike one-blog-post wonders). While some orphan tweets betray skepticism about microblogging ('I don't get it... what's the point of this thing?'), other one-and-done Twitterers demonstrate keen enthusiasm before disappearing ('I'm here!'), and some tweets hint that tragedy has cut a promising Twittering-life short ('it hurts to breathe. should I go to the hospital?'). Slate notes that studies of Twitter accounts by Harvard and Nielsen suggest the service has been better at signing up users than keeping them, including the one-tweet wonders."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the Arduino.cc forums, Bill writes -

This is still a prototype but it’s functionally complete and works very well. It’s messy because I hacked up a generalized arduino proto-shield to mount it but there’s really not a lot to the hardware and now that it’s working I can refine it to something much smaller and neater. The functions that are there at the moment are speedo, tach, and gear indicator the speedo and tach are dead accurate and the gear indicator responds very crisply to shifting up or down.

Using LCD displays can be uniquely satisfying and practical - should be interesting to see this one in its final road-ready form (chrome enclosure?) Check out the forum thread for more on how he's gathering the pertinent data.


In the Maker Shed:


ProtoShield for Arduino Kit

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Eye-Fi has developed a version of its wireless SDHC memory cards aimed at the pro market. The Eye-Fi pro supports RAW file transfer and allows the creation of ad hoc connections to a computer or mobile device (without the need for a wireless router or internet connection). It also incorporates a new selective transfer feature that downloads only images that the user has marked as locked or protected. The Eye-Fi Pro is now available for a retail price of $149.

Google recently released the Android Scripting Environment, which allows an Android user the ability to access the myriad of APIs available directly from the device itself. Initially Python, Lua, and BeanShell are supported, but Ruby and JavaScript are on the way. Some folks will definitely find this very useful for prototyping in the field.

The Android Scripting Environment (ASE) brings scripting languages to Android by allowing you to edit and execute scripts and interactive interpreters directly on the Android device. These scripts have access to many of the APIs available to full-fledged Android applications, but with a greatly simplified interface that makes it easy to:

• Handle intents
• Start activities
• Make phone calls
• Send text messages
• Scan bar codes
• Poll location and sensor data
• Use text-to-speech (TTS)
• And more

Scripts can be run interactively in a terminal, started as a long running service, or started via Locale.

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Want yet another example of the Associated Press' out-of-date approach to things (as if there weren't enough already)? The organization apparently officially reprimanded a reporter, Richard Richtmyer, who made an offhand comment on his Facebook page, mildly criticizing the management of McClatchy, a large newspaper chain (and, of course, an AP member). On the whole, the comment (about trouble at McClatchy) was pretty benign:

It seems like the ones who orchestrated the whole mess should be losing their jobs or getting pushed into smaller quarters. But they aren't.

Apparently that was enough to get an official reprimand letter put on file (though, the union is now protesting this). However, it shows the way the AP still views the journalism business, where actually expressing some sort of opinion is somehow seen as an offense. In this case, it wasn't even in his capacity as a reporter, which makes the whole thing even sillier. I'm going to trust someone who is free to tell me their opinion over someone who has to pretend he has no opinion, any day.

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This low-cost walking robot is made from a cardboard box and scavenged electronics. A custom-made development board based on an ATmega88 controls the robots movements. The entire project cost about $18 to build. Check out the link for more information and another video.

The Servos I got from a past project, all LEDs from various things I took apart (VCRs, Computers, Remotes, etc.) Piezospeaker from a toy train that was broken, both IR emitters were 47Hz from remotes I believe if my memory serves me well. I whipped out my spectrum analyzer, and I think it was 47Hz, so then I bought two receivers within that range and whipped up a circuit.

More about the Cardboard Walker Bot

Pololu 3pi Robot

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Hacx sends along a piece from PopSci that begins "Carlos Owens had handled all kinds of machines as an army mechanic, but he always dreamed of using those skills for one project: his own 'mecha,' a giant metal robot that could mirror the movements of its human pilot. Owens, 31, began building an 18-foot-tall, one-ton prototype at his home in Wasilla, Alaska, in 2004. Working without blueprints, he first built a full-scale model out of wood. Moving on to steel, he had to devise a hydraulics system that would provide precisely the right leverage and range of movement. He settled on a complex network of cables and hydraulic cylinders that can make the mecha raise its arms, bend its knees, and even do a sit-up. ... He foresees mechas having uses in the military and the construction industry, but acknowledges that right now they're best suited to entertainment. The first application he has in mind: mecha-vs.-mecha battles, demolition-derby style."

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Announcing our new bundles available exclusively in the Maker Shed. William "Bill" Gurstelle is an award-winning writer, licensed engineer, bestselling author and professional speaker (not to mention MAKE Magazine contributing editor and producer on Make: television). We like the guy, we like the way he thinks. We think you'll like him too, which is why we've created the Ballistic bundle.

The Ballistic Bundle includes:

• Backyard Ballistics $16.95 value
  
• Whoosh! Boom! Splat! $16.95 value
  
• Make Vol. 3 $14.99 value
  
• Barrage Garage Vol. 1 DVD $19.99 value

All for the discounted price of $48. That's an amazing 46% off the price if you purchased these items individually. Take advantage of this amazing deal before it's too late.

More about the Ballistic bundle in the Maker Shed

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It's no secret that Eastern Europe has become the center of an awful lot of organized crime online. Various phishing and scam rings tend to work from a variety of different Eastern European countries without much fear of law enforcement or prosecution. Most of the enforcement in the US to date has been on the few unfortunate Americans who got involved in such scams -- but such targets were almost always small-time scammers compared to the big players across the ocean. However, there are some signs that's starting to change. Forbes details the first case of a foreign cybercriminal being extradited to the US, noting that greater cooperation between foreign governments and the US means that we should be seeing more of this. However, the article also notes that this is only one small attempt, and officials haven't really been able to do any damage to some of the bigger organized crime groups online. Still, given how little the US gov't had been able to do to actually go after the real criminals, it is a good sign that at least they're looking for ways to reach across boundaries to find them.

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Today at Boing Boing Gadgets, we paid special homage to our best doggie friends by doing a series of posts about dogs and technology. Among them:

* An illustrated guide to the history of the artificial dog;

* Photo galleries taken by minpins Ruby and Malcolm using Uncle Milton's Pet's Eye View camera;

* How to carry a laptop and a lapdog at the same time;

*A retro-robotics robo-dog;

*A developmental study on robotic pets and children;

*An x-rated clip-on speaker a la Up;

*A $3K doggie treadmill;

* A review of the Zoombak GPS locator;

* A review of the SpotBot Pet dog stain cleaner;

* A review of an ice cake maker for dogs, and

* Geeky dog toys for geeky dogs.

For those of you who aren't interested in dogs, we had some other fun stuff today too, like the self-proclaimed world's most technologically advanced roller coaster, bluetooth motorcycle gear, and a video on making living movie posters.

Roskolnikov writes "Apple has apparently decided that ZFS isn't really ready for prime time. We've been discussing Apple/ZFS rumors, denials, and sightings for some years now. Currently a search on Apple's site for ZFS yields only two hits, one of them probably an oversight in the ZFS-cleansing program and the other a reference to open source. Contrast this with an item from the Google cache regarding ZFS and Snow Leopard. Apple has done this kind of disappearing act in the past, but I was really hoping that this was one feature promise they would keep. I certainly hope this isn't the first foot in the grave for ZFS on OSX."

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We've had a number of different stories over the years about students making use of social networks to make fun of or taunt teachers, principals and administrators -- which often ended with schools disciplining those students. However, for years, courts have held that schools have no right to discipline students for speech that occurs off-campus. The Supreme Court muddied the waters on this issue recently in its decision on the "Morse case," better known as the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case, where a student was disciplined for unfurling a banner with that phrase on it at a school-sponsored Olympic torch rally. The Supreme Court indicated that the fact that the event was school-sponsored gave the school the right to discipline the students -- but that's opening up plenty of questions in two separate cases in the same circuit where it looks like judges are somewhat split on the issue (via Michael Scott). The key issue, of course, is what constitutes a school-related event. If students are passing out the info on such fake social networking websites to classmates, is it school sponsored? That seems to be the claim some administrators are making, saying that if it influences activities at the school, then the school can discipline the students. With so many different opinions, it seems almost certain that this issue is going to show up a lot more before the courts finally settle the matter.

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Over on Offworld, our Brandon's got an exciting gallery of high-rez screenshots from the for the forthcoming Left 4 Dead 2, the sequel to one of the most compelling, cinematic, frightening games ever made.

Southern discomfort: new screenshots of Valve's Left 4 Dead 2

Discuss this on Offworld

A court in China sentenced a gangster to three years in prison for extorting virtual goods from a game-player (presumably someone involved in gold-farming, running a large guild or something other than simple play, as the man had nearly $15,000 worth of virtual items; though he may have just been super hardcore):

According to the Xinhua news agency, the man, along with three others, assaulted another man in the cafe, forcing him to give up various virtual goods and 100,000 yuan ($14,700) worth of the virtual currency known as QQ coins. The coins are the currency utilized by the major Chinese web portal, Tencent. It is used for the purchase of online goods and premium services for supported titles...

Despite the clear financial value, no law exists in China to protect virtual goods or currency. This case changed set a new precedent: The court ruled that the victim should be protected because he spent money on the extorted items. Under the ruling, the three men who assisted in the crime were fined. The primary defendant was sentenced to three years in prison.

(via Raph)

Jon Johansen's doubleTwist -- a package that lets you manage all your media, uncoupling iTunes and the iPhone -- bought an ad outside the Apple Store by the Powell Street BART station in San Francisco, proclaiming that doubleTwist is "The Cure for iPhone Envy."

Not long after this cheeky -- but paid-for -- ad went up, BART tore it down, citing the lame excuse that the ad was "too dark." So doubleTwist submitted the same ad with a white background, and BART rejected it for "having a solid white background." Now they're doing it on a transparent background -- what excuse do you suppose BART will come up with this time?

We then submitted the following revised ad with a white background. A white ad would have let even more light through (notice how bright the bottle is in the original ad above). However, it was rejected for having a solid white background (!).

At the ad agency's request, we then made the background completely transparent. It's a lot harder to read text on a transparent background... After complying with all their requests to change the ad, we still haven't been given a firm date on when the ad will be back up.

Apple is a major BART advertiser (in the past they've plastered entire BART stations with iPod ads). Apple's WWDC conference ends on Friday. It's pretty obvious what's going on here... I'm sure our ad will conveniently be back up after WWDC ends.

The Cure for iPhone Envy: The story behind the doubleTwist ad (Thanks, Jon!)

The Hope Chest: Bad news from the past is a blog that reproduces late 19th/early 20th century bad news reports from various American newspapers, with a little snappy commentary at the end, such as "Telling little snapshot of what life was like before the liberalization of divorce laws. I wonder what the charge might have been had there been no children in the household to 'protect.'" and "The democratization of the automobile in the late Teens and Twenties was not without its social costs. Neighborhood pedestrians conditioned to horse-drawn traffic were slow to adapt to the new speed of life; drivers didn't know what the fuck they were doing. The consequent death toll gave rise to the journalistic concept of the 'vampire auto,' which basically meant a hit-and-run car."

The Hope Chest: Bad news from the past (via Beyond the Beyond)

Hallmark's delightful miniature "The Menagerie" is advertised as a way to "relive moments from Star Trek's beloved two-part episode featuring the radiation-scarred Captain Christopher Pike." This would be a great Thanksgiving centerpiece, or topper for your toilet-paper cozy.

"The Menagerie"

No, not a trampoline for bouncing, which is what I thought when I first saw this, too. The fabric bridge across a catamaran is also called a trampoline, and is constructed from strong fabric, sewn to the frame through the grommets around the edge of the fabric. Instructables user TimAnderson's catamaran trampoline was in disrepair, so here he shows us how to repair the piece using the original grommets, but new fabric. He used a UV-resistant fabric for lasting strength in the sun.

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An anonymous reader writes "I work for a small software company (around 60 people) as the sole IT guy. It's my first time in a position like this and after about 1.5 years I'm starting to get a bit burned out. I try to be friendly, helpful, and responsive and I get no respect whatsoever. Users tend to be flat-out rude when they have a problem, violate our pretty liberal policies constantly, and expect complex projects to be finished immediately upon requesting them. My knee-jerk reaction is to be a bastard, although I've avoided it up to this point. It's getting harder. For those of you who have been doing this a lot longer, how do you get a reasonable level of respect from your users while not being a jerk?"

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Major League Baseball has long contended that fans should watch games in the manner in which it chooses, rather than how the fans themselves want to. This is the thinking behind its local blackout policies, first intended to "protect" ticket sales by not allowing the TV broadcast of games that weren't sold out, and lately, intended to "protect" local TV broadcasts by making it impossible for fans to watch their local team online. It takes the blackouts so seriously that it's even patented a way to black out local users from online streams, an absurd show of pride in something that basically just frustrates fans and customers. But there may be some cracks appearing in the local online blackouts, as the New York Yankees, Cablevision and MLB have reached a deal for in-market streaming of games. At first glance, the negotiations sound pretty convoluted, especially considering the Yankees own a stake in YES, the local TV rightsholder. But not surprisingly, the result -- that people in the Yankees' local market can only buy the online subscription if they're Cablevision subscribers that get the YES network in their cable package -- seems like it's par for the course for MLB, which has a penchant for trying to lock down everything baseball-related online.

The amount of baseball that's broadcast on TV has boomed over the past couple of decades, having escaped the thinking that making the game harder for fans to follow on TV was somehow actually good for it. Now, the same thing is playing out online, where MLB seems hellbent on frustrating fans who want to see all of their teams' games online. What makes online different than TV, in that putting up these walls in front of the game's most dedicated fans is somehow a good thing?

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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Canon has also announced the Selphy CP780 compact dye-sublimation photo printer. Replacing the CP760, it offers faster print speed of approx 47 seconds per print and features a 2.5" LCD with image preview and takes a selection of memory card formats. It will be available in pink, blue, silver or white.

Canon has introduced the Selphy CP790 compact dye-sublimation photo printer. With a print speed of 47 seconds for postcard size images, it sports a 3.0" LCD, memory card slots for a selection of popular media and a Pictbridge port. It comes with a built-in carry handle, storage basket and an optional battery pack to enable portability. The printer includes Auto Image Correction functions and built-in templates and layouts for customizing images before printing.

For years, the federal government has insisted that online poker in the US is illegal, and reinforced it by tacking on punishment for payment processors who process gambling payments onto a totally unrelated bill about harbor safety. Poker players, on the other hand, have insisted for years that there are no laws against online poker -- in part because the laws are all against games of chance, whereas poker is a game of skill. This position received a small boost recently when a judge agreed that poker was a game of skill rather than chance. On top of this, there's been an ongoing effort underway (led by Barney Frank) to specifically make it clear that online poker is legal. However, until that bill goes anywhere, the feds apparently still believe it's very much illegal and have now started going after the payment processors, freezing the funds of payment processors who work with a variety of online poker sites. Expect quite a legal battle to follow.

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(Download MP4 / YouTube | Warning: NC-17, cartoon nudity/ultraviolence)

Boing Boing Video proudly presents the world-premiere of a third video, above, from the N.A.S.A. music project (here was our first, here's the second) -- "A Volta," featuring Sizzla, Amanda Blank & Love Foxxx. Video by Logan, with art by The Date Farmers. Executive Producer: Susan Applegate.

NASA, short for "North America South America," is a music collaboration project assembled by Squeak E. Clean (aka Sam Spiegel, brother of film director Spike Jonze) and DJ Zegon (Ze Gonzales, professional skateboarder).

Buy the album, The Spirit of Apollo, here. More than 40 music artists are featured, including David Byrne, Kanye West, Ghostface Killah, Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O and Nick Zinner, M.I.A., Santogold, E-40, Tom Waits and Kool Keith. Music videos for the project involve a similarly diverse team-up of visual artists and directors.

Logan, the folks who directed the video for this track, create TV commercials and music videos, content for video games, and experiment with animation and visual effects. We caught up with Alexei Tylevich of Logan for a conversation about how this unusual music video -- kinda like GTA: Juarez -- came together with the Date Farmers.

The text of our interview follows (+ more after the jump).

Video #2, embedded below (Download MP4 / Watch on YouTube): Logan's mockumentary web-film about the making of this NASA video.

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Video #3, above (Download MP4 / Watch on YouTube): A soft-rock introduction to the Coachella Valley, CA-based art duo of Carlos Ramirez and Armando Lerma, better known as The Date Farmers.

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(Interview continues after the jump...)

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Photo (courtesy Flux): Left, Alexei Tylevich of Logan; Right, Carlos Ramirez and Armando Lerma, aka The Date Farmers.

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# # #

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(Special thanks to Susan Applegate and Syd Garon)

CWmike writes "Microsoft today issued 10 security updates that patched a record 31 vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer, Excel, Word, Windows Search and other programs, including 18 bugs marked 'critical.' Of the 10 bulletins, six patched some part of Windows, while three patched an Office application or component, and one fixed a flaw in IE. The total bug count was the most patched by Microsoft in a single month since the company began regularly scheduled updates in 2003. The previous record of 26 vulnerabilities patched occurred in both August 2008 and August 2006. 'This is a very broad bunch,' said Wolfgang Kandek, CTO at Qualys, 'compared to last month, which was really all about PowerPoint. You've got to work everywhere, servers and workstations, and even Macs if you have them. It's not getting any better, the number of vulnerabilities [Microsoft discloses] continues to grow.'"

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R. Crumb's upcoming "The Book of Genesis" was excerpted in The New Yorker this week. It looks amazing.

At first, he thought about doing a take-off of the story of Adam and Eve, and then a friend suggested he do the whole of Genesis. Crumb accepted the challenge, but the text seemed to him so bizarre that he quickly realized he couldn't sustain a satirical approach. He resolved to use the words of the Bible unabridged: "I did it as a straight illustration job."

Pre-order R. Crumb's Book of Genesis on Amazon.

UPDATE: You can see a poor-quality scan of the excerpt here.

R. Crumb's Book of Genesis excerpted in The New Yorker

Limor has published her latest electronics tutorial, this one on temperatures sensors in the T0-92 (transistor-type) package. As usual, really clear, concise, with video examples of application, etc. Good stuff.

Temperature Sensor Tutorial

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The Federal Trade Commission recently said it was looking into how it could require disclosure when bloggers are being paid to write about a product, the latest move in a long-running flap over the potential abuse of word-of-mouth marketing. A big driver behind this flap was the emergence a few years ago of a company called PayPerPost, which (as its name indicates) paid bloggers to write nice things about its customers' products. PayPerPost raised a lot of questions about deceptive advertising, in particular, who should be held responsible for it: the blogger or the company paying the blogger. As Mike noted at the time, focusing on one platform misses the larger point that deceptive advertising is deceptive advertising, regardless of where it appears. With that in mind, it shouldn't be at all surprising to see the company behind PayPerPost -- which has since changed its name to Izea -- is now paying folks to post its customers' messages to their Twitter account. Seeing as how Twitter only allows messages of 140 characters or less, there's not a lot of room for disclosure there. These sorts of efforts will continue to spread to new platforms as they emerge, particularly when they grab new users in the way Twitter has. Perhaps the only saving grace is that as these shady marketing efforts grow, people will become more and more skeptical about product recommendations from untrusted sources online, undermining the value of paid placements for companies. This sort of microshilling doesn't seem like it will have a long shelf life -- especially if the FTC decides to get involved.

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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John Gallone shared this story with me and kindly gave me permission to post it on Boing Boing. He writes:

The beaches of the Pacific Northwest are loaded with interesting finds.

From glass floats that have drifted from Japan to carcasses of sea life that defy the imagination but one of the items I have been searching for for years has been an eagle feather. Yesterday during a beach hike near my home I found a large wing feather from a mature bald eagle.

Now, not only is the bird a thing of beauty in itself but its feathers are beautifully constructed with ample size and a thick quill.

When proving Galileo’s theory of gravitational pull in a vacuum it was an eagle feather, which Neil Armstong used on the first moon landing. The landing probe was called the Eagle, remember “The eagle has landed” ?

These items are very highly prized among Native Americans and in fact they are the only people allowed to posses an eagle feather and even they must have certification of tribal membership and the appropriate registration license to acquire one legally. And there is the rub... or a mere pale-face such as myself, possession of even one feather brings a fine of $100,000 and a jail sentence.

The law: “Anyone who possesses an eagle feather, and doesn't meet the requirements, could face fines up to $100,000 and a year in prison. A second offense is upgraded from a misdemeanor to a felony, and carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The act also provides for a civil penalty of up to $5,000.”

I returned my incredible find to the beach... all I have are these photos.

Take only pictures; leave only footprints indeed...

brumgrunt writes "Should we be worried? As Pixar, with Up, once more proves itself to be home to some of the most original and daring blockbusters on the planet, the news that its next three films are likely to be sequels — with the confirmation of Monsters, Inc. 2 — gives cause for concern. Are commercial pressures catching up with one of our most inventive movie companies?"

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