KentuckyFC writes "The PageRank algorithm (pdf) behind Google's success was developed by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1998. It famously judges a page to be important if it is linked to by other important pages. This circular definition is the basis of an iterative mechanism for ranking pages. Now a paper tracing the history of iterative ranking algorithms describes a number of earlier examples. It discusses the famous HITS algorithm for ranking web pages as hubs and authorities developed by Jon Kleinberg a few years before PageRank. It also discusses various approaches from the 1960s and 70s for ranking individuals and journals based on the importance of those that endorse them. But the real surprise is the discovery of a PageRank-type algorithm for ranking sectors of an economy based on the importance of the sectors that supply them, a technique that was developed by the Harvard economist Wassily Leontief in 1941."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Given what the Olympics have become lately, I have to admit to not paying attention to any of it so far. I heard the news of the luger's death, and that's been about it. So perhaps more people already knew about this, but apparently one of the mogul skiers has a bit of a reputation as a spam/spyware purveyor. It sounds like the guy is now out of that business, but what's fascinating is how his reputation has been tarnished over all of this, despite winning Olympic medals. The Canadians wouldn't let him on the team this time around, due to their dislike of his activities, so he switched his citizenship to Australia, and basically, it sounds like everyone hates him:

After Begg-Smith's second place finish in Vancouver this week, one Australian news organization published an article calling him--in the headline, no less--a "sourpuss." Another, the Sydney Morning Herald, labeled the Olympic athlete as "Mr. Miserable" and speculated that he was "simply flying a flag of convenience" with no real ties to Oz.

Canadians were more direct. Facebook groups such as "Dale Begg-Smith is a sourpuss" and another calling him a "traitor" have popped up. Twitter messages after the mogul race have included "traitor," "fake Canadian and all-around jerk," plus other phrases entirely unsuitable for a family publication.

Obviously, some of that hatred is due to him switching citizenship, but the article explains why his spamming/spyware activities are a large part of it as well (and may have resulted in the citizenship switch). I find this interesting not just because of the Olympic angle, but because of the reputation angle.

Reputation is a rather valuable "scarce good," and destroying your reputation through shady activities can come back to bite you for a long, long time, even if you do plenty of other amazing things. Just ask Metallica.

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The Lost Knowledge column explores the possible technology of the future in the forgotten ideas of the past (and those just slightly off to the side). Every other Wednesday, we look at retro-tech, "lost" technology, and the make-do, improvised "street tech" of village artisans and tradespeople from around the globe. "Lost Knowledge" was also the theme of MAKE Volume 17

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When I was a tween, one Saturday afternoon, my dad and I went to the barbershop to get our hair cut. Outside the shop, an elderly man was standing there painting a new sign on the replaced plate glass window (which vandals had recently smashed). Walking by, I was mesmerized by the painter, deep in a kind of Zen-like concentration as he worked, his large, beat-up and paint-smeared wooden toolbox overflowing with brushes and small cans of paint, his palette, his maul stick, all of it was so novel and wondrous to me.

Inside the barberhop, as my dad got his hair cut, and then as I got mine, sitting in the cast iron barber's chair (which also always fascinated me), I was transfixed, watching the painter at work. I couldn't get over the idea that those nearly perfect letters, with their thick drop shadows, and the starbursts and other ornaments he was so effortlessly painting -- all flowed so confidently from his hand, held stead by the maul stick pressed to the glass. It looked like flourishes of magic. I'd already been interested in art and graphic design by then, but this experience made me become even more interested in pursuing commercial art as a career (which I ended up doing). It's amazing how, in one's life, a small, seemingly mundane experience like this can have such a disproportional impact. I still think about that elderly signwriter (what sign painters are called), outside the town barbershop in Chesterfield, Virginia, every time I see a handpainted sign.

But these signs and building-side advertisements (sometimes called "brickads") are very much a dying artform. But like a lot of dead or dying media, the form has found an avid following online. There are a number of Flickr pools devoted to old and new handpainted signage, and online archives of "ghost signs," signs from decades (or centuries) past that are all but fading away. The art of the "walldog," a slang term for signwriters, will not be forgotten. And like a lot of retro commercial arts, such as letterpress printing, there are some who claim that handpainted signs are even making a comeback.

Here are a few resources to check out:

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Press-fit linear bearings in Jonathan Ward's MTM A-Z milling machine (demoed by Noah Bedford, left) and a press-fit pinch roller from the Fluxamacutter DIY vinyl cutter (right).

Make: Online editor-in-chief Gareth Branwyn says:

As part of our coverage of 3D printing, laser-cutting, CNC routing, and other forms of desktop fabbing -- to coincide with the new "Your Desktop Factory" issue of MAKE -- we're thrilled to welcome guest contributor Shawn Wallace. Shawn is a member of AS220, the Providence, Rhode Island community arts space. From there, he weekly plugs into the global, distributed learning collaborative known as the Fab Academy. Students from all over the world meet every other week via video conferencing to learn about various fabbing technologies. It's part of the Fab Network, out of the Center for Bits and Atoms.

Letters from the Fab Academy, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Over at Ephemera Assemblyman, Diana Jou posted lovely Russian theater posters by Constructivist artist, director, and stage designer Nikolay Pavlovich Akimov. The scans are from a 1963 book titled Teatral?ny? plakat N. Akimova. "Nikolay Pavlovich Akimov Theatre Posters"

An anonymous reader writes "Red Hat has already been using the Nouveau X.Org driver in Fedora for providing display and 2D support, but with their next release (Fedora 13) they will be making open-source 3D acceleration readily available to those using Nvidia graphics cards. Red Hat has packaged the Nouveau 3D driver in Fedora 13 and what makes it more interesting than just being an open-source 3D driver that was written by the community with reverse engineering their closed-source driver is that it's one of the first drivers to use the Gallium3D driver interface. Phoronix has tested out this Gallium3D driver for Nvidia GPUs in a Fedora 13 daily build and found it to run with a variety of OpenGL games, with benchmarks being included that compare it to Nvidia's official driver. The performance is far from being on the same stage as Nvidia's official Unix driver."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Artist and cartoonist Jordan Crane has an appealing color palette. I've been reading his comics for years, and I've also bought some of his gorgeous hand-pulled silkscreen color prints. Jordan recently joined the Boing Boing Bazaar and is selling his prints there, like this one, titled "Someday You're Gonna."

Makers Market: Jordan Crane

As a semi-introvert, I was happy to discover Sophia Dembling's Introvert's Corner blog.

A woman who read one of my essays on introversion said that when she explained her introversion to her family, her brother said, "We didn't know you were an introvert. We thought you were just a bitch."

The Introvert's Corner: How to live a quiet life in a noisy world

Julie188 writes with this snippet from Network World "Office 2010 is still in beta and a patch is already out. Microsoft is trying to fix a bug in the email program Outlook 2010 Beta that creates unusually large e-mail files that take up too much space. The Outlook product team has offered a bug fix for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems that fixes the problem going forward, although previous emails will remain super-sized. This could be a problem for email programs that limit message sizes, such as Gmail or BlackBerry."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've had a series of posts debunking all of the bogus claims from supporters of ACTA and the current secrecy involved in the ACTA process -- such as how this secrecy is "normal" (no its not), how this is "just an executive agreement, not a treaty" (the difference is effectively meaningless) and how this can't change US law so there's nothing to worry about (even if it doesn't change US law directly, it can prevent fixing problems in the law, while putting pressure on legislators to change the law anyway). Well, here's another one, courtesy of the folks over at Public Knowledge.

One of the claims that's been made in defense of the "secrecy" around ACTA is that the agreement is really just about "enforcement," rather than any legal changes. While we've already questioned how true that claim really is, John Bergmayer, does a nice job explaining why we should be worried about an agreement on "enforcement" anyway: because the question of enforcement is meaningless compared to the actual procedure of enforcement. Bergmayer quotes Rep. John Dingell to make the point:

"I'll let you write the substance ... you let me write the procedure, and I'll screw you every time."

The fear here is that while ACTA might not technically change US law, it could easily change US procedures and policies on "enforcement" allowing the effective change in the law, without people even realizing it. He quotes Professor Thomas Main, saying:

"procedural reforms can have the effect of denying substantive rights without the transparency, safeguards and accountability that attend public and legislative decision-making."

And, indeed, this is what we've see in the leaked drafts of ACTA. While most (though, certainly not all) of the proposals that have been leaked don't necessarily include a direct change to US law, they often do subtly word things so that existing rights, safeguards and accountability are left out, just as Prof. Main warns. To make sure those subtle changes do not have serious impacts that let certain special interests (in the words of Rep. Dingell) "screw" the public, doesn't it make sense to reveal the contents of what's being negotiated?

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I enjoyed Nadia Arumugam's article in Slate about the bogosity of food expiration dates. I eat "expired" food all the time, trusting my nose and my eyes to let me know when food has gone bad. In fact, I find aged food to be tastier than fresh food. Give me a bowl of sauerkraut teeming with bacteria over a fresh green salad any day.

Expiration dates are intended to inspire confidence, but they only invest us with a false sense of security. The reality is that the onus lies with consumers to judge and maintain the freshness and edibility of their food--by checking for offensive slime, rank smells, and off colors. Perhaps, then, we should do away with dates altogether and have packages equipped with more instructive guidance on properly storing foods, and on detecting spoilage. Better yet, we should focus our efforts on what really matters to our health--not spoilage bacteria, which are fairly docile, but their malevolent counterparts: disease-causing pathogens like salmonella and Listeria, which infect the food we eat not because it's old but as a result of unsanitary conditions at factories or elsewhere along the supply chain. A new system that could somehow prevent the next E. coli outbreak would be far more useful to consumers than a fairly arbitrary set of labels that merely (try to) guarantee taste.

Ignore Expiration Dates"Best by," "Sell by," and all those other labels mean very little.

At his Freedom to Tinker blog, Ed Felten has a thoughtful, accessible piece on the debate at Mozilla about whether Firefox, by default, should trust a Chinese certificate authority (as it has since October). Felten explains in clear language why this is significant, and therefore controversial. An excerpt: "To see why this is worrisome, let's suppose, just for the sake of argument, that CNNIC were a puppet of the Chinese government. Then CNNIC's status as a trusted CA would give it the technical power to let the Chinese government spy on its citizens' 'secure' web connections. If a Chinese citizen tried to make a secure connection to Gmail, their connection could be directed to an impostor Gmail site run by the Chinese government, and CNNIC could give the impostor a cert saying that the government impostor was the real Gmail site."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Blizzard announced today that the multiplayer beta test for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is now underway. The client downloader is available through Battle.net for people who have received invites, and the system requirements have been posted as well. A list of known issues is up on the official forums. StarCraft II and the revamped Battle.net are planned for release "in the first half of 2010."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Zoe Caira wears a personal light-measuring device, called a Daysimeter, to monitor her rest and activity patterns and the amount of circadian light -- short-wavelength (blue) light -- reaching her eyes. Credit: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute recently conducted a field study to learn the effects of morning light on teenagers' sleep cycles. They concluded that a lack of exposure to early morning light can result in a 30-minute delay in the onset of sleep.

"If you remove blue light in the morning, it delays the onset of melatonin, the hormone that indicates to the body when it's nighttime," explains Dr. Figueiro. "Our study shows melatonin onset was delayed by about 6 minutes each day the teens were restricted from blue light. Sleep onset typically occurs about 2 hours after melatonin onset."

The study findings should have significant implications for school design. "Delivering daylight in schools may be a simple, non-pharmacological treatment for students to help them increase sleep duration," concludes Dr. Figueiro.

The new research has applications for more than 3 million shift workers and Alzheimer's patients who suffer from lack of a regular sleep pattern.

Studies have shown that this lack of synchronization between a shift worker's rest and activity and light/dark patterns leads to a much higher risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, seasonal depression and cancer over decades.

Lack of morning light keeping teenagers up at night

We have covered Maine artist Andrew Salomone's work here at Make: Online many times before. Highlights include a portrait of Bill Cosby in Jell-O shots, a Ouija board shaped like a computer keyboard, a gingerbread house abandoned halfway through construction due to the economic downturn, an unfinished scrabble game which at a distance becomes a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, and a ski mask with the wearer's face printed on the outside. We like Andrew, and we like Andrew's work.

But my fragile, inflated ego needs a break from these weekly pummelings. So today somebody else is in the spanking machine. And that somebody, dear Andrew, is you. Thanks for being a sport and for posting your failed Halloween costume in the first place. Andrew, himself, has this to say about the project:

I've been thinking about making a skull out of barbies after this famous image of Salvador Dali for a while now. I finally decided that the easiest thing to do would be to stitch the barbies onto a ski mask and wear it as a Halloween costume. But after seeing the final result, it seems like there may never be an appropriate time to wear this.

The Dali image he refers to is a tableau vivant featuring the bodies of naked women arranged to form a skull. It's pictured on the shirt he's wearing in the photo above, but because it's arguably NSFW, we're only going to link to a hi-res image. The work is a 1951 photograph by Philippe Halsman (Wikipedia), who famously collaborated with Dali on several portraits, and is based on a sketch by Dali himself. It is titled In Voluptas Mors, which my hack Latin renders as something like "In pleasure, there is death." The image is well-known, and was strongly alluded to in promotional art for The Silence of the Lambs and The Descent.

Thanks again, Andrew. Anybody else brave enough to step up? Send your What Was I Thinking? suggestions straight to me at sean@makezine.com.

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adeelarshad82 writes "At the MWC, TI showed off a tablet-sized device with a 3D display that doesn't require glasses, running on an existing TI OMAP3 chipset. The 3D demo showed images and video in 3D by using a standard 120-Hz LCD with a special overlay film from 3M that can direct images either towards your left or right eye. By flickering two images very quickly, running at 60 frames per second rather than the usual 30, the display transmits a different picture to each eye, creating a simulated 3D image. The 3D picture can be created using a handheld with dual 3-megapixel cameras and an 800-MHz TI OMAP 3630 chipset."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas, the architect of Bing Maps, gave a neat demo of an augmented-reality map at TED2010. Flickr photos are integrated into street level views, which can result in interesting "time travel" historical views. He also shows how live videos can be added into the maps as well.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos augmented-reality maps

Proud shoppers buy watches, contented shoppers buy housewares: this according to a new Journal of Consumer Research paper. "If a retailer is selling products that allow the consumer to 'show off' to other people, this retailer may want to induce feelings of pride through store atmospherics or advertising. In contrast, a retailer selling primarily home furnishings might want to try to induce feelings of contentment." ,

I stopped using it when I saw all the stuff it dropped in my inbox. But I'm still curious -- are you using Google Buzz? Have you had any good discussions? Please add links to threads on Buzz you think are interesting, so those of us who are just lurking can learn.

João Silva's latest project is to build his own computer from scratch, and it looks like he is off to a great start. Based around the Motorola 68000 processor, he is attempting to build a system that can run the CP/M-68k operating system. Besides just figuring out how to wire the chips up correctly, he is also working on getting a compiler set up so that he can write C programs for his system. It's an ambitious project which harkens back to the good old days of building computers in one's garage using discrete components. I look forward to seeing his progress!

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Wow. Doesn't the NY Times have some of the world's most famous and accomplished economists writing for them at times? You would think that, at some point, as they tried to figure out business model ideas, they would think to actually run some of these ideas by an economist. We've already explained why the NYT's decision to put up a paywall makes little sense from an economic standpoint, but now it's getting even worse. You see, there are still some folks who bizarrely believe that tablet computers -- or, really, just Apple's iPad -- represent the savior for journalism because suddenly people will pay for apps. Already, this suggests a rather tragic misunderstanding of the economics of apps, but apparently it's even worse than that.

Rumors are flying that there's a battle within the NY Times on how to price their app for the iPad. Those on the newspaper side of the house apparently believe that it should be priced at $20 to $30/month to avoid cannibalizing the print product. By the way, if you want a simple tip for how to fail at business, it's to make a decision to avoid cannibalizing your own business. When you do, you've just made it clear that a competitor is going to cannibalize your business for you. The folks on the interactive side of the house think that $10/month makes a lot more sense and believe that pricing it at the $20 to $30 range is suicidal. Of course, if you thought that the management at the NYT's was really crafty, you might believe that this whole story was floated to reset the anchor price, though I have trouble believing that's true.

The problem, of course, is that the NY Times is pricing based not just on trying not to cannibalize the physical product, but without regards to basic economics, and the fact that everyone knows that without a physical product, the costs of the paper actually go down. Yes, of course the costs of all the reporting and editing remain -- no one is denying that. But you no longer have the printing and delivery costs, which are substantial. And reasonable people would expect that, at the very least, the cost of the app will reflect that. Either that, or (more likely), they'll realize that other, more well managed news providers will step in and offer up news for free in order to get the market share that the NY Times once had.

Oh, and one final word for the NY Times. I recognize that you're a better paper, with a much better reputation, than your neighboring competitor, Newsday, but remember what happened when Newsday tried to charge $20+ per month for access to its digital version? It got a grand total of 35 people to sign up. I'm sure more would sign up for a NY Times' app, but how many more?

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An anonymous reader writes with word that the outcome of the large-scale cyberattack simulation promised a few days ago isn't too rosy. From the Help Net Security article: "During the simulated cyber attack that took place yesterday in Washington and was recorded by CNN, one thing became clear: the US are still not ready to deflect or mitigate such an attack to an extent that would not affect considerably the everyday life of its citizens. The ballroom of the Washington's Mandarin Oriental Hotel was for this event transformed into the White House Situation Room, complete with three video screens displaying maps of the country, simulated updates and broadcasts by 'GNN,' an imaginary television network 'covering' the crisis."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

To portray the message that rapid human population growth is pushing other animals out of the habitats and causing specie extinction, the Tucson, Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity has created a series of condom wrappers featuring an endangered animal and catchy slogans like "Wrap with care... save the polar bear" and "Hump smarter... save the snail darter."

Endangered species condoms (via @elizgettelman)

Aliph's Jawbone Icon is much like its last in-ear bluetooth headset, but now comes with 'dialing apps' and a set of amusing voices to tell you about incoming calls and what-have-you. The new designs are welcome, but not as nice as the Jawbone Earcandy, to my eye--vivid colors are gone in pursuit of a jewelry-like look.

They're also short and chubbier, though about the same size overall. The quality was good when tested (paired with an iPhone) and it's a little cheaper than the other models, at $100. Amazon link

The Technocell PowerPak is a matchbox-sized battery that serves as an emergency backup for your gear. It worked well in testing--it's small enough to be portable, but big enough to actually get serious juice from--and comes with many adapter tips. The fold-out plug prongs make it easy and convenient to power up. I kept forgetting to charge it, however, so if you get something like this, be sure to keep it in the car or your front hallway so that you actually have it with you when you need it. $33. Product Page - Amazon link

ICON's Rogue might be just another LED flashlight, but it is pretty. Made from greebled aluminum and finished with a metallic paint job, it resembles a minimalist hipster light saber. It didn't seem quite as bright as dowdier models from Energizer, and can't stand on its end - surprisingly annoying in a blackout. A standard off-half-full button sequence would be better than it being at half-brightness every second time you turn it on. There's also a tiny AA-size edition, but both models are a little too pricey at $50 and $38, respectively. Amazon link

benwiggy writes "Photoshop turned 20 on 10th February 2010. Here's an excellent history, including how the Knoll family created one of the biggest apps of all time. The article also has screenshots of the workspace through the versions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One problem with the cocktail robot genre is -- at least until recently -- everyone's trying to make money off these devices so no one is willing to go open source. Well, trust our friends the Evil Mad Scientists (Lenore and Windell) to do it right. Their beautiful Drink Making Unit pumps liquids from three different carafes, somewhat limiting their drink options but still serving as a great starting point.

How *do* you build a drink-mixing robot? We spent a remarkably long period of time looking for true food-safe valves and pumps to use for this project. The "standard" way to do this is to use solenoid-controlled valves, or sometimes compressed-air powered valves, but the solenoid valves are notoriously unreliable and we aren't planning to keep compressed air (or CO2) around. The other obviously safe way to transport liquid in a known food-safe environment is to use a peristaltic pump. These are great, but we felt a little silly either making our own from scratch or paying about $100 each for commercial units that barely move milliliters per minute. We also looked at various diaphragm pumps, aquarium pumps, and so on, but mostly came up with products that were either expensive or of questionable construction for use with food, or gave completely uncontrolled throughput volume.

Finally, after making some progress on a design consisting in part of ketchup bottles and servo motors, we came across an unexpected solution while browsing eBay for other pump types: breast pumps.

Check out EMSL's description of the Drink Making Unit or see the DMU in action at BarBot 2010.

More:

• BarBot 2010
• Cocktail blueprints for engineers
• NYC Resistor's Barbot

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In hipster history, the 1990s saw a resurgence in kitschy countercultural pastimes like swing dancing, tattoo culture, and tiki/retro lounge. At the same time, an underground art movement associated with those outre interests and born in Southern California was also catapulted into view. Fueled by the Internet, a worldwide audience emerged for art that could have otherwise stayed firmly ensconced in the murky shadows of the art world and underground culture. This new art scene was tongue-in-cheekily referred to as "Lowbrow," and it championed a sense of working class ethics and the festishization of nostalgia and countercultural imagery in a cartoony, fun manner. Anthony Ausgang is celebrated as a pioneer of Lowbrow. His tripped-out, surrealistic narratives feature cartoon characters in exaggeratedly provocative situations. Today on Boing Boing, Ausgang debuts his newest painting, an album cover for psych-rock duo MGMT's new record Congratulations, to be released on April 13 on Columbia. Ausgang's next solo show is in November at Santa Monica's CoproGallery. Last weekend, I spoke with Ausgang about Lowbrow, Pop Surrealism, and the MGMT connection.

"Night of the Hunter" (acrylic on canvas)

Anderson: You are one of the original "Lowbrow" guys and have watched the whole arc of this movement. What are your thoughts on how the scene has evolved?

Ausgang: Lowbrow Art was originally based on a wide assortment of aesthetic insurgencies, like the surf and hotrod subculture. Many of those cultural influences are now outdated and have been replaced by more recent stimulations. For example, the major influence that Saturday morning cartoons had on Lowbrow has been replaced by the new youth culture's video and computer games. There were also certain orphaned subcultures that were initially attracted to Lowbrow as a good place to enter the Fine Art world. As time passed some of these subcultures, like Graffiti, moved away from the Lowbrow and became their own art movements.

"The Great Escape" (acrylic on canvas)

You were just in Rome for a big Pop Surrealist exhibition called "Apocalypse Wow." What was your impression of the art scene there?



The Pop Surrealism art scene in Rome was firmly based on the Graffiti aesthetic and there was plenty of that in the streets. The cars of the subway trains were almost all completely bombed with huge pieces and even Roman ruins had been hit up. I asked one "aerosol artist" if he had a felt any hesitation the first time he wrote on a wall that was 2500 years old. He said that the ruins had been there over 2000 years and his spray paint would only be there for about 70 so he didn't feel any remorse. But most interesting thing I heard was from BO 130 who said that most kids were sick of the adoration of ancient ruins and wanted to see new, contemporary art.

Are there any new artists or scene that's currently inspiring you?

Lowbrow and Pop Surrealism are art movements firmly based on recognizable imagery and comprehendible narratives. I think that certain aspects of abstract art are going to begin influencing this dogma and there will be a new type of aesthetic brinksmanship as artists skirt the edge between abstract and representational art.

How did you get hooked up with MGMT?

I met Andrew and Ben from MGMT through the experimental musician Sonic Boom of Spacemen 3 and Spectrum, for whom I had done album cover art in the past. MGMT was recording "Congratulations" at a mansion in Malibu so I went there a couple of times to hang out and watch the process unfold. Not being a musician I was occasionally left to my own devices so I would sit around and draw on pieces of paper then leave them there when I went home. I got along well with the band and gave them copies of my book, Vacation From Reality. Later, Josh Cheuse, the art director from Sony, contacted me once the recording was finished. The most important thing was that MGMT wanted the "look" of my style of painting and gave me only a few points that I had to hit. Naturally the process took some time but they were always cool with the criticisms. A lot of people who commission a painting only know what they don't want; fortunately MGMT knew what they wanted and let me do it my way.

A Duke University study analyzed data from 22,000 online daters and found that "women put a premium on income and height when deciding which men to contact."

For example, the study showed a 5-foot-9-inch man needs to make $30,000 more than a 5-foot-10-inch one to be as successful in the dating pool.

From Professor Mark J. Perry's Blog for Economics and Finance

Esquire's moving article about famed film critic Roger Ebert is worth reading for many reasons -- detailing the unfortunate medical circumstances that have caused him to lose his voice, his jaw and his ability to eat, among other things, but not his ability to communicate or share his love of movies. Reading through the article, I had no intention of writing anything about it for Techdirt, but then I came to a story near the end, also noticed by Justin Levine, concerning how Disney apparently forced offline Ebert's first show after longtime sparring partner Gene Siskel died:

Ebert keeps scrolling down [to his blog post commemorating Siskel, ten years after his death]. Below his journal he had embedded video of his first show alone, the balcony seat empty across the aisle. It was a tribute, in three parts. He wants to watch them now, because he wants to remember, but at the bottom of the page there are only three big black squares. In the middle of the squares, white type reads: "Content deleted. This video is no longer available because it has been deleted." Ebert leans into the screen, trying to figure out what's happened. He looks across at Chaz. The top half of his face turns red, and his eyes well up again, but this time, it's not sadness surfacing. He's shaking. It's anger.

Chaz looks over his shoulder at the screen. "Those fu -- " she says, catching herself.

They think it's Disney again -- that they've taken down the videos. Terms-of-use violation.

This time, the anger lasts long enough for Ebert to write it down. He opens a new page in his text-to-speech program, a blank white sheet. He types in capital letters, stabbing at the keys with his delicate, trembling hands: MY TRIBUTE, appears behind the cursor in the top left corner. ON THE FIRST SHOW AFTER HIS DEATH. But Ebert doesn't press the button that fires up the speakers. He presses a different button, a button that makes the words bigger. He presses the button again and again and again, the words growing bigger and bigger and bigger until they become too big to fit the screen, now they're just letters, but he keeps hitting the button, bigger and bigger still, now just shapes and angles, just geometry filling the white screen with black like the three squares. Roger Ebert is shaking, his entire body is shaking, and he's still hitting the button, bang, bang, bang, and he's shouting now. He's standing outside on the street corner and he's arching his back and he's shouting at the top of his lungs.

Notice that they think it's Disney again. How nice of them to repeatedly take down the videos of Ebert's tribute to his close friend. Just like copyright law intended.

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Photo by Mar Doré (galleriamardore.com). A girl participating in the "Creole Wild West Indians" parade Mardi Gras, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2010. More on the tradition, and more about the photographer (And full disclosure: she also happens to be a family member - XJ).

krebsonsecurity writes "The City of Norfolk, Virginia is reeling from a massive computer meltdown in which an unidentified family of malicious code destroyed data on nearly 800 computers citywide. The incident is still under investigation, but city officials say the attack may have been the result of a computer time bomb planted in advance by an insider or employee and designed to trigger at a specific date, according to krebsonsecurity.com. 'We don't believe it came in from the Internet. We don't know how it got into our system,' the city's IT director said. 'We speculate it could have been a time bomb waiting until a date or time to trigger. Whatever it was, it essentially destroyed these machines.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I very much enjoy making my own circuit boards. It's a satisfying process that ties together my love of electronics with materials I used back in my art school days. It's also the most accurate way to build a circuit short of sending away to a PCB manufacturer, and it's much more fun.

Subscribe to the MAKE Podcast in iTunes, download the m4v video directly, or watch it on YouTube.

I actually got my start in electronics etching others' designs I'd found online -- long before I understood how they worked! Churning out fully-functional devices early on proved to be a great way to keep me motivated and making. The above video documents the ins and outs of my process, and can hopefully serve as a starting point for your own.

Materials I use for printing, etching, and drilling my own boards:

• Transparency stock for laser printers (inkjet setups are likely as effective)
• Nitrile gloves (thicker reusable gloves are good too)
• Dust mask & eye protection
• Good ventilation (if you can smell it - you're breathing it!)
• Inexpensive photo frame (or specialized exposure frame)
• Red safe-light (optional - brief exposure to dim light is ok)
• Chemicals - positive type developer, ferric chloride, nail polish remover (or acetone)
• Pyrex dishes w/ lids (plastic storage containers work as well)
• Desk or clip lamp + ~30W CFL bulb
• Drill bits, .8mm, 1mm, 1.5mm (+ others, dependent on source design)
• Small drillpress (or suitable dremel attachment)
• Misc. tools - xacto knife, metal ruler, permanent marker, vacuum, etc.

Additional tips I've found helpful:

• Warm developer and etchant do speed up the process, but keep an eye on your board's progress!
• Orient your design before printing (text should appear reversed in most cases)
• Keep etchant away from any metal you don't want etched - including stainless steel sinks!
• Drilling holes systematically (i.e. left to right, top to bottom) can help prevent oversights
• Keep the board clear while drilling to improve visibility/accuracy
• Dedicate a workspace & prepare materials ahead of time (plastic drop-cloths are handy!)

As part of their sponsorship of these Circuit Skills videos, Jameco is offering two product bundles to help jumpstart those new to the realm of homemade PCBs -

• Etching supplies bundle
• Drilling tools bundle

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markass530 writes "An iPhone insurance carrier says that four in six claims are suspicious, and is worse when a new model appears on the market. 'Supercover Insurance is alleging that many iPhone owners are deliberately smashing their devices and filing false claims in order to upgrade to the latest model. The gadget insurance company told Sky News Sunday that it saw a 50-percent rise in claims during the month Apple launched the latest version, the iPhone 3GS.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BBG guest reviewer Reed Savory follows up on his coverage of Nero's LiquidTV, a promising DVR product that's reached the end of its road.

I just wanted to get the word out that Nero has given-up on the product and formally discontinued it on December 30, 2009.

While there was clearly a lot of promise in the product, and the idea of having a fully-functional TiVo running on a PC was fantastic for those of us who love the TiVo user interface and functionality, the product never actually reached the point of actually being "a fully-functional TiVo running on a PC", even after multiple updates past the concerns I raised in my original review.

And that would be the sad end of the story, except Nero apparently decided to cut their losses and ran a special on the product during the month of December 2009, selling the product for $39.95 including the one-year $99 annual TiVo subscription fee, without telling anyone they would be discontinuing the product, and apparently blew-out everything they had in inventory. So there's going to be a lot of unhappy customers once people start realizing there aren't going to be any more updates to the product.

A lot of websites (including Amazon) still have the Nero LiquidTV in-stock, so buyer beware if you get tempted into purchasing a copy at this stage.

In terms of what to replace this with, at this point I have to go back to my original recommendation from the December 2008 review - if you want to be able to share video on your PC with your TiVo DVR, look at the pyTiVo open-source app, and use TiVo Desktop for playback of videos from your TiVo on your PC.

Aaron Ristau, who showed me his some of his amusingly rendered sculptures at the last Maker Faire held in Austin, Texas has a new webpage.

His work is sort of a mash-up of the industrial precisionism of Charles Scheeler with dada-esque mechanical irony of Jean Tinguey. Those who find beauty within the geometry and textures of mechanical objects will enjoy his work. At least I do.

Neil Dawson(via The Grip via NotCot)

terrywallwork writes "Things have been moving along lately on the Blender 3d book front, a friend of mine informed me that Allan Brito released a new book called Blender 3D 2.49 Incredible Machines. I had previously reviewed one of Allan Brito's other books Blender 3D — Architecture, Buildings and Scenery, which covered the Architectural Visualization side of using Blender 3D. This new book takes a very different approach to teaching the use of Blender 2.49. It does this by taking the reader through the modelling, texturing and lighting of 3 different objects, those objects being: a futuristic gun, a futuristic spaceship (steam-punk styled) and finally a robot. Read below for the rest of Terry's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Got a cool idea for a physical computing project (or actual music instrument) that uses MIDI, but don't have a computer with an actual MIDI port? Use a Windows-based computer? Then Stephen Hobley (of laser harp fame) has you covered with his serial port MIDI relay project. After getting tired of relying on expensive, unwieldy adapter boards, he wrote a slick piece of software that monitors a regular serial port, and passes messages between it and the operating system's MIDI interface. Excellent idea!

Under Linux, I *think* you can configure the snd-serial module to achieve the same effect, however I don't have any experience with OS X. Have you done this with your favorite operating system/program? Got tips, or a better way to accomplish the same thing?

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One fascinating thing to watch is how people in certain content professions continue to hold out hope that there's some way that maybe, possibly, really people will suddenly see the light and magically start "paying for content online." Now, obviously, many people do pay for content online, but it's a very difficult market position to sustain due to basic economic forces, unless you're doing something special, and have figured out a way to effectively bundle that content with some sort of real and valuable scarcity -- i.e., a true reason to buy.

But, figuring out those business models aren't easy, and for those who grew up in a world of artificial scarcity, there's always this vague hope that, magically, people will start paying again. Believers in this fantasy were pretty happy to gloat and point us to a recent report from Nielsen, concerning some survey data on whether or not people would pay for content. The suggestion passed along was that this shows that we're crazy for questioning whether or not people will actually pay for content online, as seen in the following chart, released by Nielsen plotting the data: Of course, you can read this chart in a variety of different ways -- and I found it interesting that the data is not actually to scale, since it cut off at the 60% mark. To put this into a bit more perspective, it's a bit more helpful to show what the data actually say on a full 100% scale, so I did a quick & dirty version of that myself to help out: Ah, amazing what a different scale will do, as the latter image makes the numbers (accurately) look a little less impressive than the image released by Nielsen.

But, even beyond that, these numbers don't actually look all that good for the folks who claim that there's some way to suddenly get people to start paying for this stuff, for a whole variety of reasons. First, this is survey data, which is notoriously bad at getting people to accurately predict if they would pay for something. You can lop off a big percentage of people who say they would pay, because when asked, lots of people who would never actually pay for something will say they will pay. I won't even bother to estimate that amount, but I would argue it's a significant chunk of those orange bars.

However, even if we grant the premise that these people potentially would pay, it still doesn't support the "if we just did x, they'll pay" camp (where x is anything from "shut down The Pirate Bay" to "kicked file sharers off the internet" to "passed three strikes legislation" to "increased enforcement" to "beefed up copyright laws" etc.). And the reason for that is when you look at how many people are actually paying. That is, it's really those tiny blue percentages that matter here. And those are tiny across the board -- and the reason isn't copyright infringement or unauthorized file access, but the fact that the producers of the content haven't figured out how to give most people a true reason to buy. They're used to a world where you didn't need to figure out a business model, but artificial scarcities and a small number of gatekeepers were able to make it so people had little choice.

But these days, with widespread abundance in content -- which is growing every day -- the era of artificial scarcities is rapidly ending, and anyone who wants to build a 21st century business model needs to start looking for real scarcities that offer real value, not artificial scarcities that seek to limit value while boosting price. So, yes, there's some interesting data here, but it's not the savior of those who think there's a business model in selling content directly. It really says the exact opposite.

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I wrote an article for this month's issue (January/February 2010) of The Atlantic Magazine on the interesting and far reaching cultural effects that small, inexpensive computers (like the Arduino) are having and will continue to have upon the art world. The Atlantic, one of the world's venerable magazines (having survived 151 years and counting) amazingly displays all of its content on its website for free, so you can read the whole piece here.

Physical computing, as defined in the piece, is computing technology that relies not on keyboards and mice for input, but just about everything else. Sensors, meters, electrical and physical interfaces of every kind transduce something physical into something that the cheap but powerful computer chips can understand. The opportunities this presents for artists of all sorts are myriad. One particularly interesting physical computing interface is Tom Gerhardt's "Mudtub."The artist basically turns a tub of mud into a sort of computer mouse. I mentioned it in the Atlantic article but it really needs to be seen to be understood. Check out the video.

From his website:

By sloshing, squishing, pulling, punching, etc, in a tub of mud (yes, wet dirt), users control games, simulators, and expressive tools; interacting with a computer in a new, completely organic, way. Born out of a motivation to close the gap between our bodies and the digital world, the Mud Tub frees the traditional computer interaction model of its rigidity, allowing humans to use their highly developed sense of touch, and creative thinking skills in a more natural way.

coondoggie writes "After some fancy robotic crane work over the past couple days, NASA Endeavour astronauts are preparing for tonight's final spacewalk where they will open the windows on the space station's sweet new dome-shaped observatory. The cupola observatory module is considered the ultimate observation deck. It is attached to an Earth-facing side of the International Space Station and has seven windows — six around the sides and one on top — that can be shuttered when not in use to protect them from micrometeoroids and the harsh space environment."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Watching the nearly incomprehensible (for me anyway) Olympic men's short course team speed skating event on the television prompted me to do research that and find out it's the forty fifth anniversary of the invention of 43-Man Squamish.

For (mostly) men of a certain age, 43-Man Squamish is a favorite game. Back in the day, I played both Shallow Brooder and Half Frummert, something of a rarity. Invented by Tom Koch of Mad Magazine, I heard Squamish was under consideration as a Olympic sport, but lost out to Mass Start Biathlon and Air Rifle.

It's not as well known in the USA as in some parts of the world, so some Boing Boing readers are possibly only marginally familiar with it. Squamish is a full-contact, sometimes dangerous game played on a five sided field (the Flutney) by players using a long forked stick (the frullip) to smack around a special ball (the pritz.) More squamish rules and details are available here.

Artist Thomas Woodruff's "Freak Parade" is a series of creepily beautiful illustrations from a notional circus; each picture connects to the next one, and they've been collected in a book, too. The originals are touring the US, and are presently in Milwaukee at the Haggerty Museum of Art in Marquette University.

THOMAS WOODRUFF'S FREAK PARADE (Thanks, Anne!)

Somewhere at the junction of modern open-source hardware and early 80's Russia lives a beautiful DIY kit from the Maker Shed called the Ice Tube Clock. The centerpiece of this old-meets-new clock is a Russian-made, 9-digit, vacuum florescent display (VFD). Included in the kit is everything you need to build a complete VFD clock.

Features:

• Cool glowing blue tube with 8 digits, PM dot and alarm on/off indicator
• Adjustable brightness
• Alarm with volume adjust
• Precision watch crystal keeps time with under 20ppm (0.002%) error (< 2 seconds a day)
• Clear acrylic enclosure protects the clock from you, and you from the clock
• Battery backup will let the clock keep the time for up to 2 weeks without power
• Selectable 12h or 24h display
• Displays day and date on button press
• 10 minute snooze
• Integrated boost converter so it can run off of standard DC wall adapters, works in any country regardless of mains power
• Great for desk or night table use, the clock measures 4.9" x 2.9" x 1.3" (12.5cm x 7.4cm x 3.3cm)
• Completely open source hardware and software, ready to be hacked and modded!

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Michael Geist sez,

A brief report from the European Commission authored by Pedro Velasco Martins (an EU negotiator) on the most recent round of ACTA negotiations in Guadalajara, Mexico has leaked, providing new information on the substance of the talks, how countries are addressing the transparency concerns, and plans for future negotiations. The document notes that the Mexico talks were a "long meeting with detailed technical discussions, which allowed progress, but parties not yet ready for major concessions. Due to lack of time, internet discussions could not be concluded."

Start first with plans for future talks. Round 8 of the ACTA negotiations, which will be held in Wellington, New Zealand, are apparently now scheduled for April 12 to 16th. Countries plan a five-day round - the longest yet - with detailed discussions on the Internet provisions, civil enforcement, border measures, and penal provisions. Moreover, Round 9 will take place in Geneva, possibly during the week of June 7th. This aggressive negotiation schedule - three rounds of talks in six months - points to the pressure to conclude ACTA in 2010.

Secondly, transparency. The leaked document reveals that the summary document on ACTA is currently being updated by Canada and Switzerland, with release likely in March. The new document will deny rumours about iPod searching border guards and mandatory three strikes policies. There is no agreement about releasing the ACTA text, however (though more European Union members states favour its release). New Zealand is considering a stakeholder meeting during the next round in April as part of the transparency effort.

Third, the substance of the talks. The three main areas of substantive discussion were civil enforcement, border measures (called customs by the EC), and the Internet provisions.

ACTA Document Leaks With New Details on Mexico Talks and Future Meetings

Ian Lamont writes "InfoWorld has an interesting analysis of the reasons behind the relative dearth of programmers over the age of 40. While some people may assume that the recession has provided a handy cover for age discrimination, a closer look suggests that it's the nature of IT itself to push its elderly workers out, in what the article describes as a 'Logan's Run'-like marketplace. A bunch of factors are listed as reasons, including management's misunderstanding of the ways in which developers work: 'Any developer can tell you that not all C or PHP or Java programmers are created equal; some are vastly more productive or creative. However, unless or until there is a way to explicitly demonstrate the productivity differential between a good programmer and a mediocre one, inexperienced or nontechnical hiring managers tend to look at resumes with an eye for youth, under the "more bang for the buck" theory. Cheaper young 'uns will work longer hours and produce more code. The very concept of viewing experience as an asset for raising productivity is a non-factor — much to the detriment of the developer workplace.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi's debut novel, is causing quite a stir in science fiction circles, with whispers of a Hugo nomination and critical praise from all sides (including me: I just nominated it for the Locus prize for best first novel).

Bacigalupi is already well known for his amazing short stories, such as the Hugo-nominated "The Calorie Man," which is set in the same world that The Windup Girl takes place in. He has a deserved reputation as a prose-stylist whose facility with language borders on the poetic, and as someone whose visionary ideas benefit from this poetic presentation.

In The Windup Girl, we are plunged into a fraught and difficult world: energy collapse and environmental disasters have changed the shape of the planet, swamping its coastal cities and destroying our capacity to travel or move freight at high speeds. Add to this a series of genetic-engineering screwups that lay waste to the world's crops and trigger wave after wave of punishing plagues, and the rise of midwestern American genetic engineering cartels that control the world's supply of plague-resistant GM crops.

Anderson Lake is one such Calorie Man, working undercover in Thailand, a rogue state where generippers reverse-engineer the food cartels' sterile crops and combine them with carefully hoarded genetic material from the Thai seedbank. Anderson lives in Bangkok, undercover, running a factory nominally involved in the manufacture of experimental windup springs that can compactly and efficiently store the energy pushed into them by GM elephants. He is the hub around which many stories spin: that of Hock Seng, a former wealthy Malay Chinese who has fled an ethnic purge and now runs Anderson's factory; that of Jaidee, the Tiger of Bangkok, a hard-fighting, uncorruptable shock-trooper in the Thai environment ministry; and Emiko, a "new person" manufactured in a Japanese vat to be a perfect servile helper, abandoned by her owner to the brothels of Thailand, where she is cruelly mistreated.

The Windup Girl is a story about colonialism, independence, mysticism and ethics, sex and loyalty, and the opposing forces of greed and empathy. Filled with complex and flawed characters who must struggle to overcome their failings, The Windup Girl has no easy or pat answers, but rather charges the reader to summon empathy for imperfect humans who fail as often as they succeed.

But The Windup Girl is also an exciting story about industrial espionage, civil war, and political struggle, filled with heart-thudding action sequences, sordid sex, and enough technical speculation for two lesser novels.

Bacigalupi shows every sign of becoming one of sf's major talents, if he isn't already. In addition to being a magnificent and passionate writer, he is a smart and genuinely nice guy, a truly winning combination. Kudos to him for this wonderful debut, and to the independent publisher Night Shade Books for bringing it to us.

The Windup Girl

You may recall, last month, we wrote about some jokers who came up with the idea of the SarcMark to indicate when you were being sarcastic. They forgot to use their own mark on the stunt, though, because it seems pretty ridiculous to create a proprietary punctuation mark for which they expect people to pay $1.99 to get a special app to use. Like that would work. Of course, a few things happened in response. First, a bunch of people noticed that the SarcMark looked remarkably like script version of the Hebrew letter "pey." In other words, get yourself a Hebrew font, and you're probably good to go.

But, perhaps much more interesting is that the sarcasm wars have now broken out. In response to the closed and proprietary SarcMark, another group has launched the Open Sarcasm project that is, instead, pushing a version of an upside down exclamation point to indicate sarcasm -- based on the already in existence Ethiopian punctuation mark for sarcasm (which is why it's already a part of unicode) . I have no clue if they're being serious or sarcastic. Which is why the world needs more sarcasm markers.

Still, whether or not any of this is serious, it actually does show how betting on proprietary solutions can often come back to bite you, as more open, cheaper, and more flexible solutions pop up to fill in the gap. So, yeah, to SarcMark, good luck with that project.

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Product page (via Spoon & Tamago)

garg0yle writes "As if relativity wasn't enough to prevent us traveling at light speed, Professor William Edelstein of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is now claiming that the interstellar hydrogen, compressed in front of the ship, would bring the journey to a shocking end. 'As the spaceship reached 99.999998 per cent of the speed of light, "hydrogen atoms would seem to reach a staggering 7 teraelectron volts," which for the crew "would be like standing in front of the Large Hadron Collider beam."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Swiss manufacturer Seitz Phototechnik AG has announced the Roundshot VR Drive 's', a faster version of its motorized panorama head. Capable of capturing both cylindrical and spherical panoramic images, it can complete a 360° revolution in 8 seconds. It also features a 'quality mode' for High Dynamic Range work, and is billed as compact and lightweight at 1.65kg. Existing users of the Roundshot VR Drive can upgrade to the speed (s) version for €333, while new buyers can avail themselves of it for €1870.

Nokia put on a project showcase for the finalists in their (mainly) European N900-hacking contest. The projects are pretty interesting and range from remotely viewable kite aerial photography to GPS-aided haptic navigation. Oh, and it looks like it was a good party, too.

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An anonymous reader writes "A brief report from the European Commission authored by Pedro Velasco Martins (an EU negotiator) on the most recent round of ACTA negotiations in Guadalajara, Mexico has leaked, providing new information on the substance of the talks, how countries are addressing the transparency concerns, and plans for future negotiations. The document notes that governments are planning a counter-offensive to rebut claims of iPod searching border guards and mandatory three strikes policies."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Another Make: television-produced video highlights an invention called HeatSource. Using paraffin wax stored in plastic chambers to store heat, HeatSource was created by students for the MIT IDEAS competition.

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In this series, "Letters from the Fab Academy," Shawn Wallace, member of AS220, the Providence, RI community arts space, shares his experiences with the Fab Academy, a distributed learning collaborative, built on the infrastructure of the Fab Lab network. -- Gareth

Mold making and casting

By Shawn Wallace

Noah Bedford from the Providence Fab Lab made this flexible spider coupling for use in one of the machines built in the lab.

This week's topic, mold making and casting, came as a welcome change from the previous two-week session (embedded programming), which was creating a bit of anxiety here at the Fab Academy. The materials and processes for molding and casting are easy to learn and yield satisfying results; programming microcontrollers can be satisfying in its own way, but is a more intractable topic to learn in two weeks. The assignment this time around was to model an object, machine a positive mold, then cast a flexible urethane mold that could be used to make multiple objects in a variety of materials.

Here are a few samples of the work created in the class:

Food-friendly silicone molds can be made to cast edibles, like these candies, modeled by Susanna Tesconi in Barcelona.

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For years, we (and certainly plenty of other people) have pointed out that monopolies, like patents and copyrights, don't drive innovation -- competition does. In fact, having monopolies does the opposite of driving innovation, since the monopolists have fewer reasons to innovate and upgrade since they're not fighting against competitors. This point is made quite clear in an admission by Mike Beltzner, the director of Firefox at Mozilla, in an article at Slate discussing how much browsers have been innovating lately:

"Were there not other competitors who were just as interested in making Web browsers faster, I don't know if we'd be able to find the gains that we can find," he said. "Now it's a game of one-upping each other."

Imagine if instead of thinking that way, the concept of a browser had been patented way back when? Does anyone honestly think that we'd have as innovative a web world as we do today?

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Spanish group Basurama have converted an abandoned electric trainline in Lima, Peru, into a very long, very narrow, very cool amusement park:

The Ghost Train park features amazing bright colors and games made with recycled materials such as car tires, a canopy line, swings and climbing structures. All free of charge for kids, young people, and adults.

As a group, Basurama has been working with the subject of trash for more than ten years, generating spaces and installations that make us reflect about what we throw away.

They've worked in several cities of Latin America, including Buenos Aires and Cordoba (Argentina), Montevideo (Uruguay), and Mexico city (Mexico), among others.

Ruins of Electric Train Turned into Terribly Cool Amusement Park in Lima (Photos) (Thanks, @timdifford)

oxide7 writes "The US Federal Communications Commission unveiled a plan on Tuesday that would require Internet providers to offer minimum home connection speeds by 2020, a proposal that some telecommunications companies panned as unrealistic. The FCC wants service providers to offer home Internet data transmission speeds of 100 megabits per second to 100 million homes by a decade from now, Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's been almost four years to the day since UK developer Introversion fired their shot across the bow -- a rallying call that I count as the first defining moment of the indie games movement as it stands today. On stage at the Independent Games Festival to accept the grand prize for their sophomore PC game Darwinia, the devs minced no words (and spurred wild applause) in saying that throughout development, they stayed true to their independence and didn't seek outside funds "because we didn't want publishers to fuck with our game." It's with no small amount of irony, then (and I can't have been the first) to note the semi-public, somewhat-contentious ensuing two year long uphill battle with Microsoft to bring that same game to Xbox Live Arcade, just released to the service as Darwinia+.

Granted, it hasn't been the only thing on Introversion's plate: since their IGF win, the studio's also produced a multiplayer follow-up to Darwinia (handily titled Multiwinia, and also included in the Live Arcade package as its titular '+'), the quietly horrifying mutually-assured global thermonuclear war game DEFCON (alongside a reportedly finished portable DS version), gone deep into development on their fifth game Subversion, and, like a small consolation prize, revamped the original Darwinia with assorted extra levels as a Vista-exclusive MSN release.

And so now, holdups aside, it's delightful to find that the biggest surprise with its console release is just how well the game holds up. Its deliberately aged retro-future wireframe aesthetics mean the game's only as dated as it wants to look, and its mashup of light real-time strategy and arcade shooting (and that's meant literally, Darwinia's viral foes taking the form and function of Atari's Centipede, and your airstrikes floating into its digital landscape as M.O.A.B.-toting Invaders) has gone basically un-imitated for the rest of the last decade. Darwinia feels original because it was and is a true original, and, you know, had that luxury of never being fucked with by a publisher -- never was watered down to something more marketable to a broader PC gaming audience.

Essentially, very little has changed other than some subtle surgery in making the console transition, primarily being updated to give you more immediate control of your squad -- the brute force battalion that you'll spend the majority of your time with -- by locking the camera to their backs and letting you play out fights like the twin stick shooters that thrive amongst the Xbox 360's audience.

And in a sense, the waiting game (for however potentially disastrous it nearly was to the studio) and the tweaks they've been forced to adopt along the way to meet Microsoft's approval have perfectly positioned it for the "director's cut" tagline they've adopted. With five long years since its original PC and Mac release, and with its newly enhanced mode of play, it's not only the new best way to experience Darwinia for the first time, but the new best way to take a return trip through its laser-light world.

Darwinia+ has been added to Boing Boing's ongoing list of Games To Get, covering the best in independent and retail games.

Hydroelectric Power Plant, Mirejovice - Control Room Gigapixel in Czech Republic

Jeffrey sez, "I've got two fantastic power plants to show you, in 360 spherical photography. First let's travel back to the 1950's or so. Photographed by our member Noel Jenkins, he says, "The control room of the substation at Lea Marston, Warwickshire, is the only surviving building following the demolition of the three coal fired power stations that made up the huge Hams Hall power station complex. The building has been badly damaged by vandals, though the superb roof can still be appreciated. Please note that the building is not accessible at present. Next, let's travel back to 1918 or so, to this remarkably steampunk-ish control room which is still in full operation! This one is a bit under one gigapixel. You can REALLY zoom in."

(Thanks, Jeffrey!)

CWmike writes "Just hours before Adobe is slated to deliver the latest patches for its popular PDF viewer, ScanSafe announced that by its counting, malicious Adobe Reader documents made up 80% of all exploits at the end of 2009. In the first quarter of 2009, malicious PDF files made up 56% of all exploits tracked by ScanSafe. That figure climbed above 60% in the second quarter, over 70% in the third and finished at 80% in the fourth quarter. Mary Landesman, a ScanSafe senior security researcher, said, 'Attackers are choosing PDFs for a reason. It's not random. They're establishing a preference for Reader exploits.' Exactly why hackers choose Adobe as their prime target is tougher to divine, however. 'Perhaps they are more successful,' she said. 'Or maybe it's because criminal attackers are human, too. We respond when we see a lot of people going after a particular product... We all want to go after that product, too. In the attacker arena, they might be thinking, 'Gee, all these reports of Adobe Reader zero-days, maybe I should get in on them too.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What makes Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi so easy to love? It's got a lot to do with stuff like this: a series of videos to promote the iPhone version of his delightfully obscure PS3 downloadable Noby Noby Boy, first announced at GDC 2009 and due for release on the App Store in a matter of days. The videos surely depict exactly what the Noby team's whiteboard meetings must be like, with hand-crafted puppet and cardboard-cutout versions of Noby characters each insisting on new features for the App to attract more than five million users worldwide, targeting diverse demographics of kindergartners, party people, businessmen, planners, and music lovers alike. The first of twelve planned videos is above, with another five below -- keep watching the game's just-relaunched and wildly inventive new Web Web Boy page or iPhone YouTube channel for more as they appear, or join the official Noby Noby Boy Facebook page for new updates.

Last week, we wrote twice about the Google music blog mess, which caused many people to falsely attack Google for its policies in dealing with takedown notices. While it is true that Google could do a better job in communicating and potentially in fighting for its users, the real problems are that the DMCA makes this very difficult for Google (and potentially very risky) and the big recording industry lawyers seem totally disconnected from what the same label marketing folks are doing.

Now, the EFF has weighed in to look at whether or not it's even possible for any music blogger to avoid this sort of scenario and has concluded that the answer is basically no, it's not. Many music bloggers jumped ship to other hosting firms, but as we noted in our original discussion on the topic, those other hosts will face the same exact issue when they start receiving takedown notices, and may be even less receptive to sticking up for music bloggers or less helpful in explaining to them how to file counternotices.

The EFF does shed some light on one interesting aspect of all of this. Many of the takedowns were filed by the IFPI, who seems to claim that the takedown notices are not technically DMCA takedowns since the IFPI is not a US-based organization, and thus, it doesn't need to follow the DMCA's rules (such as specifically designating which files are infringing):

Ordinarily, the party issueing the takedown notice would be required by US copyright law to specify which content is being accused. But, as an international organization headquartered in London, IFPI is arguing that it doesn't even need to play by the USA's rules. "We neither admit nor accept," they write, "...that Google is entitled to be served a notice in compliance with the DMCA." Translation: IFPI is essentially threatening to sue Google under some unspecified foreign law -- presumably one which lacks even the modest safe-harbor provisions available in the USA. It's no wonder Google felt the need to take drastic action to avoid liability, even at the expense of the resulting headaches and bad press.

While, yes, I can understand why Google might want to avoid yet another lawsuit in some foreign country (it's already dealing with a bunch of those), you would think that the company might be better off responding with a simple: "we are based in the US, the content you are complaining about is hosted on US servers, we abide by US law, and unless you follow the DMCA's rules for an official takedown notice, we will not be taking down the content."

Either way, the bigger (and more important) point is that pretty much anyone who blogs about music may face this sort of situation at some point or another -- even if you have explicit permission to post those tracks. The process that the IFPI, RIAA and others go through to demand takedowns is so automated and so disconnected from any marketing people (or common sense around marketing) that lots of people will receive them even though they should not. At some point, perhaps, the labels will recognize this is a mess of their own making, but it seems like we're still a long way from that day.

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An anonymous reader writes "President Barack Obama has announced more than $8bn of federal loan guarantees to begin building the first US nuclear power stations for 30 years. Two new plants are to be constructed in the state of Georgia by US electricity firm Southern Company."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Image courtesy of NASA

Last night's third and final spacewalk for the STS-130 crew resulted in the opening of the Cupola's seven shutters, revealing what Station commander, Jeff Williams, called "spectacular" views of the earth below. The seven-window Cupola offers 360 degree views of Earth as well as the outside of the station, giving crew members the most wide-eyed look from a spacecraft ever known. Die-hard space geeks watched live footage of spacewalkers, Bob Behnken and Nicholas Patrick, floating around on the outside of the station while the Cupola shutters were slowly opened, but had to wait for views from inside the Cupola to be beamed back to Earth (none of the live-feed ISS cameras can reach inside the Cupola). The wait was well worth it.

The new bay window view of the Earth will likely be a hot topic at today's NASA Tweetup at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. I'll be along for the ride, tweeting and sending pictures, as participants get a special behind-the-scenes tour of some of JSC's hot spots and have opportunity to chat with several astronauts.

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cowtamer writes "The Utah State Assembly has passed a resolution decrying climate change alarmists and urging '...the United States Environmental Protection Agency to immediately halt its carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs and withdraw its "Endangerment Finding" and related regulations until a full and independent investigation of climate data and global warming science can be substantiated.' Here is the full text of H.J.R 12." The resolution has no force of law. The Guardian article includes juicy tidbits from its original, far more colorful, version.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A decade into the entertainment industry's massive game of whac-a-mole when it comes to file sharing sites, you would think that people would realize that blocking or banning any particular site doesn't do a damn thing to slow the pace of file sharing around the globe. Instead, it does two things: (1) informs more people of the social norm of unauthorized file trading and (2) causes people to scatter to more sites, usually further underground and even more difficult to identify and stop. And, indeed, that appears to be the case in Italy. You may recall that the Italian Supreme Court recently decided that it was okay for a lower court to block The Pirate Bay (the lower court is now deciding what to do), but in response, it appears that users have already figured out how to scatter to other sites, as many other torrent sites have seen an influx of Italian users. Another mole whacked, and yet, more keep popping up. It's difficult to see how this is a particularly good strategic policy.

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In a PLoS-One paper, Steven H. Collins (Department of Biomechanical Engineering, Delft University of Technology) and Arthur D. Kuo (Departments of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, University of Michigan) describe an ingenious new prosthetic foot that uses a microcontroller to guide a device that stores the energy of the downstep and releases it for the upstep, mimicking the natural functioning of unmodified human ankles.

We developed a microprocessor-controlled artificial foot that captures some of the energy that is normally dissipated by the leg and "recycles" it as positive ankle work. In tests on subjects walking with an artificially-impaired ankle, a conventional prosthesis reduced ankle push-off work and increased net metabolic energy expenditure by 23% compared to normal walking. Energy recycling restored ankle push-off to normal and reduced the net metabolic energy penalty to 14%.

Recycling Energy to Restore Impaired Ankle Function during Human Walking (via PhysOrg)

Cosina has announced the Voigtländer-branded Apo-Lanthar 90mm F3.5 SL II close focus lens for Canon, Nikon and Pentax mounts. Maintaining the same 50cm minimum focusing distance and optical construction of the previous, SL version, the lens has been redesigned with a smaller body. Additionally, by mounting the included close up lens, its closest focusing distance can be reduced down to 32cm, giving a magnification ratio of 1:1.8. Priced at ¥58,000 (~ US $645) for the Canon EF mount and ¥55,000 (~ US $610) for the Nikon Ai-S mount and Pentax KA mount, it will be available in Japan from early March 2010.

Another year... another Toy Fair... Someone asked me if this upsetting, some thoughts...

i didn't go to toy fair this year - but this is interesting to hear (and not surprising). as far as it bothering me, earlier in life it would have, but now - not so much now (there are products at toy fair this year that are "based on" projects I've worked on / support it seems too).

that being said, when issues like makers not getting proper credit comes up, i don't mind helping a maker who simply wants proper credit (last year's bristlebot fiasco for example, scholastic and klutz eventually did the right thing) - we didn't need a lawyer, just a great community to rally. if companies break the law, other things might need to happen - and we'll likely see or hear some examples as the DIY community gets larger and their ideas flow to and from more commercial ventures. for me personally i really don't want to compete on lawyering, i'll move on to the next idea, hopefully :) a lot maker projects are "based" on other ideas too, so origin can get complicated. creative commons, patents, trademarks, copyrights are systems we all currently have access to - and although are problems, it's pretty exciting to be making things at the moment.

many of us have seen our own projects "ripped off", now i consider it validation our work is good and interesting. i can't speak for everyone, this is just me of course - i also reserve the right to change my mind :) i think we are all doing amazing things and the makers out there are leaders of a huge movement. hobbyists, customers, makers, fans and community will reward all of us - sure, there might be sales that "leak" away to toy makers who don't work with makers or give proper credit, but that's always going to be true, taxation on being popular :) what we all need to do is provide the best value and customers service, that is what cannot be commodified or cloned. and lastly, we can all try harder helping folks to choose makers and support makers via maker faire, maker shed, maker's market and companies like EMSL, adafruit, sparkfun, etc. - pt

Thoughts makers?

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Over the last few years, we've seen collections societies around the world do whatever possible to bring in more money -- most often by either trying to hike up their fees and by trying to collect from more places/venues -- even when those claims are often quite a stretch. Luis Esteves alerts us to the news that, over in the UK, one of the local collections societies, PPL, has lost a lawsuit concerning its fee hike back in 2005 -- meaning that pubs, restaurants and hotels that play music in the UK may be getting somewhere around £20m in revenue back from PPL. While this is one small victory against the rapid expansion of these groups, it's still worth noting that these groups, often with the backing of the government, are almost always rent seeking -- looking for more ways to get money out of organizations and individuals.

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Dr. Damage writes "How do current $74 CPUs compare to the $133 ones? To exclusive $1K Extreme Editions? Interesting questions, but what if you took a five-year-old Pentium 4 at 3.8GHz and pitted it against today's CPUs in a slew of games and other applications? The results are eye-opening." Note that this voluminous comparison is presented over 18 pages with no single-page view in sight.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We have covered other robotic Rubik's Cube solvers before, but the CubeStormer is a little different. It's fast, really fast! Apparently it's able to solve any 3x3x3 Rubik's cube in less than 12 seconds. Then again, maybe it isn't that fast compared to Erik Akkersdijk!

The Worlds Fastest Lego Mindstorms RCX Speedcubing Robot. Built entirely from lego elements now scanning and solving any 3x3x3 Rubik's cube combination in under 12 seconds.

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Lauren sez, "A 25 year old sociology student at the University of Cape Town gave the finger to the presidential motorcade as they drove past him while he was jogging. President Zuma's bodyguards pulled over, put bundled him into the car and put a bag over his head. Later he was questioned about his political affiliations (just so happens he's a card-carrying member of the ANC) and his house was searched. Democracy Fail."

Constitutional law expert Pierre de Vos said yesterday he doubted that insulting the president "would ever constitute crimen injuria". He described crimen injuria as the criminal defamation of another person by saying something without a defence for what had been said.

"The president is subject to the same laws as anyone else. The president is not more important merely because he happens to be in that position."

Asked whether it was legal for one person to show another the middle finger, De Vos said: "Yes, it would be completely legal. You would have been rude. It might show a lack of respect. You would not have defamed me, at best you would have been rude.

"If showing a middle finger was a criminal offence, half of South Africa would find themselves in prison."

Zuma cops lock up jogger (Thanks, Lauren!)

(Image: Smiley middle finger a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike image from quinn.anya's photostream)

I'm a big fan of workshops, the messier the better, and this one definitely fits the bill. I especially love the old school Macs that Grant has turned into servers. The super old ones are an 8500 and 9600 working as web servers, while a relatively modern G4/450 dualie serves as a file server. But these old school devices can't compare to Grant's pride and joy, his Apple Newton server. See this photo's Flickr page for lots of notes about the various items in the shop.

What's the oldest working electronics equipment you have in your workshop, readers?

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agrif writes "Shorah b'shemtee! Uru Live has been released for free, as a first step towards opening its source. This game, an MMO released by the makers of Myst and Riven in 2003, has been canceled, zombified, resurrected, canceled again, and is now about to be released as open source to its dedicated fan base. Massively has written a brief newbie guide if you're unfamiliar with the game."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

bugzappy notes a development out of the University of Oxford, where scientists have developed a technology capable of capturing a high-resolution still image alongside very high-speed video. The researchers started out trying to capture images of biological processes, such as the behavior of heart tissue under various circumstances. They combined off-the-shelf technologies found in standard cameras and digital movie projectors. What's new is that the picture and the video are captured at the same time on the same sensor. This is done by allowing the camera's pixels to act as if they were part of tens, or even hundreds, of individual cameras taking pictures in rapid succession during a single normal exposure. The trick is that the pattern of pixel exposures keeps the high-resolution content of the overall image, which can then be used as-is, to form a regular high-res picture, or be decoded into a high-speed movie. The research is detailed in the journal Nature Methods (abstract only without subscription).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes "Scott Harris writes on Moviefone that the economics of Hollywood are often baffling, as DVD sales, broadcast fees and merchandising tie-ins balance against advertising costs and pay-or-play deals to form an accounting maze. The latest example is the untitled sequel to The Chronicles of Riddick, released in 2004 to a slew of negative reviews and general viewer indifference. Despite its hefty $105 million budget, most of which was spent on special effects, the film topped out at a paltry $57 million domestically. So how can a sequel be made if the movie lost money? The answer has to do with ancillary profits from revenue streams outside the box office. While the combined $116 million worldwide probably still didn't cover distribution and advertising costs, it likely brought the film close to even, meaning DVD sales and profits from the tie-in video game franchise may have put the movie in the black. In addition, Riddick itself was a sequel to Pitch Black, a modestly budgeted ($23 million) success back in 2000. Extending the franchise to a third film may help boost ancillary profits by introducing the Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick DVDs and merchandise to new audiences, meaning that the new film may not even need to break even to eventually turn a profit for the studio."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The 3D printing folks at Unfold Fab have managed to get their 3D printer to extrude a complicated volumetric form using ceramic for goop:

After some calibrating I decided to print a test design that would be hard to make using conventional techniques: a double walled vessel with fins connecting in- and outside. I was expecting mostly failure but it finished without to much trouble! Due to the restrictions of Skeinforge expecting 3d models, the walls are double filament (1.5mm total). As you can see on the Pleasant3d view there is an outer and inner shell and instead of a line connecting both there are o-loops. Testing a different design now that enables us to test a single filament double wall vessel. But in the end We will need a way to generate tool paths from single walled surfaces instead of solids

Unfold Fab: The future's here baby! (first successfully printed ceramic vessel) (via Beyond the Beyond)

In "Fear the Boom and Bust," John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek perform a gangsta rap about their competing economic theories:

John Maynard Keynes, wrote the book on modern macro
The man you need when the economy's off track, [whoa]
Depression, recession now your question's in session
Have a seat and I'll school you in one simple lesson

BOOM, 1929 the big crash
We didn't bounce back--economy's in the trash
Persistent unemployment, the result of sticky wages
Waiting for recovery? Seriously? That's outrageous!

I had a real plan any fool can understand
The advice, real simple--boost aggregate demand!
C, I, G, all together gets to Y
Make sure the total's growing, watch the economy fly

"Fear the Boom and Bust" a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem (Thanks, Dmiff!)

Jonathan Springston, a senior reporter for the Atlanta Progressive News, was fired from the online news service because, according to an email from the site's editor to Creative Loafing magazine, Springston "held on to the notion that there was an objective reality that could be reported objectively, despite the fact that that was not our editorial policy at Atlanta Progressive News." (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)

Last week, several high-profile, much-loved music blogs disappeared from Google's Blogspot service, after they were targetted by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI -- the international version of the RIAA). IFPI defended its action by saying "Our top priority is to prevent the continued availability of the IFPI Represented Companies' content on the internet."

But IFPI didn't target pirate websites here. Among the sites it took down was I Rock Cleveland, a site whose author, Bill Lipold, painstakingly sought and received explicit permission to post every single track and excerpt he put up (though in many cases, he could have relied on fair use rather than going to the effort).

By using the law to annihilate labors of love like I Rock Cleveland, sites that obeyed all the rules and sought permission from the copyright holders at every turn, IFPI's message is simple: "Don't bother getting permission. Just take stuff. You're wasting your time trying to obey the law. It all comes out the same in the end -- we don't care whether you obey our rules or not."

IFPI will argue that it was just trying to help artists, that everyone makes mistakes, that copyright is complicated. But these are exactly the same arguments that the musicbloggers whose sites were vanished by IFPI's abusive lawyering would have made, if they'd been given a chance.

And the artists, the human shields in whose name IFPI is doing all of this? They don't want it, don't need it, and don't understand it. As one band's publicist wrote, "Just so you know, this is none of our doing...apparently, DMCA operate on their own set of odd rules, as they even requested that the (band's) official blog remove the song....What a headache..."

Targeted bloggers need to know these details, not only so that they can remove the file if it's indeed infringing, but so that they can file a DMCA counter-notice in the event that the file is not infringing.

Ordinarily, the party issueing the takedown notice would be required by US copyright law to specify which content is being accused. But, as an international organization headquartered in London, IFPI is arguing that it doesn't even need to play by the USA's rules. "We neither admit nor accept," they write, "...that Google is entitled to be served a notice in compliance with the DMCA." Translation: IFPI is essentially threatening to sue Google under some unspecified foreign law -- presumably one which lacks even the modest safe-harbor provisions available in the USA. It's no wonder Google felt the need to take drastic action to avoid liability, even at the expense of the resulting headaches and bad press.

Music Journalism is the New Piracy

When does a nickel cost $27? When it's a hollow spy coin made by Brian Dereu. The spy nickel that Dereu sells in our new Boing Boing Bazaar holds a microSD card, but his inspiration is strictly Cold War spy tech:

During the Cold War, Spies from both the East and West used Hollow Coins to ferry secret messages, suicide poisons, and microfilms undetected. On May 1st, 1960 U2 Pilot Gary Francis Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union and taken captive. In his possession was a hollow silver dollar containing a poisoned needle that was to be used to take his own life in such a circumstance. For one reason or another, he did not use it and was held for 21 months by the Soviets. He was then exchanged for Soviet spy KGB Colonel Vilyam Fisher (aka Rudolf Abel) at the Glienicke Bridge, in Berlin, Germany. Colonel Fisher was also no stranger to hollow coins...his original capture by the United States FBI was directly related to a hollow nickel that was used to transport microfilm.

Hollow Spy Coins (Boing Boing Bazaar)

This post is part of the IT Innovation series, sponsored by Sun & Intel. Read more at ITInnovation.com. Of course, the content of this post consists entirely of the thoughts and opinions of the author.

A recent study suggests that IT people really don't seem to like their jobs very much. Apparently, only 4% of IT people found themselves "highly engaged" with their jobs -- a number that has dropped from the still low, but not as low, 12%, two years earlier. There are concerns, of course, for what this means for companies and their IT staff. It certainly raises some questions about whether or not this is a potential issue going forward, and how companies might deal with this. Are the problems caused by the way IT people are treated? Or does it have more to do with their own worries about the future of the IT profession? And given that so many people in IT aren't particularly enthusiastic about their jobs, how can that be dealt with?

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Our buddy Fra Fondi, of Hobby Media/Xtreme RC Cars, was at the Nuremberg Toy Fair last week. He sent us email with some of the things he was most excited about, including this Grossi 2-stroke, 3.5cc R/C car engine that's water-cooled! Looks amazing. Grossi's 1/8 Rally Buggy Racer, using this new engine, will be available in July 2010,

You can see pics of engine here.
And all of Hobby Media's fair coverage here. [Site's in Italian.]

Over on RC-Monster, they have some close-up images of it which shows the beautiful of the engineering.

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theodp writes "The Mercury News reports that Google, whose stated mission is to make the world's information universally accessible, says the race and gender of its work force is a trade secret that cannot be released. So do Apple, Yahoo, Oracle, and Applied Materials. The five companies waged a successful 18-month FOIA battle with the Merc, convincing federal regulators who collect the data that its release would cause 'commercial harm' by potentially revealing the companies' business strategy to competitors. Law professor John Sims called the objections — the details of which the Dept. of Labor declined to share — 'absurd.' Many industry peers see the issue differently — Intel, Cisco, eBay, AMD, Sanmina, and Sun agreed to allow the DOL to provide the requested info. 'There's nothing to hide, in our view,' said a spokesman for Intel. Some observers note it's not the first time Google has declined to put a number on its vaunted diversity — in earlier Congressional testimony, Google's top HR exec dodged the question of how many African-American employees the company had."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A little over a year ago, we wrote about the issue of Twitter squatters sitting on famous brand names, while the actual brands were totally unaware. In that post we wondered if there needed to be a "Twitter name dispute resolution policy." So far, there hasn't been much movement on that front, as the dispute resolution policy has basically been the benevolent dictatorship of some anonymous employees at Twitter, who may or may not step in to deal with such an issue in a unilateral fashion. So it's interesting to see this AdAge piece by a guy who decided to see what would happen if he became a Twitter squatter. After looking through various brands he decided to pretend to be the Twitter representative for HJ Heinz, famous for its ketchup and pickles, among other things.

Basically, he set himself up to be @HJ_Heinz and started sending messages of a positive nature about Heinz. He started cultivating a following, watching for anyone who mentioned Heinz and also trying to connect with those in the Pittsburgh area (home of Heinz). It lasted all of two weeks until he logged in and found that his account name had been changed to @NOThj_Heinz, along with a note from Twitter saying that he had violated Twitter's rules. At least they let him keep the account.

What's interesting, though, is that it still took Heinz itself two weeks to notice the account and do something about it. Heinz provided AdAge with a statement in response to the article, which falsely suggests that the original account was "closed" (rather than just had its name changed). Still, the company claims it came across it via its "regular monitoring practices," but if you're just monitoring social networks, you're missing the point of them, which is to actively engage. If Heinz were actively making use of the tools it wouldn't have taken so long to notice the squatted account.

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BarBot 2010... See you there!

In a world where robots and humans struggle together in the fight against boredom. . . Only one event ends up with the robots dancing “The Human” while the meat puppets (you) end up singing the praises of RoboBartenders. This February, come hang out with some alternate life-forms at BarBot 2010 - the third annual festival of Cocktail Robotics! BarBot is a celebration of cocktail culture and man-machine interface. Get a drink from an actual robot. Chat up a snarky electronic bartender. Listen to some graceful tunes being played by robotic music makers. And, after downing your sixth martini, you can finally admit that it’s the geeks who shall inherit the earth. These robots don’t clean the carpets. What they will do is much, much better. They make you a drink! Let your roommate do the vacuuming. These bots have got better programming on their mind.

Wed/Thur Feb 17-18, 2010 - 9pm-2am
21+ with photo ID $10 advance / $15 at door
DNA Lounge - 375 Eleventh St.?Buy tickets now!

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Richard Etter designed this cell phone detecting AwareFashion shirt to assist the staff at an opera house. Containing a module that detects activity on a GSM band, it can be used to alert the staff to patrons who have not turned their phone off (and may be in danger of interrupting the proceedings with a cell call).

It appears to be just a concept, however I can see the potential for it being a more polite way to deal with the issue than just blocking all cell reception. This way, the staff is will be able to confront each person individually, which could allow them to make exceptions for people with valid reasons to have a (muted) phone on. Think it could work? [thanks, Val!]

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Ponca City, We love you writes "NPR reports that with snow blanketing much of the country, the topic of global warming has become the butt of jokes; but for scientists who study the climate, there's no contradiction between a warming world and lots of snow. 'The fact that the oceans are warmer now than they were, say, 30 years ago means there's about on average 4 percent more water vapor lurking around over the oceans than there was... in the 1970s,' says Kevin Trenberth, a prominent climate scientist. 'So one of the consequences of a warming ocean near a coastline like the East Coast and Washington, DC, for instance, is that you can get dumped on with more snow partly as a consequence of global warming.' Increased snowfall also fits a pattern suggested by many climate models, in which rising temperatures increase the amount of atmospheric moisture, bringing more rain in warmer conditions and more snow in freezing temperatures."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Like making blinky light projects, but not able to pump enough performance out of those measly 8 bit instructions on your Arduino? Yeah, us too! Thankfully, the folks over at liquidware antipasto have us covered with this liquid-cooled, overclocked Arduino.

All joking aside, it can be a fun experiment to try overclocking a microcontroller (skip the liquid cooling part, though). If you are actually running into the limits of performance that you can squeeze out of the Arduino platform, you might want to consider a faster system, such as the Maple.

In the Maker Shed: The Maker Shed has everything you need to get started with Arduino

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Hugh Macleod has done a good job of building "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards" into a nice business for himself. He explains the secrets of his success in his post, "the three keys to social marketing" in which he states:

1. Figure out what your gift is, and give it to them on a regular basis.
2. Make sure it's received as a real gift, not as an advertising message
3. Then figure out exactly what it is that your trail of breadcrumbs leads back to.

#1 and #2 are his version of "CwF" and the essence of "RtB" is captured by #3. Macleod considers his style of business a gift economy:

They put stuff out there, as gifts. Great content, great ideas, great insights, great personal connection. By giving so much of themselves, for free, every day, they build up huge surpluses of goodwill, so when you're finally in the market for something they're selling (and they're ALL selling something, trust me), they're first on your list.

However, what Macleod describes is not really a true gift economy, since, as an explicit part of his so-called gift economy, there is an expectation that some selling will occur. There is a key difference between a "gift" and giving something away for free. Since, in a true gift economy, there is no expectation that the gifter will ever be reciprocated for their gift. Instead, there is just the hope that "what goes around comes around" and someone else will eventually give them something that they need. "Give it away and pray" is not really a good business model.

That said, he's doing many things right. Macleod uses his blog and social media to connect with his fans and distribute them his brand of daily cartoons (although in my experience, his site could stand to make his cartoons a little more accessible -- he would be well served to make them more searchable, and easier to embed). Then, he gives them good reasons to buy by selling limited edition prints, books, custom commissions and even his own brand of wine, Stormhoek. Added all up, this allows Macleod to make a seemingly nice living, which is great. So, what Macleod is describing, in his own words, is really Mike's CwF+RtB concept, which brings up another great point. While we do a lot of discussion here on how CwF+RtB works well for musicians, it's important to note that it's not just for the music industry -- it works for anyone that is doing a good job connecting with fans.

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Unfold Fab announced the first successful printing of a ceramic vessel by a 3D printer. Interestingly, one of the biggest challenges seems to be eliminating the bubbles in the clay. However, what I want to know is, how to fire the resulting pieces?

We took some time to play around and get used to the dynamics of the clay print process. It was also time to step up (or down?) the resolution from 1.9 to 0.8 mm using screw-on luer lock tips. We are also now using powder clay that can be mixed in exact quantities instead of moisturizing chunks of clay. Also figuring out ways of reliably filling the syringes without trapped air. I'm using a similar 60cc syringe where the front is cut off and use this to suck in the clay from the mixing bowl. Then the clay is transferred to the print syringe, this works really well actually.

After some calibrating I decided to print a test design that would be hard to make using conventional techniques: a double walled vessel with fins connecting in- and outside. I was expecting mostly failure but it finished without to much trouble! Due to the restrictions of Skeinforge expecting 3d models, the walls are double filament (1.5mm total). As you can see on the Pleasant3d view there is an outer and inner shell and instead of a line connecting both there are o-loops. Testing a different design now that enables us to test a single filament double wall vessel. But in the end we will need a way to generate tool paths from single walled surfaces instead of solids.

[via Open Materials]

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coondoggie writes "The European Space Agency's Mars exploring satellite will make a number of close-up passes of the Martian moon Phobos. The Mars Express, which the agency launched in 2003, has begun a series of flybys of Phobos, the largest moon of Mars, that will ultimately set a new record for the closest pass to Phobos — skimming the surface at 50 km, or about 31 miles. This is only about 5 times the irregular moon's average radius. The data collected by the satellite could help solve some of the mysteries about the moon, beginning with that of its origin."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Some of the movie studios (admittedly, not all of them) have been on a braindead fight against Redbox -- despite the fact that Redbox had created a service that people liked and were paying for and that generated revenue for the movie industry. There are still ongoing lawsuits, but today came the news that Redbox caved to Warner Bros., on the most important point: delaying the availability of new release movies until 28 days after the release. Yes, this is the same deal that Warner Bros. convinced Netflix to agree to last month. Basically, Warner Bros. is telling people to either not rent its video or to download them from an unauthorized source.

The whole thing makes no sense at all. Warner Bros. mistakenly thinks that if people can't rent a particular DVD in the first four weeks of release, they're more likely to shell out money to actually buy the DVD. This is Warner Bros. pretending that it can influence customer behavior by denying them what they want. That's a strategy that has never worked well. What this means is that at the moment when Warner Bros. actually puts some marketing effort behind the DVD release, that movie will not be available from the most popular rental options. And, the bizarre reasoning put forth by Netflix that this would benefit customers by improving inventory and availability of movies is not seen in reality. So rather than pissing off some customers because a movie is not available, you're now pissing off all customers by making the movie not be available on purpose, and then effectively massively increasing the amount of time they have to wait to see the movie? Does no one at Warner realize that a lot of those "customers" will simply decide to go see other movies or to download an unauthorized copy instead?

Based on Warner Bros., logic here, why release movies at all?

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Greg Borenstein posted drawings and photos of the mouse trap-driven car he's been working on to the MAKE Flickr Pool.

Mouse trap car

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