Ponca City, We love you writes "David Ropeik writes at MSNBC that there's a lot more to making a basic firework display than putting a fuel source and an oxidizer together. Pyrotechnic chemists, who are trying to create bedazzlement instead of bang, don't want their work to explode, but to burn for a bit, so it gives a good visual show. To achieve the desired effect, the sizes of the particles of each ingredient have to be just right, and the ingredients have to be blended together just right. To slow down the burning, chemists use big grains of chemicals, in the range of 250 to 300 microns, and they don't blend the ingredients together very well, making it harder for the fuel and oxidizer to combine and burn, thus producing a longer and brighter effect. Surprisingly few emitters are used in pyrotechnics, and there are no commercially useful emitters in blue-green to emerald green in the 490-520 nm region. Energy from the fire in the basic fuel is transferred to the atoms of the colorant chemicals, exciting the electrons in those chemicals into a higher energy state. As they cool down, they move back to a lower state of energy, emitting light. So, you actually see the colors in fireworks as they're cooling down. To get the really tricky shapes, like stars or hearts, the colorant pellets are pasted on a piece of paper in the desired pattern. That paper is put in the middle of the shell with explosive charges above it, and below. When those charges go off, they burn up the paper, and send the ignited colorant pellets out in the same pattern they were in on the sheet of paper, spreading wider apart as they fly."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A piece I wrote from Berlin has become one of the most-quoted pieces I've ever written. Maybe I should travel more often. Getting out of the country, writing while America sleeps, 120-degrees of jetlag, all seem good for whacking quotable phrases out of my brain.

Yesterday Jeff Jarvis quoted a line from that piece. "The sources never got paid. So the news was always free, it was the reporting of it that cost."

Which inspired a thread by two-time Pulitzer winner Howard Weaver, who I visited by train in Sacramento in June. In that thread Weaver said something that I couldn't respond to in a mere 140 characters. It was that good.

Weaver: "Is it news if it's not reported? I don't think so."

Weaver is the perfect foil because he says things like that. He's not wrong, given his background, where he spent his youth, his level of accomplishment, his justifiable pride, he has to think that.

And equally, given all my experience, I have to think the other way.

I blogged because there was news the press wasn't reporting.

4/5/97: "The press only knows three stories, Apple is dead, Microsoft is evil, and Java is the future."

I understand this is a semantic debate. Weaver chooses to define news as what was reported. I choose to see news everywhere, that it exists before it is reported, that reporting isn't even a necessary part of the news. I see his view as the means by which the press controlled us, but that control is slipping.

An example of the futility.

I was shocked for about 20 seconds to hear that Sarah Palin had resigned as Alaska governor. It was news the instant she made the announcement. I had to rush out to a lunch meeting at the Jupiter in downtown Berkeley. When I got back, it slipped my mind that there was a "breaking story" I could watch on CNN. I noticed some bloggers talking about it. I thought to tune in for about 5 seconds, even got so far as locating the SlingPlayer icon on my desktop. But before I could click, I was already bored.

At least for me, the reporters are as irrelevant as paper delivery of the NYT, WSJ and SJM had become in 1994. I know what they're going to say before they say it. I also don't feel their ability to set an agenda anymore. The only reason Palin has any viability is that the press remembers who she is. For me, and I'd bet a huge chunk of the electorate, she's a fading memory of an election we've put way behind us as we've turned to face our futures. For me the last election was only important in that it got Bush and the Republicans out. Having accomplished that, I don't care what the press thinks is news. I decide that for myself now.

I guess that's the point I'd like to make in response to Howard's excellent quote. I decide what's news. I don't delegate that. Maybe others want to accept the filter of the press, that's their right. But I don't care what they think is news. It's not that I decided not to care, it's that I truly don't care.

PS: To be clear, I do care what Weaver thinks is news. Perhaps that's the subject of another piece, or perhaps something to talk about on Monday's RTN.

[Fireworks art by Rosemarie Fiore]

Happy 4th of July (all you American makers, and to anybody else who wants to use this day as a reason to celebrate). We here at Maker Media wish you all the best and a fun, creative, and celebratory weekend.

Are you planning on making anything? If so, please take some pics, post them to our Flickr Pool, and tells us what you did in the comments below.

In response to last year's 4th of July message, where the Make: Online staff answered the musical question: "What MAKES America great?," one of our readers, alandove, posted his little story in comments that perhaps sums up some of the inspiring character of this country:

Here's a story that always comes to my mind when I think about what makes America great. I was interviewing Pasko Rakic, one of our greatest neuroscientists, for an article I was writing. Born in Yugoslavia, Pasko has pretty much lived the American Dream since immigrating, and he's unabashedly patriotic.

Midway through the interview, he insisted on taking me on a tour of Yale, where he works. After showing me one of the old library buildings, which is built in a rather typical Ivy League style (ornate neo-Gothic), he took me across the quad to the Beinecke Rare Book library. That building is a modern cube floating above the sidewalk, made of panels of marble so thin they allow daylight - but not UV rays - to penetrate. It's a brilliant design, completely unlike any building that preceded it.

Walking back outside, Pasko got to the punchline. He pointed to the old library and said "That was America, when it was trying to be like Europe." Then he turned to the Beinecke, beamed with pride, and said "but that is just America."

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Digg this!

Any holiday that necessitates pyrotechnics and cookouts must be a good one, right? - right!
In honor of such an awesome holiday, enjoy a collection of 4th-related posts for your perusing pleasure - oh, and Happy Independence Day!

How to: Make an American flag

HOW TO - Take photos of Fireworks & HOW TO - Photograph fireworks

Make your own smoke-bombs

Fireworks Drawings

LED fireworks

Wireless fireworks launch controller

Model rocketry and hobby fireworks

HOW TO - Make a sparkler & a geek's guide to fireworks

What MAKEs America great - Happy 4th of July from MAKE

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Holiday projects | Digg this!

schliz writes "Researchers behind the world's largest quantum encrypted network said the technology could secure business networks inside six years. The prototype Quantum Key Distribution network was built by the Secure Communication Based On Quantum Cryptography (SECOQC) group last year. It is described in a journal paper published by the Institute of Physics this week, which includes details on how it is based on the trusted-repeater paradigm."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

These ice dentures should be a hit in the punch bowl at granny's party! If you want to pick up a set, try Amazon.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

Bruce Schneier points out that keypad wear is a form of "information leakage": "There are 10,000 possible four-digit codes, but you only have to try 24 on these keypads. The first is most likely 1986 or 1968. The second is almost certainly 1234."

Information Leakage from Keypads

Bruce Schneier points out that keypad wear is a form of "information leakage": "There are 10,000 possible four-digit codes, but you only have to try 24 on these keypads. The first is most likely 1986 or 1968. The second is almost certainly 1234."

Information Leakage from Keypads

Bruce Schneier points out that keypad wear is a form of "information leakage": "There are 10,000 possible four-digit codes, but you only have to try 24 on these keypads. The first is most likely 1986 or 1968. The second is almost certainly 1234."

Information Leakage from Keypads

Unexpected, delightful; I did enjoy this fireworks animation by PES.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Holiday projects | Digg this!

Video. Adolf Hitler is pretty pissed off to learn that Michael Jackson has died and won't be able to perform at his birthday party. Evidences the true marks of a great internet meme: infinite expandability, extremely bad taste in multiple respects, and an unfairly long lifespan. (via @andrewbaron)

Video. Adolf Hitler is pretty pissed off to learn that Michael Jackson has died and won't be able to perform at his birthday party. Evidences the true marks of a great internet meme: infinite expandability, extremely bad taste in multiple respects, and an unfairly long lifespan. (via @andrewbaron)

Video. Adolf Hitler is pretty pissed off to learn that Michael Jackson has died and won't be able to perform at his birthday party. Evidences the true marks of a great internet meme: infinite expandability, extremely bad taste in multiple respects, and an unfairly long lifespan. (via @andrewbaron)

cheezitmike writes "Researchers at Oregon State University are testing a new type of wave-energy converter to generate electricity from ocean waves: 'Even when the ocean seems calm, swells are moving water up and down sufficiently to generate electricity. ... For decades the challenge has been to build a device that can withstand monster waves and gale-force winds, not to mention corrosive saltwater, seaweed, floating debris and curious marine mammals. ... In the most recent prototypes, a thick coil of copper wire is inside the first component, which is anchored to the seafloor. The second component is a magnet attached to a float that moves up and down freely with the waves. As the magnet is heaved by the waves, its magnetic field moves along the stationary coil of copper wire. This motion induces a current in the wire — electricity.'" Meanwhile, researchers at Stanford are working to design "turbine kites" that operate at 30,000 feet, where air currents flow much faster than they do close to the ground. Ken Caldeira, a Standford associate professor, said, "If you tapped into 1% of the power in high-altitude winds, that would be enough to continuously power all civilization."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

djBC, consistently my favorite mashup producer/creator (he's the guy behind the Beasties/Beatles remix "The Beastles"), has released an entire album of remixes of Muppet music! He sez, "In honor of my daughter's first birthday- and one month late- I'm rolling out 'Muppet Mashup.' Ten mashups, remixes, and covers of music from The Muppet Show and Sesame Street. With the legendary McSleazy (of MTV Mash and GYBO), Dunproofin, ATOM, Martinn, Uncanny Valley and yours truly, dj BC. I'm particularly proud of my 'I'm Happy' track, which is built on Edwinn Starr loops, Muppet Show samples, and a fun, funky playground acapella from some little girls on Sesame Street."

I've just listened to this straight through, with the baby, and we were both captivated. Bravo!

Mashups, remixes, and covers of music from The Muppet Show and Sesame Street.

Coral Cache mirror of the entire album

This first-hand account of the construction of a clandestine shortwave radio by British POWs in a Japanese camp in Singapore really reminds me of James Clavell's magnificent novel King Rat, my all-time favorite war-novel, which revolves grippingly around the construction, discovery and consequences of a hidden shortwave in the Changi camp (both Clavell and Ronald "St Trinian's" Searle were interned in this camp).

BJ: Can I just ask you - the components for the low voltage battery cells that you produced, where did you get all the components from?

RGW: Well, zinc wasn't hard, there was some sheet zinc lying on the aerodrome and we pinched quite a bit of that because that would be eaten away during the use of the cells for the low voltage. I don't know what would have happened if that ran out. I think someone produced two lantern cells which did for a while, but it was mainly on this home-made cell system, which wasn't efficient but nowhere near as inefficient as the rectifier was. We must have been consuming... Ah Ping said he had to turn up a lot of power to keep the lights what they wanted. We were dispersing such an amount of power in this four test tube rectifier for the high tension.

A variable capacitor was another component we had to bring in. We couldn't make a variable capacitor, it was impossible. We had to take two plates off the one we had to get a high enough frequency. Yes, I can't remember why we didn't go up a bit in inductance; it was largely a trial and error business really. Except that in a regenerative receiver you had some idea when you were near a station because the receiver was so sensitive as all regenerative receivers are.

It had a piece of meat skewer type wood which I had a hole drilled in by a pen-knife, and we glued this in with some of our glue or something, into the capacitor shaft so that we could tune it by holding a little stick across it, fixing it at about six inches because one couldn't get one's hands any closer to the set because it was in a state of very near oscillation where the maximum sensitivity is, just before it bursts into oscillation. With a fairly clear HF band, it wasn't long before we knew roughly, by putting a couple of marks on the stick, where it was. We knew that the Voice of America was due for a transmission and I don't think we ever knew the frequencies because the BBC didn't announce frequencies, they just came on the air and broadcast.

Construction of Radio Equipment in a Japanese POW Camp (via Make)

Etsy seller Plastique's got laser-cut acrylic rings boasting pointy world monuments. As knuckledusters, they create the possibility of growling, "Right, mate, you're geography," before you bust your opponent in the chops.

world landmarks acrylic ring set (white) (via Neatorama)

"Homeopathic A&E," a sketch from the British comedy show That Mitchell and Webb Look invites us to imagine an emergency room (A&E is British for Accidents and Emergencies, the UK equivalent of ER), as run by newage woo woos.

That Mitchell and Webb Look: Homeopathic A&E (via White Coat Underground)

After 30 years, Compuserve is finally, totally, mostly dead (the email addresses still work). I was always a local BBS and GEnie guy, but there's no doubting the power and influence of Compuserve in introducing the idea of networked communications to a generation, and proving the business-case for commercial online activity:

The original CompuServe service, first offered in 1979, was shut down this past week by its current owner, AOL. The service, which provided its users with addresses such as 73402,3633 and was the first major online service, had seen the number of users dwindle in recent years. At its height, the service boasted about having over half a million users simultaneously on line. Many innovations we now take for granted, from online travel (Eaasy Sabre), online shopping, online stock quotations, and global weather forecasts, just to name a few, were standard fare on CompuServe in the 1980s.

CompuServe users will be able to use their existing CompuServe Classic (as the service was renamed) addresses at no charge via a new e-mail system, but the software that the service was built on, along with all the features supported by that software, from forums for virtually every topic and profession known to man to members' Ourworld Web pages, has been shut down. Indeed, the current version of the service's client software, CompuServe for Windows NT 4.0.2, dates back to 1999.

CompuServe Requiem (via Beyond the Beyond)

The chairman of the virtual bank in EVE Online, a space-trading/piracy game, absconded with billions of virtual credits, swapping them for $5,000 in cash to make a house payment. The embezzlement caused a run on the bank and has rocked the economy of EVE.

The run on the bank has come to about 600 billion ISK, which has been withdrawn. However, we have a very big group of excellent supporters, who have deposited about 105 billion ISK sitting in Sweep to keep us liquid. We are extremely grateful for this. Currently the run seems to be mostly over with only a slightly higher withdrawal rate still, than deposit rate. That's to be expected, and in-line with EBANK's strategy to shrink to a more managable level.

EBANK has always been extremely sound, due to our massive reserves. Our checks and balances have proven themselves to work as a mitigation device and by having the reserves spread out over several directors, the embezzlement was kept to a minimum. However, the run on the bank had the potential to do great damage to EBANK as people frantically made withdrawals to ensure they would not be caught if the bank ran short.

We have also had several offers from very large entities, regarding big loans, should we need to cover any insolvency. Frankly, this has yet to be needed. But we are grateful for the support.

Billions stolen in online robbery

New perspective on EVE Online's latest bank embezzlement (via /.)

Mikey77 writes:

Build a 1/20 cubic inch robot with a gripper that can pick up and move small objects. It is controlled by a Picaxe microcontroller. At this point in time, I believe this may be the world's smallest wheeled robot with a gripper. That will no doubt change, tomorrow or next week, when someone builds something smaller.

The main problem with building really small robots is the relatively large size of even the smallest motors and batteries. They take up most of the volume of a micro robot. I am experimenting with ways to eventually make robots that are truly microscopic. As an interim step, I made the three tiny robots and the controller described in this instructable. I believe with modifications, these proof of concept robots, could be scaled down to microscopic size.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Robotics | Digg this!

Half-pint HAL tips news of UK prosecution lawyers who are instructing police to study information on Wikipedia when preparing to give expert testimony in court. "Mike Finn, a weaponry specialist and expert witness in more than 100 cases, told industry magazine Police Review: 'There was one case in a Midlands force where police officers asked me to write a report about a martial art weapon. The material they gave me had been printed out from Wikipedia. The officer in charge told me he was advised by the CPS to use the website to find out about the weapon and he was about to present it in court. I looked at the information and some of it had substance and some of it was completely made up.' Mr. Finn, a former Metropolitan Police and City of London officer and Home Office adviser, added that he has heard of at least three other cases where officers from around the country have been advised by the CPS to look up evidence on Wikipedia."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

movesguy sends us to The Daily Galaxy for comments by Stephen Hawking about how humans are evolving in a different way than any species before us. Quoting: "'At first, evolution proceeded by natural selection, from random mutations. This Darwinian phase, lasted about three and a half billion years, and produced us, beings who developed language, to exchange information. I think it is legitimate to take a broader view, and include externally transmitted information, as well as DNA, in the evolution of the human race," Hawking said. In the last ten thousand years the human species has been in what Hawking calls, 'an external transmission phase,' where the internal record of information, handed down to succeeding generations in DNA, has not changed significantly. 'But the external record, in books, and other long lasting forms of storage,' Hawking says, 'has grown enormously. Some people would use the term evolution only for the internally transmitted genetic material, and would object to it being applied to information handed down externally. But I think that is too narrow a view. We are more than just our genes.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes "Three Amazon inventors set out to correct what they felt was a real problem: that 'out-of-print or rare books ... typically do not include advertisements ... the content is fixed and, therefore, has not been adapted to modern marketing.' Their solution is spelled out in newly-disclosed Amazon patent applications for On-Demand Generating E-Book Content with Advertising and Incorporating Advertising in On-Demand Generated Content. From the patent apps, here's what the future of reading may look like: 'For instance, if a restaurant is described on page 12, [then the advertising page], either on page 11 or page 13, may include advertisements about restaurants, wine, food, etc., which are related to restaurants and dining.' So, what would a delightfully-tacky-yet-unrefined Hooters ad do for your Hemingway experience?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

cin62 writes "The number of Internet scammers offering fake versions of the anti-swine flu drug Tamiflu has surpassed those selling counterfeit Viagra, reports CNN. Since the H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu, was declared a global pandemic last month, there has been an increase in the number of Web sites and junk emails offering Tamiflu for sale. 'Every Web site that used to sell Viagra is now selling Tamiflu. We are pretty sure that the same people are making the Tamiflu as are making the Viagra,' said Director of Policy for the UK's Royal Pharmaceutical Society." This news fits in nicely with a report Wired ran a couple weeks ago about the hysteria behind H1N1.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Stephen Worth says:

When I was very small, I had one of those horses on springs. I would jump on it and bounce around furiously while my Dad would urge me on, calling out to me to "Ride that horse down the bumpy road to Bodie!"

Before I was born, my family had taken a trip to the High Sierras and my Dad and Mom never forgot the potholes they had to navigate their 56 Chevy station wagon over. It was a memory they spoke of often. When I got a little older, I got a chance to visit Bodie with them, navigating a slightly more modern Chevy station wagon over those same potholes. Bodie became a lasting part of my consciousness as well.

On my personal blog, Late Night Coffee Shops, I just posted a documentary on Bodie (and its nine inhabitants) from the mid-1950s. If you love the otherworldly feeling of stillness in places like this as much as I do, this video will make your day and fill your dreams with the beautiful sound of wind blowing through sun bleached boards.

Ghost Town: The Bumpy Road To Bodie

There are a few clever pranks here. I particularly like the Mentos stealth geyser. From the Mischief Makers' Manual.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

Richard Metzger pointed me to the Don Martin Dictionary. Martin was one of my favorite Mad cartoonists. His sophisticated absurdism was the opposite of Dave Berg's middlebrow sitcom humor (but I liked him, too). The Don Martin Dictionary

Higher Mammals made a song and video to accompany Radiolab's recent show about stochasticity. If you don't already know about Radiolab, it's a terrific science podcast produced for WYNC public radio.

Radiolab Stochasticity Bonus Video!

jadoon88 writes to share a series of old Atari 7800 games that have been unofficially open sourced. "Remember Dig Dug or Centipede or Robotron? They used to be favorites when Atari's 7800 series was still around. Since the era of those consoles is over, and a different world of interactive reality gaming has taken over, Atari has unofficially released source code of over 15 games for the coders and enthusiasts to admire the state-of-the-art (because this is what it was back then). During those times, nobody would have imagined in their wildest dreams the games that Atari's developers floated into the gaming thirsty market and instantly swept across continental boundaries. But things changed soon after that and a company once regarded as one of the most successful gaming console manufacturers and developers faded away in the pages of our technology's hall-of-fame."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

That's not an adjective in the title, "Awesome Grant" is the actual name of the grant, from the Awesome Foundation, of Cambridge, MA. Each month, they give away $1,000 to someone who wants to do something... well awesome. Here's how they define what they're looking for:

Awesomeness is often overlooked by mainstream culture, which tends to rehash the same broadly appealing but mediocre creations. Thankfully, there is the web.

Awesomeness is more the product of a creator's passion than the prospect of audience or profit. Awesome creations are novel and non-obvious, evoking surprise and delight. Invariably, something about them perfectly reflects the essence of the medium, moment, or method of creation. Awesomeness challenges and inspires.

You enter the proposals on their site and they only need to be 500 words. If you get accepted, you even get access to workspace to realize your project (if you live in the Boston area).

If any of our readers submit a proposal that gets excepted, please let us know. We're sure there are plenty of awesome ideas bouncing around the noggins of Make: Online readers.

The Awesome Foundation

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Announcements | Digg this!

one-man orchestra writes "I'm the sole programmer of a small, multi-platform, commercial audio program (a spectrogram editor). After over 6 months on the market, I realized that the program would never just sell itself, and that I need some real marketing done for it. Being a one-man orchestra is becoming increasingly difficult; I only can devote so much time to marketing, my skills in that department are lacking, and I'd much rather spend more time coding. Despite my lackluster part-time marketing effort, I still manage to make a modest living out of the sales. My logical assumption is that with someone competent taking care of that part, revenue could greatly scale up. But what's the right way to go about doing this? What type of people/company do I need to contact? What to expect? What to look out for?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week, Cory posted a Talking Heads video and I followed up with a Laurie Anderson clip. For the trifecta of posts related to NYC's downtown scene in the 1980s, here is a video of Andy Warhol painting Debbie Harry on an Amiga computer at a Commodore press event in 1985.

While BB Gadgets' Rob is fond of Bughouse's Album Side Table made from old LP jackets, I prefer the Hypolux Chandelier, constructed from plexiglass plates, commercial syringes, and a ballchain suspension.

Hugh Pickens writes "Retired University of Tennessee Professor Dr. John Reece Roth has been sentenced to four years in prison after he allowed a Chinese graduate student to see sensitive information on Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones. In 2004, the company Roth helped found, Atmospheric Glow Technologies, won a US Air Force contract to develop a plasma actuator that could help reduce drag on the wings of drones, such as the ones the military uses. Under the contract, for which Roth was reportedly paid $6,000, he was prohibited from sharing sensitive data with foreign nationals. Despite warnings from his university's Export Control Officer, in 2006, Roth took a laptop containing sensitive plans with him on a lecture tour in China and also allowed graduate students Xin Dai of China and Sirous Nourgostar of Iran to work on the project. 'The illegal export of restricted military data represents a serious threat to national security,' says David Kris of the US Department of Justice. 'We know that foreign governments are actively seeking this information for their own military development. Today's sentence should serve as a warning to anyone who knowingly discloses restricted military data in violation of our laws.' During his trial, Roth testified that he was unaware that hiring the graduate students was a violation of his contract. 'This whole thing has not helped me, it has not helped the university,' said Roth. 'And it has probably not helped this country, either.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Make: Online has published a number of cool projects recently.

Sew a cute Morse code key leg strap

Diana Eng's frilly and fashion-forward Morse code key. Diana Eng (best known from Project Runway and her book Fashion Geek) is our current guest author. Besides being a geek-chic fashion maven, Diana is also a ham operator and on a mission to introduce a new generation of hobbyists (especially women) to ham radio. In this project, she makes a sexy garter strap to hold her new Morse key.

Shrinky Dink gaming minis

Sean Ragan shows you how to make some sweet home-baked gaming components using Shrinky Dink plastic and binder clips.

More on making Light Bricks

As a follow-up piece to Alden Hart's LED Light Brick project in MAKE, Volume 18, the atuhor shares more ideas for molding and casting the acrylic bricks to house your LED board, including using machinable wax to create a life-mask face to house your array. Disco face, baby!

On today's HacDC Blabber list, Trammell Hudson posted a link to this awesome account of British soldiers building a radio in a Japanese POW camp. Trammel writes:

Since they didn't have a local Digikey or Radioshack, everything had to be sourced from what was available. The caps were made from aluminum foil lining of tea-chests, the resistors were rusty barbed wire with burned tree bark, the rectifiers out of oxidised foil and salt water, they smuggled a tube ("valve") in the camps and bribed the local Chinese power station operator to slowly step the output voltage up to 130 from 110 volts.

Amazingly they were able to receive the BBC broadcasts! The initial RX design was pretty basic, so they then built a super-het regenerative transmitter, too, but never made use of it.

[FYI: The image I used above is not from this story, just a diagram of your basic DIY foxhole radio.]

Construction of Radio Equipment in a Japanese POW Camp

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Makers | Digg this!

Techdirt has an interesting look at copyright and the idea that an author is the originator of a new work. Instead, the piece suggests that all works are in some way based on the works of others (even our own copyright law), and the system should be much more encouraging of "remixing" work into new, unique experiences. "Friedman also points back to another recent post where he discusses the nature of content creation, based on a blog post by Rene Kita. In it, she points out that remixing and creating through collaboration and building on the works of others has always been the norm. It's what we do naturally. It's only in the last century or so, when we reached a means of recording, manufacturing and selling music — which was limited to just those with the machinery and capital to do it, that copyright was suddenly brought out to 'protect' such things."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Let's Make Robots is a popular site for robot hobbyists. They've been running two build contests on the site which are now in their finals. Rik, a community member writes:

The LMR Dagu Mr. Basic Challenge invited makers to create any robot from a basic four wheel platform (provided by community sponsor Dagu Electronics). Entries vary from spectacular light shows (using Nixie tubes) to fire fighter to mouse droid (as seen on Star Wars). Three money prizes are at stake. All community members are invited to judge the entries.

The Oddbot LMR Video Challenge is sponsoring creative videos of home made robots. The criteria for "robot" are stretched far enough as to give any one a shot at the lavish prizes. The resulting videos are very funny and creative. The prizes consist of robots and components that Oddbot built and collected over the years. He must now part with them as he moves from Australia to China to become a pro.

I love the sense of humor, and fun, expressed in a lot of the entry bot designs and videos.

Let's Make Robots

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Robotics | Digg this!

A recent eulogy for open source's relevance to cloud computing by Redmonk analyst Stephen O'Grady caught the attention of Matt Asay, who breaks down the difficulty of this David and Goliath problem. "In a world where horsepower matters more than the software feeding those 'horses,' in terms of the entry cost to compete, and where big vendors like Amazon and Google are already divvying up the market, the odds of a small-fry, open-source start-up challenging 'Goliath' are slim. It's not a new argument: Nick Carr has been suggesting for some time that only a few, big companies can afford relevance in this hardware-intensive business. Given this fact, O'Grady thinks the best we can hope for (and he thinks it's pretty important) is 'a loose coalition or confederation of [open-source] projects and vendors that will together comprise an increasingly viable top to bottom alternative to some of the cloud providers today.' He includes projects like Puppet (Reductive Labs) and Hadoop in this mix, but is careful to point out that he doesn't see a full-fledged, open-source alternative seriously challenging the closed platforms of Google, Amazon, Salesforce, and the other mega-clouds."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A recent eulogy for open source's relevance to cloud computing by Redmonk analyst Sephen O'Grady caught the attention of Matt Asay, who breaks down the difficulty of this David and Goliath problem. "In a world where horsepower matters more than the software feeding those "horses," in terms of the entry cost to compete, and where big vendors like Amazon and Google are already divvying up the market, the odds of a small-fry, open-source start-up challenging "Goliath" are slim. It's not a new argument: Nick Carr has been suggesting for some time that only a few, big companies can afford relevance in this hardware-intensive business. Given this fact, O'Grady thinks the best we can hope for (and he thinks it's pretty important) is "a loose coalition or confederation of [open-source] projects and vendors that will together comprise an increasingly viable top to bottom alternative to some of the cloud providers today." He includes projects like Puppet (Reductive Labs) and Hadoop in this mix, but is careful to point out that he doesn't see a full-fledged, open-source alternative seriously challenging the closed platforms of Google, Amazon, Salesforce, and the other mega-clouds."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has sent back its first photos of the moon. The photo above was taken near the moon's Mare Nubium region. The man in the moon is just outside the frame. From NASA:

Older craters have softened edges, while younger craters appear crisp. (The image) shows a region 1,400 meters (0.87 miles) wide, and features as small as 3 meters (9.8 feet) wide can be discerned. The bottom (faces) lunar north.

LRO's First Moon Images

These may be one of the oldest pairs of basketball sneakers in the world. The shoes were manufactured by the Colchester Rubber Company which shut down in 1893. Vintage clothing dealer Gary Pifer paid 50 cents for them at an estate sale in Vista, California. From CafeTerra:

"In a instant, I knew this discovery would be re-writing basketball and sneaker history, as these sneakers are 25 years older than the 1917 Converse All-Stars", added Pifer. The Colchester Rubber Co. was located in Colchester, Connecticut and was in business from 1888 to 1893.

"World's first basketball sneakers 116 years old found at an estate sale"

Roy Christopher has assembled his annual summer reading list, which includes book recommendations from several of our friends and former guest bloggers.

Gareth Branwyn:

A trend I’m noticing in books recently is that there are an increasing number that trade in danger – anti-Nanny State books. No, not those Dangerous Book for Boys and Girls. Those are rubbish. I’m talking about books like Theo Gray’s tremendously awesome Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do at Home – But Probably Shouldn’t (Black Dog & Leventhal) and Bill Gurstelle’s Absinthe and Flamethrowers (Chicago Review Press). Gray’s book has a bunch of enticing experiments that are so well-documented and gorgeously photographed, you don’t have to do them yourself, but if you decide you want to, Gray tells you the real dangers involved and what you have to find out on your own to do them safely and successfully. Treating us like adults. What a concept.

My friend Bill Gurstelle’s book first looks at reasons for living dangerously, mapping what he calls the Golden Third, those people who take risks, who aren’t afraid to live a certain degree of risk,… but not too much risk. Be too risk-taking and you might not survive, not reproduce, don’t take any risks, and you won’t move the culture, innovation, etc. forward. All the action is in that Golden Third. After these ruminations on the why of living dangerously, he gets into some projects and activities, the “art” of living dangerously, from “thrill eating” (stuff like fugu that can theoretically kill you) to Bill’s main bailiwick, teaching you how to spectacularly blow shit up (hence “flamethrower” in the title).

Richard Metzger:

Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back by Douglas Rushkoff (Random House, 2009): Ever get the feeling that you’re trapped on a hamster wheel of predatory “Corporatism”? An unwitting participant in a system that you didn’t sign up for in the first place? What happens when the operating system of the corporate Moloch runs amok.

Never Trust a Rabbit by Jeremy Dyson (Duck Editions, UK, 2001): Great macabre short story collection from the silent member of The League of Gentlemen. “Never trust a rabbit. They may look like a child’s toy, but they will eat your crops.” Hungarian proverb.

Summer Reading List by Roy Christopher

"The choppers call him 'Torch.'"

Many thanks to the The Isotope Guerrilla Cult Theatre for uploading this 1961 movie about a gang of kids who steal and strip down cars to turn into hotrods.

If you cool cats like classic hotrod cars, bad boys from the other side of the tracks, sexy blondes in tight shirts, insipidly catchy songs, goofy teen idol good looks, and the world's biggest cell phone... this one is for you!

Hot rods, hot rock, and hot hair are the jewels in the juvenile delinquency crown of THE CHOPPERS. This classic drive-in exploitation flick features the debut of sixteen year-old Arch Hall Jr. as Cruiser, the spoiled rich kid with a taste for crime and his band of troubled teens who call themselves cool names like Torch, Flip and Snoop, and specialize in stripping cars in record time. This is the movie that made you mom weak in the knees and your daddy worried about the crowd you run with.

Featuring the some exceptional less-than-hit songs from the awesome Arch Hall Jr, including non-classics like "Konga Joe" and "Monkey In A Hatband".

(Thanks, Brian!)

Many outlets are reporting on the recently released results of the various experiments and observations of NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander. Most notable is the discovery of nighttime snowfall on the planet, lending credibility to the idea of a hypothesized active water cycle based on earlier data collection. "The papers rely on evidence from a variety of the instruments on the lander, and the description of the data provides an impressive catalog of the various ways that Phoenix could prod and query the Martian pole. In the months before Martian winter shut the lander down, it managed to dig a dozen trenches, taking soil samples from each. These samples went into wet and dry chemistry labs, had their conductivity tested, and were even examined using an atomic force microscope. Meanwhile, cameras and a LIDAR system (a laser-based range detector) scanned the surroundings. The overall conclusion is that the northern pole has an active water cycle. This had been suggested by a variety of evidence from orbital sensors, as well early images returned from Phoenix. It's also not a huge shock, given the seasonal growth and retreat of the polar ice cap. Still, Phoenix provided some significant details on the cycling of water in the area where it landed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Many outlets are reporting on the recently released results of the various experiments and observations of NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander. Most notable is the discovery of nighttime snowfall on the planet, lending credibility to the idea of an active water cycle hypothesized based on earlier data collection. "The papers rely on evidence from a variety of the instruments on the lander, and the description of the data provides an impressive catalog of the various ways that Phoenix could prod and query the Martian pole. In the months before Martian winter shut the lander down, it managed to dig a dozen trenches, taking soil samples from each. These samples went into wet and dry chemistry labs, had their conductivity tested, and were even examined using an atomic force microscope. Meanwhile, cameras and a LIDAR system (a laser-based range detector) scanned the surroundings. The overall conclusion is that the northern pole has an active water cycle. This had been suggested by a variety of evidence from orbital sensors, as well early images returned from Phoenix. It's also not a huge shock, given the seasonal growth and retreat of the polar ice cap. Still, Phoenix provided some significant details on the cycling of water in the area where it landed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

1sockchuck writes "A major power outage at Seattle telecom hub Fisher Plaza has knocked payment processing provider Authorize.net offline for hours, leaving thousands of web site unable to take credit cards for online sales. The Authorize site is still down, but its Twitter account attributes the outage to a fire, while AdHost calls it a 'significant power event.' Authorize.net is said to be trying to resume processing from a backup data center, but there's no clear ETA on when Fisher Plaza will have power again."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Behold, gentlemen! Ript, "the revolutionary torso-enhancing undershirt." The designer of this undergarment is described as "the creative force behind P. Diddy's Sean John clothing line, where she mastered her understanding of what appeals to the most sophisticated and discriminating men." Ah, so we can blame Diddy.

"Ript" is so technologically advanced, it comes with a HOWTO, bitches:

Ript, via Book of Joe.

The tradition of improvising a chess set from whatever's on hand is probably as venerable as chess itself. Chess culture is chock-full of sets put together from odds and ends of every description, but here I'm only focusing on sets built from mechanical and electrical bits--mostly nuts, bolts, and washers of various flavors. If you've got a good one I missed, please do link it in the comments.

If you're interested in making your own and want some guidance, Mother Earth News has a nice tutorial.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Toys and Games | Digg this!

(Ed. Note: We recently gave the Boing Boing Video website a makeover that includes a new, guest-curated microblog: the "BBVBOX." Here, folks whose taste in web video we admire tweet the latest clips they find. I'll be posting periodic roundups here on the motherBoing.)

---

More @BBVBOX: boingboingvideo.com

I just did a quick read of an academic paper about Jorn Barger's contribution to the development of blogging written by Rudolf Ammann, and presented at Hypertext 09 in Torino, Italy.

I really liked the paper, and I plan to go through the it and read all the citations. A trip down memory lane.

One thing I liked about this treatment is that it is dispassionate. He doesn't take sides and lets our words speak for us. For both Barger and myself, linkrot has not claimed our work -- it's all still there, many many years later.

It was also gratifying to see the Frontier community get the credit it deserves in laying the foundation for the blogging world that followed, including (in no special order) Michael Sippey, Peter Prodoehl, Steve Bogart, Brent Simmons, Daniel Berlinger, Andy J. Williams, Chris Gulker, Cameron Barrett and Jorn Barger. There were so many others, I'm sure I'm leaving people out who I both appreciate and have great affection for.

Ammann credits Barger specially, as do many others. For me, all these people made important contributions.

BTW, the software we were using then is an ancient predecessor of the OPML Editor, which is still, in many ways, light years ahead of any other content management environment. Perhaps that will be the next thing people dig up. It's GPL-licensed open source.

Back then I said, and still say now..

Still diggin!

PS: I'll keep saying it until I'm not diggin anymore.

PPS: Docs on the NewsPage suite, the software that defined the community.

PPPS: I found a copy of Frontier 4.2.3 on my hard drive, and uploaded it. This was the April 1997 release. I also found a copy of the NewsPage suite, which is the lizard brain of everything that followed in the blogging world. I may release it so that every copy of the OPML Editor has this bit of history, so it never gets lost, fingers crossed, Murphy-willing, IANAL, my mother loves me, etc.

An anonymous reader writes "Now that some little time has passed, and the hype has died down a bit, I'm wondering if anyone has taken the $500 plunge and gotten a Kindle DX. From the academic-paper-reading-geek perspective, is it worth the money? How well does it work with PDFs, and is it easy to get them on and off? I haven't been able to find any good reviews on the interweb that address its usability as I would like to use it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Times of India is calling it "India's Gay Day." A ruling on Thursday overturned a colonial law nearly 150 years old that describes sex acts between two persons of the same gender in India's capital city as an "unnatural offense."

Homosexual acts were punishable by a 10-year prison sentence. Many people in India regard same-sex relationships as illegitimate. Rights groups have long argued that the law contravened human rights.

A clarification from an earlier iteration of this blog post: The ruling only applies to India's capital city of Delhi. Sex acts between two men or two women is, if I'm reading this right, still a crime in the rest of India.

India media hails gay sex ruling (BBC). See also: Mumbai gays' long fight for recognition (BBC). Below: image from WAtoday: "A eunuch kisses another member of the transgender, gay and lesbian communities as they celebrate the Indian court decision." (thanks, Antinous!)

A new specimen from Ethan Persoff's "Comics with Problems" archives: Early NAACP Comic Book History - Your Future Rests In Your Hands and The Street Where You Live (1960 and 1964)

Most cell phones are provided with a very basic wall-wart charger, and you usually have to pay extra for a proper charging dock. The bundled charger is often unsightly in use, being just a transformer with a cord strung out to an end table or something where the cell phone rests. If you have a cat who likes to chew through cords, as I do, this can be more than just inelegant--it can be totally impractical. It's also a good project if you just hate, for aesthetic reasons, loose power cords strung out across the furniture.

A similar product is for sale at ThinkGeek, and that's where I got the idea. The nice thing about my version is that it requires no tools to mount or demount, being suspended by the plug on the charger itself. So you can quickly move it around to whatever outlet you want or take it with you when you travel. Plus it costs all of nothing to build.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in MAKE Projects | Digg this!

Jake Lazaroff writes "According to the W3 News Archive, the charter for the XHTML2 Working Group — set to expire on December 31st, 2009 — will not be renewed. What does this mean? XHTML2 will never be a W3C recommendation, so get on the HTML 5 bandwagon now. According to the XHTML FAQ, however, the W3C does 'plan for the XML serialization of HTML to remain compatible with XML.' Looks like with HTML 5, we'll get the best of both worlds."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Instructables has a roundup of 4th projects for a happy weekend. BBQs, recipes, summer clothes, and water abound.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Holiday projects | Digg this!

Jörn Loviscach shares strategies for thermographic imaging using an infrared thermometer and custom software. Impressive results considering IR thermometers can be had for less than a hundred bucks while the cameras cost several thousand. [via Hack a Day]

Update: There's also a related discussion in our forums, where Bill Beatty points out an interesting strategy.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Imaging | Digg this!

blackbearnh writes with this excerpt from O'Reilly Radar "Think about Wikipedia, what some consider the most complete general survey of human knowledge we have at the moment. Now imagine squeezing it down to fit comfortably on an 8GB iPhone. Sound daunting? Well, that's just what Patrick Collison's Encyclopedia iPhone application does. App Store purchasers of Collison's open source application can browse and search the full text of Wikipedia when stuck in a plane, or trapped in the middle of nowhere (or, as defined by AT&T coverage...)"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

J Miller shares video of the maiden voyage of his rocket built from the plans in MAKE Volume 15. The reaction to the lack-of-rocket-return here is genuinely priceless! And in case you're curious, yes, it was sucessfully recovered. Definitely a good idea to use a very wide open space for testing :)

Compressed Air Rocket  Volume 15, Page 102

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

Ever wondered what it'd be like to set off 204 bottle rocks at the same time? I know I have. Turns out, it's a good time (so long as you're not in the line of fire).

I Love Bottle Rockets

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Holiday projects | Digg this!

Yesterday while my poor addled brain struggled to cope with jetlag, Twitter was released a small feature with potentially wide implication, and FriendFeed released something new related to search that I thought they had already released. I don't think my confusion in the latter case had anything to do with jetlag.

Twitter now hots-up hashtags.

So when you refer to #iranelection in a tweet it links to a search page with the results of a search for that string in the twitstream. I've hotted it up the way Twitter would have. Nice to have for sure, seems it should have always worked that way. They probably didn't do it earlier to lessen the load on the search servers.

FriendFeed now has real-time search. Maybe the feature is totally new. It seems I've seen it before. But I still don't get it. Let me try to explain.

FF has a lot of stuff flowing through it, including part of the Twitter firehose. I think they just get the tweets of Twitter users who are followed on FF. So if I have it search for "davewiner" it returns a subset of all the occurences of my Twitter handle. Steve Gillmor says that they've now got his much-fabled feature -- Track -- implemented. How so? Unless they're getting the whole firehose from Twitter.

http://friendfeed.com/search?q=kitten+or+cat

It's nice that they track sources other than Twitter, like this blog's RSS feed. But apparently they don't poll very often, and they don't support weblogs.com-compatible pings (I know they invented a more complicated protocol, why am I not excited about that) so you can hardly call that "real-time." (BTW, this item first appeared in the feed at 7:52AM. It showed in FF at 8:28AM.)

All this hype about real-time is welcome (but hardly new). The ideal of having search be up-to-the-minute accurate is an important one. It's just that no one is there yet. And 140-char tweets all repeating the same thing over and over and then retweeting those same things, well that hardly counts as information. After a while it's more interesting to watch Wolf Blitzer. And that's really saying something.

So, while I'm glad that FF is reaching out beyond Twitter, their interface is impossible to use. Sit someone down off the street and have them try to watch the flow of tweets and comments rush by. No doubt FF's interface would make an impressive display for a mad genius in a scifi movie about the end of the world, but for more ordinary folk? Back to the drawing board.

BTW, talking about new features that should be sent back to the labs -- Microsoft announced that they are including results from selected Twitter users. The relevance criteria is follower count. Might have worked last year, before the SUL, but now follower count is more a reflection of how much you are pwned by Ev and Biz, not how the net values your opinion. I'm sure Larry and Sergey are having a good laugh. Try again Microsoft. Use some other algorithm, follower count is meaningless.

Now that we've announced the book, we can also announce another exciting thing: Handcrafted CSS: A Day of Markup & Style will be a unique, one-day workshop presented by Ethan Marcotte and myself on September 14, 2009 at the Hawthorne Hotel here in Salem, Massachusetts.

You'll get a copy of the book (the Video Edition, including the DVD), and we'll present the content live, throughout four takeway-packed sessions, followed by Q&A. Breakfast, lunch and two snack breaks are also provided. And we'll cap off the day with an after party at an awesome location to be determined.

The Hawthorne Hotel is located in downtown Salem, just 16 miles north of Boston. It's also just a 10-minute walk from the MBTA Commuter Rail station which connects Salem to Boston in about 25 minutes.

This will be a unique opportunity to buy a book, then have the authors work through it live, with a chance to ask questions along the way. It's sure to be a fun day -- and we're pretty damned excited about it.

Early-bird and student tickets are now available at a discounted price of $399 per person. Act quick! There's limited seating for 100 fine people like you.

Oh, and interested in sponsoring the event? We'd love to hear from you.

Cross-Stitch Ninja's Flickr stream is a bottomless well of pixellated delights. Shown here, the CCTV cameras worked into the border of the "You Are Not Alone" sampler, and there's plenty of other lovelies, like the Super Mario maps, grammar puns, religio-vegetarian humor and loads more.

Cross-stitch ninja's photostream (via Craft, thanks, Alice!)

Sigma has released an update to its Photo Pro image-editing software. Version 3.5.2 for Windows and v3.3 for Mac claim to improve processing of highlight areas in RAW images and now offer the 'ProPhoto RGB' color space. Exposure warning is also displayed for RGB channels in the histogram in the Windows version.

The Obamabot 3000 is ready to be unveiled at Walt Disney World's Hall of Presidents, along with the Mark II George Washingtron ("Now with real talking action!") and a Gettysburg-complete Lincolnbot.

No word on whether the Obamabot will allow release of the photos of the waterbotting on Pleasure Island, a no-go zone for civilians for several years now.

We're just sorting out our Christmas at Disney World plans -- our first WDW trip with the baby -- and I'm looking forward to this. There is something eerily cool and compelling about all those hyper-detailed robots nodding and twitching at you from out of the uncanny valley while Maya Angelou tells you about the War Between the States.

A remarkably lifelike Audio-Animatronics figure of President Barack Obama enters the spotlight in a revised and refreshed Hall of Presidents show when it reopens July 4 in Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World Resort. The addition of the countrys 44th chief executive is just part of the most significant update to this classic attraction since its 1971 debut in the parks Liberty Square.

Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin helped develop the show with Disney Imagineers. In this video they talk about the Hall of Presidents: A Celebration of Libertys Leaders.

Barack Obama Joins Hall of Presidents at Disney's Magic Kingdom (Thanks, Patricio!)

Ianopolous writes "Classic DOOM and DSL Linux Desktop inside your Java-enabled browser! The latest JPC, the fast 100% Java x86 PC emulator, is now available with online demos and downloads. JPC is open source and is the most secure way of running x86 software ever — 2 layers (applet sandbox, JPC sandbox) of independently validated security make it the world's most secure means of isolating x86 software. Visit the website to try out some classic games and play around with Linux all within your web browser. Refresh = reboot!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BBCWatcher writes "Computerworld's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols reports that the London Stock Exchange is abandoning its Microsoft Windows-based trading platform: 'Anyone who was ever fool enough to believe that Microsoft software was good enough to be used for a mission-critical operation had their face slapped this September when the LSE's Windows-based TradElect system brought the market to a standstill for almost an entire day .... Sources at the LSE tell me to this day that the problem was with TradElect ...'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

snydeq writes "Pwn2Own winner Charlie Miller has revealed an SMS vulnerability that could provide hackers with root access to the iPhone. Malicious code sent by SMS to run on the phone could include commands to monitor location using GPS, turn on the phone's microphone to eavesdrop on conversations, or make the phone join a DDoS attack or botnet, Miller said. Miller did not provide detailed description of the SMS vulnerability, citing an agreement with Apple, which is working to fix the vulnerability in advance of Black Hat, where Miller plans to discuss the attack in greater detail. 'SMS is a great vector to attack the iPhone,' Miller said, as SMS can send binary code that the iPhone processes without user interaction. Sequences can be sent to the phone as multiple messages that are automatically reassembled, thereby surpassing individual SMS message limits of 140 bytes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Timothy J Silverman used the burrs from a peppermill to convert his drill into a handy coffee grinder. Use this along with the drill scrambler and you've got yourself a real workshop power breakfast!

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in hacks | Digg this!

Make your own fire starter that uses compressed air and burns at 500 degrees!
Thanks to Bill Gurstelle for showing us this at Maker Faire.
To download The Fire Piston MP4 click here or subscribe in iTunes.
Pick up your own Fire Piston Kit in the Maker Shed.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Weekend Projects | Digg this!

This thing is wrong on so many levels, it almost reaches back around to right. Almost.

USB Cigar Flash Memory (with LEDs)

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Instructables | Digg this!

angry tapir writes "The husband and wife owners of a California company that distributed pornographic materials over the Internet have been each sentenced to one year and one day in prison. Extreme Associates and owners Robert Zicari, also known as Rob Black, 35, and his wife, Janet Romano, aka Lizzie Borden, 32, pleaded guilty in March to a felony charge of conspiracy to distribute obscene material through the mail and over the Internet."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scottish sound designer, the Amazing Rolo, traveled to Maker Faire this year especially to see what sorts of cool musical technologies people were cooking up. He made a series of videos of makers demoing their wares. Of the three videos above, he writes:

First up is Elly Jessop, a Masters Student at the uber-cool MIT Media Lab, and her Vocal Augmentation and Manipulation Prosthesis (VAMP). Next is Barry Threw, from Keith McMillan Instruments, showing off the K-Bow (and accompanying software) for extending stringed instrument performance into the digital realm. And finally, the amazing Moldover and his totally bonkers Syncomasher.

The Amazing Rolo

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Music | Digg this!

Some mobile carriers have started selling subsidized netbooks with integrated 3G radios. If you've already got a netbook and enjoy the form factor, but would rather not have to plug in a dongle, here's a quick run-through for integrating a Novatel EU850D 3G radio into a Dell Mini 9 that should give you an idea of what such a project entails.

How-to: 3G to Dell Mini 9. Not so easy way.. [via jkkmobile]

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Computers | Digg this!

Hasselblad has announced the CFV-39 digital back to be used in conjunction with its V series of camera bodies. Featuring a 39 megapixel sensor, it offers two capture formats: 4:3 and square (at 29MP). It allows tethered shooting and offers a capture rate of 1.4fps. The bundled image processing software features digital lens correction for Carl Zeiss lenses that corrects distortion, lateral chromatic aberration and vignetting.

The Fire Piston Kit is a neat physics experiment based on the heat created when air is rapidly compressed. Bill Gurstelle, author of Backyard Ballistics and Barrage Garage, created this kit for us. If you were at Maker Faire you might have seen him demonstrating his kit in the Maker Shed. [Thanks Bill!]

More about the Fire Piston Kit

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

Francesco Fondi writes "An Italian Company is using RC scale model submarines to lay fiber through Milan's sewage system. The RC submarine used is the Neptune SB-1, produced by Taiwanese company Thunder Tiger. It costs ca $600 in US hobby shops." In Italian, but the pictures speak for themselves.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This prototype handbag detects camera flashes and emits a powerful, obscuring strobe that is meant to confound paparazzi. Of course, if there were four paps shooting at once (as there usually seem to be!), it would just ruin one of the four shots.

Last year on July 4, we were walking down the beach in Santa Monica and we saw a pap stop his car in traffic, jump out, run up to the passenger window of a car and start shooting. It turned out Courtney Love and a friend were in the car, enjoying a drive.

We chased the pap back to his car and paced him in the snail-traffic with our cameras, snapping pictures of him as he crawled to the next traffic light.

Anti-Paparazzi Clutch Bag

Direct link to video. There is no part of this trailer that is not made of awesome. A robot geisha transforms into a tank. Two robot geishas (I guess) spew poison milk (don't ask) out of their titties at an opponent. A girl gets stabbed to death in the butt with a giant sword. Robot girls make giant swords pop out of their butts, presumably with which to stab other people in their butts. "Bust Machine Gun." And a dude is blinded with tempura shrimp.

All this and more in the trailer for Noboru Iguchi's new film RoboGeisha - you may recall his work on similarly-themed films Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police. According to the website, the film will be "in theatre fall 2009." (thanks, bobby ciraldo, via geektyrant)

sheepweevil writes "IBM just released Milepost GCC, 'the world's first open source machine learning compiler.' The compiler analyses the software and determines which code optimizations will be most effective during compilation using machine learning techniques. Experiments carried out with the compiler achieved an average 18% performance improvement. The compiler is expected to significantly reduce time-to-market of new software, because lengthy manual optimization can now be carried out by the compiler. A new code tuning website has been launched to coincide with the compiler release. The website features collaborative performance tuning and sharing of interesting optimization cases."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tony sez, "Recently, a group of paleontologists were in town for the North American Paleontological Convention at the University of Cincinnati, and decided to take a field trip to the Creation Museum just across the river, in Kentucky. My aunt went to cover it for AFP, and I had the doubly good fortune of living just a stone's throw away, so I tagged along to see what these guys were up to. It was an eyeful, to say the least. Gorgeous facilities with amazingly engaging displays and animatronics, and at least a few hundred cubic cubits of bad science and misinformation. One young lady stood, furious, and grumbled, 'It's bullshit. Bullshit pretending to be science.' Anyone who finds themselves in the Cincinnati area with a few bucks, hours, and brain cells to burn should check it out, and see what the scientific community is up against in terms of informing the public."

Arnie Miller, a palentologist at the University of Cincinnati who was chairman of the convention, said he hoped the tour would introduce the scientists to "the lay of the land" and show them firsthand what's being put forth in a place that has elicited vehement criticism from the scientific community...

"And there was a feeling of unhappiness, too, about the extent to which mainstream scientists and evolutionists are demonized -- that if you don't accept the Answers in Genesis vision of the history of Earth and life, you're contributing to the ills of society and of the church."

Daryl Domning, professor of anatomy at Howard University, held his chin and shook his head at several points during the tour. "This bothers me as a scientist and as a Christian, because it's just as much a distortion and misrepresentation of Christianity as it is of science," he said.

(Thanks, Tony!)

(Image: (AFP/File/Jeff Haynes)

A tombstone for the famed German sex-worker and advocate Domenica Niehoff has been turned down as too sexual by the cemetery where she was buried.

The 77-year-old artist Tomi Ungerer's parting gift to his friend Domenica Niehoff was to be a gravestone featuring two ample pink marble boulders in homage to her famously top-heavy figure. But those responsible for the Garden of Women cemetery, resting place of Hamburg's most famous women, turned his design down, the paper reported...

Ungerer and Niehoff were friends for decades, and even shared a flat for a while in 1984. He published drawings of Niehoff and her colleagues in a book entitled "Guardian Angels of Hell" at the time...

Niehoff, who gained fame for advocating the rights of sex workers in the 70s and 80s, died at age 63 in February 2009.

Famous prostitute's gravestone deemed too 'slutty' (Thanks, Rosa!)

Inspired by this European Digital Rights Initiative article on "The Silence of the Chips" (a proposal to redesign your radio-enabled ID cards so that you can control when they work and when they're switched off), Oneillkza created this CC-BY logo for the idea, and made a CafePress tee in case you wanted to add it to your sartorial repertoire.

One of the most important action point is the launch of "a debate on the technical and legal aspects of the 'right to silence of the chips', which has been referred to under different names by different authors and expresses the idea that individuals should be able to disconnect from their networked environment at any time."

This is one of the main actions of the plan in order to allow the usage of the RFID while respecting privacy and the protection of personal data, two fundamental rights of the EU.

Silence of the Chips (Flickr)

Silence of the Chips (CafePress)

(via Beyond the Beyond)

The photoshoppers at Worth1000 have found some remarkably fertile territory in today's contest, to remix the Statue of Liberty -- see, for example, Lady Liberty on the Launching Pad, BFF with Jesus of Rio, Yee-HAW!, Window Washer and Evil Monster.

Cliche Hell 18 - Statue of Liberty

Cory's post about the Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense, one of my fave concert films too, reminded me of Laurie Anderson's fantastic Home Of The Brave movie. I distinctly remember seeing it for the first time when I was 14 at a midnight showing in my town's art house cinema and feeling very... avant garde. That was my first exposure to William S. Burroughs, whose quote "Languags is a virus from outer space" inspired the song performed in the clip above. Unfortunately, Home of the Brave never saw an official DVD release, just VHS and laserdisc. But according to Anderson's site, a DVD film/video box set collection of her work is on the horizon.

Home of the Brave (MP3 soundtrack)
Home of the Brave (VHS)

Limor has posted another installment of her exceedingly excellent sensor tutorials, this one on that most marvelous of switches, the tilt sensor. When you just have to know which end is up, you need to strap on one of these puppies. Here's how.

Sensor tutorials - Tilt sensors!

More:
Force Sensitive Resistor (FSR) tutorial
Ladyada's temp sensor tutorial
Adafruit's CdS tutorial

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Electronics | Digg this!

Ask MAKE is a weekly column where we answer reader questions, like yours. Write them in to becky@makezine.com or drop us a line on Twitter. We can't wait to tackle your conundrums!

Bill writes in:

Last year I built a Kid Wash and my kids have loved playing in it. We brought it out again yesterday with the great weather we had over the weekend and my son (age 12) came up with the idea of earning money over the summer by building and selling them locally. It's an easy enough project that I figure he can handle it and it is popular enough with the neighborhood children that he could also have some success in selling it.

However, the new CPSIA regulations have me worried that such a project (however small) will never get off the ground or we'll just be setting ourselves up for legal problems down the road. How do makers who build and sell toys deal with such regulations? Obviously if he was trying to make and sell something hazardous I wouldn't allow it, but how do we encourage such entrepreneurship without exposing ourselves to liabilities.

There was a huge outcry over the CPSIA regulations when they were announced because of their lack of consideration of the costs they would impose on small manufacturers, especially handmakers of one-of-a-kind toys and clothes. The CPSC voted to impose a stay of one year for testing and certification requirements, which expires February 10, 2010. These folks clearly realized there needs to be more thought put into the wide-sweeping rules that would devastate many small businesses. So you still aren't allowed to sell toys with lead paint, small choking-sized parts, etc., but you don't have to have your KidWash tested by a third party for lead and phthalates before selling them to your neighbors. Not until next year, at least.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Ask MAKE | Digg this!

Robbie sez, "I have no other reason for sharing the link to this video of Life During Wartime than I can't stop watching it. It's from the Talking Heads concert film for _Stop Making Sense_, directed by Jonathan Demme. The music and choreography are mindblowing. My mind is blown right now."

Mine too. This is the best concert movie I've ever seen, one of the greatest albums ever recorded, and the amazing thing is that the trajectory of the band and its components went up from there. I've been listening to the new Byrne/Eno for weeks on heavy rotation and going crazy over it.

I'm really hoping to get to the David Byrne show in London next month!

Talking Heads - Life During Wartime

Stop Making Sense CD

Stop Making Sense DVD (Thanks, Robbie!)

Copyright system defenders often trot out the commonly accepted wisdom that copyright does not protect "ideas" and that there's an important "idea/expression" dichotomy, where it's only the specific expression that's protected, not the ideas. However, the reality is that both individuals and courts seem to have a pretty difficult time distinguishing between the two, and always have. While perhaps there's some platonic ideal where it's easy to tell the difference between an idea and the expression of that idea, it's much harder in practice. Recent studies have shown how notoriously difficult this distinction is in practice, leading to serious questions about how copyright violates the First Amendment.

The latest example of this is the ruling banning the publication of the "modern" sequel to The Catcher in the Rye. If there really were a distinction between the idea and the expression, then a sequel would never be seen as infringing, unless it used significant text directly from the original. Yet, in this case, the ban on publication is making some wonder where that mythical idea/expression dichotomy really exists:

First, it exposes the lie that is perpetuated in the legal community that copyright laws don't protect "ideas", but rather only the "concrete expression" of ideas. In practicality, this statement is pure nonsense as evidenced by the fact that a copyrighted work seals in monopoly protections of "characters" and "derivative works" - even if such derivative works don't include any actual "copying" of cloned material from the underlying work.

For instance, if I feel that I have a far better script or storyline that utilizes the character of James Bond, but without utilizing any previous cloned image from a Bond film and without copying previously used dialogue beyond a minimal instance of "My name is Bond...James Bond." or "Shaken...not stirred.", I still would not be able to create it, because Ian Flemming's estate and/or Sony Pictures, etc. has a monopoly over the IDEA of James Bond.

I would argue that by protecting "derivative" works, copyright effectively asserts control over ideas - except for those envisioned at the most abstract levels.

I'm sure we'll get angry comments from some of the copyright defenders who are always quick to chide, but I'm curious how they can use the so-called idea/expression dichotomy as a defense against a First Amendment violation, when that dichotomy doesn't really seem to exist. Copyright system defenders, for years, have relied on the whole "idea/expression" split to explain away how copyright law can be compatible with the First Amendment's insistence that "no law" may be passed that inhibits freedom of speech. If you realize that said split doesn't really exist (or, at the very least, is not enforced by the courts), you have a big, big constitutional problem.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

meketrefi writes "It's been quite a while since I got interested in the idea of using html (instead of .doc. or .odf) as a standard for saving documents — including the more official ones like academic papers. The problem is using HTML to create pages with a stable size that would deal with bibliographical references, page breaks, different printers, etc. Does anyone think it is possible to develop a decent tag like 'div,' but called 'page,' specially for this? Something that would make no use of CSS? Maybe something with attributes as follows: {page size="A4" borders="2.5cm,2.5cm,2cm,2cm" page_numbering="bottomleft,startfrom0"} — You get the idea... { /page} I guess you would not be able to tell when the page would be full, so the browser would have to be in charge of breaking the content into multiple pages when needed. Bibliographical references would probably need a special tag as well, positioned inside the tag ..." Is this such a crazy idea? What would you advise?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's interesting to see the logical pretzels that certain business execs will twist themselves into to defend a poor business model against one that customers enjoy much more. Take for example, the claim from cable firm Rainbow Media's CEO, Josh Sapan, that free video online somehow "insults" people who pay for cable:

"I do think it's important to be technologically progressive and responsive to what consumers want. But that's a different thing, in my mind, from creating bad habits," Sapan said in an interview. "To offer these shows for free ... It's almost insulting to the consumer who's paying money for it, because it says to that consumer, 'What are you doing?'"

Of course you could make the identical argument for any obsolete product. The telephone apparently "insulted" telegraphy purchasers. The airplane apparently "insulted" those who traveled by boat across the ocean. The printing press? Man, did that ever insult those monks who wrote out bibles by hand.

Honestly, it's yet another sign of the entitlement culture, where some seem to assume they're entitled to keep their business model, and it's somehow "insulting" to show their customers that there are better/cheaper/more efficient ways to get what they need.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Matt Mets made a rotation-based MIDI controller using a motor, disc, webcam, and OpenCV. Source code included.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Music | Digg this!

We recently wrote about how many different sources Shakespeare used in writing King Lear, some of which he apparently copied verbatim. However, it seems quite likely that what Shakespeare did with those words created something wholly unique and valuable (at least, it's withstood the tests of time). Yet, this idea that taking the works of others and doing something with them to make them new and wonderful seems to be an anathema to the "true believers" in copyright, who insist that creativity is about being wholly original, and almost never about building on the works of those who came before. Yet, there's almost no evidence to support this. Nearly any creative work can be shown to be built upon the works of those who came before (hell, even our own copyright law is copied from others').

Law professor Peter Friedman recently had a few interesting blog posts that helped highlight this. First, he noted that the very notion of an author as the originator of a new work is a relatively recent phenomenon, and part of the Romantic Movement. However, prior to that, the view was much more akin to what we're actually seeing today with online tools of creation: "creative endeavors are derivative and collaborative, that originality is not the product of isolated genius but of, well, remixing."

He then goes on to discuss the blues musician Robert Johnson -- considered by many to be the "quintessential" Blues musician. However, a recent study into Johnson's work suggest that his fame and renown is basically an accident of history. Some British musicians heard Johnson's music, and since they'd never heard it before, they credited him for it, even though he was mainly copying (and building on) the work of others:

Conceptions of Robert Johnson's work highlight the context dependent nature of notions of originality. Originality is yet another characteristic of copyrightability that is not always easy to delineate in actual contexts of creation. However, what might seem original to those in one context may not seem as original in other contexts. Consequently, within the context of African American audiences of the 1920s and 1930s, Johnson's work probably did not seem startlingly original in the way that it did to British and other musicians and audiences listening to Johnson's music, often in relative isolation, in the 1950s and 1960s. This later audience was largely removed from the original context of other music that was prevalent at the time Johnson produced his music or able to listen to a limited and likely biased sample of such music. For early African American blues listeners, what seemed original and interesting was very different that what seemed interesting and original to the largely white blues fans that were the major force behind the blues revival in the 1950s and 1960s. For the latter, romantic conceptions about the blues were closely tied to notions of authenticity that are often unsuited to musical creation in living musical traditions. As a result, what is perceived as original may depend in significant part on the contexts within which listeners hear music.

Friedman also points back to another recent post where he discusses the nature of content creation, based on a blog post by Rene Kita. In it, she points out that remixing and creating through collaboration and building on the works of others has always been the norm. It's what we do naturally. It's only in the last century or so, when we reached a means of recording, manufacturing and selling music -- which was limited to just those with the machinery and capital to do it, that copyright was suddenly brought out to "protect" such things.

But, today, with the rise of the internet, and the ability for anyone to perform those roles, we run smack dab into conflicting interests. People still want to create the way they always have, but the industry of the last century, that has relied on copyright law to make its product seem different and "original" freaks out about this ongoing content creation:

Culture is a conversation. Every act of culture is a reply to something, a restatement, correction, modification, reworking. Lawyers are constantly debating how much modfication is required to make a work legal. Thus, you may 'create' a new instance of The Blues(TM Martin Scorsese), by shuffling the notes and words around by a set amount. Shuffle too little and you're in trouble with the law. Shuffle too much and the purists start screaming rape. Still, artists are trained to recognize what is a new song and what a version and their publishing companies have experts to deal with these matters. And there we enter the crux of the matter:

Copyright law is corporate law. Or it used to be.

Previously, it took heavy investment to publish art, music, writing, so it was always done by companies and professionals. Today, squirting anything into a blog is an act of publishing. The legalese you signed by clicking when you started your blog forbids any use of copyrighted material that you don't own. Suddenly, instead of plain ordinary citizens entitled to sing "Poops, I did it again" or tape Brad Pitt's face in a toilet bowl onto a postcard to a friend, we are all professional artists required to Create Art from Scratch. Because we are no longer just having a conversation, in which we quote from everything we have seen and heard without any thought of Creation and Originality. Your piddling little blog is a Publishing Enterprise held to the same legal standards as Time Warner Inc, except that you do not have the funds to pay for any borrowings.

You have been muzzled.

This is why people are angry. Their normal modes of expression have been turned into a crime. They know they are only safe from prosecution because they are small fry - unless someone decides to make an example of you. Thus, any time you post some photoshoppery or a musical mash-up you risk having it summarily deleted and your account cancelled for criminal cultural activities.

It's nice to see more and more people recognizing and speaking out about these things. The idea that there is a single "author" or "creator" who deserves to get money any time anyone else builds upon his or her works is something that should be seen as increasingly ridiculous as people recognize that all works are created based on the works of others, and it's inherently silly to try to charge everyone to pay back each and every one of their influences in creating a new work.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

I've started to write blog posts three times today and gave up each of the three times because...

It's impossible to write coherently when your mind is scrambled by jetlag!

It's hard for me to finish a sentence coherently or even remember if I've used the word coherenent, or even spell it right, or finish the sentence without getting hung up if coherent is actually the right word to use, and where did it come from and why is that the word I thought to use anyway.

This post was going somewhere.

I thought I had discovered the algorithm for fighting jetlag in both directions.

Flying west to east, time your arrival so that it's bedtime locally when you arrive so you can go to bed and when you wake it will be the proper time to wake for the place you're in. Fine, as far as it goes, but... It doesn't mean your body thinks it should be asleep at what it perceives to be two in the afternoon.

Coming home, arrive at 1AM and schedule something for 9AM so you have to get by with 8 hours sleep at roughly the time everyone else sleeps. No problem waking up at 4AM! (First sign of a problem.) Then when I return at noon I figure I'll just catch up on a couple hours but I can't fall asleep. (Maybe it's working!) Now as the time for the podcast arrives I realize my mind is complete Jell-o. I've tried to write three blog posts today, easy ones, and given up each time. And now I'm at the beginning of the piece again. Looping.

All this led me to post this tweet earlier today.

Good advice.

What is it with the silly food related trademark battles we keep hearing about lately? First there were Idaho potatoes, then lettuce, and now whisky. You see, the Scotch Whisky Association takes these things seriously. Already you can't call something Scotch (or Scotch Whisky) unless it was produced at a distillery in Scotland, but now it was trying to expand its control over the word "Glen" as well. There are, of course, a few very well known Scottish distilleries using "Glen" such as Glenlivet or Glenfiddich. So what was the problem? Well, in Glenville, Nova Scotia, Canada there's a whisky distillery called Glenora, who makes a single malt whisky under the name Glen Breton Rare whisky. The Scottish Whisky Association insisted this was a problem and confusing, even though the label on Glen Breton states quite clearly: "Canada's Only Single Malt Whisky." I think even the traditional "moron in a hurry" would recognize that it's from Canada, not Scotland.

It appears that some Canadian judges agree -- and have refused to hear the Scottish Whisky makers' appeal, meaning Glenora gets to keep the name. Of course, the other bit of irony, as pointed out by the anonymous person who submitted this: Nova Scotia actually means New Scotland.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Alden Hart, who wrote the LED Light Bricks project for MAKE, Volume 18, has put together a lovely little kit to make building the project much easier. And we're now offering them in the Maker Shed! The kit includes a printed circuit board, 20 bright LEDs, in red, green, blue, and yellow, a programmed PIC16F916 (which you can reprogram, if you like), a tilt switch, power supply, and everything else you need to complete the project (except the molding and casting components). The kit sells for $27.

Here's a link to the Digital Edition of the article in MAKE, Volume 18.
Here's a link to the Web Extras page with the full mold-making and casting article.
Here's a link to the Make: Online how-to on different ways you can construct molds.

In the Maker Shed:

LED Light Brick Electronics Kit
Our Price: $27.00
All the components you need to make the LED Light Brick circuit featured in MAKE, Volume 18. When assembled, the circuit board is ready to cast to make your finished glowing nightlight.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Kits | Digg this!

In the US, thanks to safe harbor rules in the DMCA and the CDA, courts will often toss out misdirected lawsuits that go after a service provider for the actions of a user. To be honest, I've always questioned why we need such safe harbors in the first place, since it should just be basic common sense that a service provider shouldn't be liable for the actions of a user. But, of course, common sense just isn't that common. This can be seen, first, in all the lawsuits that require incantations of the safe harbors to get them tossed out, but even worse, in foreign countries that have no such safe harbor laws. Take for example, a case in India, where Google India is being blamed for content written by bloggers on Blogger. First, Blogger is run by Google, not Google India, so the lawsuit is doubly misdirected -- but, more importantly, Google itself cannot be responsible for what someone writes using its tool. That's like suggesting that Bic is responsible for what you write with its pens. The case involves a guy who was upset about what some bloggers wrote about him -- so of course, he had to sue Google. What's amazing is that the judge seems to have initially bought this as reasonable. It barred Google from hosting any blog that "defamed" this guy. Google has responded by trying to explain the basics of the internet to the judge and how it's impossible for Google to figure out if someone is defaming someone else using its software.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

BabyDuckHat writes "Cnet's Dennis O'Reilly caught "Windows Search Helper" trying to change his default Firefox search from Google to Bing. This isn't the first time the software company has been caught quietly changing user's preferences to benefit its own products."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.