mytrip writes "2007 has not been kind to AMD, but it's surprising to hear rumours that they might be considering outsourcing chip fabrication. Analysts are predicting that AMD will try to cut costs by moving some fabrication elements out of the company by early next year. 'One Citigroup analyst is predicting a "transformational move" that would result in AMD's lower-end CPUs being manufactured by a third party and possibly selling off part or all of its Dresden, Germany facility. Another report from Goldman Sachs outlines the investment firm's belief that the company will leave manufacturing completely in the hands of third parties.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

mytrip writes "2007 has not been kind to AMD, but it's surprising to hear rumours that they might be considering outsourcing chip fabrication. Analysts are predicting that AMD will try to cut costs by moving some fabrication elements out of the company by early next year. 'One Citigroup analyst is predicting a "transformational move" that would result in AMD's lower-end CPUs being manufactured by a third party and possibly selling off part or all of its Dresden, Germany facility. Another report from Goldman Sachs outlines the investment firm's belief that the company will leave manufacturing completely in the hands of third parties.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cory Doctorow: A hacker mowed a program into his wheat-field, creating a Semacode app that says "Hello, World."

The German programmer, Ben Hopfeng-Aertner, wrote in Semacode, a type of visual code that contains "machine readable information" that can be used to graphically encode web-links. Since the code is visual, Ben was able to take a picture of his 160 square meter programming artwork from an airplane and have a machine read the code to output the words "Hello, World!"

Link (Thanks, Rick!)

A few months back we were all shocked to hear Congressional Representative Mike Doyle come out and praise mixtapes and mashups. Doyle wondered aloud during a hearing if these new creations were really all that different than Paul McCartney copying Chuck Berry's bass lines. He named Greg Gillis, a popular mixtape maker, as an example of a "local guy done good." Newsweek journalist Steven Levy thought it might be a good idea to get the two together, and sat in on a lunch between the Congressman and the mixtape artist and performer. Gillis explained that he pretty much worries all the time that the recording industry will shut him down and that if he wanted to pay all the relevant RIAA fees his albums would cost $100 each (even as the PR side of those same record labels ask him to promote their artists). Gillis notes that certain types of sampling would make more sense to be considered fair use, but Doyle admits that such a change in the law isn't likely to fly: "Some members don't even want to understand it. They just get a call from the [recording] industry saying, 'Bad'." Indeed. That's why other Congressional representatives joked after Doyle's original speech about Gillis, saying that they had no clue what he was talking about. Apparently, while Doyle is interested in actually understanding the issue, the same can't be said for many of his colleagues.

Cory Doctorow: Richard's uncle built the "world's fastest margarita machine" for a family wedding:

This past weekend, my wife and I attended a family wedding for one of her cousins. My wife's uncle (and the father of the groom) is a bit of a tinkerer and a prankster. We also suspect he's slightly crazy, but that's beside the point.

When you've got a small-block 400, a trailer, assorted parts and the ability to custom fabricate a 6-inch tall replica of a blender blade out of stainless steel, what do you do with your spare time?

Make the world's fastest margarita machine.

Link (Thanks, Richard!)

Cory Doctorow:
Here's an intimidating gallery of photos of insanely complex freeway interchanges around the world. Link (via Kottke)

Cory Doctorow: Last week, at the International Creative Commons Summit in Dubrovnik, Croatia, Lawrence Lessig made a stunning announcement: he is going to retire from copyfighting and take up a new career, fighting for a new issue. He's going to stay involved with Creative Commons as its CEO, but from now on, he's working to fry a bigger fish: the corruption that leads countries to make bad copyright laws and other regulations, even when they know that the laws are bad for their society.

Larry has posted an expanded piece about this to his blog, explaining his decision to move on after ten years. He suggests that the open Internet and a culture of sharing and remix will make it easier to fight the bigger problem of corruption.

Lessig inspired me -- his writing and work changed my life forever, and I'm not the only one. It's amazing to see him moving on to tackle this new issue. I'm looking forward to following where he leads.

From a public policy perspective, the question of extending existing copyright terms is, as Milton Friedman put it, a "no brainer." As the Gowers Commission concluded in Britain, a government should never extend an existing copyright term. No public regarding justification could justify the extraordinary deadweight loss that such extensions impose.

Yet governments continue to push ahead with this idiot idea -- both Britain and Japan for example are considering extending existing terms. Why?

The answer is a kind of corruption of the political process. Or better, a "corruption" of the political process. I don't mean corruption in the simple sense of bribery. I mean "corruption" in the sense that the system is so queered by the influence of money that it can't even get an issue as simple and clear as term extension right. Politicians are starved for the resources concentrated interests can provide. In the US, listening to money is the only way to secure reelection. And so an economy of influence bends public policy away from sense, always to dollars.

The point of course is not new. Indeed, the fear of factions is as old as the Republic. There are thousands who are doing amazing work to make clear just how corrupt this system has become. There have been scores of solutions proposed. This is not a field lacking in good work, or in people who can do this work well.

Link

Cory Doctorow:
My pal Pablos (creator of the Hackerbot, among other ingenious stuff) writes in about his latest project, We-Fi: "Our goal is to make open Wi-Fi act more like a wireless infrastructure that can compete with 3G networks, except freely created and shared by the users. We want to be able to get on fast, free Wi-Fi wherever we go, so we're building the tools to make that possible. Today we are releasing the first version of our client that replaces the wireless connection manager in Windows. It tests all the networks around you and automatically connects you to the best one. Metrics about all the access points users see are reported to our server, and we show them on a map, so you can see where there is open Wi-Fi coverage - updated constantly, in real time, by the WeFi users. Take a look at San Francisco on our map, for a good example." Link (Thanks, Pablos!)

Mark Frauenfelder: Simon says: "After all your extensive posts about how lame the common American ice cream bar is, this post on Serious Eats just rubs more salt into the wounds of our shamed nation. I can only conclude that Korea truly is light years ahead of us in snack design, craftsmanship and production technology." Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Popsicle parody ad
• Turtle popsicle reflects pride in workmanship
• Bugs Bunny popsicle
• Tweety Bird popsicle doesn't look like Tweety Bird
• Ice cream patent wars in the 1930s
• Expertly produced Korean red bean ice cream fish
• Ice cream treat resembles heinous murderer

Xeni Jardin:

A first-person essay by photographer Ashley Gilbertson, whose work from Iraq has appeared in the New York Times:

I didn’t want to go back. When I began reporting from Iraq in 2002, I was still a wild and somewhat naïve twenty-four-year-old kid. Five years later, I was battle-weary. I had been there longer than the American military and had kept returning long after most members of the “coalition of the willing” had pulled out. Iraq had become my initiation, my rite of passage, but instead of granting me a new sense of myself and a new identity, Iraq had become my identity. Without Iraq, I was nothing. Just another photographer hanging around New York. In Iraq, I had a purpose, a mission; I felt important. I didn’t want to go back, but I needed to—and for the worst possible reason: I wasn’t ready for it to end. After twelve months away, I had a craving that only Iraq could satisfy.

Link. Above: "American soldiers take a biometric scan of [Iraqi detainee] Ziad." (Thanks, Clayton)

Gilbertson has a book coming out soon -- Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, "A Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War." Here's a recent radio interview on NPR's "Fresh Air."

Xeni Jardin: Cosplayas, crunk juice, and spinnin' rims. This video needs not much more in the way of a description. Link. (thanks, Susannah Breslin!)

Xeni Jardin:

Whoah, much badness of ass in this eBay auction, spotted by Fleshbot -- sexy avionics kitschery from Hugh Hefner's 1970 "Big Bunny" DC-9 aircraft:

Described in press materials at the time of its inaugural flight as "Hef's sky-high hutch" and "a floating bachelor pad", the "Big Bunny" was the ultimate in sexy jet-set fabulosity ... and now you have a chance to own the actual fiberglass panels from the original model of Hef's private quarters on the plane as well as a pile of ephemera related to the project (even if you'll have to go to London to pick them up if you're the lucky high bidder).

Link to Fleshbot post, Link to eBay auction. There's some fancy cosplay fixins in here, too -- flight suits and other goodies. (thanks, Jonno!)

Mark Frauenfelder: Len says:

I got this piece of junk mail today ["A Message From The Administrative Offices of The Billing Audit Bureau"] that I thought was pretty funny. It came from The Administrative Offices of The Billing Audit Bureau. In reality, it's from some publishing house in Denver, Co who won't leave me alone and let my subscription to their Inside Photoshop magazine expire. I almost don't want to call them because they keep getting more and more inventive with their junk mail.

I guess as long as they keep sending me them, I'll keep reading them. And as long as they are not invoices, I'll keep not paying them.

Link

Perhaps the most iconic failure of the dot-com era was Pets.com, which pretty much symbolized everything that was wrong during that period. Of course, there's no particular reason why an online pet supply store couldn't be successful. Red Herring notes that online retailer Pet Food Direct has completed a fresh round of investments (via Dealbook); naturally, the magazine makes allusions to Pets.com. But the lesson to be drawn from Pets.com had nothing to do with selling pet food, rather it was all about the company's profligate spending and silly marketing gimmicks. So unless we start to see a return of sock puppet mascots and Super Bowl ads for startups, there's nothing to be particularly alarmed about here.

slugo writes "Internet search giant Google (GOOG) hopes to speed the development of plug-in hybrid cars by giving away millions of dollars to people and companies that have what appear to be practical ways to get plug-in hybrid automobiles to market faster. 'While many people don't associate Google with energy, analysts say the fit isn't all that unnatural. Renewable energy, unlike coal or nuclear, will likely come from thousands or tens of thousands of different locations. Analysts have long said that one of the big challenges will be managing that flow into and out of the nation's electric grid, and that companies that manage the flow of information are well placed to handle that task.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lots of folks have been submitting the story of British censors deciding to give the new video game Manhunt 2 tons of free publicity ban the new video game Manhunt 2. The censors are claiming that it's being banned for "unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone." Of course, that pretty much describes every horror movie or horror book ever created -- but we don't hear calls for those to be banned. Yet, the censors claim that the game "involves a range of unjustifiable harm risks to both adults and minors." It's not quite clear what those risks are. In the meantime, that second link points out that there's a campaign underway stateside against the game as well, from a group demanding that the game be given the strictest rating possible from the ESRB. Of course, the group pushing for this also admits that it's not yet seen the game. Apparently everyone there just knows that the game must be horrible. In the meantime, thanks to all this negative publicity, you can pretty much bet that the demand for Manhunt 2 just show way up.

An anonymous reader writes "An article over at ComputerWorld implies that the EU Privacy Directive, or something like it, will soon be signed into law here in the USA. The author seems to think this is a good thing, but I'm not so sure. From the article: 'We've finally come to realize that self-regulation by industry hasn't worked. The states have stepped in, creating the same situation of conflicting regulation that led to the creation of the EU privacy directive. The only question now is if the law that comes out of Congress will be a small step strictly focused on breaches, such as S.239, or whether we take the bigger step of forming a permanent committee under the FTC to monitor privacy as outlined by S.1178. Either way, the U.S. is finally moving away from the fractured environment of the past and toward a comprehensive privacy strategy.' Is it time for a national privacy law or 'Privacy Czar', or are we better off letting things be?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yesterday I wrote up a Macintosh networking problem. With two ISPs, I wondered how I could use both networks on one LAN. There was a huge outpouring of very high quality information that almost immediately pointed to a class of hardware product that provides a very elegant solution. But I want some more information before decidin