coondoggie writes "On top of its recently announced plan to reduce flight delays, Federal Aviation Administration officials today launched what they hope will be pan U.S. and European Union joint action plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft. Specifically the group announced the Atlantic Interoperability Initiative to Reduce Emissions or AIRE — the first large-scale environmental plan aimed at uniting aviation players from both sides of the Atlantic."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mark Frauenfelder: Edward says:

There was a thread in a comic book chat room about two years ago that discussed the "Robin Corner Shock Pose" Its superbly funny. In a nutshell the late 50's and 60's Batman comics have Robin in the bottom left or right corner looking shocked at whatever is going on. This occurs on about 30 covers. Nearly exact same pose every time. Here's a link with the page showing a poster picture of the covers.

Link

Mark Frauenfelder: Jamie says: "Stephan Orsak's experience reminded me of [Ray Bradbury's short story] "The Pedestrian."

"But you haven't explained for what purpose."

"I explained; for air, and to see, and just to walk."

"Have you done this often?"

"Every night for years."

The police car sat in the center of the street with its radio throat faintly humming.

"Well, Mr. Mead," it said.

"Is that all?" he asked politely.

"Yes," said the voice. "Here." There was a sigh, a pop. The back door of the police car sprang wide. "Get in."

"Wait a minute, I haven't done anything!"

"Get in."

(Illustration by Joe Mugnaini, who also did the covers for many other US Bradbury books) Link

"Human therapeutic cloning has moved a step closer after U.S. researchers said they had successfully created embryonic stem cells from monkey embryos. Scientists told a stem cell research conference in Cairns this week that they had successfully created two batches of embryonic stem cells from cloned rhesus monkey embryos."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Remember all those analyst reports warning about how dangerous iPods were in enterprise settings? Apparently, those were so successful that analyst firms are shoving each other aside to make the same claims about the upcoming launch of the iPhone. Some are worried that executives will buy iPhones because they'll be a status symbol, but the lack of enterprise security will make them a prime target for hackers, while others are complaining about the general lack of enterprise-ready security. The thing is, no one has claimed that the iPhone is an enterprise device. And, as for the security risks, they're about the same as any other portable storage device, which is hardly a new phenomenon. However, putting out a warning about the iPhone is the type of thing that attracts press coverage, so it's not too surprising to see analyst firms rush into it.

Mark Frauenfelder: Here's a funny mashup of of presidential candidates as if they were competing on American Idol. (Shown here: Rudy Giuliani about to get her bosom nuzzled by Donald Trump) Link

*SECADM writes "Learning from Microsoft's error, Google is building a lobbying power house in Washington." From the Washington Post article: Two years ago, Google was on the verge of making that Microsoft-like error. Davidson, then a 37-year-old former deputy director of the Center for Democracy & Technology, was the search-engine company's sole staff lobbyist in Washington. As recently as last year, Google co-founder Sergey Brin had trouble getting meetings with members of Congress. To change that, Google went on a hiring spree and now has 12 lobbyists and lobbying-related professionals on staff here — more than double the size of the standard corporate lobbying office — and is continuing to add people.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mark Frauenfelder: Liz Bulkley, the host of "The Front Porch" on New Hampshire Public Radio interviewed me about Rule the Web today. It was a lot of fun, and she was not afraid to ask me some tough questions about the privacy implications of some of the sites I told her about.

No matter how much you may know about the internet, there's always something new out there that can make your online experience better. Tonight on the Front Porch, we talk with editor, blogger and tech expert Mark Frauenfelder about all the hidden gems the web has to offer. Mark is the founder of the popular technology blog Boing Boing, and he's the author of the new book Rule the Web.

You can listen to a recording of the program here. Link

Unfortunately, the debate over net neutrality has mainly been filled with nonsensical blather from both sides, rather than serious discussion on the issue. This may be due, in part, to the lack of a good understanding of what net neutrality would actually look like. On its new blog related to public policy, Google makes its case for net neutrality, enumerating what would and wouldn't be allowed under such a regime. But as Tim Lee points out, even within this one blog post, Google's stance is incoherent. For example, the company defends prioritization based on application type (e.g. streaming video) and it acknowledges the right of a broadband provider to offer its own proprietary content (like IPTV). But based on this, there's nothing stopping a broadband provider from giving the lowest priority to streaming video in order to prevent competition to its own service. Also, because proprietary content services are allowed, an operator could just license a third party's content, as a way of getting around limitations on favoritism. Basically, under Google's own scheme, there's really very little to prevent a broadband provider from prioritizing content in any way they want. So perhaps we need to go easier on the various shill groups that obfuscate the issues, since even rational participants can't explain their position very well.

Mark Frauenfelder:
Here's a video I made to promote my new book, Rule the Web: How To Do Anything and Everything on the Internet -- Better, Faster, Easier. Special thanks to Mr. Dork for agreeing to be in the video! Link

Mark Frauenfelder: The wonderful art gallery/tech workshop called Machine Project in Los Angeles' Echo Park has two great events this weekend:

SEEING ANEW: A LECTURE BY TREVOR OAKES + RYAN OAKES
Co-hosted by The Institute For Figuring and Machine Project
7pm Sunday June 24, 2007
FREE

It is hard to believe there is anything new to be discovered about perspective drawing. But in 2004 twin artists Trevor and Ryan Oakes made a startling discovery about how to render perspectival images on the inner surface on a sphere. Their discovery is all the more intriguing in the light of recent controversy surrounding David Hockney's thesis about the use of spherical lenses in the making of perspective drawings in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

In their first public talk the Oakes will discuss their perspectival research and will demonstrate their unique spherical rendering technique. The lecture will include a historical account of other optical tools used to depict three-dimensional space - including the concave mirror-lens, the camera obscura, and the camera lucida - by way of introduction to their own method, which explores the interplay between the visual cortex and the human retina using pen and "concave paper."

The Institute For Figuring is a Los Angeles-based organization dedicated to the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of science and mathematics.

Link

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Build a Blubber Bot Robotic Blimp - Instructor Jed Berk
Saturday June 30th, 2007
10am - 4pm (w/ a break for lunch)

One-day workshop w/ materials included. $185
Enrollment is limited to 7 people.

Blubber Bots are DIY robotic species that navigate autonomously and intelligently. Blubber Bots float, dance, seek and sing. They are light-seeking helium-filled balloons that graze the landscape in search of light and cell-phone signals. If you make a call and wave your phone near a Blubber Bot, it will go into a flocking dance or sing you a special tune. They bellow sounds similar to a whale’s song and serenade you with melodies. When not being played with, they rest for awhile, awakening periodically and seeking attention.

Join us at Machine Project to build your very own Blubber Bot with inventor Jed Berk. Link

Xeni Jardin:

This is the funniest 5 second internet video ever. Maybe just the funniest internet video ever. Video Link. With all that gravitas, I think he must be Mr. Romance's pet or friend. (Thanks, Kent Nichols!)

Mark Frauenfelder: Spike says:

Back when I was working at Cutler's Records in New Haven, CT in the late (or was it mid?) 1970's my manager Barry told me about these things and how they used to sell 'em like hot cakes back in the 50's. He wasn't the kind of guy to make shit up but I still found it kinda hard to believe that you could have a record player in your car. For some odd reason I was just thinking about it and managed to google up this article.

Link

jcgam69 writes "A federal judge in New Mexico has put the brakes on the RIAA's lawsuit train, at least in the US District Court for New Mexico. The case in question is part of the RIAA's campaign against file-sharing on college campuses and names "Does 1-16," who allegedly engaged in copyright infringement using the University of New Mexico's network. In a ruling issued last month but disclosed today by file-sharing attorney Ray Beckerman, Judge Lorenzo F. Garcia denied the RIAA's motion to engage in discovery. This means that the RIAA will not be able to easily get subpoenas to obtain identifying information from the University."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The silly levels of hype about Second Life as a business tool have died down over the last few months, as companies realize there's often little value in setting up shop there beyond the initial PR benefits. However, the WSJ would have us believe that a growing number of companies are conducting job interviews inside Second Life. Perhaps if companies are hiring for jobs working on their in-world properties, such interviews make sense, but it's hard to see the benefit of interviewing for other positions there. For instance, one guy says he spent several hours building his avatar and trying to figure out how to get around Second Life, then couldn't figure out how to get the avatar to sit down in a chair during his interview. The job he was interested in? Executive chef for a large food-service company. It would seem that the interviews become largely about the prospective hire's ability to manipulate their avatar and get around Second Life, which seems largely irrelevant to most people's jobs (unless, perhaps, they're the Dell employee responsible for passing out free in-game trees on Earth Day).

kremvax writes "It's a field day for robotics hackers everywhere, as NASA releases the first installment of their CLARAty reusable robotic software framework to the public. According to the JPL press release, these modules contain everything from math infrastructure to device drivers for common motors and cameras, and computer vision, image, and 3D processing."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

kremvax writes "It's a field day for robotics hackers everywhere, as NASA releases the first installment of their CLARAty reusable robotic software framework to the public. According to the JPL press release, these modules contain everything from math infrastructure to device drivers for common motors and cameras, and computer vision, image, and 3D processing."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Xeni Jardin: Over at Wired's Threat Level blog, Ryan Singel writes:

A House Homeland Security subcommittee is holding a hearing [today] into security breaches, hacking and IT security failure at the Department of Homeland Security, that totaled more than 800 incidents in two years.

During that hearing, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) questioned congressional auditors about their report criticizing U.S. Visit, the IT system intended to keep track of foreigners entering and leaving the United States. Again, Ryan Singel blogs:

"What did you find regarding US Visit in terms of cyber security?," Logren asked. Keith A. Rhodes, the director of the Center for Technology and Engineering at the Government Accountability Office, seemed to be waiting for this one:

Security issues are pervasive. As matter of fact, i realize that there was earlier statement that our audit was a year old, but actually our audit started a year ago. As matter of fact, we curtailed our assessment since we kept getting more and more findings. If we continued to this day, we would still be finding problems. The problems are pervasive and systemic.

Actually, a lot could be fixed. Systems were out of date or misconfigured. A lot of them are zero cost fixes. I reiterate the systems are run by contractors.