A. N. Onymous sends us to OLPCNews for an account of kids' reactions to the OLPC XO, and comments: "My first impression is, it's just like when you give a kid a box of Lego." The video of a 10-year-old and his younger sister replacing a mobo is pretty cool.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

David Pescovitz:
Two of my patron saints as pitchmen. At left, Timothy Leary's 1993 print ad for The Gap. A copy is currently up for auction on eBay. At right, a still from the William S. Burroughs TV commercial for Nike from 1994. View the blipvert on YouTube.

Link to eBay auction for Leary ad, Link to Burroughs/Nike on YouTube

Last week, the Freakonomics blog got some extra attention by moving the blog to the NY Times. Of course, the blog had been in support of the immensely popular Freakonomics book, but the blog has taken on a life of its own. What was interesting was how people reacted to the news. While there were a few congratulations thrown in, the vast majority of the comments on the blog when the news broke was to complain about the NY Times' decision to switch the RSS feed from full text to partial text, where anyone who wanted to read the whole thing would have to click through. This has kicked off yet another round in the debate with some thoughtful discussions about full vs. partial feeds. Techdirt, of course, offers full feeds and always has. This means that plenty of people who read this site absolutely never visit the site. We're fine with that for a variety of reasons (one of which being that our business model isn't dependent on page views or ad impressions).

However, in our experience, full text feeds actually does lead to more page views, though understanding why is a little more involved. Full text feeds makes the reading process much easier. It means it's that much more likely that someone reads the full piece and actually understands what's being said -- which makes it much, much, much more likely that they'll then forward it on to someone else, or blog about it themselves, or post it to Digg or Reddit or Slashdot or Fark or any other such thing -- and that generates more traffic and interest and page views from new readers, who we hope subscribe to the RSS feed and become regular readers as well. The whole idea is that by making it easier and easier for anyone to read and fully grasp our content, the more likely they are to spread it via word of mouth, and that tends to lead to much greater adoption than by limiting what we give to our readers and begging them to come to our site if they want to read more than a sentence or two. So, while many people claim that partial feeds are needed to increase page views where ads are hosted, our experience has shown that full text feeds actually do a great deal to increase actual page views on the site by encouraging more usage. It's the same thing that we've talked about in other areas of the content industry. Taking value away from users to try to force a specific action is almost always going to be less desirable than providing people what they want. So while Dubner and Levitt may have to argue with the NYTimes beancounters who will claim that partial feeds will increase revenue, they may want to use the lessons they learned from their own book to recognize that the opposite may be true. Full feeds can actually drive more traffic overall.

ttsiod writes "An internet connection is not always at hand. I wanted to install Wikipedia on my laptop to be able to carry it along with me on business trips. After trying and rejecting the normal (MySQL-based) procedure, I quickly hacked a much better one over the weekend, using open source tools. Highlights: (1) Very fast searching. (2) Keyword (actually, title words) based searching. (3) Search produces multiple possible articles, sorted by probability (you choose amongst them). (4) LaTeX based rendering for mathematical equations. (5) Hard disk usage is minimal: space for the original .bz2 file plus the index built through Xapian. (6) Orders of magnitude faster to install (a matter of hours) compared to loading the 'dump' into MySQL — which, if you want to enable keyword searching, takes days."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I saw this commercial in March, and have been looking for it ever since. A group of Dilberts is hanging out in a Holiday Inn, talking about a blogger who works for their company.

Cory Doctorow: I just zipped through Death Valley, the first volume of Boom Studios' fun, clever zombie graphic novels. Death Valley follows the traditional zombie narrative: a few survivors left over after some Terrible Thing zombifies everyone else -- but with the gimmick that these survivors are a Breakfast Club mishmash of Hollywood teenagers whose world ends on graduation day. It's like John Hughes meets George Romero, a great mix of bathos and pathos. The art is great: manga-inflected, but clearly American, and the dialog just snaps off the page. The teenagers are pretty blase about the whole end of the world thing, which probably would have pissed me off if this had gone on much longer, but this is such a quick read that it didn't really get to me. I've got the whole series of Doom Studios books and if this is any indication of the overall quality, I can't wait to dig into 'em. Link

With Congress debating patent reform and the Supreme Court correcting the mistakes of lower courts when it comes to patent laws, it seems that the US Patent and Trademark Office is finally starting to realize that there's widespread dissatisfaction with how it's going about things. Perhaps it's starting to realize that the purpose of the USPTO isn't to grant patents, but to promote innovation. To that end, it's making some minor, but still important, changes to the rules for patent examiners, hoping to improve the quality of patents being approved. The latest change is to try to cut down on overly broad patents and patents where the actual invention isn't entirely clear, by forcing applicants to only include a single invention in a claim. This way the examiners know what the invention is that they're actually supposed to be examining. The fact that this wasn't in place before (along with the suggestion that patent examiners weren't entirely sure what they were examining) should say something about the state of our patent system.

thefickler writes "Google has come come up with a novel way to boost the information it has about local businesses. As part of its Business Referral Representative program, Google is offering individuals up to $10 to visit local businesses and tell them about Google Maps and Google AdWords, collect information (such as hours of operation and types of payment accepted), and take digital photos of the business. Reaction to the program has been mixed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mark Frauenfelder: Christian Outdoorsman sells several types of camouflage Bibles, including a green one for boys and a pink one for girls.

A full text Bible in International Children's Bible translation in traditional camo canvas cover and just the right size for young hands. Embroidered with a cross, this Bible is perfect for adventurous boys.

The cloth binding style offers kids a compact and cool look to carry their Bible to church, school, or on-the-go. It's durable, flexible, and incredibly adventerous for boys of all ages!

Link

Commoditization is always a threat to PC manufacturers like HP and Dell, although by most accounts HP has done a better job of differentiating its products than the competition. But there's also an upside to commodization for these companies: cheaper components. A new research note from a Wall Street analyst argues that both HP and Dell will realize meaningful benefits from cheaper components when they report their coming quarterly earnings. In addition to lower DRAM and LCD prices, the ongoing price war between Intel and AMD will prove particularly beneficial. Whether these companies are actually taking advantage of these savings or whether they've been forced to completely pass them on to consumers depends on the market dynamics. Between Dell and HP, they may have enough of a grip on the market to avoid an all-out price war themselves, but such a situation can only be temporary as they'll be forced to cut their own prices eventually.

David Pescovitz: Juanita Marie Jones, 53, of Rochelle, Georgia, called police after realizing the crack cocaine she bought was bunk. According to an Associated Press article, she was hoping the cops would help her "get her money back." After arriving at Jones's home, they arrested her for possession. Link

arlanTLDR writes "The Seattle PI is running a story about how the MP3 format is the sign of a musical apocalypse. Apparently, many top music producers are 'howling' over the fact that files in a compressed format contain 'less than 10 percent of the original music on the CDs.' Is this just sensationalist FUD, or is there something to the assertion that listening to an MP3 is like hearing music 'through a screen door?'" The article mentions that the iPod and its cheap earbuds bear some of the responsibility for rendering this degradation in sound quality less objectionable.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cory Doctorow: Alex sez, "Karl Schroeder just posted an awesome essay on Worldchanging about how SF thinking about Mars colonization effortsm may actually prove the smartest, shortest route to creating the kinds of innovation we need to live on Earth without destroying the planet's climate and ecosystems. This is truly a kick-ass piece of perspective hacking:"

We should have been colonizing Earth as though it were a planet with no ecosystem resources to exploit.

Look at the difference between what we do when we settle a new area on Earth, compared to what we'd do on a planet like Mars. On Earth we'd take advantage of the free air and water, ready-made soils provided by local fauna, pollination provided by the local bees, all to minimize the costs of building and minimizing our colonies. This process is documented expertly by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel; he points out that the conquest of the Americas was really the invasion of one ecosystem by another, rather than a simple matter of moving human populations. North America is the greatest success story of European expansionism because its ecology was most similar to that of Europe, more than for any political or social factors.

Link (Thanks, Alex!)

David Pescovitz: Knowing my appreciation for artist Marcel Duchamp, Dave Praeger sent me this:

"In my book "Poop Culture: How America is Shaped by its Grossest National Product" (published by your friends at Feral House), I examine the impact of Victorian bathroom morality on every aspect of society, including art. A significant portion of the chapter on art focuses on Duchamp's "Fountain" -- the most important toilet in the history of art. I've posted a PDF excerpt for Boing Boing readers to enjoy."

Link to PDF, Link to buy Poop Culture, Link to Poop Culture Blog

Previously on BB:
• Duchamp's Fountain attacked with a hammer Link
• Making sense of Duchamp Link
• Not a pisser Link
• Smithsonian magazine on Dada Link

Mark Frauenfelder: Bob says: "Here's a heads up for Seattle area BoingBoinger's: A Jim Woodring show at Gage Academy of Art."

I went to the opening last night. Jim gave a fun video slide overview of his career and artistic influences. It also happened to be the same night as the high school age summer school classes' show, so there were lots of families and kids in attendance, not the urban vinyl/hipster/ art gallery crowd. Nice extended Q&A afterwards with a lot of kids asking good questions. Jim was sporting his custom made-in-Japan high tops!

The show at Gage of Jim's work is small but varied, a real sampler box of assorted eye candy. You can see a charcoal drawing, a intaglio print (gorgeous!), camera-ready ink line art, watercolors, a couple oil paintings, and samples of his commercially produced vinyl figures, along with some of Jim's control drawings for sculpting them. You really get a sense of how his imagination creates a truly 3 dimensional world, complete with its own visual language of shapes, motifs and textures, and how he then realizes that internal vision into real objects.

(Click on thumbnails for enlargement)

Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• New Jim Woodring art -- Divinorum, or Life After Man
• New stuff from Jim Woodring
• MP3 interview with Jim Woodring
• Woodring animated
• New Jim Woodring figurine from StrangeCo
• Jim Woodring profile on STRANGEco
• Jim Woodring handpressed prints
• New Jim Woodring toy: Mr Bumper
• Woodring and Frisell's Mysterio Simpatico
• The Comics Journal Audio Archives: Jim Woodring
• Cool Jim Woodring animations
• Jim Woodring's pop-up Moleskine art
• Jim Woodring's Mr. Bumper toy sculpture
• New Jim Woodring toys: "Imperial Newts"
• Jim Woodring Interview
• Woodring's amazing plastic pals
• More wonderful Woodring Weirdness
• New Jim Woodring print: "The Confidence Bird"
• Jim Woodring interview
• Woodring-esque Salamander from old German kids' books

Cory Doctorow: Harry Potter's French publishers have decided not to sue a 16-year-old fan who produced an amateur translation of Deathly Hallows, the concluding volume of the series. The boy undertook to translate the book into French when he discovered that the official French edition would lag the English by three months -- he was worried that his monolingual peers would have their enjoyment of the book ruined by spoilers leaking over from the English-speaking world.

The boy has already spent a night in jail and was facing counterfeiting charges. After a firestorm of worldwide negative publicity, the French publishers -- in consultation with JK Rowling -- decided that suing this child was a losing proposition.

No word on whether the people who thought that putting him in jail for a night would get any kind of promotion, though. Link (Thanks, Mike!)

It's incredibly obvious -- to everybody but the Hollywood movie studios, apparently -- just how bad movie-download sites are. When the first studio-backed efforts launched several years ago, the problems were clear. In the following five years, they haven't been fixed, despite plenty of reviews pointing them out. The studios made "protecting" their content with ridiculously restrictive DRM their top priority; delivering a good user experience came in somewhere down towards the bottom. Now, a new study has yet