The evolving credit crunch has forced some tech companies to to suspend plans to buyback their stock due to an inability to raise the necessary cash. Either way, you'd think that in light of current conditions, companies would be hesitant to leverage up by expanding their debt levels and removing some shares from the market. But current conditions don't seem to be much of a deterrent to some firms. VeriSign has announced the successful sale of $1.1 billion worth of convertible bonds with the proceeds earmarked for share repurchases. Although the move carries risk, Wall Street analysts tend to love this kind of move. One analyst lauded the announcement, claiming that VeriSign will now have a more "mature capital structure". The thinking is that VeriSign is a large company with slowing growth and so the quickest way to maximize returns is to take on debt and bet on itself. If the company executes well, then the move will look brilliant. But it leaves the company little to no margin for error should things not go exactly as planned.

mysqlbytes writes "According to a recent post on the BBC's website, Nokia has admitted to a problem in the BL-5C batteries made by Matsushita between December 2005 and November 2006. For some of us, it means longer battery life with a new lease of life and for some of us, no more burnt legs. You can check out the product advisory here."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Despite the war on online gambling in the US, a few brave companies continue to search for loopholes allowing them to operate. The most recent one to get our attention was Betcha.com, which offered a platform for peer-to-peer wagers. The only catch was that the losing party wasn't technically compelled to pay the winner, a caveat that the company felt would allow it to operate legally. Authorities disagreed, however, and the site was promptly shuttered. TechCrunch points to a new mobile-oriented site dubbed Swamble that hopes to make a market in non-financial wagers. So, for example, instead of betting $20 on the outcome of a football game, the two parties could wager something else, like a free week of yard work for the winning party. While the authorities may not have much of a problem with these arrangements (though who knows?), it's hard to see the company faring very well. Non-financial wagers are going to have a very narrow appeal. For people who do like the arrangement, there's very little need for an actual service to facilitate such bets. The company says that in the future it will add a private financial wagering system, away from the peering eyes of the law, but if a thriving betting platform does take off, it's hard to imagine the government not getting involved in some way.

The beautiful new home of Mr. Ethan Marcotte. I really hope the robot's eyes blink on the t-shirt, too. Wait, there will be a t-shirt, right? #

Raver32 writes "Following the successful launch and deployment of two inflatable space modules, on Monday the owner and founder of Bigelow Aerospace announced plans to move ahead with the launch of its first human habitable spacecraft, the Sundancer. The decision to fast-track Sundancer was made in part to rising launch costs as well as the ability to test some systems on the ground, company CEO Robert Bigelow said in a press statement. "As anyone associated with the aerospace industry is aware, global launch costs have been rising rapidly over the course of the past few years," Bigelow is quoted as saying. "These price hikes have been most acute in Russia due to a number of factors including inflation, previous artificially low launch costs and the falling value of the U.S. dollar.""

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mark Frauenfelder: xarph says: Here's an utterly complete (down to the branded POWER CABLES for chrissake) working NeXT cube system with every accessory, document, piece of software, and even stacks of spare parts. This is pretty much the retrocomputing equivalent of finding a working, fully restored Dymaxion Car on craigslist. Link

I've been flying a lot over the past few years, and it's become pretty standard for airlines to now have self-serve kiosks where you can check in and print out a boarding pass. If you have a bag to check, you then take it to a "bag drop" station. There are fewer and fewer places where this isn't the norm -- but apparently Alaska Airlines owns a patent on the process. The company says it got the patent to "reward the employees" who came up with the idea, but that doesn't make much sense. As William Stepp points out in the link above, wouldn't Alaska Airlines have been better off not spending all that money filing a patent. In fact, if they wanted to reward the employees who came up with the idea, why not just give the money wasted on the patent filing to the employees?

BillOfThePecosKind writes "Researchers have demonstrated a new technology using tiny "ionic wind engines" that might dramatically improve computer chip cooling, possibly addressing a looming threat to future advances in computers and electronics. Purdue researchers funded by Intel have improved the "heat-transfer coefficient" by some 250%. I never liked water cooled systems, and this sounds promising. However I wonder how much ozone one of these things produces."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

David Pescovitz: Kasey Kazee was arrested for robbing a liquor store in Ashland, Kentucky on Friday. He allegedly disguised himself by wrapping duct tape around his face. He also apparently pulled his t-shirt around his head Cornholio-style. Don't miss the video interview with Kazee where he denies being the duct tape bandit. From WSAZ:

Miller says Kazee also had a t-shirt pulled up around his head during the robbery attempt. Miller says it reminded him of the "Cornholio" character from the "Beavis and Butthead" cartoon.

Steele says Kazee did get away with two rolls of change before Steele could grab his club. Police found much of that change in the parking lot.

Link (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)

Previously on BB:
• Man disguised as tree robs bank Link

Cory Doctorow: The RIAA owes former file-sharing defendant Debbie Foster more than $68,000 in legal fees after losing their case against her -- but they won't pay up. They haven't responded to polite notes asking them to turn over the dough the court ordered them to pay, so now Foster has asked the court to "enter judgement" which will let her turn the Fortune 100 delinquent deadbeats like Universal, Warners, Sony and EMI over to a collection agency. Link (via /.)

Cory Doctorow: Following up on this morning's story about outing whitewashers on Wikipedia, Brian sez, "We went ahead and took a look at changes to Wikipedia allegedly made by the people from the Fox News offices - the changes originating from IP address 12.167.224.228. We've done the legwork of poring through all the edits and published a comprehensive list. An example of the changes:

From: "Many groups and commentators, including [[Media Matters for America]], and liberal broadcasters [[Al Franken]], and [[Keith Olbermann]], have claimed that Hume distorted Roosevelt's views."

To: "Many groups and commentators, including [[Media Matters for America]], and liberal broadcasters [[Al Franken]], and [[Keith Olbermann]], have claimed that Hume distorted Roosevelt's views in an attempt to ride Mr. Hume's coat tails in the ratings race as Mr. Hume hosts the highest rated political program on cable television."

Link (Thanks, Brian!)

Cory Doctorow: AtomicMadhouse's line of comics sound-effect tees is pretty swell. Link (Thanks, Frank!)

Cory Doctorow: An eBay seller (whose first language is clearly not English) has hand-built a replica steampunk powered monocycle from the Victorian era. This is a hell of a piece of engineering.

After many dedication compiling information about books and documentation of epoch of the 19th century, 1got a base of knowledge to make this faithful reply of this unique monocycle for it´s funcionality and elegance. It was invented in 1873 in France.

Link (Thanks, Detroit Dave!)

See also: a steely-toothed bouquet of steampunk links from Boing Boings past

Cory Doctorow: Britain's Channel 4 has just announced the second season schedule for The IT Crowd, the geeky sitcom that rocked my socks when it debuted last season. They've posted some video of creator Graham Linehan (who also created the brilliant sitcom Father Ted) talking about the second season -- but they've region-locked it so I have no idea what it's like.

Boy, that's dumb. I thought that it was dumb to region-lock the web-previews of the show last season, but they supposedly had to do this due to their territorial deals -- but surely there's no territorial deal on Graham talking about the show. Someone put this on the Pirate Bay, please. Link (Thanks to everyone who sent this in!)

(Disclosure: I was an unpaid consultant to Season One of The IT Crowd, and I live with a Channel 4 commissioner)

See also: The IT Crowd -- the geek comedy I've been waiting for all my life

Brian Heater writes "I recently did a two-part interview with John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants. It might be of interest, as we discussed the role of technology both in terms of their recording and distribution, from Dial-a-Song, to podcasts, to Myspace. Says John: 'All the song writing we do, we'll be working with a computer, just as a recording device, and maybe we'll be working with a program as a music-generating device. That's just the sound-making devices that are there. A lot of times it's good enough, but when you hear it played on a real instrument, it's much more persuasive and exciting. Or conversely, you've have some lumpy, homemade loop that has oodles of charm that you forget to leave on the final version of the song, because it seemed amateurish. Finding the balance is really the key for us. I'm very excited by the time we live in, but I feel like any time in the post-mechanical era would be good for me.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This will probably come as a surprise to absolutely no one, but a new Wikipedia scanner service is matching the IP address of Wikipedia edits to the organizations the IPs are associated with -- and it's turning up some interesting matches. For example, there's the person coming from a Diebold IP who deleted paragraphs and paragraphs of Wikipedia content that highlighted Diebold's ongoing security problems. Then there's the Disney employee who tried to pull a link to Cory Doctorow's speech on why DRM is bad for business from the DRM entry. Wired is actually keeping a running tally of some of the most interesting edits. Now, before people use this as more evidence as to Wikipedia's trust problems, it doesn't look like those edits did much damage, as they were quickly changed back to the more appropriate entries by those watching out for vandalism.

Mark Frauenfelder:
The Kelsey-Hayes Company in Detroit, MI produced this brochure for their pre-fabricated fallout shelters. SyndProd scanned it and put it on Flickr for the enjoyment of the human race. Link (Via Make)

David Pescovitz: New studies of dust that form lifelike structures suggest that extraterrestrial life may not be carbon-based at all. Researchers at the Russian Academy of Science, the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in German, and the University of Sydney observed particles of inorganic dust form helical structures and go through other "lifelike" changes. The experiments took place under simulated plasma conditions, representative of space and also the primordial Earth. These inorganic structures may have even led to the organic molecules of life that we're familiar with, and made from. From the Institute of Physics press release:

Quite bizarrely, not only do these helical strands interact in a counterintuitive way in which like can attract like, but they also undergo changes that are normally associated with biological molecules, such as DNA and proteins, say the researchers. They can, for instance, divide, or bifurcate, to form two copies of the original structure. These new structures can also interact to induce changes in their neighbours and they can even evolve into yet more structures as less stable ones break down, leaving behind only the fittest structures in the plasma.

So, could helical clusters formed from interstellar dust be somehow alive? "These complex, self-organized plasma structures exhibit all the necessary properties to qualify them as candidates for inorganic living matter," says (V.N.) Tsytovich, "they are autonomous, they reproduce and they evolve".

Link to press release, Link to New Journal of Physics paper