Wellington Grey has a great little slideshow about the idiocy of the DMCA's "anti-circumvention" measures, which prohibit breaking the digital locks off the stuff you own. In it, Grey recounts how offended he was when he bought a TomTom GPS that came with a CD in a sealed envelope, the seal on which read, "By breaking this seal, you agree to our contract," but the contract itself was on the CD, behind the seal. In other words, the CD said, "By breaking this seal, you agree to a bunch of secret stuff."

So Grey opted to break extract the CD by slitting the envelope with a pair of scissors, thus evading the abusive "agreement." Then he goes on to point out that if the DMCA applied to physical objects as well as digital objects, scissors would be illegal.

It's a great little illustration -- just the kind of thing you might want to show to the info-civilians in your life when they want to understand why anti-circumvention is such a bad idea. Link (via Making Light)

In today's episode: the amazing flying machines of Carl Rankin -- they're made from unusual materials, like drinking straws, tape, thread, even restaurant take-out boxes. The "Jules Verne" looks more like a clipper ship than a radio-controlled model plane. Next, you've seen claymation, but -- dough-mation? "Behold the Wonder," a short film by Ben Rodkin.

Link to video and comments thread.

l-ascorbic writes "A German court has overturned Vodafone's temporary injunction against T-Mobile. Two weeks ago, the British mobile network won an injunction forcing T-Mobile to sell iPhones that were not locked to its network. Vodafone argued that locking is an anti-competitive practice, and sought to force the German network to permanently allow the use of the phones on other networks. After the injunction was granted, T-Mobile offered the unlocked phones for €999 ($1473), and these will now be withdrawn from sale."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While it used to be that patent hoarding companies like Acacia would file their lawsuits under their own names, more recently the trend has been to hide behind a series of shell companies. The latest is Altitude Capital Partners, a company we've discussed in the past. It's raised hundreds of millions of dollars solely to invest in patents. While officially a private equity firm, it's clear that the company is clearly just a patent hoarder. While it appears to have changed its website somewhat, it used to list "Number and Quality of Potential Infringers" as an investment criteria. It's clearly taken that to heart in its latest series of lawsuits against companies like Google, Yahoo, AOL, RIM, Palm and many others. The interesting thing, though, is that Altitude is doing its best to hide its involvement in these lawsuits, just like it tried to hide an earlier investment in Visto. Instead, it's been using a series of shell companies that are clearly formed solely for the purpose of filing these lawsuits. In the case of Altitude, it appears to be quite difficult to even track down that they're involved at all. Acacia has been doing the same thing as well. There could be a few reasons for the use of such shell companies -- but a big one might be to pretend that these really are cases of "little inventors" vs "big companies" instead of the truth, which appears to be big time investors with hundreds of millions of dollars looking to use questionable patents to squeeze money out of successful companies. Just how Jefferson and Madison envisaged things when they set out to create the patent system.

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From Robots.net:

Robocommunity, the official user community for WowWee robot owners, is offering classes in the Java programming language. The classes are based on the popular programming book "Head First Java" by Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates. They have also written some instructions for downloading and installing the Netbeans software too. The classes are open to all but they are meant to help Robosapien RS Media robot owners learn to develop Java programs on that robot. They have established a Java and the RS Media Central Command page where you can learn more and find a link to their related discussion forum.

Robocommunity Offering Java Classes - Link

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It is official. As PDF Architect Jim King blogged today, Adobe has received word that the ballot for approval of PDF 1.7 to become the ISO 32000 Standard (DIS) has passed by a vote of 13 positive to 1 negative. A two-thirds majority is required to pass so it was a large margin of victory (93%). The vote breaks down as follows: Countries voting positive with no comments (9): Australia, Bulgaria, China, Japan, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine. Countries voting positive with comments (4): UK (13 comments), USA (125), Germany (11), Switzerland (19). Countries voting negative with comments (1): France (37 comments). Countries abstaining (1): Russia.

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A few years ago, an honest Virginia man reported a bank error that resulted in an extra $1.8 million dollars in his bank account -- not once, but three times. Where did all of that money come from? Perhaps they have now found the source. This week, a Georgia man was notified that he had a negative balance of $211 trillion at his Wachovia bank account. His debt makes the national debt, which is only slightly over $9 trillion, seem like small potatoes. Luckily for him, Wachovia reports that the balance was caused by an isolated banking error, and that he was not liable for any charges related to the negative balance. In this case, the error was that his account number was entered in place of his balance. Like the $218 trillion phone bill we saw in 2006, why are errors of this magnitude not caught by some sort of bounds checking algorithm in the bank's software? Furthermore, if an error this size gets through all of the checks and balances, then what other, less noticeable errors are falling through the cracks every day?

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Dave from uC Hobby sent us link to a Lab Tip about repurposing a bottled water bottle as a soldering station water bottle. Good tip (just make sure it doesn't encourage you to over-water the sponge. You want it to be damp, not soppy).

This made me think of one of my soldering tips. When I first started doing a lot of electronics work, especially cannibalizing old components for parts, I couldn't figure out what to do with all of the solder flakes you suck up into a Desoldering Pump. Putting it on your bench in a pile is no good 'cause it ends up flying all over the place (and it's not something you want to be traveling around your work/living space). So I got a leftover food container and cut a hole in the top to fit the pump's nylon tip. I also put a moist paper towel in the bottom for the solder flakes to stick to. When I'm done with a soldering session, I just fold up the towel and throw it away. No fuss, no muss.

(BTW: I don't use a sponge with my soldering set-up, I use the Solder Tip Cleaning Genie, which I love (seen bottom-left in this photo). You can read my review of it on Street Tech.

Lab Tip - Soldering Station Water Bottle - Link

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longacre writes "The tiny village of Barrow Gurney, England, has asked GPS map publisher Tele Atlas to remove them from the company's maps. The reason: truck drivers using GPS navigation devices are being directed to drive through the town despite the roads being too narrow for sidewalks, which has led to numerous accidents. At the root of the problem lies the fact that the navigation maps used by trucks are the same as those used by passenger cars, and they don't contain data on road width or no-truck zones. Tele Atlas says they will release truck-appropriate databases at some point, but until then they advise local governments to make use of a technology dating back to the Romans: road signs."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When I was in college, the campus safety system consisted of a series of emergency telephone poles with blue lights on top. The deal was that from any place on campus you were supposed to be able to see at least one emergency blue light phone, and in the event of an emergency, all you needed to do was knock one such phone off the hook and campus police would arrive quickly. It appears that some universities are getting a more modern update on this idea, as Montclair State University apparently requires students to buy a special GPS-enabled mobile phone that can be used to report emergencies to campus officials. The phones come with special software, including a special timer system. A student can set the timer before walking home, and if he or she does not turn off the timer by the time it is up, the police will be alerted to the location of the phone. It's an interesting feature -- but is it really worth requiring all students to buy one? Apparently very few students actually use the system at all. It's certainly for a good cause, but it sounds like it's a bit of overkill that is resulting in very little usage. There's nothing wrong with offering such a deal to students who want it -- which will make it naturally appealing to those who are safety conscious and, thus, more likely to use it. However, forcing everyone to buy in seems unnecessary.

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Steve writes in -

I purchased one of the Interactive LED Table kits from Evil Mad Scientist and built a table, it took a week to assemble, and almost two months to make the table part, but it's pretty awesome. Tons of photos, and a few videos of the building process, and final table on the link above

Interactive LED table - Link.

Related:


Interactive LED coffee table kit - Link & more.

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I caught a bit of today's radio debate between the Democratic presidential candidates.

NPR is providing it as an MP3 download. Much appreciated.

One thing's for sure, we dodged a big World War III size bullet today with the National Intelligence Estimate. Looks like the military didn't want to go to war with Bush, again.

Now a question for the electorate, how do we make sure that the next president gets the message loud and clear -- no more bullshit wars. I think a late-term impeachment and trial of Bush and Cheney would help make the point to future presidents. Fuck with the people again and we'll have your ass.

That Bush even thinks about legacy is a travesty. He belongs in jail. That's his legacy.

C'mon, you can't say it's never crossed your mind: "Would bullet-proof glass hold up to a Soviet-built RPG-7?" The Internet: Always here to answer the vexing questions that keep you awake at night.

Rocket Launcher vs. Glass - Link

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ES&S is already involved in a lawsuit for providing uncertified software to California e-voting machines, but things keep getting worse for the company. Beyond all the other problems it's had with buggy machines and a defiant attitude towards anyone who questions the company, California has finally produced the independent security team review of the ES&S machines used in California and it's not pretty. You may recall that all of the other e-voting machines were reviewed by independent researchers four months ago. ES&S, however, wasn't included in that review because the company stubbornly refused to hand over its source code until well after the deadline, meaning that the review had to wait. However, the results are pretty similar to the other machines. The machine was clearly not built with security in mind, as both the software and the physical security were found to be lacking and easily violated in ways that would not leave much of a trace. At this point, none of this should be even remotely surprising. What still is surprising is why none of these firms will even admit that their approaches to date have fallen well short of what was necessary -- while committing to building new machines that actually have real security and accountability built in.

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theraindog writes "Errata are not uncommon with new processors, but a problem with the TLB logic in AMD's quad-core Opteron and Phenom processors appears to be quite serious. The erratum is so severe that AMD has issued a 'stop ship' order on all quad-core Opterons. AMD has also blamed this bug for the delay of the 2.4GHz Phenom, despite the fact that the erratum is unrelated to clock speed. A BIOS-based workaround for the issue has been made available to motherboard makers, but it apparently carries a 10-20% performance penalty. What's more disturbing is that AMD knew of the erratum and the potential performance hit associated with fixing it before it launched the Phenom processor. Hardware provided to the press for reviews did not include the fix, conveniently overstating Phenom performance."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Strictly No Photography is a photo-sharing site for pictures taken where you are not allowed to take them.

(Shown here: Zev's Liquidated Logos, taken at Lazarides Gallery london. Photographer: Betty.)

Link (Via Laughing Squid)

Village of the Giants (1965) is a pretty awful movie. But the music is great, and this clip is the best part. Watch this and you'll never have to see the whole thing.

Sexy Beau Bridges and Joy Harmon in Village Of The Giants a spoofy movie where a gang of juvenile delinquents ingest a substance and grow to 30 ft tall, then proceed to take over a small town. directed by Bert L. Gordon (based on a novel written by H.G. Wells) , music by Jack Nitzsche with an appearance by The Beau Brummels, choregraphy by Toni Basil.

This track by Jack Nitzsche, called The Last Race, is also featured on Quentin Tarantino's last movie soundtrack: Death Proof (2007).

Link

Gio writes -

Similar to some of the other 41hz.com kits featured on Make, the AMP6 is a simple and inexpensive DIY Class-T Amplifier kit. Despite the low cost of the kit and efficient power consumption (similar to that of a Class D design), the AMP6 delivers very good sound.

AMP6 T-Amp: DIY Class-T amplifier kit - Link.

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necro81 writes "The NYTimes has an in-depth piece describing an upcoming shuttle mission, scheduled for next August, to make a final service call to the Hubble Space Telescope. After the Columbia accident and the scheduled shuttle decommission in 2010, additional service trips to the telescope were off the table. The resulting hue and cry from scientists, legislators, and the public forced NASA to reconsider. Next August, if all goes well, Atlantis will grab Hubble, replace its aging gyros, attempt to revive the Advanced Camera for Surveys, and install a new camera and spectrograph. The telescope could then continue doing science well into the next decade."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.