Today in my irregular, continuing series of pix from my travels: this very handsome "ZEN" tag from the Shibuya hills in Tokyo, written on a bamboo guy-wire cover attached to a utility pole. Link

The Canadian version of the US DMCA copyright law has been stalled. Reliable word has it that the bill will not be introduced today, as previous planned. No one knows how long the delay will last -- or whether the reintroduction will see the bill emerge with more balanced language and an opportunity for public input as well as input by Canadian artists, librarians, educators and industry.

Over the past couple weeks, we've rallied and sent thousands of letters and emails, called and shown up in person and in force at Industry Minister Jim Prentice's office. It worked. We have put a stake through this bill's heart. Next step: be prepared to cut its head off, fill its mouth full of garlic, and bury it at the crossroads.

Now this is a Hannukah present! Link (Thanks, Mike, Hub and Deb!)

See also:
Canadian DMCA rally in Calgary -- photos, videos, reports
O Canada! The Canadian DMCA version of the national anthem
Canadian DMCA introduced
CANADIANS! Tomorrow is your best chance to fight the Canadian DMCA! Event in Calgary, national phone-in
Canada's DMCA won't get any consumer rights added to it for a decade
Facebook group for fighting Canada's DMCA growing fast
Ranting hand-puppet tackles Canada's DMCA
HOWTO Fight Canada's coming DMCA copyright law
Canada's coming DMCA will be the worst copyright yet
Canadian DMCA: how it might have happened
CBC radio show needs your input for question with Minister responsible for Canadian DMCA
Canadian Industry Minister refuses to defend Canadian DMCA in public

OriginalArlen writes "The UK government has announced an ambitious plan to expand the existing offshore wind turbine farms, which are already extensive, to an estimated 7,000 units — two per mile of coastline — enough to generate 20% of the UK's power needs by 2020. The newly green-friendly Conservative opposition party is also backing the scheme. Wonder what they'll make of it in Oregon..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel has spotted this carved wooden acorn MP3 player, which sports a small joystick controller on the top and a headphone jack on the bottom. Its guts are Evergreen's DIY DAP kit, which allow you to sculpt any kind of shell for your music player. Link, Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

Wired's Quinn Norton has a great feature in today about amateur clock-hackers who build their own super-accurate atomic clocks. These "Time Nuts" pull stunts like taking their kids hiking in the mountains for a couple days, using their cesium clocks to recreate Einstein's time-gravity experiment to prove that the family had gained 22 nanoseconds on their neighbors by rising high above Earth's gravatic center.

This is just part one -- more tomorrow!

With the end of the Cold War, and with telecommunications technology advancing rapidly, surplus stores and eBay have filled up with discarded precision time equipment once beyond the reach of all but governments. Cesium clocks, rubidium clocks and even the occasional hydrogen maser can be had for less than a decent laptop. A recent search on eBay turned up an HP 5061B cesium standard for sale for $2,000, and you can get a telecom surplus rubidium standard for less than $400. Some of this equipment costs upwards of $50,000 new.

Their access to once-forbidden technology lets the time hackers play in a realm of precision that underpins the modern technological world. A select few, like Van Baak, have started exploring the underpinnings of the universe.

Link

All-in-One Joystick games prove that you can cram an entire, mid-80s console system into something the size of a hockey puck, so it was inevitable that the hockey puck would get gussied up. Exhibit A: a Millennium Falcon all-in-one system that plays Star Wars games.

The Plug & Play Retro Gaming Millennium Falcon Joystick offers a choice of a Lightsaber Dual, Assault on Hoth, Red Reader and Battle of Endor games that see you engaging in Lightsaber battles to flying an X-Wing to controlling a ground force assault and even posing alongside Chewbacca, with each of the games being stored an a hard rive unit built into the Millennium Falcon themed joystick controller – all you have to do is plug it in to a TV using the supplied RCA cable (the Millennium Falcon is devoid of wireless capabilities). Link to TFTS post,

Link to buy at Urban Outfitters (offline as of 0500h GMT Dec 11/2007) (via Wonderland)

I just woke up in Paris, it's 5:34AM here, but back in California, it still never ceases to amaze me, the day hasn't yet flipped. You guys haven't even gone to bed yet! Now that's amazing to me. What perseverence! Keep up the good work everybody.

I just started posting a couple of twits that really should be a blog post, so let's get started.

First at some point, after a suitable period of mourning, I'd like to rasie the issue of what's to happen with Marc Orchant's web presence.

Which of course is a way of focusing attention on all of our web presences.

None of us like to think of it, but truth is none of us are going to live forever.

Yet if you read this, it's likely that you're creating a digital body that can and imho should continue to exist even after your physical body stops existing.

People are humble, no one wants to come out and say their work has any value that's worth preserving past their death, but come on, we know that's not true. If Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be writing on the web. As would Hemingway or Faulkner, Vonnegut or Mailer, John Lennon or Dylan Thomas, Carl Sandberg or Robert Frost. Mozart, Bach and Beethoven. You think there isn't any great literature out there on the web? I wouldn't be so sure about that. What if there is? And what if a baby born today becomes a great creative force? Or what if there's a social disaster like the Holocaust? Did you know that there are preserved diaries from pre-revolutionary America? Writings of ordinary people can be of enormous help to historians. And if we believe in citizen journalism (I do) why not citizen historians? Shouldn't we be thinking out into the future? We should!

With all possible humility, I'd like to tell you that a few days after I die my entire web presence will likely disappear. My servers require some attention from me from time to time. The first time that happens, poof, there goes 10-plus years of Scripting News, and all the docs for the OPML Editor and the OPML spec, the XML-RPC site, to name just a few. Anyway, within a couple of months it will all certainly disappear, unless someone pays my hosting and DSL bills. Maybe someone will, but isn't it ridiculous that that's what it depends on?

And when my sites disappear so will my uncle's. He died in 2003. His site is still accessible because I keep it that way. When I die, who will will take over for me? I'm sure the world will survive without his writing, but why? If I love the memory of my uncle, and I do, what can I do to reserve a place for him in the archive of the future. It seems such a small thing, but it's most of what remains of his life.

And what of academics, Nobel Laureates and others? I know for a fact that a great university (Harvard) has no plan to protect their web-based work after they pass. It's so ironic that the web offers an archival solution for non-digital work, yet the web information is more fragile than the physical stuff.

Preserving our digital heritage is going to require some foresight, some planning, but it seems possible and we surely can do much better. Marc's fate awaits us all. While we're still alive, there's still time to solve this problem. When we're gone, it will be too late. Part of his legacy can be that he helped focus us on this issue, and his life work could be a great test case. Do we want to see his work preserved? And if so, how will it be done?

PS: The RSS 2.0 site will likely persist, because I gave it to Berkman, and then used it as a test cast to learn about future-safing archives. It seems likely to continue to exist, knock wood, praise Murphy, as long as Harvard exists.

For most people, broadband ISPs are really little more than dumb pipes. We want our connections to the internet and that's all. Many people use third party email offerings (especially from portals) and set their own home pages. Unfortunately, being a dumb pipe is the last thing that these broadband providers want. It makes it a lot more difficult to communicate with customers and especially to try to charge them for premium services. It appears that Canadian ISP Rogers is testing a system where it inserts its own messages into Google's home page. In the screenshot, Rogers inserts a huge message at the top of Google's homepage to let a user know that he or she is approaching the monthly bandwidth limit on the account. This is troublesome for a number of reasons. There's simply no reason to hijack a site like Google (and, in fact, I'd imagine that the folks at Google wouldn't be particularly pleased about an ISP messing with its page). If an ISP really wants to communicate with people, why not just pop up a proxy page when the browser is first opened? Most importantly, though, it shows how some ISPs feel about its position in the value stream. They feel that they are more important than the content and services you are using. This is what leads to all those network neutrality debates, where the ISPs forget that they're providing just a pipe and think that they are the most important part of the process and have the right to change how everything else works. This doesn't mean they should be regulated -- but it does mean that both users and service providers (such as Google) should make it abundantly clear to ISPs like Rogers that this will not be tolerated.

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If you read Kaden Harris' awesome Eccentric Cubicle, but are too lazy to fabricate desktop seize equipment parts on your own, or have someone on your gift list who's a danger around bladed machinery, these siege engine kits might be the ticket.

Medieval Siege Engine Kits - [Thanks, Patti!] Link

From the Maker Store:

Eccentric Cubicle by Kaden Harris
Price: $29.99
Buy: Maker store - Link.
Sample chapters: - Link.

Who says office cubicles need to be dreary? In this book, author Kaden Harris (creator of www.eccentricgenius.caEccentric Genius) introduces aspiring and die-hard Makers to a highly entertaining parallel universe of surreal office-based projects that are sure to pique the curiosity of even the most jaded office mates.

From desktop guillotines and crossbows to mood-enhancing effects and music makers, each project presents a different set of challenges and opens new avenues of Maker lore. There's a strong emphasis on the basic mechanical theories and principles of the devices presented in the book, as well as the fabrication techniques you need to use. But this is far more than a book of project "how-tos". Eccentric Cubicle offers oblique industrial design and fabrication philosophies, countless cultural reference points, and innumerable bad puns.

This book is a dream come true for you office-bound souls who are tech DIY enthusiasts, hobbyist engineers/designers, and Makers at heart. Imagine having your cubicle sport projects such as:

• A mechanical golfer Lucid dreaming induction device
• USB-powered bubble blower Fog machine
• A desktop guillotine
• And a whole lot more

In the Eccentric Cubicle, Harris starts with classic, time-honored principals, then modernizes and augments his designs with performance enhancements and updated feature sets -- all while precariously balancing form, function, and oddness. Scavenging and repurposing materials and components at every opportunity, he challenges and inspires you to modify and adapt the projects and designs to meet your own scale, performance, and aesthetic requirements. Bring character and life to your office desktop with Eccentric Cubicle!

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1sockchuck alerts us to an article in Data Center Knowledge that explores ramifications from the FCC's decision a couple of months back to require backup power for cell sites and other parts of the telecom infrastructure. The new rule was prompted by wireless outages during Hurricane Katrina. There are more than 210,000 cell towers in the US, as well as 20,000 telecom central offices that will also need generators or batteries. Municipalities are bracing for disputes as carriers try to add generators or batteries to cell sites on rooftops or water towers. The rules will further boost demand in the market for generators, where there are already lengthy delivery backlogs for some models.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Inquiring minds want to know. #

ToriaUru writes to let us know that Michael Geist is reporting that the Canadian Minister of Industry will not be introducing the proposed Canadian Digital Millennium Copyright Act legislation as scheduled. That proposed legislation, discussed here a couple of weeks back, is now reaching Canada's mainstream press. Geist doesn't speculate on why the legislation is being withdrawn, but it could have something to do with the massive popular outcry against the proposal that Geist helped to orchestrate.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A few weeks ago, Michael Geist began calling attention to plans in Canada to introduce a copyright reform bill that seemed to basically give Hollywood everything it wanted. This resulted in protests, phone calls, emails, letters, faxes and many other forms of communication as concerned Canadian citizens made it clear to their government that they did not appreciate being sold out while having copyright reform turned into the Entertainment Industry Welfare Act. While the Industry Minister Jim Prentice tried to weakly defend the forthcoming bill, it seems that the outpouring of protest has resulted in a temporary victory, as it appears that the introduction of the bill will be delayed. Hopefully, the delay is to actually spend some time understanding the issues, rather than trying to wait for those pesky citizens to quiet down so the bill can be introduced with less fanfare.

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Here's a rather silly YouTube vid of a guy making an origami iPhone/iPod stand out of a $100 bill. Call me cheap, but I bet you'd get the same results with a $1 bill, or even a rectangle of paper. Lifehacker, where we found this, also points us to a similar, easier stand made out of a business card.

The $100 iPhone+iPod Touch Stand - Link
Make an iPhone/iPod stand from a business card - Link

Related:

• HOW TO - Make an iPhone stand with a laser cutter - Link

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ludwigvan968 writes "The ACTLab at the University of Texas at Austin is making waves with it's Weird Science class. The link is to the TA's blog with documentation of some of the projects: a laser harp, a 3D environment constructed with fog and an LCD projector, and a 'water bridge' using a 50,000-volt transformer. Next semester, they're introducing a new class called 'Disruptive Technologies.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's the trailer for Noboru Igushi’s forthcoming feature Machine Girl (aka "The One-Armed Machine Girl," aka "Kataude Mashin Gâru"). The eaturing "yakuza ninjas, flying guillotines, a drill bra, a Japanese teenage schoolgirl," and lotsa blood, according to this item on slashfilm. (thanks, Jason Wishnow!)

Imeem, a social networking site that was in the recording industry's crosshairs earlier this year for allowing file-sharing on its network, has pulled off an impressive feat. This summer it settled its lawsuit with Warner Music by promising to give Warner a cut of advertising revenues from the site. Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that it's signed similar deals with all four major labels, meaning that Imeem is now the first website whose users have the music industry's blessing to share music for free. What's especially striking about this is that for the last decade, the fundamental principle of the labels' business strategy is that sharing music without paying for it is stealing. They drove Napster, AudioGalaxy, Grokster, Kazaa, and other peer-to-peer file-sharing services out of business on that basis. As we pointed out way back in 2000, all this accomplished was to drive file-sharing underground where the recording industry couldn't get a cut of the profits. Had they approached Napster in 2000 the way they approached Imeem this year, they could have been collecting ad revenue from every file-sharing transaction over the last seven years. Instead, they wasted a lot of money on lawsuits, angered a lot of their customers, and ultimately still had to concede that music sharing might be OK as long as they get a cut. The only significant difference between Napster and Imeem is that Imeem only allows you to play music on its website, whereas Napster allowed you to download songs to your hard drive. But this isn't as big of a difference as it might appear at first glance. The Imeem website doesn't provide a "download" button, but there's no DRM involved, and it's quite easy to download music files from Imeem using third-party tools. And because Imeem's site doesn't use DRM, Imeem downloading tools are probably legal under the DMCA. So what we have here is the de facto legalization of Napster-like sites, as long as the record labels get a cut of the advertising revenue. It's an exciting development, albeit one that should have happened seven years ago.

Tim Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tim Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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In preparation for work on his steam-powered car, MAKE pal Jake von Slatt went Medieval on a 29' Cobra Sierra mobile home and turned it into a 21' (chop, chop) car carrier. And just in time, too. On the day he finished the project, he found (and bought) on eBay a replica of a 1929 Mercedes Gazelle built on a Volkswagen Beetle chassis. This car will make a very lovely steamer, indeed.

Car Carrier Trailer - Link

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