Another installment in my series of photos from my travels: Walt Disney's quiet, contemplative grave in Forest Lawn cemetery, in Glendale, CA (just a few minutes away from my apartment last year!). Walt's remains, along with those of his wife Lillian and his son-in-law Robert B Brown, are interred in a woodsy, overgrown corner of Forest Lawn, surrounded by a low wall with a small wooden gate. There's a stone bench for sitting on and contemplating the plaque and the thriving vegetation. Link

American politicians have been toying with such legislation for a while, and Australian politicians have already approved similar legislation, but it appears that Irish politicians are in something of a rush to ban incandescent lightbulbs. New legislation would ban the sale of the traditional lightbulbs as of January 2009 -- basically just one year. The Australian plan, that was approved earlier this year, would phase out the bulbs by 2010. While we can understand the basic reasoning, it's still unclear why a full ban is really necessary. Fluorescent bulbs keep getting cheaper and cheaper (and better and better in quality) than incandescent bulbs. They last so much longer and use so much less energy that it won't be long until most people voluntarily move to fluorescents, without any unnecessary ban on incandescents.

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Opinari writes "In case you haven't heard, Microsoft is giving away copies of Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit or 64-bit DVD), Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, Microsoft Money Plus Premium, Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008, or Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008 — you can choose any one. The caveat is that you have to let them monitor your use of the program."

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Here's a project a guy did to turn a Phidget USB RFID Reader and a Kwikset Powerbolt 1000 into a keyless entry system that can be operated by an RFID key fob, mobile phone, or PC. (BTW: This project won second place in the recent Trossen Robotics contest.)

Front Door Security via Phidget RFID Reader - Link

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mlimber sends us to the NYTimes for a story about flying people who jump from planes or other high locations wearing a wing suit akin to a flying squirrel's. Their efforts have potential military and Xtreme sports applications. The story profiles, with video, one guy who wants to be the first to jump from a plane and land without a parachute (and live). Here's a YouTube video of another of these fliers skimming six feet above skiers in the Swiss Alps. Quoting: "Modern suit design features tightly woven nylon sewn between the legs and between the arms and torso, creating wings that fill with air and create lift, allowing for forward motion and aerial maneuvers while slowing descent. As the suits, which cost about $1,000, have become more sophisticated, so have the pilots. The best fliers, and there are not many, can trace the horizontal contours of cliffs, ridges and mountainsides."

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We all know that Viacom is suing YouTube, claiming that the online video hosting site is infringing its copryrights. However, it looks like a very similar case is happening over in the adult entertainment world, as Vivid, a top adult entertainment video producer, is suing PornoTube, a YouTube clone that focuses (of course) on pornographic videos. The argument is basically the same. PornoTube claims that it's protected by safe harbors and that it's only the service provider and should have no liability. Vivid claims that PornoTube crosses the line and encourages the uploading of unauthorized materials (sound familiar?). To make this case a little more confusing, there are some additional laws covering the producers of pornographic materials, and Vivid points out that PornoTube is not abiding by them, such as the requirement that the producer keep age records of all performers. To be fair, that particular aspect of the law has recently been tossed out, but just in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Either way, this lawsuit should basically follow the same path as the Viacom/YouTube one, as the situation and the arguments are likely to be nearly identical.

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CNN.com has a nice collection of Boing Boing-esque headlines on the front page right now:

• Woman reunited with monkey
• 5-year-old kills 445 pound bear
• DUI chain gang wears pink
• Pole dancers ride the rails

And my favorite:

• Lizard spit and bongs

Yukio Toho, 36, was arrested for breaking into a mini police station, called a police box, in Nagoya, Japan. After nabbing him, police raided his house and found a collection of stolen cop gear including police notebooks, handcuffs, filing cabinets, and batons, according to the Mainichi Daily News. During his most recent caper, Toho was after a specific souvenir. "I was interested in the doorknobs," he apparently told the fuzz. Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

Trossen Robotics has announced the winner of their latest TR Community contest. The winner is Otto. Well, Otto is the bot, Kdwyer is the builder and actual winner. Trossen writes:

Otto is a humanoid/track hybrid droid with an incredible range of capabilities. Kdwyer's mission was to make an autonomous robot that could avoid obstacles, track motion, and interact with people through speech and gestures. Otto's brain follows a distributed architecture, employing 2 Oopic R's (the "upper" and "lower" brains). He boasts a boatload of sensors, such as IR rangefinders, Ultrasonic rangefinders, a digital compass, and a color video camera. We like this project a lot, mostly because it was built from the ground up using a pile of hardware from numerous different sources.

Otto Lives - Link

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Colin says: "Once again this year, I'm producing San Francisco's Unsilent Night, Phil Kline's FREE mobile boombox concert for an infinite number of boomboxes. Last year drew more than 1,000 participants in San Francisco; this year it's happening in 26 cities across the world. It's the best, brightest, most cheerful hour of the holiday season -- beautiful ambient music echoing through the streets and structures of the winter metropolis. Load up on fresh batteries and come join us...or another Unsilent Night in a city close to you!" Link

I usually don't like animated GIFs, but Mitch O'Connell's glitter graphics are great. Link

geekmansworld, among other readers, lets us know that the Canadian ISP Rogers is inserting data into the HTTP streams returned by the Web sites requested by its customers. According to a CBC article, Rogers admits to modifying customers' HTTP data, but says they are merely "trying different things" and testing the customer response.

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You may recall that we recently had a post about executives in the anime industry blaming fansubs for ruining the business (even as we'd also heard others report that it was the interest from fansubs that had created the US market in the first place. The post was based on an editorial piece written by someone within the fansubber community, basically saying that the blame was misplaced and the real problem was that the anime industry wasn't giving fans what they wanted. This is a familiar refrain, of course, heard from fans and customers across the entertainment industry. However, normally, the big copyright firms respond either by ignoring the complaints of fans, or brushing them all off as "pirates." Apparently, that's not true with everyone in the anime industry. Petréa Mitchell writes in to point out that the president of one US anime distributor, Bandai Visual USA, has responded to the complaints on his own blog. He basically says that the company recognizes the complaints and has been thinking about solutions (including simultaneous release of titles in both the US and Japan, rather than waiting a while for the US release). He also notes that they're trying to decrease their prices, but Mitchell notes that Bandai's prices seem quite high, even compared to it competitors. Still, considering that most industry execs seem to completely ignore fan complaints, it's nice to see one (even if in a much smaller industry) take notice and respond.

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Brano Meres, a Slovakian industrial designer and engineer says of his Bluetooth-equipped Red Army phone:
This is the first Soviet army phone from the 1960's to be equipped with Bluetooth technology. It was intended for use as a Bluetooth headset with my mobile phones. To redesign this phone, Titanium and high quality wires from dismantled Scud missiles were used.

The phone is equipped with a multifunction button (Power on/off, answer/end calls), volume up/down button, two LED indicator lights and a connector for charging the battery.

Bluetooth Soviet army phone (October 2007) - [via] Link

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RockDoctor writes "The highly respected palaeontology journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica has published its December number for free access on the Web, with the headline paper concerning new discoveries of dinosaurs from Antarctica (Paper here, PDF.) The first major part of these discoveries was made in 1991, when isolated bones of a sauropod (a relative of the Apatosaurus, formerly known as Brontosaurus) were found associated with a theropod (ancestor or cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex). The sauropod has been named Glacialisaurus hammeri (the reason for the genus name is obvious, and Professor Hammer led the field expeditions under 'extremely difficult conditions'). The herbivore was some 25 ft. long and weighed 4 to 6 tons; at the time of life, the area was between 55 and 65 degrees south, suggesting a climate similar to the Falkland Islands or Tierra del Fuego."

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Certainly an awful lot has been written about Radiohead's experiments with new business models, but it's starting to crank up again, as the band gets ready to release the new album on CD. While some fans felt "betrayed" by this, the band had made it quite clear from the beginning that this was the strategy. However, it's likely that we'll now see plenty of stories focused on how well the CD sells, as if that will be the key factor in determining whether or not this experiment qualifies as a "success."

That, however, is the wrong way to look at things. It's the "old business model" way of looking at things, where the key point is how many CDs were sold. That's doesn't much matter any more. The band has supposedly made quite a lot of money from selling the MP3s directly, and the attention garnered by the marketing stunt will likely allow them to sell more concert tickets at higher prices (and, yes, the band is about to start touring). Plenty of people who knew little about the band now know a lot more and are talking about and listening to the new album. At this point, no matter what happens with the CD, you'd have to say that the experiment has been quite a success.

That said, it doesn't appear as though the band fully embraces the economics impacting the music industry these days. That's because the band has decided to stop offering the downloads off its site as it gears up to try to sell the CDs. That seems like a rather pointless and shortsighted move. The music is already out there and being listened to widely. If you look on sites like Last.fm and Hype Machine, Radiohead clearly dominates. Continuing to offer fans an option in terms of how they want to consume and purchase the music only makes sense. It's not as if the music is suddenly not going to be available on various file sharing sites. So, really, all this move does is limit the ways fans can give the band money -- and that doesn't make much sense.

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Lucas123 writes "After a backup tape containing sensitive information on 130,000 Ohio residents, current and former employees, and businesses was stolen from the car of a government intern in June, the state government just announced it has purchased 60,000 licenses of encryption software — McAfee's SafeBoot — for state offices to use to protect data. It's estimated that the missing backup tape will cost Ohio $3 million. In September, the state docked a government official about a week of future vacation time for not ensuring that the data would be protected."

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"Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, how light-intense are your branches."

Laser Christmas Tree - Link

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narramissic writes "Google's Android may be getting all the headlines, but the venerable LiPS (Linux Phone Standards Forum), which launched to much fanfare in 2005, is rolling out the specs. The group, comprised of companies including Orange, France Telecom, MontaVista, and Access, announced Monday that it has completed the first release of its mobile Linux specification, adding components including APIs for telephony, messaging, calendar, instant messaging, and presence functions, as well as new user interface components."

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