The Register delivers the good news that a US federal judge had slapped down the practice of pretexting and ordered a Wyoming company to pay almost $200,000; AccuSearch was also permanently barred from selling individuals' phone records without their permission. The FTC had filed suit in 2006 against the company and four others. AccuSearch had advertised a service that made phone records of any individual available for a fee. The current article makes no mention of whatever became of the other four accused data brokers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pre-PMA 2008: Nikon has today announced two new models in its 'L' series of entry level digital compact cameras. There aren't any earth-shattering innovations to be found on the spec-sheet; the L16 combines a 3x Nikkor zoom lens with a 7.1 MP sensor while the L18 has a slightly higher resolution of 8 MP. The L18 is available in a range of colors while the L16 is available in black or gray only.

Pre-PMA 2008: The entry-level Coolpix S210 offers an 8.0 megapixel sensor and 3x 38-114mm equiv. lens. Electronic VR takes care of camera shake issues - though not as effectively as the lens and sensor based systems offered higher up the range. A 2.5" 230k dot LCD on the rear of the camera displays photos crisply enough and the brushed-aluminum and chrome casing gives it a touch of class. Click through for the details.

Pre-PMA 2008: The Coolpix S520 is a 8.0 megapixel, 3x zoom compact with lens-shift stabilization. It's also rather dinky and cute if that sways your decision one way or the other. A 2.5" screen with 153k dots occupies the rear of the camera along with the typical Coolpix array of buttons and you can choose your favorite three scene modes to store for quicker access. Obviously an array of colors will be available if the pictured 'Urban Black' doesn't tickle your fancy.

Pre-PMA 2008: Apparently the Nikon Coolpix S550 is the smallest 10 megapixel compact with a retractable 5x zoom (as of time of publication etc etc). Very nice, but what we would like to know is how many compromises have to be made to chase such a pointless accolade. The lens covers 36-180mm equiv. but the 'stabilization' is electronic - lens or sensor-based optical systems are more effective. Click through for the full story.

Pre-PMA 2008: Nikon has today announced another model in its S-series of ultra compact digital cameras. The S600 sports a 10MP sensor and a 4 times stabilized Nikkor zoom lens with a 35mm equivalent zoom range of 28-112mm, all wrapped up in an attractive metal body. The camera is expected to hit the shelves in April.

Pre-PMA 2008: The Nikon Coolpix P50 intrigued with it's combination of (relatively) low price, 'mini P5100' styling and 28mm wideangle lens. The 8 megapixel P60 is no less alluring but for different reasons; for a start the wide lens is gone, replaced with a 5x 36-180mm equiv. unit backed up by sensor shift stabilization. Then there is something we don't see very often in non-superzoom compacts - an electronic viewfinder. A (decent) EVF is arguably better than the rather crummy optical viewfinders usually seen in mid-range compacts, at the very least in terms of accurate framing. Of course, Any type of viewfinder is preferable than trying to compose on a sun-splashed LCD. More after the click.

Pre-PMA 2008: Nikon today announced a new Nikkor unlike any before it and likely to prove an effective 'halo' product as well as an invaluable tool. The PC-E NIKKOR 24mm f/3.5D ED is a wide angle lens offering both tilt and shift movement. Also announced was the development of two further PC-E Nikkors in 45mm and 85mm focal lengths which shall be on show at PMA 2008.

Pre-PMA 2008: Nikon today replaced the Micro Nikkor 60mm F2.8, adding two aspherical elements to control aberrations - a world's first for SLR micro lenses. A Silent Wave Motor, ED glass lens element and the latest Nano Crystal Coat technology have also been added to bring this lens bang up to date.

Pre-PMA 2008: Another new Nikkor was announced today - the AF-S DX NIKKOR 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR. Representing a range roughly equivalent to a 24 - 127.5mm lens for 35mm or FX cameras this new optic incorporates a Silent Wave Motor, two ED glass elements and VR II stabilization and should make an ideal high-quality 'walkaround' for DX-format dSLRs.

Nikon has announced its latest consumer-level DSLR, the D60. It's a 10.2MP digital camera that will look and feel remarkably familiar to users of the D40X. It includes an anti-dust system that incorporates a self-cleaning sensor unit that shakes off dust, coupled with an airflow system designed to channel dust away from the sensor. The model also adds active d-lighting, a stop-motion recording mode and Expeed branding.

We've had a little bit of a chance to play around with and handle the Nikon's latest digital SLR, the D60. Here we line it up against the camera we suspect it replaces: the D40X and see what Nikon has done to refresh one of its recent successes.

Since taking over the FCC, Kevin Martin has supposedly been against regulations -- except in two areas: the cable industry and "indecency." He's been a strong proponent of cracking down on whatever he considers indecent programming, and much of his support for a la carte cable is based on how it might block indecent content. The latest crackdown on indecency has a number of people shaking their heads. It involves fining ABC affiliates $1.43 million for a brief clip of the TV show "NYPD Blue," that aired in February of 2003, and included images of a naked woman from behind. Of course, if Martin really was trying to protect people from viewing such indecent content, perhaps he shouldn't have issued this fine. After all, it was shown on TV nearly five years ago. By now, most people would have forgotten about it... unless, of course, the FCC were to bring the clip back into the news, getting someone to put it on YouTube, and driving well over a million viewers to watch the video since the fine was announced.

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HighWizard writes with word from Engadget that the iPhone SDK Key has been leaked early. "We're not exactly sure how this all went down, but we trust Erica Sadun over at TUAW when she says that it appears that the iPhone's SDK key — which will probably be required by all 'official' third-party apps — has been leaked. Two different sites currently have the key posted, but it's all just for show until next month, when the SDK hits for real — and the code is undoubtedly changed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

HighWizard writes with word from Engadget that the iPhone SDK Key has been leaked early. "We're not exactly sure how this all went down, but we trust Erica Sadun over at TUAW when she says that it appears that the iPhone's SDK key — which will probably be required by all 'official' third-party apps — has been leaked. Two different sites currently have the key posted, but it's all just for show until next month, when the SDK hits for real — and the code is undoubtedly changed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Boing Boing reader Phil Lapsley says,

The folks over at governmentattic.org FOIAed portions of the FCC's television complaints database! Browse their site to find citizen complaints about your favorite TV show, or check out a few quick PDF links here: The Daily Show, Desperate Housewives, and The Simpsons.

Da Massive writes "Speaking at the linux.conf.au event in Melbourne, Australia, independent open source consultant Ricardo Gonzalez has told of how he has helped bring 23,000 Linux PCs to over 1000 schools in the Philippines: 'Ministers in the Filipino government now understand Linux can do so much for so little outlay.'" The slow process of educating a government that knew only Microsoft is especially well described in this piece.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I've got an Obama poster in the right margin of the home page of Scripting News. It'll stay there for the duration as a virtual equivalent of one of those signs people put on their front lawns. I live in California, one of the Super Tuesday states and I'm an Obama voter. That's what the poster means. Pass it on.

After Google indexes Scripting News, this query will have exactly one match. Right now it has none. Let's load up Google with lots of blogs with Californians voting for Obama. And of course every other state in the union.

PS: This is where I got the poster.

While there's still some speculation about an Al Gore run for the presidency, it appears he's got bigger fish to fry, such as an IPO for his cable TV station Current Media. Honestly, it looks like a tough sell as an IPO. It's not profitable. There are some serious questions about how viable a business it can be, and its "unique" angles, such as embracing the internet, haven't been all that successful (almost all of its revenue still comes from the TV side). If it succeeds as an IPO, it may be entirely on the strength of Gore's name, which seems like the opposite of what the company should want at this point.

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Most of what Chris Matthews says is mindless trash, but today he pulled out a great analogy immediately after Ted Kennedy's stirring endorsement of Obama.

He compared Hillary Clinton to the character Salieri in the movie Amadeus. Until Mozart came along he was the leading composer in Vienna, but he was just a workman, a technician. Mozart had inspiration, feeling, the spirit. Salieri, even though he lived a long life and Mozart died young, is a footnote to Mozart's lasting greatness.

Matthews nailed it.

Maybe this makes up for his calling the voters of New Hampshire racists because he and every other pundit read the polling data wrong.

DaMan writes "Here's something that isn't an urban legend — Snopes, the popular urban legends reference site, has been pushing adware, for at least 6 months, to users via ads displayed on its Web site. No one seems to have called them on it until recently."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It looks like the UK is about to make the same dangerous mistake that US courts made a while back. A decision there has now stated that the Patent Office shouldn't automatically reject patent apps on software. Oddly, the Financial Times report on this only quotes those who seem to think this is a good thing. It quotes some patent attorneys (who, as a rule of thumb, generally want more things to be patentable) claiming this will help small companies better compete. This is actually the opposite of what's happened in the US since the Supreme Court made a similar decision allowing software patents about a decade ago. Since then, the patentability of software has only resulted in the rise of ridiculous patents and lawsuits often preventing small companies from actually being able to innovate. In fact, the US Supreme Court has been trying to back away from software patents recently. Given the vigorous protests against software patents in Europe, you would think that the FT reporter would at least look for an opposing viewpoint, rather than claiming straight up that this decision was a good one.

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I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Raymond Niro of Niro Scavone Haller & Niro is fighting back against criticism from the Patent Troll Tracker blog by offering a $10,000 bounty for the identity of the person behind it. He thinks the blogger might work for Microsoft, Intel, or has connections to a 'serial infringer' and that could 'color' what they say."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hollywood's admission last week that its campus piracy stats were bogus raises an interesting question: why have colleges been so quick to roll over and accede to Hollywood's demands? Greg Sandoval points out that universities could have done their own studies a long time ago and had hard numbers to dispute the industry's accusations. If, as now appears to be the case, colleges are only responsible for a fairly small fraction of illegal file sharing, it makes the industry's demands that academia bend over backwards to help Hollywood in its anti-piracy fight a little unreasonable. The really screwy thing about this is that the movie industry is a relatively small part of the American economy. The industry's revenues in 2006 were just $42 billion. For comparison, Harvard alone has an endowment of $35 billion, and altogether the higher education sector has assets in the hundreds of billions of dollars. If they chose to stand up to Hollywood's bullying techniques, they would have little trouble mounting an effective legal defense. And given that Hollywood seems determined to paint students—academia's customers—in the worst possible light, it seems only appropriate that colleges be more proactive about countering unfair negative stereotypes of college campuses.

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

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aboivin writes "The Songwriters association of Canada has put forward a proposition for collective licensing of music for personal use. The Right to Equitable Remuneration for Music File Sharing would legalize sharing of a copy of a copyrighted musical work without motive of financial gain, for a monthly fee of $5.00 applied to all Canadian internet connections, which would be distributed to creators and rights holders. From the proposal: 'File sharing is both a revolution in music distribution and a very positive phenomenon. The volunteer efforts of millions of music fans creates a much greater choice of repertoire for consumers while allowing songs — both new and old, well known and obscure — to be heard. All that's needed to fulfill this revolution in distribution is a way for Creators and rights holders to be paid.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jeroen says: "Hillary Clinton is using a controversial Golden Earring song in her campaign called "When The Lady Smiles." It is a great song, but I was wondering whether Hillary really know that in the video for that song a nun is raped, and the attacker's brain gets eaten by a dog." Link

Today on Boing Boing tv, just in time for the 50th anniversary of LEGO, a vlog from Boing Boing Gadgets editor Joel Johnson:

Here are several evenings of my life condensed into 3:38 of time lapse footage as I assemble the "Ultimate Collectors Millennium Falcon" LEGO set, the largest yet sold, with over five thousand individual elements.

My thanks to Matt Goodell for cutting me a great deal on this set. It was even better than new, since he even sorted out all the pieces for me. Thanks also to Judson "Cicada" Cowan for letting me use the track "Earth's Assault on the Enemy A.I.," one of my favorite tracks of 2007. (Available for free on his website on the album "Technology Crisis.") Finally, thanks to Brian Lam and Jesus Diaz of Gizmodo who had the idea first but were kind enough to give me permission to run my version before theirs to celebrate the 50th anniversary. Thanks, everyone!

I captured one frame out of every 150. It's a great set; much more fun to put together than the giant Star Destroyer. Far fewer repetitive sections. Now the ultimate question: keep it on my shelf to scare potential dates, sell it, or press its parts into service to build more ships of my own design?

(Don't miss: My snazzy sweatpants with the hole in the knee, then my realization that I have a hole in the knee after, like, a day of filming.)

Link to BB Gadgets post, downloadable version and video podcast subscription links here.

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that Stanford has a new website that not only shows you how cool their new 3-d modeling system is, but actually allows you to give it a try with your own photos. The system can take a 2-d still image and estimate a detailed 3-d structure which you can navigate. "For each small homogeneous patch in the image, we use a Markov Random Field (MRF) to infer a set of "plane parameters" that capture both the 3-d location and 3-d orientation of the patch. The MRF, trained via supervised learning, models both image depth cues as well as the relationships between different parts of the image. Other than assuming that the environment is made up of a number of small planes, our model makes no explicit assumptions about the structure of the scene; this enables the algorithm to capture much more detailed 3-d structure than does prior art (such as Saxena et al., 2005, Delage et al., 2005, and Hoiem et el., 2005), and also give a much richer experience in the 3-d flythroughs created using image-based rendering, even for scenes with significant non-vertical structure."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

i4u writes "Engadget is reporting that Wicked Lasers has introduced The Torch. It is the world's brightest and most powerful flashlight. The Flashlight is capable of melting plastic, lighting paper on fire within seconds, and if you like, fry an egg or a marshmallow on a stick. At 4100 lumens, The Torch is 100 lumens more powerful than The Polarion Helios, the former most powerful flashlight, and retails for around $300. The Torch is apparently also undergoing review at the Guinness Book of World Records."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's something of a belief (at least among some) out there that kids who have "grown up" with Google are somehow better users of search engines and other online tools. They're referred to as "The Google Generation" by some. However, some new research coming out of the UK suggests that the Google Generation isn't quite what many people think. The study looking at how those who have grown up with Google (people born after 1993) do online research shows that they're not any better at using Google than those in other generations. If anything, the research actually suggested that we're all the Google Generation, as the ability to quickly process lots of information is found across generations. Of course, some of this is open to interpretation. The British Library, which conducted the research, claims that the fact that it's now common among all generations to look for quick blurbs of information and move on, suggests a "dumbing down" of society. However, that's not necessarily true. As the author of the article notes, being able to process lots of information quickly, before necessarily drilling down deeper, is an important skill. So, just the fact that people do end up reading more short blurbs or abstracts is hardly evidence that they don't also get the depth of information that they later need. On top of that, it would be surprising if people really thought that those under the age of 15 were better at researching information online. There are multiple tasks involved in research, and doing the search is just part of it. Being able to actually make use of that information and prioritize it is also important -- and it's those skills that younger users are less likely to have developed as well.

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A couple Fridays ago, Carlos Segura, Jason Fried, Jim Coudal, and Edward Lifson (from left to right below) put on the second SEED Conference in frigid Chicago.

Sandy Weisz took some great photos of the event.

A bunch of folks blogged reviews: What I Learned at the SEED Conference | DK Design Studio SEED review | Visual Rinse SEED review | Fishsuit review (with 7-page PDF) | Giant Robots SEED review.

We’re looking forward to SEED III. When we have a date we’ll let everyone know. Thanks again to everyone who attended. We hope you found the conference valuable.

P.S. Special thanks to Sarah for handing registration and administrative details. She made it look easy all while handling a full load of 37signals customer support on a particularly heavy day.

An anonymous reader writes "The worlds most powerful functional rail gun capable of delivering projectiles at up to Mach 8 has been delivered to the Navy. The new rail gun is a 32-megajoule Electro-Magnetic Laboratory Rail Gun. The Navy eventually hopes to have 64-megajoule ship mounted rail guns. 'The lab version doesn't look particularly menacing -- more like a long, belt-fed airport screening device than like a futuristic cannon -- but the system will fire rounds at up to Mach 8, drawing on tremendous amounts of electricity to generate the current for each test shot. That, of course, is the problem with rail guns: Like lasers, they're out of step with modern-day generators and capacitors. Eight and 9-megajoule rail guns have been fired before, but providing 3 million amps of power per shot has been a limitation.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Carlos at Cartype is putting together a gallery of car cut-away diagrams. I’m ever fascinated by how many parts go into making a car. Every little tiny piece has to be designed by someone and manufactured by someone. The precision required to make everything fit and function together reliably blows my mind.

A BB Reader says: "This is an actual Scrabble Gram that ran in the Washington Post last Friday. The set of first tiles seem to suggest a very dirty answer. I'm not sure how it got past their editor. (The real answer, of course, is entirely G-rated)." Link

r3lody writes "There are many households that have high-speed Internet connections, yet most people are simply not doing enough to protect themselves from the many exploits that exist. The Symantec Guide to Home Internet Security by Andrew Conry-Murray and Vincent Weafer was written to speak to those people. Symantec Press is the publisher, yet it remains reasonably vendor-neutral. This book is for non-technical people. Its ten chapters cover a relatively slim 240 pages, so it should not intimidate someone who is not a computer professional. Also, you do not really have to read the book front-to-back, but you can focus in on the chapter or chapters that interest you and have fairly complete information." Read on for the rest of Ray's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

r3lody writes "There are many households that have high-speed Internet connections, yet most people are simply not doing enough to protect themselves from the many exploits that exist. The Symantec Guide to Home Internet Security by Andrew Conry-Murray and Vincent Weafer was written to speak to those people. Symantec Press is the publisher, yet it remained reasonably vendor-neutral. This book is for non-technical people. Its ten chapters cover a relatively slim 240 pages, so it should not intimidate someone who is not a computer professional. Also, you do not really have to read the book front-to-back, but you can focus in on the chapter or chapters that interest you and have fairly complete information." Read on for the rest of Ray's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Wikileaks project is starting to bear fruit, with documents leaked to the site beginning to get a lot of attention. The latest example is correspondence between the German government and a vendor (via Slashdot) that apparently makes software for intercepting Skype calls. Interestingly, the interception technology appears to be pretty primitive and rather expensive. The software has to be installed on the Skype client, and the vendor suggests that this can be accomplished by attaching a trojan to an e-mail or physically entering the premises to install the software on the target machine. And, evidently, only Windows 2000 and XP are supported; Vista support is still in the works. The company charges thousands of euros per target computer. This suggests that Skype's encryption technology is secure against at least the eavesdropping techniques available to the German government. Apparently they haven't found a way to decode encrypted Skype traffic off the wire, so they're forced to resort to these fairly cumbersome attacks on Skype clients -- attacks that are no more convenient for law enforcement than simply bugging the target's office. That suggests that the risk of comprehensive government surveillance of online telephony is still a fair ways off. If you encrypt your online activities, they're probably pretty secure. Of course, it's entirely possible that other government agencies, such as the NSA, have more sophisticated eavesdropping technology that they haven't shared with the Germans. My guess is that any government agencies possessing really sophisticated eavesdropping tools are also less likely to have their private documents show up on Wikileaks.

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

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Last night I spoke to Adam Savage, co-host of MythBusters. He's in Alaska, where current temperatures range between 0 to 30 degrees below zero. He just finished a test on "cabin fever" (he wouldn't say how long he lasted before murdering his cabin mates and running out into the frozen wilderness wearning nothing but longjohns and a sleeping cap) and is now working on another episode up in the 49th state.

But the real reason I talked to him was to find out about the next episode of MythBusters (airing this Wednesday). It tackles the famous "plane on a conveyor belt problem," that has pitted brother against brother and friend against friend for years.

To get to the bottom of the thought-problem, Adam and Jamie used a real plane, in this case a 400-lb ultralight, and a large conveyor belt. Did the plane take off? You'll have to wait until Wednesday to find out, but Adam said even the pilot guessed wrong. Link

Les Machines de l’ile de Nantes are massive mechanical animals on exhibition in Nantes, France. Designed by François Delarozière and Pierre Oreficee, the fantastic creatures in the menagerie include an elephant, squid, Manta ray, and more. Dark Roasted Blend posted some beautiful photos of the hydraulic beasties.
Link to Dark Roasted Blend, Link to Les Machines site, Link to video of elephant (Thanks, Jennifer Lum!)

Yesterday's piece, lightly edited, on the Huffington Post.

http://x98.us/jz

I think it looks pretty good over there!

C. Chaney says: "This is artist Otto Lange's weblog about his artwork. The paintings are truly wonderful and his writing is REALLY funny too. The funny thing is that the funny little essays usually have absolutely nothing to do with the artwork." Link

Schneier points out an interesting (and long, 117-pages) paper on the ethical implications of robots in war [PDF]. "This report has provided the motivation, philosophy, formalisms, representational requirements, architectural design criteria, recommendations, and test scenarios to design and construct an autonomous robotic system architecture capable of the ethical use of lethal force. These first steps toward that goal are very preliminary and subject to major revision, but at the very least they can be viewed as the beginnings of an ethical robotic warfighter. The primary goal remains to enforce the International Laws of War in the battlefield in a manner that is believed achievable, by creating a class of robots that not only conform to International Law but outperform human soldiers in their ethical capacity."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This mash-up episode of Friends and The Super Friends is a real hoot.
Link (via Laughing Squid)

“You have to be willing to do things that the masses wouldn’t do, or I don’t think you will be able to separate yourself from the masses.”

That’s the reason Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti gave for his decision to hire new coach John Harbaugh over more experienced candidates. Bisciotti ran a successful staffing company before taking over the team and talked about why he likes to take chances and go with his gut when hiring.

When he fired Billick on Dec. 31, Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti said the decision was the result of a “gut feeling.” Choosing Harbaugh was no different.

Before becoming owner of the Ravens, Bisciotti took pride in hiring young, untested people for Aerotek, a highly successful staffing company in the aerospace and technology sectors. He used that method in choosing Harbaugh over an experienced head coach like Marty Schottenheimer.

“Do I like a guy that has to earn his resume? Yeah. I kind of made a living on hiring people with thin resumes and it’s worked out pretty well for me in the last 25 years,” Bisciotti said. “I think that works to John’s advantage. I said three weeks ago you have to take chances to be successful. You have to be willing to do things that the masses wouldn’t do, or I don’t think you will be able to separate yourself from the masses.

“Is it a little bit more of a perceived chance? Yeah, but the time we spent with John Harbaugh gave me a comfort level that we hired the right guy,” the owner said. “You go with your instincts, and I have pretty good instincts. ... I like the fact that John gets to build his legend right here.”

I always wonder why you see the same unsuccessful head coaches getting plum new jobs all the time. Bisciotti’s approach is refreshing…and offers a worthwhile perspective for hiring outside of football too.

Chloe from Portland's Reading Frenzy zine emporium -- publishers of the brilliant and highly irregular found art zine CRAP HOUND -- has sent along several interior pages from CRAP HOUND 7: CHURCH AND STATE, which goes on sale tomorrow. Enjoy! Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4, Link 5, Link 6, Link 7, Link 8, Link 9

A new geological study is suggesting that what we know about the lower mantle of the Earth may have to be reevaluated. Since we are unable to actually sample the Earth at those depths, scientists rely on the use of seismic waves to study the lower reaches of the Earth. This new study suggests that material in the lower mantle has unusual characteristics that make sound move more slowly, suggesting a softer makeup than previously thought. "What's most important for seismology is the acoustic properties--the propagation of sound. We determined the elasticity of ferropericlase through the pressure-induced high-spin to low-spin transition. We did this by measuring the velocity of acoustic waves propagating in different directions in a single crystal of the material and found that over an extended pressure range (from about 395,000 to 590,000 atmospheres) the material became 'softer'--that is, the waves slowed down more than expected from previous work. Thus, at high temperature corresponding distributions will become very broad, which will result in a wide range of depth having subtly anomalous properties that perhaps extend through most of the lower mantle."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In 1857, Irish scientist John Tyndall recognized that sound waves could extinguish flames. Now, scientists hope that phenomena could lead to the development of new fire extinguishers that would be useful, say, in a spacecraft or terrestrially to avoid water damage from sprinklers. First though, they need to figure out why exactly sound can snuff fire. Most likely, the sound wave causes a drop in pressure that extinguishes the flame. From Scientific American:

In 2004 Dmitriy Plaks and several of his fellow students at the University of West Georgia tested whether sound waves can douse fires in hopes of using sound to extinguish flames in a spacecraft. They placed a candle in a large topless chamber with three bass speakers attached to the walls. The candle was lit and the Canadian rock band Nickelback's "How you remind me" was pumped through the subwoofers. Within roughly 10 seconds, once the song hit a low note, the flame was out, according to results published in 2005 in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

Link

Today is LEGO's 50th birthday, or rather the anniversary of the patent approval for the original brick. Joel Johnson has more at Boing Boing Gadgets, including a timeline of LEGO technology advances. From LEGO.com:

The LEGO history began in 1932 in Denmark, when Ole Kirk Christansen founded a small factory for wooden toys in the unknown town of Billund in the south of the country. To find a name for his company he organized a competition among his employees. As fate would have it however, he himself came up with the best name: LEGO – a fusion of the Danish words “LEg” and “GOdt” (“play well”).

Link and Link

The issue of "domain tasting" (or "domain kiting") has been getting a lot more attention lately. Dell sued a company for pulling a domain tasting scam to make ad money off of domains without having to pay for them and ICANN has recently started to look into the problem. Of course, at ICANN's snail's pace, it didn't seem like anything was going to happen any time soon -- so it appears Google has decided to step up with a potential solution.

For those who don't know, domain tasting is used by certain companies to register a bunch of domain names and place ads on them. Since ICANN's rules say that you can register a domain for five days before deciding if you actually want to pay for it and keep it, the domain tasters just hold onto the domain for five days, put Google AdSense on the domain and collect any money before returning the URL. If a domain is particularly valuable, they might actually buy it -- but the more recent scam is to have a series of shell companies repeatedly take the domain for five days at a time, quickly reregistering it seconds after the previous "holder" gives up the domain.

It's clearly a scam and wasn't at all what was intended with the five day grace period. However, with ICANN taking the slow road towards dealing with it, Google has now announced that it will not allow any Google AdSense ads to appear on a site during the five day grace period. This is a bit of a surprise, since Google likely makes plenty of money from this practice. While domain tasters will quickly gravitate to other ad platforms, Google was probably the most effective one, and hopefully other leading ad platforms will follow Google's lead.

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Cars are mysteriously dying in a few block radius around New York City's Empire State Building. Many people think the phenomena is caused by the 30+ transmission antennas on the spire of the 102-story building. Officials from the building deny there's a problem. From the New York Daily news:

“We get about 10 to 15 cars stuck near there every day,” said Isaac Leviev, manager of Citywide Towing, the AAA’s exclusive roadside assistance provider from 42nd St. to the Battery. “You pull the car four or five blocks to the west or east and the car starts right up...."

Automotive experts and engineers believe the problem stems from radio frequency interference that’s “jamming” the remote keyless entry systems of cars.

The remote keyless entry systems operate on specific wavelengths assigned by the Federal Communications Commission, which governs the bands and bandwidths of TV, radio, telephone and other transmissions.

The FCC said it has not received any complaints regarding interference affecting autos in midtown, and Empire State Building officials don’t believe the claims.

Link

Babygirl, a stray cat with five legs, will soon have surgery to remove her extra limb and another that is non-fuctional so that she can walk more easily. The cat is currently living at the Washington Area Humane Society in Pennsylvania. From the Associated Press:

Rice said some people have expressed an interest in the cat, but no one has applied to adopt her.

"We've had a few calls come in, but everyone's just kind of asking how's she doing, when's the surgery," (kennel associate Chrystin) Rice said.

Link to AP Article, Link to LocalNews8 video

theoverlay writes "With all of the recent hype about solid-state drives in both consumer applications and enterprise environments I have a real concern about data recovery on these devices. I know there are services for flash memory restoration but has anyone been involved in data restoration projects on ssd drives? What are the limits and circumstances that have surfaced so far? What tools will law enforcement and government use to retrieve data for investigations and the like?"

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A Chicago man filed a lawsuit against the Blue Man Group, claiming they forced an esophagus camera down his throat when he went onstage during one of their shows.

The lawsuit alleges the Blue Man actors circled [James Sroden], held his neck and arms and "forced his head back" to insert the camera.

"He was an unknowing and unwilling participant of a stunt that went bad," said Sroden's attorney, Anthony Romanucci.

"When I started struggling, it seemed like this fellow, he tried to be more aggressive with this device and shoved it way down my throat," Sroden said. "In the days after that, the nightmares continued. A few days later, I really panicked because I had blood coming from my nose."

Sroden said his throat was sore for days; he had a foul taste in his mouth and eventually lost a few filings.

The general manage for the Blue Man Group in Chicago says the act does not use an esophagus camera. It's just a trick:

"Essentially, we have a piece in the show where an actor holds a camera to an audience member's mouth, doesn't enter their mouth, and then we play a video," Kori Prior said. "We have been performing this show in this theater for 10 years and have never had this issue before."

Link (Via Museum of Hoaxes)

BB pal RU Sirius is teaching an online course titled "Pranks, Pranksters, Trickster & Tricks" next month at the Maybe Logic Academy. Negativland's Mark Hosler and legendary prankster Joey Skaggs will also be participating. Leading up to the seminar, The Art of the Prank interviewed RU about why tricks are a treat. From the interview:

Your course covers Pranksters and Tricksters. Is there a difference between them?

RU Sirius: There’s a lot of crossover, but yeah, they’re different. For starters, obviously the trickster is a mythological concept — or a series of mythological figures — and a prankster is a real flesh and blood mortal. Trickster activities generally take place among the gods. Tricksters prank powerful, otherworldly beings while pranksters prank schmucks who think they’re in control.

Also the figure of the trickster, as it’s been characterized by Lewis Hyde (author of the seminal book, Trickster Makes The World), might be described as amoral or even immoral. Tricksters tend to appear in cultures and mythological systems where the boundaries and values and taboos are very well defined. And in these legends, you have your morally straight characters and you have your basic grim and serious “bad guys.” And then you have these tricksters who are playful and unpredictable criminals… thiefs mostly — and they’re generally imaginative and sneaky and able to play with ambiguity in otherwise rather diagrammatic narratives. And while they might commit theft or even murder, they also might unexpectedly leave behind gifts, or do things that confound or illuminate their victims, but there’s always some strategy, some sort of selfish motivation. Also, while the Trickster is clever, he (almost all are male) is also a fuck-up. Tricksters tend to get snared in their own tricks.

Link to interview, Link to Maybe Logic Academy

Previously on BB:
• Joey Skaggs launches Art of the Prank Link
• Negativland's My Favorite Things DVD Link

Over at 43 Folders, Merlin Mann mentioned the "Sullivan nod," which, according to Wikipedia, is a "sales technique used to create a subconscious suggestion to a customer to purchase one particular item out of a list of like items."

A Sullivan nod is executed by nodding slightly, by approximately 10–15 degrees, when the item it is hoped the customer will choose is reached. The key is to make the nod perceptible, yet subtle, so as to not distract. The nod is best done with lists less than 5 items in length. Studies have concluded that 60–70% of the time, a Sullivan nod will result in the customer choosing the 'recommended' item.

The Sullivan nod has been used for years, but I just heard about it. Consultant Jim Sullivan, the creator of this technique, claims it "even works over the phone for room service orders." Link

Spike Priggen of Bedazzled found this funny old ad that shows how an uptight dad stopped beating his child after switching to decaffeinated Sanka. Link

Skunk, a bicycle parts sculptor, has turned out a couple of seriously bad-ass rayguns -- one's all steampunky, the other extremely post-apocalyptic. Ideally, you'd wear one on each hip. Link (Thanks, Ruuskado!)

Emily sends us some "photos of a 3D Dungeons and Dragons/Discordian birthday cake, made for my brother by Kate Lanciano, one of the players in his campaign. I thought gamers the world over would enjoy this, we sure did!" Link (Thanks, Emily!)

alphadogg writes "Next-generation 802.11n systems promise to considerably improve WLAN performance. But the processing required for the boost sucks up more power than the older 802.11a/b/g networks. Still, many enterprise-class Wi-Fi vendors claim to deliver full 802.11n capabilities without enterprise customers having to touch their power infrastructures. So what gives?"

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Last week, we noted that the press couldn't stop talking about Last.fm's supposed effort to offer "free" music, when the details showed it was a lot less than the press made it out to be. You'd think that maybe they would be more careful the next time around. However, when you combine the words "free" and "music" it appears that some folks in the press just can't help themselves. Thus, when a company named Qtrax announced "free" file sharing, with the backing of all four major labels, plus iPod compatibility, the press ran with it. The Associated Press and Reuters both ran with it... though, at least the Associated Press has quickly started backtracking after the various record labels all started denying any kind of deal with Qtrax. They admit they're talking, but no deals have been signed -- meaning that Qtrax jumped the gun, as did the reporters who ran with the announcement. Even if the labels do come around on this one, it's a plan that will go nowhere fast. It involves crippling DRM and annoying advertising that won't even be close to effective. This is a non-story turned into a story by the use of two words: "free" and "music."

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Ellis D. Tripp noted a village voice article about attempts in NYC to pass a law requiring permits for air monitoring devices including apparently geiger counters. I'm sure everyone will feel much safer not knowing anything.

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Preedit writes "A free download that can cut Windows Vista's gargantuan footprint by half or more is developing a big following on the Internet. vLite is a configuration tool that lets users automatically delete a lot of unnecessary Vista components — such as Windows Media Player and MSN installer — to pare the OS down to a reasonable size. The software is catching on. An InformationWeek story notes that a forum that asks users to suggest new features has drawn nearly 50,000 page views. Meanwhile, Microsoft officials have themselves conceded that Vista is "bloated" and are developing the next version of Windows on a core called MinWin, which is smaller than Vista by an order of magnitude."

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Since the early/middle of 2007 we’ve been hard at work on a new product. It’s something thousands of our customers will use every day, but not a single one of them will sign up for it or log into it. It’s a silent partner. It’s called Queen Bee.

What is Queen Bee?

Queen Bee is the name of our internal unified billing, admin, and stats platform. Prior to Queen Bee, each one of our pay products had a different sign-up process, a different billing engine, a different coupon engine, a different affiliate engine, and a different back-end admin. That was fine for a while, but last year we decided it was time to take advantage of economies of scale and unify.

How about an example?

Many of our customers have multiple Basecamp accounts. Some may also have a Highrise account or a Campfire account.

So, let’s say you have two Basecamp accounts and a Highrise account and you want to update your credit card because it’s about to expire. Before Queen Bee you’d have to log into each account separately, click the Account tab, click the “change card” tab, and update your card. But now all you have to do is pick any account to update and you’ll see a screen that look like this:

You’ll see that if you have multiple accounts with us on the same credit card you’ll be asked if you want to update all the accounts or just one (or two) of the accounts. This makes our customer’s administrative tasks (updating cards, for example) a lot easier. Hassle be gone.

What else can Queen Bee do?

Queen Bee can do a lot of good stuff, but we’re not completely finished porting all our products over to it yet. We just wanted to give you a quick peek at what we’ve been working on. Stay tuned for another taste of royal jelly as Queen Bee development rolls on.

P.S. Big ups to Jamis for his incredible work on Queen Bee so far. From many different angles it’s been our most complex undertaking to date. So many moving parts, so many criticalities, so many hooks and loops and connections. All things considered, it’s been incredibly smooth sailing. Well done Jamis!

MojoKid writes "AMD officially launched their new high-end flagship graphics card today and this one has a pair of graphics processors on a single PCB. The Radeon HD 3870 X2 was codenamed R680 throughout its development. Although that codename implies the card is powered by a new GPU, it is not. The Radeon HD 3870 X2 is instead powered by a pair of RV670 GPUs linked together on a single PCB by a PCI Express fan-out switch. In essence, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 is "CrossFire on a card" but with a small boost in clock speed for each GPU as well. As the benchmarks and testing show, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 is one of the fastest single cards around right now. NVIDIA is rumored to be readying a dual GPU single card beast as well."

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At the end of last week, the latest banking scandal started hitting the wires as news broke of a low level trader for the French bank Societe Generale was somehow able to lose the bank $7.2 billion by sneaking around various control and security systems to make a series of complex bets, well beyond what he should have been allowed to do. Many people are comparing it to the case of Nick Leeson, who brought down Barings bank over a decade ago -- though, with Leeson, it only took a little over a $1 billion. And, over the weekend, the details got worse. That $7.2 billion loss came on bets up to $73 billion. It certainly raises plenty of questions about the controls that are in place. No matter how sneaky you are, you would think that $73 billion would be pretty hard to trade without anyone noticing. Apparently not. The trader in this case, Jerome Kerviel, supposedly had a detailed understanding of the security systems thanks to an earlier job at the bank, that involved monitoring the trading systems and then used other people's accounts and falsified documents to hide his tracks. Even so, you would think that someone would have taken notice of $73 billion moving around. Societe Generale claims that, unlike Barings, it can easily survive this fraud and will even turn a profit. Of course, at the same time, it also announced it needs to raise $8 billion -- and given the size of the loss, that certainly makes it sound like the bank needs to replace that money pretty quickly.

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egil writes "Trolltech announced this morning (CET) that they have accepted a bid from Nokia to buy the entire company. The bid was for 16 NOK per share, which values the company at an equivalent of approximately 150 million USD. The stock currently trades at 15.70 on the Oslo stack exchange, up from around 10 on Friday. The offer has already been accepted by the Trolltech BOD."

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An anonymous reader writes "'The LEGO brick turns 50 at exactly 1:58pm today. This cool timeline shows these fifty years of building frenzy by happy kids and kids-at-heart, all the milestones from the Legoland themed sets to Technic and Mindstorms NXT, as well as all kind of weird curiosities about the most famous stud-and-tube couple system in the world.'" Of course, it all peaked in 1979 with the space set. These kids these days with their bionacle. bah.

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Brian Krebs of the Washington Post's Security Fix blog has up an article on work-at-home money mule scams (backgrounder blog post here). These operations offer victims hundreds or thousands of dollars per week for moving money through their own accounts — a critical piece of the infrastructure for profiting from identity theft and phishing. The article links to the site of a UK fraud fighter named Bob Harrison, who lists hundreds of fradulent money-mule operations.

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We've been linking to Business Week's website for many, many years here on Techdirt. A quick search shows a long list of posts that all link to articles on the Business Week site. In fact, Business Week has hired a PR firm that has often sent us stories, requesting that we write posts to them. I actually found it rather amusing that a publication would have PR people to try to get more buzz about its own articles -- but those PR people were always friendly, and some of the links they sent were actually quite good. Yet, apparently, someone didn't make this clear to other folks at Business Week. Mathew Ingram points us to a post by SmugMug's CEO, who claims that Business Week demanded he take down a link to a story about his company, pointing to this user agreement that forbids deep-linking, among other things. In the past, we've seen other sites make such claims, though none have been shown to be legal. You simply can't forbid someone from linking to you, no matter how much you might wish to do so. It's rather surprising that a site like BusinessWeek.com would have such a policy in place (especially while actively seeking such links from others) and even more surprising that someone there would move to enforce such a policy. In the meantime, if they would prefer it, we can stop linking to Business Week.

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I haven't done the research to find out when the last time 7 games separated one conference's top 10 teams, all with a winning record and playing good basketball this late in the season. It hasn't happened in the 8 years I have owned the Mavs.

This year is shaping up to be a crazy one. A 5 or 6 game losing streak and any of the 4 teams who have had the best record in the west over the past month could find themselves out of the playoffs.

This scenario is not lost on players or fans. The feel in arenas lately have been very playoff like. You can feel the energy as fans know what is at stake. Players are looking at the standings and paying far closer attention to game by game results of division and conference teams. They know what is at stake with every game.

This season, at least in the Western Conference, no one is going to ask the question of whether the regular season is important. For the remainder of this season, EVERY game is important. Every team will have their up and down streaks simply because its going to be hard to play playoff quality basketball for 40 games. Back to back games in the West are going to be brutal.

The playoffs to make the playoffs has started and it doesn't look like any team will get a breather between now and when their season ends.

That will make this the Best NBA Season Ever !

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scim writes "Intelligent speculation has led one knowledgeable observer to believe the satellite recently announced to have failed is a radar satellite named USA 193. According to an earlier story on the satellite: 'The experimental L-21 classified satellite, built for the National Reconnaissance Office at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, was launched successfully on Dec. 14 [2006] but has been out of touch since reaching its low-earth orbit.'" The ArmsControlWonk story leads off with what purports to be a photo from the ground of USA 193.

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