eldavojohn writes to tell us that Tilera has released a Linux-based development kit for their 64-core system on a chip. "The Tile64 is based on a proprietary VLIW (very long instruction word) architecture, on which a MIPS-like RISC architecture is implemented in microcode. A hypervisor enables each core to run its own instance of Linux, or alternatively the whole chip can run Tilera's 64-way SMP (symmetrical multiprocessing) Linux implementation. An "iMesh" switching interconnect, developed by Tilera's founder, MIT professor and serial entrepreneur Dr. Anant Agarwal, is said to eliminate the centralized bus intersection that limited scalability in previous multicore designs."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While the AOL/Time Warner merger has gone down in the record books as one of the worst mergers ever, I still contend that it could have gone much better if stronger management had been in place. Most specifically, there were obvious synergies between aspects of Time Warner and AOL -- but petty squabbles and turf wars kept most of those synergies from being realized. The most glaring and obvious of these was Time Warner Cable (or RoadRunner) and AOL. Both offered internet access, and it seemed perfectly reasonable to merge the two properties, and use RoadRunner to upgrade all those dialup users onto broadband, and then keep them engaged with all the Time Warner content. Of course, the Time Warner content people freaked out about content on the internet of course, so that would never have worked -- but the failure to link up RoadRunner and AOL never made any sense.

In fact, the two services began aggressively competing with each other. Then, after three years, someone finally realized that maybe the two should work together and made an announcement saying so. Of course... an announcement without action is worthless. So, another year goes by and another exec trots out with an announcement that the two divisions will work closely again. And again... nothing. Give it almost another year... and yet another announcement. Sense a pattern? In the end, the two groups never actually did combine, and with today's announcement that Time Warner is selling off the cable business entirely, it just puts an exclamation point on all these years of keeping the two businesses separate. Of course, in selling off Time Warner Cable, it will also likely lead to speculation that the company will sell off AOL (or merge it with Yahoo -- remember that plan?) as well -- though, as an entirely separate entity.

While I tend to be skeptical of mergers based on vague "synergies," it's still rather amazing that in all this time, no one at Time Warner ever got these two divisions together -- and now the company may end up selling each off separately. In the end, this was a deal that only worked out for the investment bankers. Remember, they love to convince companies to consolidate one year and diversify the next -- because they make money on both transactions.

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I'll be doing a demo at 11am on Saturday at Maker Faire on embroidering a circuit with conductive thread, LEDs, and a watch battery. Don't worry if you've never picked up a needle and thread before; this beginner's level demo will show you the basics of embroidery and circuits. I'm very excited to see you all there!

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Engadget has had a chance to play around with Psystar's Open Computer and has a few things to say about the controversial machine. "Okay, so we've been playing with the Psystar Open Computer for a few hours now, and we've formed some early impressions and put together a short video of it in action. We haven't really tried to stress the system yet, but based on our other experiences with OSx86 machines, we're expecting things to generally go smoothly. That said, there are some definite rough patches and issues, all mostly having to do with the fact that OS X isn't really built for this hardware."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A US Congressional Representative has introduced a new bill that would make it illegal for US tech companies to assist any foreign country in attempting to censor the internet or in handing over data on users to the government except for "legitimate foreign law enforcement purposes." This is targeted at companies such as Cisco, which has supplied some of the technology used in the Great Firewall of China, as well as Yahoo! which got into some hot water for supposedly handing over information to Chinese authorities on some critics of the Chinese government.

While the goal is certainly admirable, the implementation is troublesome. First, it's putting liability on tech companies for something they may not have much knowledge about (how countries are going to use the tech or whether the info is needed for "legitimate foreign law enforcement purposes."). Furthermore, where this is really hypocritical is that the law apparently does not apply to the US as well. While certainly not as bad as some other nations, the US has certainly requested data for questionable reasons, and has also been seen trying to censor parts of the internet at times. While I'm certainly not equating the efforts of US politicians to filter the internet with massive operations such as those seen in China, implementing this type of legislation does seem a bit hypocritical.

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The Department of Defense is freaked out that the commercially-manufactured microchips in their tech might contain "kill switches" that bad people could use to remotely knock the devices out of operation. So at the end of last year, DARPA launched its Trust In Integrated Circuits program to develop methods for sussing out chips with "malicious" circuitry hidden inside. IEEE Spectrum writer Sally Adee looked at the technicalities of the controversy. She told me, "I think interviewed every electrical engineer in the country so I could wrap my head around 1) why that's a big deal and 2) how it would affect me (I'm selfish that way.) From IEEE Spectrum:

Feeding those (fever) dreams is the Pentagon's realization that it no longer controls who manufactures the components that go into its increasingly complex systems. A single plane like the DOD's next generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, can contain an “insane number” of chips, says one semiconductor expert familiar with that aircraft's design. Estimates from other sources put the total at several hundred to more than a thousand. And tracing a part back to its source is not always straightforward. The dwindling of domestic chip and electronics manufacturing in the United States, combined with the phenomenal growth of suppliers in countries like China, has only deepened the U.S. military's concern.

Recognizing this enormous vulnerability, the DOD recently launched its most ambitious program yet to verify the integrity of the electronics that will underpin future additions to its arsenal. In December, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon's R&D wing, released details about a three-year initiative it calls the Trust in Integrated Circuits program. The findings from the program could give the military—and defense contractors who make sensitive microelectronics like the weapons systems for the F?35—a guaranteed method of determining whether their chips have been compromised. In January, the Trust program started its prequalifying rounds by sending to three contractors four identical versions of a chip that contained unspecified malicious circuitry. The teams have until the end of this month to ferret out as many of the devious insertions as they can.

Vetting a chip with a hidden agenda can't be all that tough, right? Wrong. Although commercial chip makers routinely and exhaustively test chips with hundreds of millions of logic gates, they can't afford to inspect everything. So instead they focus on how well the chip performs specific functions. For a microprocessor destined for use in a cellphone, for instance, the chip maker will check to see whether all the phone's various functions work. Any extraneous circuitry that doesn't interfere with the chip's normal functions won't show up in these tests.

“You don't check for the infinite possible things that are not specified,” says electrical engineering professor Ruby Lee, a cryptography expert at Princeton. “You could check the obvious possibilities, but can you test for every unspecified function?”

Link

Today I got two gifts from the Amazon wish list I started. As items come off the list, I add more items.

They were much appreciated! I got the McCartney album CD and a dozen reporter's notebooks, my favorite way to take notes while I'm programming or writing (along with Pentel sign pens, of which I have hundreds).

You guys are the greatest!!

We're very excited about the release of the second in our line of DIY Science books, Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments, by Robert Bruce Thompson. Bob also authored the first title in the series Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders. At Maker Faire, he will be doing demos of lab experiments from the book on Saturday (1pm - 1:45pm) and Sunday (3pm - 3:45pm) at the MAKE Demo stage in the Maker Shed.

From the Maker Store:
Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments
Our Price: $34.99

For students, DIY hobbyists, and science buffs, who can no longer get real chemistry sets, this one-of-a-kind guide explains how to set up and use a home chemistry lab, with step-by-step instructions for conducting experiments in basic chemistry. Learn how to smelt copper, purify alcohol, synthesize rayon, test for drugs and poisons, and much more. The book includes lessons on how to equip your home chemistry lab, master laboratory skills, and work safely in your lab, along with 17 hands-on chapters that include multiple laboratory sessions.

Maker Faire is a two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset May 3rd and 4th at the San Mateo Fairgrounds, CA (Upcoming.org). It's for creative, resourceful people of all ages and backgrounds who like to tinker and love to make things. Buy tickets now and save, discount ticket sales end on April 25th, 2008.

If you're in the Bay Area, or plan to attend Maker Faire add "makerfaire" to your Twitter, we'll be giving away tickets and will have updates before and during Maker Faire!

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Fred sez,

I've just completed building the 2.0 version of Committee Caller for my master's thesis. It's called Cause Caller and it is a virtual phone bank web app powered by a Semantic Media Wiki.

I came up with the idea of automating call queues for phone banks while trying to organize one for myself, it was a total hassle to find everyone’s phone number on a particular committee, so I built CommitteeCaller last semester.  Over the last couple of months I’ve worked with several local causes to develop the idea into a generalized activist tool that is my thesis — Cause Caller. The result is a fully extendable, platform that drives a “live” VoIP application that hopefully takes a lot of the hassle out of phone banking.

Right now Cause Caller is a bit of a blank slate — while I have almost all of America’s federal politicians (Congressional representatives, Senators, etc.) in the database,  I am really interested in building state level politicians into it. Causes also need to be added as right now there are only two: the demo cause and SolarOne’s I Heart PV Cause. This is where you can help — if you are or you know any activists looking to organize phone banks, please forward this to them! I’m going to be presenting this project for my thesis at ITP on Friday, May 9th at 12:20pm, so I’ll be incorporating feedback I receive over the next week into the “results” section of my presentation.

Have fun getting in touch with democracy!

Link (Thanks, Fred!)

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,

Boing Boing readers may remember some static from the State of Oregon about whether their statutes are public or private.

Tim Stanley, the CEO of Justia and myself have had three phone calls with the staff of the Office of the Legislative Counsel, examined their proposed so-called "public" license, and believe we've established that we're going to have to agree to disagree. As such, we've retained counsel and referred the matter to him for the next steps.

Readers may be interested in a recent post by William Patry, author of the 7-volume treatise on copyright, on the subject Oregon goes wacka wacka huna kuna. Despite the technical legal words used in the title, he does a great job explaining the basic concepts.

Link See also: Oregon: our laws are copyrighted and you can't publish them

Media reports from within China say a factory in Guangdong has been completing orders for the flag of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

Workers said they thought they were just making colourful flags and did not realise their meaning.

Link to BBC News article (too jay shay, Hutch!)

Paul sez, "A couple of days ago, an "educational" documentary aimed at discouraging music piracy was announced in the Australian press. Today it appears that at least one of the artists was lied to about the intent of the piece. Allegedly, he was told the film was to be about trying to survive as a musician and his statements were spun to present the view that the life of an artist is made more difficult by the downloading of his work. The closing quote is great:

I'm from a punk rock band, it's all about getting your music out any way you can - you don't make money from the record, the record companies make the money from the record. If they can't make money these days because they haven't come onside with the way the world is going, it's their own problem.

Link (Thanks, Paul and Sandy!)

A friend at Fleshbot writes...

Prague's Big Sister internet-enabled brothel has long been high on our list of travel destinations ever since our globetrotting siblings at Gridskipper first bought it to our attention a couple of years ago. (But only from a sociological perspective, you understand, not because we want to boink our way to international notoriety via the dozens of video cameras set up throughout the establishment which broadcast the goings-on to tens of thousands of the site's subscribers.) Short of going to Prague or coughing up a $40 monthly membership to join the website, the best way to see what Big Sister is all about is photographer Hana Jakrlova's Big Sister photodocumentary project...

Link to Fleshbot post (nsfw). Shown here, the, ah, polar bear theme room inside the Big Sister brothel.

MAKE will be on G4 - Attack of the Show - The Loop: Maker Faire segment today LIVE! Tune in to see and hear a preview of all things Maker Faire before this weekend!

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... apologies to xkcd.com/149/ (thanks, Wayneco!).

theodp writes "I don't want my GTV. Excerpts from a newly-published Google patent application for Targeted Video Advertising: [1] 'Users may be allowed to skip particular commercials, but required to watch or accept a set number of commercials in order to watch a program. The required number may be, for example, a set integer, such as 11 commercials.' [2] 'The system...may also require the user to fully watch at least four promotions before the program will continue.' [3] 'The profile includes some demographic information of the user, such as income, age, and gender. This information may be obtained when the user registers for the video service.' [4] 'A commercial with the interactive format is an advertisement that requires user interaction to be completed (e.g., a survey).' Yikes."

This is only at the application stage, but it's difficult to see this getting anywhere. There are already interstitial advertising systems online that do exactly what appears to be described in this patent. But, even more to the point, in the past when companies have patented concepts such as preventing people from skipping over commercials, the backlash has been pretty loud.

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