With gas prices across the country soaring to over $4/gallon, you may want to track down one of those (now mostly rural) gas stations that still uses really old gas pumps. It turns out that many of them were not designed to handle prices over $4. They go right up to $3.99 9/10... and that's it. While there aren't that many gas stations left that still have these pumps, it's causing a bit of a mess for them. The article highlights one station that has huge signs everywhere explaining that the price on the pump is inaccurate, and the station will apply a multiplier to the final amount to get the price right. While operating a gas pump with the incorrect price being shown is illegal, it sounds like (at least in Washington, where the story was written), state officials are making exceptions -- though it wants the stations to have plans in place to upgrade the pumps. I guess this is sort of the gas station industry's version of Y2K.

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SlackFan writes "Slackware 12.1 has been released with kernel 2.6.24-5. 'Among the many program updates and distribution enhancements, you'll find better support for RAID, LVM, and cryptsetup; a network capable (FTP and HTTP, not only NFS) installer; and two of the most advanced desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.4.2, a fast, lightweight, and visually appealing desktop environment, and KDE 3.5.9, the latest 3.x version of the full-featured K Desktop Environment.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,

Two days, go Boing Boing ran a story on the deteriorating relations in the fight to free the supposedly copyrighted laws of the great State of Oregon. Well, the situation is definitely at an impasse and June 2 has been set as the date by which this situation is either resolved or we post the full text of all 2005 and 2007 statutes.

Karl Olson of the firm Levy, Ram & Olson LLP, Attorneys, delivered the news on behalf of Justia and Public.Resource.Org when he said:

"My clients respectfully cannot agree to the Public License. First, and most fundamentally, it would require them to acknowledge that portions of the Oregon Revised Statutes (ORS) are protected by copyright, and they respectfully but vigorously disagree that portions of the ORS are protected by copyright."

So there!

Link (Thanks, Carl!) See also: Oregon continues to insist that its laws are copyrighted and can't be published

We recently pointed to Neil Gaiman's comments on JK Rowling's lawsuit against the author of the Harry Potter Lexicon guidebook. Now, Slashdot points us to the even more brilliant dissection of the case by famed author Orson Scott Card. It's really worth reading the whole thing, as he makes a ton of fantastic points including: (a) every author borrows ideas from others -- including Rowling, (b) the Lexicon is clearly fair use, (c) the Lexicon's website helped promote the Harry Potter books for many years and made Rowling a ton of money, while the Lexicon's author made nothing, (d) if she's so upset by the quality, why doesn't she just write her own, and (e) the end result is of this attempt to gain "respect" is going to widely damage Rowling's reputation. Here are some snippets from the piece, but it's really worth reading in its entirety:

"This frivolous lawsuit puts at serious risk the entire tradition of commentary on fiction. Any student writing a paper about the Harry Potter books, any scholarly treatise about it, will certainly do everything she's complaining about. Once you publish fiction, Ms. Rowling, anybody is free to write about it, to comment on it, and to quote liberally from it, as long as the source is cited.... She let herself be talked into being outraged over a perfectly normal publishing activity, one that she had actually made use of herself during its web incarnation. Now she is suing somebody who has devoted years to promoting her work and making no money from his efforts -- which actually helped her make some of her bazillions of dollars. Talent does not excuse Rowling's ingratitude, her vanity, her greed, her bullying of the little guy, and her pathetic claims of emotional distress."

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And we wouldn't have our military there if there wasn't.

Everyone knows the war in Iraq is about oil, but if a Democrat were to say it the Republicans would challenge his or her patriotism. But what if a Republican said it? What if John McCain, the Republican candidate for President said it? In public, on camera, with mikes, clearly, unambiguously?

You might think it was major news, at least on the same order as whether Obama wears a flag pin or properly salutes the flag?

Would it be news that over 4000 Americans and at least $1 trillion has been piddled away on a really bad deal? That $1 trillion could have bought a lot of oil. Or it could have built some great mass transit. Or it could have paid for Republican tax cuts. Or whatever, who cares -- it's news dammit.

No the press isn't likely to report this latest McCain truth-leak, that's why it's so important that we give generously to the DNC so they can run ads that do their work for them.

I gave them $100 today. For now, I think my donations to Obama aren't going to change things very much, so I'm switching my donation-flow to the DNC. Their ads defining McCain are good, they're accurate, and they work. They just have to be run in more states more times.

BTW, MSNBC is being way too soft on McCain when they say he "seemed to suggest" -- the usual press BS re McCain. He said it, so report it, without the double-qualification. He didn't "seem to" and he didn't "suggest." He said it, so say he said it. They're going to soft-pedal it for sure. Arrrgh.

Update: Cross-posted at Huffington.

Lots of information in the comments on yesterday's post about city-owned fiber in Berkeley.

Adam Savage is at Maker Faire this year and he brought some of his incredible creations, including a Maltese Falcon, an Indiana Jones whip, and this beautiful recreation of a Dodo bird skeleton.

(Click on thumbnails for enlargement)

After eBay released its side of the story in the eBay-Craigslist lawsuit, we noted that it looked pretty damning against Craigslist, but we wanted to hear Craig and Jim's side of the story. Well, their initial response isn't all that convincing. At best, it highlights a few points in the lawsuit and claims "but eBay did the same thing!" But, that's not at all accurate, unfortunately. eBay isn't suing Craigslist because it has a poison pill, or because it wants a staggered board or the right of first refusal agreement -- as Craigslist implies. It's suing because Craig and Jim put those provisions in place by themselves, without the wider consent of the board or eBay as a significant shareholder. In other words, Craigslist's response isn't on the meat of the lawsuit, and appears to be missing the point entirely. One would hope that their response in court has more substance.

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shankar writes "Engineers at Eyebeam, an art and technology center based in New York, have created a scaled-down open-source version of Surface, called Cubit. By sharing the Cubit's hardware schematics and software source code, the engineers are significantly reducing the cost of owning a multitouch table. 'Multitouch displays are not new technology; in fact, they've been built in research labs for decades. Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs created an iconic multitouch table called DiamondTouch; more recently, Jeff Han, founder of Perceptive Pixel, based in New York, developed wall-sized multitouch screens that he sells to corporations and major government agencies. But because of the falling costs of many touch-screen components, such as infrared light sources and small cameras and projectors, it's now becoming feasible for people without access to a lab or venture-capital money to make their own multitouch displays.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

shankar writes "Engineers at Eyebeam, an art and technology center based in New York, have created a scaled-down open-source version of Surface, called Cubit. By sharing the Cubit's hardware schematics and software source code, the engineers are significantly reducing the cost of owning a multitouch table. 'Multitouch displays are not new technology; in fact, they've been built in research labs for decades. Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs created an iconic multitouch table called DiamondTouch; more recently, Jeff Han, founder of Perceptive Pixel, based in New York, developed wall-sized multitouch screens that he sells to corporations and major government agencies. But because of the falling costs of many touch-screen components, such as infrared light sources and small cameras and projectors, it's now becoming feasible for people without access to a lab or venture-capital money to make their own multitouch displays.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While the RIAA has been sending threatening notices to colleges about student file sharing for a while now, it seems to have recently stepped up the attack. Various colleges are reporting a rather massive increase in these notices, despite no discernible change in file sharing activity. In some cases, they're suddenly getting as many notices in a day as they used to get in a month. Some universities are also pointing out that they don't see any corresponding activity in their log files that would indicate that industry insiders had actually checked to make sure these files were infringing.

One interesting theory is mentioned in the Wired article above. The RIAA has been using the number of such notices as some sort of indicator of how much piracy is occurring -- and even lobbying for laws that would require any university that got over a certain number of notices to install special filtering/monitoring software. So, by showing an increase, the RIAA can try to show how "necessary" this is, even if the notices are totally bogus. As one person points out in the article, it does not seem at all reasonable to judge how much piracy is occurring (or what actions need to be taken) based on an arbitrary number that is totally under the control of the RIAA.

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And it delivered two geekish presents.

I'm installing the Eye-Fi card right now. Wish me luck!

It's going pretty well. Now they want me to connect my card to one of the photo utilities, like Facebook, Flickr, TypePad, Photobucket, Windows Live, Costco (!) and many many more. What they don't tell you is if every picture you take will be uploaded. That could be pretty embarassing and since my pictures flow to Twitter through TwitterGram, that could be a problem too. A Help option here, explaining, would be useful -- but I'm going to assume that only some of my pics get uploaded and wire it up to Flickr.

They also don't tell you whether you can create a new account from this page.

Answer to the second question -- you can create a new account.

Okay, I followed their instructions, took a few pictures of myself, while I was away the browser (Firefox) crashed. I'm trying to get back to where I was but keep hitting this error page.

Ooops, it seems to upload all pictures. That's not good! I'm going to turn that one off.

Looking for the folder on my hard disk. Nope. Not there.

I'm still the best guy around for breaking software.

Okay slow down. You have to leave the camera on so it can upload the pics? I guess so.

Postscript: I don't think the Eye-Fi is designed to work well if you take high resolution pictures, which I do with my Canon. I'm going to try using it with my Nikon, which I have set up to take low-rez pics.

Iddo Genuth writes to mention that MIT researchers have made their first pass at bringing the common yellow post-it note into the digital age. Using a combination of artificial intelligence, RFID, and ink recognition the team hopes to make the digital version as ubiquitous as possible. "The Quickie application not only allows users to browse their notes, but also lets users search for specific information or keywords. Using a freely available commonsense knowledge engine and computational AI techniques, the software processes the written text and determines the relevant context of the notes, categorizing them appropriately. "The system uses its understanding of the user's intentions, content, and the context of the notes to provide the user with reminders, alerts, messages, and just-in-time information" - said the inventors. Additionally, each Quickie carries a unique RFID tag, so that it can be easily located around the house or office. Therefore, users can be sure never to lose a bookmarked book or any other object marked with a Quickie."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've covered the bizarre love/hate affair that NBC Universal has had with YouTube. It actually helped get YouTube its first burst of serious publicity in demanding the SNL "Lazy Sunday" clip be taken down off the site. It then went back (setting up its own YouTube channel) and forth (blaming YouTube for company problems) on whether or not it liked YouTube, before eventually announcing its own competing offering (in partnership with News Corp.) called Hulu. Soon after doing so, it pulled the official NBC channel on YouTube, which made little sense. Even if Hulu were fantastic, the actual eyeballs were at YouTube. It had built up a huge community. NBC Universal was making the classic content owner's mistake of overvaluing the content, and undervaluing the platform. It figured that if it hosted the content itself, the crowds would come.

Apparently, that's not what has happened. While Hulu surprised many critics with a well-designed site, it appears that Hulu hasn't been able to generate the type of traffic executives expected. So, despite it being a YouTube competitor, Hulu has tucked its tail between its legs and set up its own channel on YouTube. Apparently, the "build it and they will come" philosophy of NBC Universal's execs didn't work quite as well as planned.

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An anonymous reader writes "Raytheon is bringing 'Iron Man' to life, according to EETimes. 'The movie opens in theaters worldwide today, but the real "iron man" has already been under construction at Raytheon Company (Salt Lake City, Utah) since 2000. Raytheon's Exoskeleton project is the brainchild of project leader Stephen Jacobsen and is being funded by the U.S. Army. The project, according to the company, permits soldiers to don an Exoskeleton suit that amplifies their strength — enabling them to lift 200-pound payloads without tiring.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With the news coming out this week that mobile operator Rogers was finally bringing the iPhone to Canada, almost every Canadian comment on it had something to do with just how badly everyone expected Rogers to rip people off with the iPhone. Apparently, Rogers has quite a reputation -- and it appears to be well deserved. Rob Hyndman points us to a story about the ridiculous roaming charges for those who use a Rogers device outside of Canada. Ridiculously high roaming charges are nothing new, of course. They happen to everyone, unfortunately. What's stunning, though, is that the reporter gets a guy at Rogers to admit that the company demands that all of the mobile devices it offers disable any feature that lets you see how much you've racked up in roaming charges. In other words, they know they're ripping you off -- and they want to make sure you don't realize by how much until it's too late.

If ever there were a short-term strategy, this would be it. This decision most likely "gets" some travelers the first time around (as it got the reporter in the article). However, it then pisses off those users such that they'll never use Rogers mobile phones out of the country ever again. In fact, I'd bet that many start looking at other options entirely. It seems like a plan designed to drive away customers, just for a short one-time ridiculously high charge. There are certainly companies out there that believe an informed customer is a bad customer, but those companies will often find that's not a particularly good plan to stay in business over the long term.

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Engadget recently grabbed a few minutes with Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz. They were able to get some great information on the JavaFX Mobile platform as well as Java on the iPhone and how the struggle against Microsoft is going with respect to open source.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.