Municipalities should label the placebo x-walk buttons as such so that attentive folks like me can avoid spreading germs when I come across a button that benefits me in no way. Or it sounds like a decent graffiti art project to go around and add a tiny standardized sticker.

You haven't seen my wife's salt collection...The amount of money she's spent would put a crackhead to shame.

Note where Eshoo's district is: the heart of Silicon Valley and where Google, Microsoft, Verisign, etc. have major offices and/or headquarters. Does she represent the bulk of her constituents in this statement, not at all likely. Is she representing some companies whose business would be providing the technology to do the networking or the filtering? Likely. (Partial disclosure: I work in her district and I have yet to be impressed by her.)

http://www.house.gov/formeshoo/zipauth.html

Ah hah! Front 242 was ahead of their time for multiple reasons. :*)

What is the noise level of this thing? Something tells me it's a desk-side wind tunnel. Let out the magic smoke...

I buy Apple h/w for the engineering that goes into them...Enough juice to satisfy me and silent as a whisper. Oh, and DVI out on their laptops/minis. (Does Shuttle make any with DVI yet?) Disclosure: I have two MacBooks, one Intel Mini, one PPC Mini...

Agreed about carpenter bees; they are amazing insects. A flower called "coral bells" is another favorite, the flowers are 1/8" across but the bees love them.

I have noticed that there are two "types", one fairly normal-sized (maybe 1" long), and another more rare type (~1.5" long). I am uncertain whether the larger ones are a different species, mutants, or males.

Another fun plant in my yard are large spurge; whose flowers mimic meat (black flowers, no smell to me, but I'm sure to the insects.) We see lots of interesting wasps and flies; none are pests that annoy humans, luckily. Unluckily, a neighbor hung a wasp trap, I hope it doesn't affect the population too much...(Wasps do an excellent job of controlling other, plant-eating, pest insects.)

The Radiolab podcast has a very closely-related item in their latest episode "(So-Called) Life". I won't spoil the punch line, give it a listen. (Another mind-blowing episode.)

Fallacy of causality? Could it be that the cameras move the crime, or are there other factors involved (types of businesses that use cameras, historical impact on crime patterns [gee, murders happen alot on this corner, I think I'll commit mine a couple blocks away in the hopes of getting away with it], etc.) Hopefully the researchers took this into account

Mounting fake cameras would be a perfect way to normalize the data, if the fakes were mounted at random spots throughout the city or if you could truly blanket the city with fakes...

Sounds like those gimmicky "booster" stickers folks were selling that claimed to improve reception. Personally, I've not been impressed with most/all of Griffin's product line and the things I've bought from them in the past ended up with really poor support. Theoretically this could be a wave guide, but something tells me you won't see a noticeable change in reception.

For the record, I owned an iMic (subsequently sold off, I prefer my USB Soundblaster, no driver needed and lots more port options), still have a PowerMate in a drawer mostly unused, mostly due to really crap drivers for OSX, and I owned this funky thing for a PocketPC PDA that was supposed to work as an IR remote control transmitter but that never worked right. I've officially sworn off buying anything from this company ever again.

ceramic blade == cool, but I prefer mine which cost like $10 at the local Japanese store (or was it at a Korean store, I forget) and has replaceable steel blades, some of which have slots for making julienned veggies. Only problem is I'd like to make thicker slices for pickles...

And the Engrish instructions are some of the best!

I agree about shoveling fried rice, but how many times have you been served fried rice in a bowl? Always comes on a very shallow serving plate and I always get a flat dinner plate to eat from...

Ah! Radiolab is amazing. If you're a science geek, check out the previous episodes. I support WNYC partially because of Radiolab.

I so wish I were in NYC so's I could attend their live events...

Won't the cell companies slam DMCA down on these folks?

Any crypto that can be broken should be broken and the method of decryption released widely.

Instead of fixing their security hole(s), Our Corporate Masters (TM) will try to sue an exploit out of existence so only criminals and law enforcement will have access to our conversations.

way cool, although I am a little bit (sorry, pun not intended) skeptical of his father's claim that, "He has never been bothered at being so small. He has no inferiority complex. He is the jewel of our family." If he had no inferiority complex, why is he into bodybuilding (to the point of having his glamour photo taken in the gym?) But I say I'm only a little bit (sorry again) skeptical because he doesn't appear to be obsessive over his bodybuilding.

But maybe he hasn't hit the 'roids, yet.

Food for thought: muscle dysmorphia, a psychological disorder that afflicts obsessive bodybuilders who always think they are small, no matter how overly-bulked-up they are...look it up.

It's unclear from your post--Do these lights, when plugged into a powered outlet, charge standard Ni-MH rechargeable batteries? I currently use rechargables primarily for my Wiimotes, but having the charger double as a flashlight would be a definite bonus.

Nope, at least the artwork is not 3-d but there is additional art (or something) provided by Nike that is. Still a cool idea, but I'm more a stereo art collector than an Arkitip collector.

---received this AM---

Actually, it is a 3-D viewmaster and we had planned on making all the images 3-D, but all the art is only in 2-D. The deadline came too fast and we would have had to put all the art through a different digital setup so it was too late to change it. There are some other (Nike sponsored images) that are in 3D.

Thanks for your interest in our products.

Sincerely,
Arkitip Customer Service
Tracy Forman
tracy@arkitip

bah, sliders...I used to own a number of different slider phones and while they were all well-built, the sliding functionality generally was more an annoyance than a boon. And the added thickness for the second layer prevents me from slipping the phone into my pocket (whereas I can have the iPhone + my wallet in the same pocket and it is still comfy.)

Hey, anyone know if the reels are stereographic images (3-d) or just the same image in both eyes? Far more interesting if they're 3-d, but I somehow doubt it. (Their pics of the set are not clear enough to tell if there are critically-important minute differences between each frame to make them stereo.)

Agreed, interesting idea...Odd line of reasoning/argument (which takes up far too much of the video)--moving the background vs. moving the character. In their example, it's not that the character is moving in relation to the world, it's that the (larger) world is moving in relation to the character.

It's all relative. ;^)

I'm all for this--as long as Home Despot and Lowes tracks who buys the tools so that next time a construction worker loses their ladder, bucket, whateva road hazard on the freeway, CHP will know who to fine.

What'd be the legality of loading one of these into a mall department store or casino without their consent? I have heard that casinos intentionally organize the layout of their buildings so that leaving them is difficult, and I highly suspect dept stores of doing same...Would be a hoot to screw with their plans, but I'm guessing trespassing laws would mean your expensive bot would be impounded.

Huh...whathuh? Why would you want to keep your coffee as hot as possible as long as possible only to cool it down before drinking? Do coffee nutjobs (oh, I guess they'd be beanjobs) think the nature of the coffee is different doing this rather than just cooling it all down and drinking it?

Nobody ever said they were in a lab facility...Something tells me they have a couple running around free and science is just a bonus.

I forget where I heard it (I think it was Radio Lab, an AWESOME Podcast from WNYC) but I've heard that it's commonplace for shuttles to fly to the station with at least one mosquito. Astronauts laugh at the mosquito when it tries to fly in 0-g. Spiders also sneak onboard occasionally; it takes them 3 days to adjust to making webs in 0-g, and in the meantime they make f*cked up webs.

Magic Sand: you'd use bottles with the sand and wter with nozzles to pour/squirt the sand in water; because the sand is hydrophobic, the water acts to lubricate the sand and it pours like soft mud, but when it would drop to the bottom it would pile up nicely so you'd make this way-cool drippy '70's psychedelic rock sand castles underwater with this stuff. When you were done, you'd pour the water out and air-dry the sand and start the process all over.

Unless you mixed the colors, there's no easy way to un-mix colors. It would be cool to have different colors in different sizes so you could centrifuge them. Or if you made one with iron in the grains, you could magnetically separate them...Ah, the possibilities.

HDMI 1080p? :^) Better be, with a screen that big. And don't sit so close, you'll get eye cancer!

Insecta from Fat Messiah Games is similar, but doesn't have papercraft bugs (unless you think cutting chits off a sheet is papercraft.) But it's a very well designed game, and a good way to learn different bug species. The players play a mutant bug, but all of the enemy bugs in the hive accurately portray real bugs. It's usually played "all against the hive", a-la Heroquest or Descent.

And the guys who run the (small) game company are really cool. Too bad it's out of print, currently.

http://www.fatmessiahgames.com/fmg/insecta/howitplays.html

Before we devolve into 9/11 conspiracy theories...

I ran across the snopes.com article on the ill-fated Starbucks ad, entitled "Collapse into Cool". I'll leave it up to y'all to find it. I actually found one of the posters on eBay and bought it cheap. It's hanging in my office. :^)

Technically not a "water turbine", but an air turbine engine whose exhaust is use to push water at high velocity.

Still cool, though, and ingenious use of existing tech. I am guessing the wind velocity is enough to draw water through the inlet tubes at a fair clip/force, I wonder if they could draw water from a nearby pond/lake with this thing.

Dculberson, properly-designed optics should be able to project onto a curved surface with little/no distortion...

But a curved LCD would be even more interesting of a development, the optics and whatnot will make a curved DLP fairly deep, methinks.

Still, props to AlienDell for thinking out of the box. I'd pay $1k for something like this.

Um, how does it switch from being an input to being an output? Is this device amplified (and, hence, would not amplify if you switched the port to "input"?) Neat trick: any headphone can double as a low-gain microphone. What sort of isolation would it include? Not to say unamplified/unisolated would be interesting, but you're likely to get some odd crosstalk/feedback.

Oh, and what's to prevent folks from connecting two inputs and producing sound loud enough to blow their eardrums (or their headphones, preferably?)

Definitely could be an interesting product, but I've been luke-warm over Belkin products in the past...

There's one particular app that track balls are perfectly suited for: controlling your media computer while you're in a recliner, in bed, or otherwise in a location without a mousing surface.

I've yet to find an alternative that works as well as a trackball in such a situation, and I still need to buy a bluetooth trackball (yes, there is one out there...Not available at your local Radio Shack, but still.)

Sure, if everything you watch/listen to is in iTunes or some other monolithic media player that can be controlled with a simple up/down/left/right, a Wiimote or IR remote would work...But selecting files in the filesystem for playback or otherwise manipulating complex menus makes these devices difficult to use.

Too bad my iPhone (and my previous phone, a Sprint PPC 6700) don't have the wrist strap attachment hardware to use a wrist strap.

Why do phone manufacturers skip these conveniences?

The e-waste problem is not exactly new news, but there are some interesting developments including the suggestion that the lead used in the paint on the recalled toys may, in fact, have come from e-waste recycling facilities. Irony. (Sorry, I can't seem to find the ref; apologies if I learned about the above from boingboing and this is old news. E-mail me if you want me to search my archives for a ref.)

Regarding OLPC, are they still using styrofoam packaging? They really need to go with some all-cardboard packaging model:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:AP1_18.jpg

I've heard JVC's mini stereo system (I believe the EX-A1) that includes the wood-cone speakers--they sound quite nice (much better than any other mini stereo system at the store, at least) and are unique and very nice looking. I don't believe they can handle much power (like 15w) but if you turn 'em up, you're a fool.

Also, as with most audiophile equipment, don't buy all the hype and don't buy these speakers assuming you'll get higher quality sound than any other option, but it'll certainly beat out any plastic box POS.)

I am mightily tempted, but for $400, you could buy the EX-A1 and get a complete system already built (which, I assume, you could take apart and mod as you wish.)

Um, wouldn't 1/2 cup of baking soda and 1 cup of vinegar in a quart ziplock cause a big big mess? Or maybe Jr High science fair physics no longer applies?