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From the customer’s perspective, it’s all the same. If it’s provided over the
Internet on a pay-for-usage basis, it’s a cloud service. Within the industry, we argue
about definitions more than is good for us. Customers look in from the outside and see a much
simpler array of choices.
Why is this important? It matters to how we market and support cloud services (of whatever ilk).
Yesterday EuroCloud UK (disclosure: of
which I’m chair) had a member
meeting, hosted at SAP UK headquarters, that covered various aspects of the transition to
SaaS for ISVs. From the title, you’d imagine it would have little content of relevance to
raw cloud providers at the infrastructure-as-a-service layer. (One of our challenges in the early
days of EuroCloud, whose founders are more from the SaaS
side of things, is to make sure we bring the infrastructure players on board with us). But in
fact, much of the discussion covered topics of equal interest at any level of the as-a-service
stack: How to work with partners? How to compensate sales teams? What sort of contract to offer
customers? How to reconcile paying for resources on a pay-per-use basis with a per-seat licence
fee? What instrumentation and reporting of service levels should the provider’s
infrastructure include?
And then came the customer presentation, by Symbian
Foundation’s head of IT, Ian McDonald. He was there as a customer of SAP’s
Business
ByDesign SaaS offering, whose team were hosting the meeting. But it soon became clear that
his organization’s voracious consumption of cloud services runs the gamut from high-level
applications like ByDesign and Google Apps through to Amazon Web Services, Jungle Disk storage
and file sharing (stored on either Amazon or Rackspace), even Skype. Symbian’s developers
still build their own website infrastructure using open-source platforms but that too is hosted
in the cloud. The imperative for Symbian, as a not-for-profit consortium, is to stay flexible and
minimize costs. An important part of that is having the capacity to scale rapidly if needed but
without having to pay up-front for that capacity.
For Symbian, relying on the cloud for the entirety of its IT infrastructure gives the cost
flexibility and agility of execution that it requires. It doesn’t differentiate between
infrastructure and applications as a service — what matters is that they are
delivered from the cloud in a usage-based billing model.
The takeaway for industry players is that we all have to work together. Earlier in the afternoon,
the meeting heard a presentation by Chrysoula Christopoulou, a long-term member of the SAP
Business ByDesign team and a key architect of its go-to-market and channel strategy. SAP will be
bringing live its partner strategy for ByDesign this year (it already has some beta partners
working with it) and it will encourage partners to offer mashups, add-ons, integration services
and other extensions to ByDesign. Indeed, SAP is planning to introduce an application marketplace
(they’re all the rage
these days) and will be positioning ByDesign to its partners not just as an application but
also as a platform.
SAP needs partners to sell ByDesign because (for the average case) the product alone
doesn’t produce enough margin to cover the cost of making a sale. By adding their own
extensions and services, the theory is that partners can spread that cost of sale across a larger
total value. I think the Symbian story demonstrates that ByDesign partners should consider
casting their net wider and as well as building on ByDesign they should also offer services that
bring together a complete portfolio of cloud services. Most ByDesign customers won’t have
the same in-house resource of smart developers that Symbian, because of the nature of its
business, has on tap. Therefore there’s probably a big opportunity for partners to provide
that expertise as part of their service offering. Of course they still have the challenge of
providing it at cost-effective prices that are more in line with the price points of cloud
services — the old SI models of long-term projects and sky-high bills
don’t work in the cloud. The opportunity is around understanding the cloud environment and
helping customers make the most of it — becoming the customer’s trusted
advisor as they embrace the cloud, from top to bottom.
Frédérick Reynal, veteran French developer and the creator of Alone in the Dark and
Little Big Adventure, is due to release a new game this year in tandem with publisher Ubisoft. So
says the website for his company Ludoid (via Kotaku and NeoGAF).
At the bottom of his "Ludography" is an entry reading (in French): "Coming in 2010 with [Ubisoft
logo]". Then there's a picture of a blackboard on which is written: "The name of the next game is
written on the back of this slate."
Click on the slate and the name is cheekily rubbed out, but there's a sad footnote for Little Big
Adventure fans.
Look, I’m all
for privacy, liberty, rights, etc. But this video (embedded below) is pretty ridiculous.
Listening to this, you’d think Google was born of a desire to trick everyone on the planet.
Does Google make almost all of its money off of ad revenues? Yes. But does that mean
they’re out to screw you by
any means necessary? No.
The video even delves into Google Buzz and its privacy debacle. But it implies that
the issue stems from Google’s desire to control you. Really, it’s just that Google
can’t seem to comprehend
social, and was rushed
into rolling out Buzz, and handled it very poorly.
The bottom line is that if you really think Google is out to get you, you shouldn’t be
using it — at all. In fact, they have a new analytics opt-out feature
that is probably right up your alley. But you also probably shouldn’t be using the Internet
at all, because all of these companies are doing basically the same thing to varying degrees.
Maybe Google wants to murder you, but I don’t know, I’d bet that they’re not
going to.
Whatever happened to actually competing in the market place? Copycense points us to a
recent legal battle between Dixie and Huhtamaki over the design of their disposable coffee cups. Seriously. Dixie claimed that
Huhtamaki violated its trade dress because its cups, like Dixie's, included a white band at the
bottom of the cup. After two years in court, the judge, thankfully, didn't see what the big deal
was over both cups having a white strip at the bottom and ruled against Dixie. In part, the judge
noted, Dixie never proved that the white strip was non-functional, which is important, since trade
dress is supposed to be for non-functional design elements: Dixie even provided alternative
designs for Huhtamaki to adopt to differentiate its cup from Dixie's, according to the judge's
order.
"Because Huhtamaki would either incur additional costs or sacrifice design quality if it were
forced to adopt one of Dixie's alternative designs, the court finds that the product feature in
question is functional under the traditional test." Still, just the fact that lawsuits like
this even exist in the first place shows how far gone these things have gone. It's as if every
company feels entitled to having no competition whatsoever, and will sue anyone who offers anything
remotely similar. What a sad state of affairs.
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J’ai été invité par les étudiants de Paris 11 pour donner une
conférence sur les réseaux sociaux et la politique. Je me suis dit que
j’allais reprendre du début (et commencer par citer quelques passages du Peuple
des connecteurs). D’abord, donner à ruminer une citation de Nietzsche,
paragraphe 4 du Gai savoir.
Le nouveau cependant est dans tous les cas le Mal en tant que ce qui veut conquérir,
fouler aux pieds les anciennes bornes des frontières et les anciennes piétés
; et seul l’ancien constitue le Bien ! Les hommes bons de chaque époque sont ceux
qui labourent à fond les anciennes pensées, et qui les font fructifier ; ce sont
les cultivateurs de l’esprit. Mais à la fin tel champ ne rapporte plus et sans cesse
il faut que le soc de la charrue du Mal vienne le remuer de nouveau.
Les six degrés de séparation
En 1929, l’écrivain hongrois Frigyes Karinthy pressentit l’avènement
d’un nouvel ordre social. Il imagina que nous étions tous connectés les uns
aux autres par l’intermédiaire des amis de nos amis. Plutôt que de recevoir
des informations venant d’en haut (gouvernement, journaux, patron...), nous étions,
selon lui, capables de communiquer transversalement les uns avec les autres.
Cette idée resta d’ordre poétique jusqu’à ce que le sociologue
Stanley Milgram se demande combien d’intermédiaires séparaient effectivement
deux personnes choisies au hasard. En 1967, Milgram proposa à des habitants du Nebraska et
du Kansas d’envoyer une lettre à un Bostonien dont ils n’avaient jamais
entendu parler.
– Quand je demandai à un ami intelligent par combien d’intermédiaires
devraient passer les lettres, il estima qu’il en faudrait au moins une centaine, expliqua
Milgram.
À sa grande surprise, les lettres parvinrent à leur destinataire en passant par six
intermédiaires en moyenne. La légende des six degrés de séparation
était née : nous ne sommes pas socialement très éloignés les
uns des autres. L’humanité forme un petit monde où nous nous connaissons
indirectement presque tous.
L’idée de cartographier la société était née. Il fallut
attendre la fin des années 1990 pour que les premières cartes apparaissent, et
surtout les années 2000 et l’apparition des réseaux sociaux pour obtenir des
cartes détaillées.
Les trois familles de réseau
À quoi pouvaient bien ressembler ces cartes ? Le 8 janvier 1959, à la suite de Che
Guevara, Fidel Castro entra dans La Havane et chassa le dictateur Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar.
Cette prise de pouvoir entraîna le durcissement de la guerre froide. L’URSS apporta
son soutien économique à Cuba puis installa sur l’île des missiles
balistiques. La peur de l’embrasement nucléaire était à son comble.
En Californie, dans les bureaux de RAND Corporation, Paul Baran reçut pour mission de
dessiner un système de communication permettant de résister à une attaque
atomique. Cet ingénieur de 38 ans, qui venait de quitter une société
pionnière dans la fabrication d’ordinateurs – domaine qu’il
jugeait de peu d’avenir –, fut malgré lui ramené à
l’informatique. Il analysa les réseaux de communication existant au début des
années 1960 et découvrit qu’ils étaient de deux sortes.
Dans un réseau en étoile, toutes les stations communiquent avec une station
centrale, le nÅ“ud du réseau. Il suffit qu’elle soit détruite ou
victime d’une panne pour que le réseau s’effondre. Cette architecture
hautement centralisée ne possède aucune robustesse (entreprise pyramidale,
dictature avec dictateur au sommet…).
Le plus souvent, les réseaux en étoile s’interconnectent entre eux par
l’intermédiaire de leur nÅ“ud et forment une architecture
décentralisée. Si les nÅ“uds sont faiblement interconnectés, le
réseau reste vulnérable (liaisons aériennes avec des aéroports qui
jouent le rôle de hub).
– La question devint de trouver comment construire une structure fiable à partir de
composants vulnérables, expliqua Paul Baran.
En 1964, il proposa un nouveau type d’architecture : le réseau distribué.
Dans un tel réseau, qui forme un filet au maillage étroit, aucun des
nÅ“uds ne joue un rôle prédominant. Tous les nÅ“uds
s’interconnectent à d’autres nÅ“uds : si l’un d’eux
est détruit, les communications restent néanmoins possibles. Cette architecture,
bien plus résistante que l’architecture centralisée du réseau en
étoile, apparaît aussi plus résistante que l’architecture
décentralisée. Le réseau distribué est, en fait, un réseau
hautement décentralisé (réseau routier).
Les militaires, habitués à vivre dans un monde dominé par la
hiérarchie, apprécièrent peu la suggestion de Paul Baran. De son
côté, l’opérateur téléphonique AT&T déclara la
solution techniquement irréalisable. Pourtant, Internet n’allait pas tarder à
voir le jour, suivant cette topologie imaginée par Paul Baran mais sans s’appuyer
sur ses travaux, plusieurs personnes et institutions pensant chacune des bouts d’Internet
sans encore le savoir.
Internet a poussé sans que personne ne le décide, le planifie, le commandite.
Aujourd’hui, il interconnecte 2 milliards d’hommes et de femmes. C’est la
démonstration que en l’absence de chef et de coordination top-down nous pouvons
construire de grandes choses..
J’en reviens aux réseaux sociaux naturels (ceux observés par les
sociologues), comme à ceux que nous créons sur Facebook ou Twitter.
Spontanément, ils adoptent cette topologie distribuée et hautement
décentralisée imaginée par Paul Baran. Il y existe des étoiles, des
gens plus connectés que d’autres, mais les branches aussi s’interconnectent.
Centralisé ou décentralisé
On dit toujours que Facebook avec ses 400 millions d’utilisateurs est le plus grand
réseau social. Faux. Le Web est déjà un réseau social. Pensez aux
blogs, aux forums, aux sites communautaires comme 4chan...
Tous ces sites ne se contentent pas de lier entre elles des informations, mais surtout, avant
tout, les gens qui les produisent et qui les discutent (je les appelle les
propulseurs). Pourquoi Facebook est-il devenu si populaire ? Parce qu’il
facilite l’interaction. Mais cette facilité a un prix faramineux.
Le Web est un environnement décentralisé pour créer un réseau social
décentralisé. Facebook est un environnement centralisé pour créer un
réseau décentralisé. Le résultat est en apparence identique, mais
j’insiste sur les dessous, décentralisation dans un cas, centralisation dans un
autre.
C’est un peu comme si je vous parlais de deux voitures allant à la même
vitesse, possédant les mêmes caractéristiques, l’une avec un moteur
essence, l’autre un moteur diésel. Si vous n’êtes pas un fan de
mécanique, vous vous fichez certainement du moteur tant que la voiture vous aide à
vous déplacer. De même, tant que vous utilisez les réseaux sociaux pour
badiner, le moteur ne pose guère de problème. Il en va tout autrement si vous
êtes engagés politiquement.
La révolution iranienne de 2009
Facebook et Tweeter ont bien sûr aidé les Iraniens à se coordonner et
à communiquer avec le reste du monde mais, parce que ces réseaux reposent sur des
environnements centralisés, ils ont été tout de suite pris en main par le
gouvernement iranien.
Rien de plus facile que de repérer les leaders, de faire circuler leurs photos, de les
traquer, de les emprisonner... Il suffisait d’aller sur Facebook ou sur Twitter, deux lieux
centralisés. C’est un peu comme si les résistants durant la Seconde Guerre
mondiale donnaient l’adresse de leurs réunions aux nazis.
Si un gouvernement, même totalitaire, ne peut de but en blanc couper Internet, dont
dépend aujourd’hui l’économie, il peut en revanche bloquer certains
sites, les ralentir, les espionner à loisir.
Quand on se trouve dans un pays politiquement agité, il est donc important de faire
attention aux environnements qui sous-tendent les réseaux sociaux. Si on veut faire la
révolution contre le totalitarisme, qui se traduit souvent par un excès de
centralisation, il faut utiliser des outils antinomiques, c’est-à-dire se glisser
partout sur le web, de préférence à travers des services P2P qui
garantissent l’anonymat, freenet par
exemple.
Mais en démocratie
Vous allez me dire qu’en Occident nous ne trouvons pas dans la même situation que les
Iraniens. Vous avez raison. Si vous entendez vous engager dans un parti officiel et jouer le jeu
démocratique traditionnel, celui admis dans votre pays, utilisez des outils clé en
main comme Facebook.
Comme ils sont centralisés, vos opposants comme le gouvernement pourront vous surveiller
avec facilité, mais, comme vous êtes dans la légalité, ils exerceront
sur vous peu de pression.
En revanche, si avec ces outils centralisés vous sortez de la légalité, vous
aurez vite des problèmes. Est-ce si difficile de sortir de la
légalité ? Ne suffit-il pas de télécharger des films et de
les partager ? Ne suffit-il pas ainsi de militer pour une société de
l’abondance face à une société de la rareté ?
J’en reviens à la citation de Nietzsche. Les méchants d’une
époque deviennent souvent les bons d’une autre. Un réformateur commence par
être un méchant. En tant qu’opposant de la loi Hadopi, je suis dans le camp
des méchants, un jour si le gouvernement durcit sa position je devrais comme les Iraniens
obligatoirement passer par des outils sociaux décentralisés... pour échapper
à la chasse aux sorcières.
Ainsi pas besoin d’être un terroriste d’Al Qaïda pour attirer la suspicion
même en démocratie. Un autre exemple : vous militez pour la légalisation des
monnaies alternatives et le droit pour chacun de créer de la monnaie, pire vous mettez en
application vos idées. Vous êtes hors la loi dans les démocraties modernes
(ce qui montre bien que nous n’avons pas fini d’inventer la démocratie).
Vous le voyez, on a vite fait de se mettre en position tangentielle. Alors si vous êtes
tentés par des idées nouvelles, n’utilisez surtout pas les réseaux
sociaux centralisés. Ne commettez pas la même erreur que les Iraniens. Vous devez
construire vos réseaux sur le Web lui-même, suivant des structures
décentralisées, plus difficiles à surveiller, à verrouiller, à
infiltrer, à prévoir...
Pour résumer, Facebook et Twitter sont bons pour la politique à papa. Le Web reste
le seul réseau social qui nous permet de repenser la politique, et de repenser la
démocratie elle-même. En tout cas, si vous estimez qu’elle doit être
encore perfectionnée.
Bottom-up vs top-down
Pour terminer, il me parait important de rappeler la différence entre le top-down et le
bottom-up.
Le top-down, vous connaissez. C’est « Fait ça et tais-toi. » C’est
le système qui prévaut dans les organisations pyramidales et dans de nombreux
partis politiques. Les cadres définissent les mots d’ordre et organisent le travail
des militants. Dans ces conditions, les réseaux sociaux deviennent des outils de
communication, sortes de TV améliorées, pratiques pour récupérer des
adresses et compter ses rangs.
Pour moi, en France, les partis en sont encore à ce stade. Il n’est d’ailleurs
pas étonnant qu’ils déploient tous leurs réseaux sociaux maison. Ils
ont bien compris que Facebook était facile à espionner et que les patrons de
Facebook disposaient d’une richesse inestimable, la carte sociale. Ils veulent alors
s’approprier cette richesse, tout en maximisant leur contrôle sur leurs membres.
Voilà pourquoi ils déploient des outils centralisés. S’ils
étaient progressistes, ces partis feraient un pas vers le réseau social
décentralisé.
Le bottom-up maintenant. Les Iraniens se sont organisés de manière
spontanée, en plusieurs points du pays, pour créer un mouvement d’ensemble
qui a grossi. Nous avons assisté au même phénomène en 2005 en France
avec les partisans du non lors des élections européennes. Comme pour Internet,
personne ne s’est décrété a priori le chef de ces mouvements. Ils sont
nés d’eux-mêmes, par une espèce de pression sociale tout azimut. Dans
le premier cas, je le rappelle, grâce à des outils centralisés. Dans le
second, à travers le Web d’une manière totalement
décentralisée.
Le bottom-up, boosté par les réseaux sociaux, ne garantit pas
l’indépendance. Lui aussi être une arme entre les mains des politiciens.
Obama, lors de sa près-campagne et de sa campagne 2007-2008, nous en a fait la
démonstration. Dans une moindre mesure, Ségolène Royal en 2006 lors des
primaires au PS. Le bottom-up peut-être organisé de manière top-down.
C’est une façon de profiter de l’intelligence collective, de la mettre au
service d’une structure de pouvoir traditionnelle. Cela est facilité lorsque le
bottom-up se fédère sur des outils centralisés.
A priori, en théorie, aucune méthode d’organisation n’est meilleure que
les autres. Tout dépend des combats, des situations. Il est en tout cas important de
prendre conscience du cadre dans lequel on agit.
Top-down et obéissance.
Bottom-up contrôlé top-down.
Bottom-up spontané avec des outils centralisés.
Bottom-up spontané avec des outils décentralisés, c’est ce que
j’appelle le cinquième pouvoir. Il nous a donné Internet, le Web, Wikipedia
dans une certaine mesure… et j’espère qu’il nous donnera une meilleure
démocratie dans un monde plus humain.
We were delighted to be invited to see where Virginie Duroc-Danner manufactures her hand-made
chocolates. And there were lots of them! With all those colours and tastes, it was a perfect
subject for we chocoholics. Come take a look…
photos : JasonW
Virginie’s mini chocolate factory is in the Paris subrbs, and we were so motivated that we
went there on our bikes! Actually we took the train there and cyced back on our bikes, hoping to
use up some of the calories! You can check out our photos below.
Click the play button, then click the four little arrows bottom right to go into fullscreen view
(much more comfortable).
The new GreenBox pizza box is made of 100 percent recycled content and designed to reduce waste.
The top of the box is perforated so that it can be torn into 4 squares - to use instead of paper
plates or dishes that would need to be washed - and the bottom can be folded in half for storing
pizza instead of using aluminum foil or containers.
Village Voice columnist Michael Musto, whom I've been a fan of for many years, talks about why he
loves riding his bike around the streets of New York in this fun video profile. [He] has been
riding a bike in New York City for more than 25 years, long before it was fashionable or we had
bike lanes and cycletracks. Musto has never had a driver's license, and he tells us the bicycle is
an advantage in his profession. Although he's had his share of bikes stolen (he recommends buying a
used, cheap bike), he has nothing but positivity and praise for the velocipede. I love the part at
the end, when Michael addresses safety concerns. Bottom line: "You're gonna be fine." I agree with
that, but I would respectfully submit: wear a helmet! Streetfilms: Michael Musto, Il Ciclista Dolce
(Streetsblog)...
It will remind you of the Kindle but the secondary display actually is a touchscreen with Android
running. Yes, that’s a 3.5-inch tablet right there at the bottom of the 6-inch electronic
paper display. All in all, the Alex has a smaller hardware footprint than both the Kinle and the
Nook. The makers of the Alex were obviously going for a netbook, e-rader hybrid like the
enTourage eDGe, but thought sacrificing portability for a bigger tablet display is not the
way to go. Alex has WiFi and is priced at a whopping $400.
In anticipation of the upcoming immigration marches, Media Matters for America has
compiled a review of the hateful and outrageous right-wing rhetoric surrounding the immigration
debate in 2006.
Right-wing rhetoric: Immigrant-rights marchers, immigrants are seeking to
reclaim the Southwest for Mexico
"Reconquista" is a discredited smear used by the right to generate fear of Latino
immigrants. During the 2006 immigration debate, right-wing media repeatedly advanced the
discredited smear that Mexican-Americans and Mexican citizens -- particularly "illegal
aliens" -- are plotting to take over the U.S. Southwest for Mexico.
Dobbs referred to potential "army" of "illegal alien" "invaders" taking over
Southwest. During an April 2006 broadcast of his now-defunct CNN show, Lou Dobbs introduced a
report by stating: "There are some Mexican citizens and some Mexican-Americans who want to see
California, New Mexico and other parts of the Southwestern United States given over to Mexico.
These groups call it the reconquista, Spanish for reconquest. And they view the millions of
Mexican illegal aliens in particular entering the United States as potentially an army of
invaders to achieve that takeover." Correspondent Christine Romans reported, "Long downplayed as
a theory of the radical ethnic fringe, the la reconquista, the reconquest, the reclamation, the
return, it's resonating with some on the streets," and went on to say: "A lot of open borders
groups disavow it completely. But the growing street protests in favor of illegal immigration,
Lou, are increasingly taking on the tone of that very radicalism." [CNN's Lou Dobbs
Tonight,
4/31/06]
CNN reporter referenced "the Vicente Fox Aztlan tour," used "Aztlan" graphic sourced to
hate group.Lou Dobbs Tonight correspondent Casey Wian characterized
then-Mexican President Vicente Fox's trip to Salt Lake City, Utah, as a "Mexican military
incursion" and claimed that "[y]ou could call" Fox's trip to the United States "the Vicente Fox
Aztlan tour." During Wian's report, CNN featured a graphic of "Aztlan" that was sourced to the
Council of Conservative Citizens -- an organization whose "Statement
of Principles" reads: "We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote
non-white races over the European-American people through so-called 'affirmative action' and
similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage
of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races." [Lou Dobbs Tonight,
5/23/06]
Malkin: "[T]he vast majority of mainstream Hispanic politicians" embrace "the
intellectual underpinnings of reconquista." On Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor,
columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin declared that protesters in Los Angeles were "people who
believe that the American southwest belongs to Mexico, that we don't have a right to enforce our
borders, and who do nothing more than try to sabotage our sovereignty." Malkin later added that
"the kind of quote-unquote 'pride' that a lot of these illegal alien activists are touting now
goes much further than just being proud about one's heritage and one's roots. The idea, the
intellectual underpinnings of reconquista, are embraced by the vast majority of mainstream
Hispanic politicians." [Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, 3/30/06]
Wash. Times editorial: Protesters approve of "reconquista" agenda. A
Washington Times editorial accused Latinos who protested against a proposal to restrict
immigration of either supporting or having given "tacit approval" to the "reconquista" agenda of
"Hispanic radicals," which the editorial said was the "reconquering of Mexican land lost during
the Mexican-American war." [The Washington Times, 3/30/06]
Fox's Gibson suspicious that Latino advocacy groups are set on "retaking old Mexico
territories ... by pure birth rate." While saying that he was citing an internal email
from the National Council of La Raza, John Gibson claimed on his
Fox News show that he was suspicious that advocacy groups like the NCLR favor "the so-called
reconquista," which Gibson described as the "retaking of old Mexico territories, which are now
part of the United States, by pure birth rate." Gibson also asserted that the NCLR "is a group
dedicated to the betterment of the race," adding, "good, but try being American while you are at
it, guys." [Fox News' The Big Story with John Gibson, 4/3/06]
O'Reilly: Purported immigrant protest "organizers" have hidden "hardcore militant agenda"
to take back American Southwest. On his radio show, O'Reilly said that the "organizers"
of immigrant rallies have a "hardcore militant agenda of 'You stole our land, you bad gringos.' "
O'Reilly said that the "slogan" of the demonstrations' organizers was "[W]e didn't cross the
border, the border crossed us," and that this meant that the organizers believed that Americans
"stole [their] land." The organizers' hidden "agenda underneath," said O'Reilly, was that "now,
we're going to take it back by massive, massive migration into the Southwest." [Westwood One's
The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly, 5/1/06]
Buchanan: "Chicano chauvinists and Mexican agents" want to "take back through demography
and culture what their ancestors lost through war." In his book, State of Emergency:
The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, published in August 2006, MSNBC
contributor Pat Buchanan wrote: "Chicano chauvinists and Mexican agents have made clear their
intent to take back through demography and culture what their ancestors lost through war." He
also wrote that the United States must keep "Americans of European descent" from becoming the
"minority" in order to "survive[]." [State of Emergency (Thomas Dunne Books)]
Malkin: "[W]e saw ... that supposed fringe" that favors reconquista "come out into the
mainstream." O'Reilly said to Malkin, "So I know that there's an undercurrent of
militancy that says, 'Hey, this is our territory. You stole it from us in the Mexican-American
War. We're going to take it back now by illegal immigration.' But I think that's a fringe, nutty
group, not the mass of millions that we have." Malkin replied: "Well, I guess I disagree with you
there, Bill, because I mean, we saw in April and May of this year [2006] that supposed fringe
come out into the mainstream. And it wasn't just a dozen folks who are ensconced in the ivory
tower who believe that the Southwest is Aztlan and it belongs to them." O'Reilly later asked her:
"You think that this massive immigration to the United States, 15 million strong, is a part of a
plan to bring back territory to Mexico?" Malkin responded: "Well, I take the Mexican government
at its word when it says that is exactly its plan." [The O'Reilly Factor, 8/23/06]
Right-wing rhetoric: Immigrant rights marchers are "racis[t]"
Malkin: "[M]ilitant racism from another protected minority group was on full display"
from "Latino supremacists." In her syndicated column, Malkin wrote of immigration rallies,
"Well, this weekend, militant racism from another protected minority group was on full display.
But you wouldn't know it from press accounts that whitewashed or buried the protesters' virulent
anti-American hatred." Malkin also wrote: "Apologists are quick to argue that Latino supremacists
are just a small fringe faction of the pro-illegal immigration movement (never mind that their
ranks include former and current Hispanic politicians from L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to
former California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Cruz Bustamante)." [Creators Syndicate
column,
3/29/06]
Savage: "[B]rown supremacists" are "behind these protests." On his nationally
syndicated radio show, Michael Savage said: "So, it seems to me that there's a certain group of
immigrants that's not very happy and they're all Hispanic. I don't see any other racial group out
there in the streets, do you? Now, that's very interesting. I'm not allowed to raise the issue or
the specter of brown supremacists behind these protests. Don't tell me this is all about
compassion for immigrants, because it is not at all only about compassion for immigrants. They
are trying to provoke the takeover of the United States of America." [Talk Radio Network's
The Savage Nation, 4/11/06]
Right-wing rhetoric: Pro-immigration marchers should be arrested or deported
Fox's Asman wondered whether marches are a perfect chance to "round up these lawbreakers
and ship them out." Guest-hosting Fox News' Your World, David Asman discussed
nationwide protests of immigration reform and wondered: "With so many illegals hitting the
streets, is this the perfect time to round up these lawbreakers and ship them out?" As Asman
spoke, the on-screen text read: "Round 'Em Up?" Later, the text read: "Perfect Chance to Arrest
Illegal Immigrants?" [Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto, 4/10/06]
Smerconish: "[L]aw enforcement ought to step in" at immigration demonstrations and
consider "gathering ... up" undocumented immigrants. Guest-hosting MSNBC's
Scarborough Country, Philadelphia-based radio host Michael Smerconish suggested that
"maybe law enforcement ought to step in" at pro-immigration demonstrations and consider
"gathering ... up" undocumented immigrants. Smerconish wondered why there was "zero discussion"
of "gathering them up" at the demonstrations, when "[a]ll I keep hearing is how would we ever
find them?" [MSNBC's Scarborough Country, 4/10/06]
Doocy suggested "round[ing] them up right then, when they're saying, 'Hey, I'm right
here.' " On Fox & Friends, syndicated radio host Erich "Mancow" Muller
announced that he was "having a big rally here in Chicago" for a "group" that he said was
"pro-illegal murder and illegal car thieves." Muller added: "We're just getting together, and
we're going to be out on the street. We're for illegal murder and illegal car thievery. So, we
just like illegal stuff." Muller added: "I just like illegal murder and illegal car thieves. So,
you know, it's illegal, but -- and, in fact, all the people who have done it are going to be out
there on the street, and hopefully, none of the cops will come arrest us." Co-host Steve Doocy
then said: "Yeah, you wouldn't want to round them up right then, when they're saying, 'Hey, I'm
right here.' " [Fox News' Fox & Friends, 4/3/06]
Right-wing rhetoric: Stoking fears over displays of the Mexican flag
Media figures attacked Mexican-flag wavers, but not those waving Irish, Italian, or
Israeli flags. Following immigration rallies, media figures criticized demonstrators for carrying Mexican
flags, but the same media figures had not complained about people waving other nations' flags,
such as Irish flags at St. Patrick's Day events, Italian flags at Columbus Day events, or Israeli
flags at Israel Day events. Some commentators even dismissed the comparison. For instance,
National Review editor Rich Lowry
called the Mexican-flag waving "more ominous" than the St. Patrick's Day or Columbus Day
displays.
Savage: "[B]urn the Mexican flag!" On his radio show, Savage urged his listeners
to "burn the Mexican flag" in opposition to undocumented immigrants, telling them to "[b]urn a
Mexican flag for America, burn a Mexican flag for those who died that you should have a
nationality and a sovereignty, go out in the street and show you're a man, burn 10 Mexican flags,
if I could recommend it. Put one in the window upside down and tell them to go back where they
came from! And if that's a little to xenophobic for you, ask yourself why the xenophobes from
Mexico wave their flag in your country." [The Savage Nation, 3/27/06]
Fox News: Waving Mexican flag shows "antagonistic edge," waving U.S. flag "just a cover"
and "a ploy to win America's support." Asman cited demonstrators' use of Mexican flags
as evidence of "an antagonistic edge" and suggested that the use of U.S. flags and signs written
in English at pro-immigration demonstrations was "just a cover" by the demonstrators to conceal
their "real intention, which is to keep things as normal among illegal immigrants in the
country." Similarly, Neil Cavuto suggested that the pro-immigration demonstrators' U.S. flags
were "just a prop" and "just a ploy to win America's support." [Your World with Neil
Cavuto, 4/10/06; 4/11/06]
Right-wing rhetoric: Immigration is an "invasion"
Buchanan: Illegal immigration is "an invasion of the United States of America" and "[t]he
whole world is coming." On MSNBC's Hardball, Buchanan claimed that the influx
of undocumented immigrants into the United States is "not immigration" but "an invasion of the
United States of America" that is "coming not only from Mexico," but "from the whole world." He
reiterated: "The whole world is coming." [MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, 5/15/06]
Savage: "This is an invasion by any other name." Savage said, "We, the people,
are being displaced by the people of Mexico. This is an invasion by any other name. Everybody
with a brain understands that. Everybody who understands reality understands we are being pushed
out of our own country." [The Savage Nation, 3/27/06]
Buchanan: "This is an invasion, the greatest invasion in history." In State
of Emergency, Buchanan wrote of immigration: "This is an invasion, the greatest invasion in
history." He also wrote: "We are witnessing how nations perish. We are entered upon the final act
of our civilization. The last scene is the deconstruction of the nations. The penultimate scene,
now well underway, is the invasion unresisted." [State of Emergency]
Right-wing rhetoric: U.S., Mexico are in a state of "war"
Tancredo: [W]e are at war with
Mexico, in a way." On Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, WorldNetDaily.com
columnist Tom Tancredo -- then a Republican congressman from Colorado -- said, "[I]n a way, we
are at war with Mexico, in a way. I'll say it in this way: Mexico is aiding and abetting an
invasion of this country. They are part of the problem. They are doing what they are -- in fact,
they are creating situations along that border using their own military to protect drug
trafficking into the United States, pushing their own people into the United States for a variety
of reasons. It is an invasion. It is an act of aggression." [Fox News' Hannity &
Colmes, 6/26/06, transcript from the Nexis database]
Beck sidekick Gray: "[W]e are in a war with Mexico right now." Pat Gray, who is
now a co-host of Glenn Beck's radio show, appeared on Beck's then-CNN Headline News show and
claimed that "we are in a war with Mexico right now." After Beck agreed that "we better wake up
soon," Gray responded: "[O]r we're going to wake up dead." [CNN Headline News' Glenn
Beck, 9/25/06]
Right-wing rhetoric: Immigrants are fundamentally altering American culture or
way of life
O'Reilly claimed to have exposed the "hidden agenda" behind the immigrant rights
movement: "the browning of America." O'Reilly claimed that during his Fox News show,
guest Charles Barron, a New York City councilman, had revealed the "hidden agenda" behind the
current immigration debate. O'Reilly told his radio listeners: "[T]he bottom line is Charles
Barron said last night is there is a movement in this country to wipe out 'white privilege' and
to have the browning of America." But in the interview, Barron at no point claimed that he and
other advocates for immigrant rights are motivated by a desire to force white Americans into the
minority -- despite O'Reilly's repeated efforts to provoke such an acknowledgment. [The Radio
Factor with Bill O'Reilly, 4/12/06]
Beck: "[I]llegal immigrants are attacking our culture, and our way of life." On
his then-CNN Headline News show, Beck said, "[A]t the very least, illegal immigrants are
attacking our culture, and our way of life. They are not melting into our melting pot -- they're
here for the cash." He later said, "I mean, we've got all these threats coming in from overseas,
but the simplest way is for us to lose the culture of the West is just to do nothing and let
illegal immigrants not melt in and take the culture away from us." [Glenn Beck, 8/24/06]
Buchanan: "They're not welcome to come here and insult the symbols of our country, and
that's what these outsiders have done." On Scarborough Country, Buchanan said
that a Spanish-language version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" is "a provocation and an insult"
and that immigrants are "not welcome to come here and insult the symbols of our country, and
that's what these outsiders have done." Buchanan then said that the Spanish recording is "a good
thing in this sense: The American people are awakening to the character of these people."
[Scarborough Country, 5/1/06]
Matthews: Republicans "have a right to fear" a "cultural change" that would result in
their hometowns "becom[ing] overwhelmingly Mexican." On Hardball, Matthews
claimed that House Republicans who had passed a bill that would apparently have criminalized
undocumented immigrants, their employers, and those who provide aid to them "have a right to
fear" a "cultural change" that would result in their home states and towns "becom[ing]
overwhelmingly Mexican." Matthews was responding to a suggestion by guest Amy Goodman, host of
Democracy Now, that "the Republicans who passed the House bill" are "afraid" that the
United States will soon have "a majority Latino population." Matthews later said, "It's not my
point view necessarily," before suggesting that "90 percent of this country" agrees with the
"viewpoint" that "I didn't move to Mexico; Mexico moved to me, and I'm complaining about it."
[Hardball with Chris Matthews, 3/30/06]
O'Reilly: "[Y]ou're on a nice block ... and then the house next to you is turned into an
illegal alien Club Med." On his radio show, O'Reilly said:
You've got the folks who don't have emotion invested in it, other than the farmers down and the
ranchers down on the border are going -- as the lady just called up, [caller] -- say, look, I got
garbage in my -- on my ranch every day. I mean, I'm under siege. They have emotion invested in
it. But those of us up here don't.
Unless you live in a town, like Farmingville, Long Island -- we went over this before
-- where you bought a house, you spent a couple of hundred thousand dollars, you're on a nice
block, your kids are happy, and then the house next to you is turned into an illegal alien Club
Med. And this happens all over the country. [The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly,
3/27/06]
Buchanan: "I think what's coming is the complete balkanization of America." On
Hardball, Buchanan said, "I think what's coming is the complete balkanization of
America, and I'm afraid it's going to be by ethnicity and culture, and language, and every other
way. ... And so, then, it's not like the country you and I grew up in, Chris, whereby we were
monocultural. We were monocultural." [Hardball, 6/5/06]
O'Reilly wondered whether children of Mexican immigrants in U.S. "have any kind of
traditional value system" or are "setting up Acapulco North." On his radio show,
O'Reilly wondered whether children of legal and undocumented immigrants from Mexico who are
attending school in the United States "have any kind of traditional value system at all,
vis-à-vis what America used to be," or whether they are "taking their Mexican values,
because most of them are Mexicans, and, you know, basically setting up Acapulco North." [The
Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly, 8/15/06]
Buchanan: "You're going to have a giant Kosovo in the Southwest, which de facto is going
to secede." On Scarborough Country, Buchanan said: "[Y]ou cannot absorb 40 to
60 million more people. You're going to have a giant Kosovo in the Southwest, which de facto is
going to secede from this country." [Scarborough Country, 6/5/06]
Buchanan: Immigration will turn U.S. into "a polyglot boarding house for the world, a
tangle of squabbling minorities." On CNN's The Situation Room, Buchanan warned
that "[w]e'll become a polyglot boarding house for the world, a tangle of squabbling minorities."
He continued: "The problem with the immigration, basically -- let's take Mexico -- is these folks
are breaking the law, first. Secondly, they're coming in huge numbers, like no other group
before. Third, they're from a contiguous nation. Fourth, 58 percent of Mexicans believe the
Southwest belongs to them. Fifth, the Mexican government is pushing them in here, and it's got a
political and ideological agenda." [CNN's The Situation Room, 8/28/06]
Right-wing rhetoric: Immigration reform is part of plot to institute "North
American Union"
"North American Union" is an absurd conspiracy theory. Right-wing media,
including Dobbs, have obsessively warned that elements in the U.S. government are secretly
plotting to merge the United States with Mexico and Canada in a "North American Union" similar to
the European Union. During the June 21, 2006, edition of his CNN show, Dobbs stated that "the
Bush administration is pushing ahead with a plan to create a North American union with Canada and
Mexico" and later asked: "Do you think, our question is, maybe somebody should take a vote if
we're going to merge Canada, Mexico and the United States as the leaders of the three countries
are attempting to do with the security and prosperity partnership? Yes or no. Cast your vote at
LouDobbs.com." Dobbs' CNN colleague Suzanne Malveaux later described the North American Union rhetoric as
"conspiracy theor[y]." [Lou Dobbs Tonight,
6/21/06]
Corsi: "North American Union ... was the hidden agenda behind the Bush administration's
true open borders policy." Jerome Corsi, co-author of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat
Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, wrote in a column that "President Bush is pursuing a
globalist agenda to create a North American Union, effectively erasing our borders with both
Mexico and Canada. This was the hidden agenda behind the Bush administration's true open borders
policy. Secretly, the Bush administration is pursuing a policy to expand NAFTA politically,
setting the stage for a North American Union designed to encompass the U.S., Canada, and Mexico."
[HumanEvents.com, 5/19/06]
WND's Farah linked Bush guest-worker proposal to plan by "one-worlders" to merge U.S.,
Mexico, Canada. Appearing on a radio show, WorldNetDaily founder and editor Joseph Farah
claimed that the "one-worlders" of the Council on Foreign Relations have a plan to merge the
United States, Mexico, and Canada by 2010 and suggested that Bush's proposed guest-worker program
is part of this plan. Farah said, "Sometimes, the conspiracies are right." [American Family
Radio's Today's Issues, 4/4/06]
Buchanan: Vicente Fox's "ultimate goal" is making Mexico and U.S. "basically part of the
North American Union." On Lou Dobbs
Tonight, Buchanan said, "The government of Mexico is pushing its poor and unemployed into
the United States to ease social pressure on itself. Secondly, they get $16 billion in
remittances back to Mexico. Third, it is awoken to the idea that it can reannex the American
southwest, which it used to hold, linguistically, culturally, ethnically and socially, not
militarily by pushing all these people in there and creating a gigantic fifth column in America."
Buchanan added: "The ultimate goal of Vicente Fox is the erasure of the border between the United
States and Mexico. He has said as much and to make the two basically part of the North American
Union in which Mexico will get ... a constant flow of cash from the wealthy USA and La
Reconquista is the objective." [Lou Dobbs Tonight, 9/5/06, Nexis transcript]
Download Squad readers haven't been shy about voicing their general distaste for the bazillion
different short URL services out there. As if you needed another reason, a new report shows -- in
USA Today style graphical goodness -- just how much they suck.
Over at WatchMouse, you'll find
a rundown comparing 14 popular options including goo.gl, tr.im, bit.ly, and the other usual
suspects. The bottom line: URL shorteners amplify the suckiness of your Internet experience. To be
more specific, availability isn't always great (snurl and tr.im both fell below 99%) and delays are
standard fare. We're talking sub-1 second mostly, except for Facebook's fb.me which can add two
full seconds to load times. And dangit, I don't have high speed Internet so I can wait an extra two
seconds.
Google fares the best, with goo.gl registering the shortest added time (at somewhere around 400ms)
and 100% uptime. Not surprising, really, since they run their own DNS servers.
The brain does not predict the unpredictable: The sight of bars apparently moving from bottom left
to top right (dotted line) evokes activity in the primary visual cortex (V1). It turns out that
there is a striking similarity between how the human brain determines what is going on in the
outside world and the job of [...]
Minneapolis maker Michael Krumpus, who also sells the EZ-Expander in the Maker's Market, created this lovely
mood lamp made out of
LEDs, an Arduino Duemilanove, and glass vials he bought from the Twin Cities' legendary Ax-Man
surplus store.
This is a mood lamp I build using 16 LEDs of different colors and small glass vials. The square
bottoms of the vials look a lot like glass block, and the glass diffuses and scatters the light in
beautiful ways. The software shows random patterns of light and the brightness of each LED can vary
-- they aren't simply "on" or "off". The Arduino code is pretty complex
because it implements PWM (pulse-width modulation) for all 16 LEDs. The Arduino board only has 5
PWM-capable pins, so providing PWM for all 16 pins is accomplished purely in the code. The lamp
randomly displays different lighting patterns and can be really mesmerizing.
The blog’s taking a few days off (back next Thursday), but during that time we’ll be
revisiting some of the photos we’ve taken over the years for you. Today, our Art Nouveau
exploration in the 16th arrondissement…
photos : JasonW
We had a great time exploring the leafy streets of the 16th arrondissement for buildings by
Guimard and others (including – to be fair – some art déco too). You can check
out our photo gallery below.
Click the play button, then click the four little arrows bottom right to go into fullscreen view
(much more comfortable).
Before we get into the how-to, we felt it would be appropriate to explain a little bit about how
this came to be. As many of you may remember, a couple of months ago we attended CES 2010. While there, we also
attended the It Won’t Stay in Vegas Blogger
party and ended up meeting the guys from
Woot. After all of us spent a little bit of time appreciating the open bar, a group of us
stood ended up standing around and talking shop for a while. All of a sudden, a member of our
group, Jeremy Grosser, proposed the idea that Hackaday
and Woot form a partnership. Basically, they would give us a heads up on what they are going to
sell and we would write up a how-to on how to do something cool or useful with that product.
Then, when the day came for Woot to sell the product, we would post our how-to. What you are
reading right now just so happens to be that idea in action, the
first official partnership between Hackaday and Woot. In this how-to, we’ll be taking
apart the Wowwee Rovio mobile webcam robot, adding some super-bright LEDs for better
see-in-the-dark action, and see how some software called RoboRealm can give it a little bit of artificial intelligence.
If don’t have a Rovio yet, you should probably head over to Woot and pick one up so you can follow along. Also, be sure to pick up
a copy of RoboRealm at deals.woot while you’re at it.
It is important to note that while writing this how-to, we used a modified design of the Rovio
Head-Mounted LED hack, posted to RoboCommunity by [Rudolph].
Parts
- 6 super-bright white LEDs (Ours were rated for 3.3v with an intensity of 7000mcd.)
- 1 2N2907 PNP Transistor (We found ours in a 15 transistor combo pack from RadioShack.)
- 1 10ohm resistor
- 1 2.2k ohm resistor
- 22g solid hookup wire
- RadioShack
3×2x1″ Project Enclosure (We used the plastic back panel as a place to mount our
LEDs.)
- 5mm LED holders (Optional. We ended up using them to mount our LEDs in their poorly drilled
holes.)
- Heat-shrink tubing (Optional, but recommended.)
- A small strip of perfboard
We picked up most of our parts from RadioShack, but these parts are so common that you should be
able to pick them up from any electronics components store.
Disassembly
The first step towards giving our Rovio some much needed extra light is, of course, to
disassemble it. After turning the Rovio upside down, remove the six phillips-head screws and
carefully remove the top shell to gain access to the Rovio’s internals. While you
won’t be able to fully detach the top shell, you should be able to lay it next to the
bottom part of the Rovio as seen above.
Inside of the Rovio, there are two main PCBs, the control board and the power supply board. For
the purposes of this how-to, we will only need to modify the power supply board. To gain access
to the power supply board, simply remove the two phillips-head screws that secure the board
vertically. After you gain access to the board, you will then need to identify the ground and
positive pads on the PCB. We will be tapping into these pads later to power our array of LEDs.
One other item of interest to us is the white wire leading from the control board to the LED
headlight board. This wire will allow us to control our new headlights through the Rovio’s
web interface.
After firing up your soldering iron, you’ll need to solder two wires onto the power supply
board. As you can see above, there are two areas with tiny little holes, allowing for easy access
to both GND and VCC. After you have soldered both of these wires, screw the board back in and
then turn your attention towards the white wire mentioned previously. After cutting the white
wire, solder a length of hookup wire to the end of it and insulate it with appropriately sized
heat-shrink tubing. Also, it’s probably a good idea to remove the LED headlight board
entirely. This gives you three openings to run your wires out of from the Rovio to our new
headlight panel. After you’ve removed the board, you can cut the wires leading to both the
infrared LED and receiver. These function as a forward facing “radar” to alert the
user if there are any obstacles ahead. We decided to salvage ours by placing them both in the new
panel that we will soon be creating. If you choose to salvage your infrared “radar”
as well, then remember to solder extension wires between the appropriate leads and the LED and
receiver. We actually used some telephone tap connectors (from RadioShack) to extend the three
wires leading to the infrared receiver, but soldering should work just fine. Now that
you’re finished with all of the internal modifications to the Rovio, we can move on to the
circuitry behind this hack.
The Circuit
In order to make sure that we can control our replacement LED headlights through Rovio’s
web interface, we need to build a circuit that will detect when the headlights are triggered via
the web interface and activate our headlights accordingly. To do this, we’ll use a PNP
transistor to switch the ground of our headlight circuit. As you can see from the schematic
above, the white wire that we mentioned earlier will be connected to the base of the transistor
via a 2.2k resistor, the ground from the power supply board will be connected to the collector of
the transistor, and the emitter of the transistor will be connected to the ground of the parallel
array of LEDs. If you want to, you could probably add a few more LEDs to this design. Just
remember, if you change the number or type of the LEDs, you will have to recalculate the value of
the current-limiting resistor between VCC and the positive pin of the parallel LED array. After
we’ve reviewed our schematic and we’re comfortable with it, we should be ready to
breadboard.
As you can see, there really isn’t that much to our circuit as far as components go. The
black and red wires come directly from the power supply board. Our voltage reading was right
around 6.5v. Please note that your voltage may vary depending on the charge of your Rovio’s
NiMH battery. The green wire was soldered to the white wire inside of the Rovio, and controls
whether the transistor lets the ground flow to the LEDs. We found that the best way to test this
circuit while breadboarding was to turn on the Rovio and turn on and off the headlights using the
web interface. After confirming that the circuit works consistently, you can go ahead and solder
the circuit onto some perfboard and connect to the Rovio.
The circuit really doesn’t take up much space on the perfboard. We decided to use the extra
space on our board as a makeshift terminal block to extend the infrared LED. While soldering the
circuit onto the perfboard, be sure to remember the orientation of your transistor. If you
accidentally put it in backwards, you could switch the collector and emitter, burning out the
transistor. We mention this only because we actually did it the first time we assembled our
board, and we ended up having to swap in a new transistor before reassembling the board. After
you’ve assembled and verified that your circuit works, we can move on to assembling our
headlight panel.
Drilling and Wiring
On your blank panel, carefully drill 8 holes in any configuration you would like. When drilling
your holes, be sure to use a 3/16″ drill bit. While it is actually slightly smaller than a
5mm LED, you can rotate the drill once or twice around to widen the hole. The main thing is that
you don’t want to make the holes too large for the LEDs, which, incidentally, we ended up
doing. One of them was so wide that we had to change the placement of our LEDs to make sure that
they all more or less fit.
I don’t think that I need to get into too much detail here, but the major thing to remember
is that the LEDs need to be wired in parallel. Also, be sure that you are connecting cathode to
cathode and anode to anode, otherwise the whole circuit just won’t work. After you’ve
completely assembled the panel, attach the wires the ground from your perfboard and the VCC from
the power supply board to the circuit, and use the web interface to test that the LEDs get
switched on when they’re supposed to be. If you decided to salvage the infrared
“radar”, don’t forget to attach the infrared LED and receiver to the board in
the two holes left over.
After you’ve finished with the drilling and wiring, you should be ready to attach the panel
to the Rovio. While it was a little tricky for us, we were able to epoxy the panel to the
underside of the front of the Rovio so that it looked like it was vertically mounted.
Now that your Rovio can see better in darker situations, lets take a look at RoboRealm.
RoboRealm
While investigating all of the different things that we could do with our Rovio, we
stumbled upon a piece of software called RoboRealm.
RoboRealm allows you to take video input from any webcam, including the Rovio, and run it through
any number of different modules to process the images. After the images are processed, the
software can even see if any pre-defined conditions are met, and if they are it will instruct the
robot to act accordingly. Combine that visual input with the audio input/output on the Rovio, and
you can do some pretty cool stuff. The interesting part about this software is that it officially supports the Rovio out of the
box. We’ve had a chance to mess around with it a little bit, and as far as we can tell, it
seems like pretty powerful software.
We already know all of the cool things that we want to do with this software and our Rovio, but
we’re curious, what would you do with it? Leave us your answer in the comments, and if we
see something that we find truly inspiring, we’ll do some research, write it up, and post a
how-to explaining how to do it. Who knows, there might even be a brand new Rovio and a free copy
of RoboRealm in it for the winner too…
Offering a much more attractive alternative to the hideous licensed shirts from TapouT,
geek/gamer apparel shop Splitreason is now selling this silver/blue Tekken-themed tee with Heihachi
Mishima's face emblazoned in the center for $18.95.
This design doesn't have the skulls, flames, or snakes you'll find on the TapouT shirts, but this
tee pulls off the "tough guy" image much better with its barbell, Heihachi's grim-faced
expression and ridiculous hairstyle, and the "Iron Fist Gym" text, with the bottom of the Y
fashioned into a lightning bolt.
Splitreason also has a fun blurb for the shirt, inviting Tekken fans to join the gym: "Do you
think you have what it takes to survive in the Iron Fist gym? Get in shape the Mishima way and
join today! Look out for our special tag-team group rates and you'll get 30% off if you bring a
rival! Hardcore fighting game fans are welcome!"
NGX Technologies sent us this
Blueboard LPC1768-H to play with. It’s basically a breakout board for an NXP LPC1768
ARM cortex-M3 microcontroller (datasheet).
The board adds a few extra goodies, such as a choice of mini-USB connector or barrel-jack to
provide regulated power to the chip. There’s also a clock crystal for the internal RTC and
an Atmel 256kb EEPROM chip. This chip has 70 I/O ports, accessed through the pin headers on top
and bottom of the board. The 20-pin header to the left is for a JTAG programmer (yes,
you’ll need a separate
programmer). Coming in at only $32.78 this is a very accessible route for projects that
require more power than some of the traditional hobby
controllers. The shipping seems to have come down since NGX’s last offering, now it
would be under $10 to ship to the States.
The LPC1768 is the same controller from the mbed that we
reviewed. What’s missing is some of the interface hardware and the boot-loader, but the
tradeoff comes with a $66 savings. This is to mbed what an AVR board is to the Arduino, a way to
get even closer to the hardware.
There are a few things we think are missing. Most notably, there isn’t a datasheet or user
guide for the board itself. The only information available is a schematic
(PDF), but that should be enough for those already well versed in working with
microcontrollers. There is also a 12MHz clock crystal on the board but it doesn’t seem to
be jumpered in case you wanted to use a different frequency. We’re not sure if this is much
of an issue, the internal RC oscillators offer a lot of flexibility including operation up to
100MHz.
We feel this is a solid platform that will help to get more people into ARM development because
of its low price. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
***UPDATE v2.0.0-Fixed the insane lag, replaced it with scanning title,added the option to rescan
your finger by taping the bottom of thescreen where it says"Tap to Scan" This is cool, fun app that
has onlyone purpose, to show off how cool your
On March 16, Fox News anchors during their self-described daytime "news hours" repeatedly
forwarded the false suggestion that, by using a legislative procedure known as the
"self-executing rule" to finalize health care reform in the House, Democrats would be passing
health care reform "without actually voting for it." In fact, implementing the proposed procedure
requires a majority vote.
The New York Times
reported on October 11, 2009, that Fox News claims its news hours are objective and defined
as "9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. on weekdays." Those weekday hours include America's
Newsroom, Happening Now,and America Live, which replaced Live
Desk in early 2010.
America's Newsroom: Procedure "actually pretty simple," but not for Fox's
Hemmer
Hemmer: The self-executing rule "does not require a single
vote." On Fox News' America's Newsroom, co-host Bill Hemmer
blog post, The Washington
Post's Ezra Klein explained that the legislative process Democrats are considering
using, theself-executing vote "functions as a vote on the Senate bill" because "the House will
pass the fixes under a rule that says the House 'deems' the Senate bill passed after the House
passes the fixes." Klein wrote:
Here's how that will work: Rather than passing the Senate bill and then passing the fixes, the
House will pass the fixes under a rule that says the House "deems" the Senate bill passed after
the House passes the fixes.
The virtue of this, for Pelosi's members, is that they don't actually vote on the Senate bill.
They only vote on the reconciliation package. But their vote on the reconciliation package
functions as a vote on the Senate bill. The difference is semantic, but the
bottom line is this: When the House votes on the reconciliation fixes, the Senate bill is passed,
even if the Senate hasn't voted on the reconciliation fixes, and even though the House never
specifically voted on the Senate bill.
It's a circuitous strategy born of necessity. Pelosi doesn't have votes for the Senate bill
without the reconciliation package. But the Senate parliamentarian said that the Senate bill must
be signed into law before the reconciliation package can be signed into law. That removed
Pelosi's favored option of passing the reconciliation fixes before passing the Senate bill. So
now the House will vote on reconciliation explicitly and the Senate bill implicitly, which is
politically easier, even though the effect is not any different than if Congress were to pass the
Senate bill first and pass the reconciliation fixes after.
CRS: Self-executing rule requires House's approval. A 2006
Congressional Research Service (CRS) report
makes clear that passage of a rule by the House is required for the "self-executing" rule to be
adopted. From CRS:
Definition of "Self-Executing" Rule. One of the newer types is
called a "self-executing" rule; it embodies a "two-for-one" procedure. This means that when the
House adopts a rule it also simultaneously agrees to dispose of a separate matter, which is
specified in the rule itself. For instance, self-executing rules may stipulate that a discrete
policy proposal is deemed to have passed the House and been incorporated in the bill to be taken
up. The effect: neither in the House nor in the Committee of the Whole will lawmakers have an
opportunity to amend or to vote separately on the "self-executed" provision. It was automatically
agreed to when the House passed the rule. Rules of this sort contain customary, or "boilerplate,"
language, such as: "The amendment printed in [section 2 of this resolution or in part 1 of the
report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution] shall be considered as adopted in
the House and in the Committee of the Whole."
Don Wolfensberger, former
chief of staff for the House Rules Committee under Republicans, stated in a 2006 Roll
Call
column:
Almost every major bill must obtain a special rule, or resolution, from the Rules Committee
permitting immediate floor consideration. The resolution also specifies the amount of general
debate time and what amendments will be allowed. A special rule also may contain other bells,
whistles, gizmos and gadgets.One of these optional attachments is a self-executing provision,
which decrees a specified amendment to have been adopted upon the rule's
passage [emphasis added]. In other words, once the House adopts the special
rule it effectively has adopted the amendment before the bill has even been called up
for consideration [emphasis added].
Fox News previously misled over budget reconciliation process
Fox News repeatedly falsely labels reconciliation as "nuclear
option."FoxNewshosts and guests have repeatedly pushed the falsehood that
the "nuclear option" refers to the budget reconciliation process. The Fox Nation and Fox News
personalities like Hannity, Van Susteren, Dick Morris, Bret Baier, and Bill Sammon have all falsely compared reconciliation to the
"nuclear option," and the Fox Nation has previouslycoupled its headlines with images of a
mushroom cloud from a nuclear bomb:
I am often asked for pointers on writing book reviews and recently realized that, to my
recollection, I've never written on the topic. That may be because I consider myself quite a poor
book reviewer. I got into writing reviews (over 500 book reviews ago now) by circumstance more
than skill; I had a blog, I read a lot, and book reviews just started to happen. Yet I am aware
that I am not a great reviewer. Read the Times or a theological journal and you will
encounter a completely different skill level in reviewers.
Having said that, I think I am able to write reviews that appeal to a particular audience. And in
that way at least, I've been successful. So today let me share just a few pointers for those who
are considering writing reviews for a medium similar to this one.
Know Your Audience
As I said a moment ago, any success I've had owes more to writing for a defined audience than in
great skill. I know who reads this site and I try to write about books that will be of interest
to that kind of reader. If my IQ was about 100 points higher and if I wrote for Themelios I might read and review Revitalizing Theological Epistemology:
Holistic Evangelical Approaches to the Knowledge of God. As it is, though, I know who I am
and I know who reads this web site and I try to review books accordingly. Almost by definition,
the people who read this site share at least some of my interests and so what is of interest to
me is of interest to them. That's part of the beauty of a blog.
So know your audience. Know the kind of book they will want to read and then anticipate the kind
of questions they will want answered before they consider reading that book. Here are the types
of questions I tend to answer:
What's the Point?
An author will typically not wait very long before offering a defense of his book's existence. He
will most often say "This is why I have written this book." I seek to communicate that
information within my review. So, for example, in my recent review of The Masculine
Mandate I quoted the author as he said, "My aim in writing this book is to help men to know
and fulfill the Lord's calling as it is presented so clearly to us in God's Word." It's usually
just that simple. But that little bit of information is very helpful to the reader. And you'd be
surprised how often reviewers neglect to include it.
Who Is It For?
As an author defines the purpose for his book, he also tends to define his audience. This is not
always the case as some books are written for just about anyone (think, for example, of MalcolmGladwell'sbooks); but most books do have a
defined audience. Again, from my review of The Masculine Mandate: "Richard Phillips
writes that his new book The Masculine Mandate 'is written for Christian men who
not only don't want to lose that precious biblical understanding, but who want to live out the
calling to true manliness God has given us.'"
What Does He Say?
Once I've covered the purpose of the book and its intended audience, I tend to offer a summary of
what the author communicates. To do this I sometimes pick out just a few of his more substantial
points or I may trace his outline, moving chapter by chapter or part by part. In just a few
paragraphs I want to offer a summary of the complete book, giving enough to be interesting but
not so much that it becomes burdensome. Two or three paragraphs is often sufficient here.
Why Does It Matter?
Before I wrap up the review, I want to help people understand what sets this book apart and what
makes it unique. This is often the most important part of the review. In almost every case the
book will have some close competition, so it is important to offer evidence of what makes it
different from the others. This is a good time to discuss a few of the author's very good or very
bad points, to agree with him, to quibble with him or to offer up a wholly different perspective.
If he says anything outrageously good or outrageously bad, here is the place to bring that out.
What Do You Think?
Reviews are, by their very nature, subjective. An author of a review cannot entirely remove
himself from it. Ultimately, many readers are looking less for a summation of the book's content
than they are looking for the opinion of the reviewer. They simply want to know, "Should I read
it or not?" Many readers will do little more than skip to the bottom of the review to find that
information (which is one of the reasons I avoid star ratings or other easy tip-offs that would
allow people to not bother reading the review). So I generally try to offer my own opinion,
saying who should read this book and why (or who should not read it and why). At
10MillionWords I've gotten into the habit of closing each review with "Verdict: Read it if..."
Mix It Up
Having said all of this, I find it best not to follow any single structure too rigidly. There are
some review styles that call for a kind of stylized rigidity (see PluggedIn's movie reviews as an example) and that
is well and good. But unless you have to write within a certain structure, it is probably best to
vary things at least occasionally.
There is also value in offering reviews of a variety of kinds of books, a variety of genres.
Again, this will depend on the context for those reviews; a theological journal will likely only
print reviews of theological books. But often at a blog or in a magazine you will have freedom to
try something very different. Know your audience and feel free to tell them about books that are,
for some reason, particularly interesting to you, even if they are somewhat unusual.
Logistics
Finally, just a few words about logistics. In terms of length, go with "just long enough."
Communicate what you need to communicate but be wary of going too long. This is particularly true
when writing for an online publication where people are accustomed to skimming more than reading.
A little too short is probably better than a little too long. Also, it's often a good idea to add
a "buy it" link at the end of the review, pointing to Amazon or another relevant bookstore. If
you are recommending a book and people are going to buy it anyway, you may as well pocket a few
cents for referring them.
A website that sorts everyday the most relevant information to you.
Vote for the news and Matoumba will learn your tastes and the information that you like the most.
It is all FREE!
Find here the history of the stories you found interesting.
Show this to people who share the same interests as you,
and if they use Matoumba, their own votes will fine recommandations to you.
Look, I’m all
for privacy, liberty, rights, etc. But this video (embedded below) is pretty ridiculous.
Listening to this, you’d think Google was born of a desire to trick everyone on the planet.
Does Google make almost all of its money off of ad revenues? Yes. But does that mean
they’re out to 
Download Squad readers haven't been shy about voicing their general distaste for the bazillion
different short URL services out there. As if you needed another reason, a new report shows -- in
USA Today style graphical goodness -- just how much they suck.
Recommandations
)
and reject those that you are not interested in
(
)
