The electronics industry supplies components to manufacturers who build things in huge quantities. Increasingly, however, there are people interested in building things in very small quantities, where a low unit price is not as important as an understanding of how the component works. SFE caters very effectively to this latter audience, not just with their designs, but with tutorials, projects, and their customer forum. I've used SFE as a source for the Arduino, a very inexpensive microcontroller board available in a variety of sizes programmable with open-source tools. They also sell a variety of add-on components for this system. SFE is an example of an enthusiast source that not only serves a community, but enabled it to exist in the first place. They’ve done this in at least three ways: 1) connected with tool makers to provide a retail outlet for their work, 2) designed example projects and boards to make the use of raw electronic components more accessible to a larger audience, 3) provided a way for people building stuff to share their experiences.

Pittsburgh - On Monday, March 8, at 4 p.m., board members of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will discuss the societal impact of technology design in a panel at Carnegie Mellon University.

Technology design can maximize or decimate our basic rights to free speech, privacy, property ownership, and creative thought. The panel will discuss some good and bad design decisions through the years and the ramifications of those decisions.

Monday's panel is free and open to the public.

WHAT:
Architecture Is Policy: The Legal and Social Impact of Technical Design Decisions

WHEN:
4 p.m.
Monday, March 8

WHERE:
Newell-Simon Hall, Room 3305
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

WHO:
Ed Felten (Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs and Director of the Center for Information Technology Policy, Princeton University)
Dave Farber (Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science and Public Policy in the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University)
Lorrie Cranor (Associate Professor of Computer Science and of Engineering and Public Policy, Director of the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory [CUPS], Carnegie Mellon University)
John Buckman (EFF Board Chair, Serial Entrepreneur)
Cindy Cohn (EFF Legal Director, Moderator)

Contact:

Rebecca Jeschke
Media Relations Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
press@eff.org

This position will help structure and implement processes that facilitate the timely and effective preparation, negotiation, maintenance and administration of the Company's contracts, including those related to the Company's publishing (print and electronic media, video, etc.), consulting, events, and conferences business. The Contracts Manager will maintain appropriate contract files and archives; and educate internal clients with respect to negotiation and interpretation of contract provisions. This position will report to the Director of Legal Services, and is located at our company headquarters offices in Sebastopol, CA.

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) submitted a petition signed by more than 7000 people to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today demanding that the agency close a loophole for copyright enforcement in its proposed regulations for network neutrality.

The petition is part of EFF's reply comments in the FCC's net neutrality rulemaking. The FCC's proposed rules generally prohibit ISPs from discriminating or blocking lawful content, but include a loophole for 'reasonable network management' by ISPs. The proposed rules then define 'reasonable network management" to include measures taken by ISPs to block unlawful content or transmissions. This exception would effectively permit ISPs to violate net neutrality rules and block lawful activities in the name of copyright enforcement.

"We can't afford to let lawful speech become collateral damage in Hollywood's war on copyright infringement," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "Net neutrality regulations should not excuse ISPs that interfere with lawful content just because they claim they were acting as copyright cops."

EFF's original comments to the FCC, submitted in January, also question whether the FCC has the legal authority or political independence necessary to properly regulate the Internet. Additionally, EFF has called on the FCC to protect the interests of individuals who offer open WiFi Internet access to their neighbors or local communities.

"Before the ink is dry on net neutrality regulations, we already see corporate lobbyists and 'public decency' advocates pushing for loopholes," said EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. "A loophole like this could swallow network neutrality, with ISPs claiming copyright enforcement as a pretext for all sorts of discriminatory behavior."

For EFF's full reply comments to the FCC:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/nn/EFF NN reply comments2b.pdf

For more on net neutrality:
http://www.eff.org/issues/net-neutrality

Contacts:

Jennifer Stisa Granick
Civil Liberties Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
jennifer@eff.org

Fred von Lohmann
Senior Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
fred@eff.org

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a friend-of-the-court brief today urging a federal court judge to block two criminal statutes that unconstitutionally limit the free expression of millions of adults who use the Internet and other electronic forms of communication, bringing the threat of criminal sanctions for private, lawful speech.

At issue are provisions of federal law that require anyone who produces a visual depiction of sexually explicit expression to maintain extensive records -- including copies of drivers' licenses, the dates and times images were taken, and all URLs where images were posted -- and often force public disclosure of a creator's home address. Even more troubling, the regulations allow law enforcement warrantless entry into homes or offices in order to inspect the records that are supposed to be kept. While these statutes regulate the commercial pornography industry, they also likely apply to a staggering number of Americans who create and share images of themselves over social networks, online dating services, personal erotic websites, and text messaging.

"The plain language of the statute subjects ordinary Americans, who are using emerging communications technologies at an ever-increasing rate, to onerous record-keeping and inspection requirements for lawful speech. They could face up to five years in prison if they don't follow the statutory requirements to the letter," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "Speakers who engage in private, expressive activity protected by the First Amendment should not be at risk of criminal sanctions for violating an overbroad statute that they likely know nothing about."

A coalition of artists, producers, distributors, and educators filed suit against the provisions last year, arguing that the law censored their artistic and educational work. In its amicus brief in support of the coalition filed today, EFF asked the judge to throw out the record-keeping regulations as an unconstitutional chill on adult free expression in the digital age.

"Digital cameras, camcorders, and the Internet make it easy to create and share lawful adult material in a wide variety of ways. Thousands of ordinary Americans are doing just that, only to find themselves subject to these record-keeping and inspection requirements," said EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. "This just doesn't square with the Constitution."

For the full amicus brief:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/fsc_v_holder/EFF Amicus Brief.pdf

For more on Free Speech Coalition v. Holder:
http://www.eff.org/cases/free-speech-coalition-v-holder

Contacts:

Matt Zimmerman
Senior Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
mattz@eff.org

Jennifer Stisa Granick
Civil Liberties Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
jennifer@eff.org

Daniel Phillips noted that his new Tux3 versioning filesystem is now operating like a filesystem, "the last burst of checkins has brought Tux3 to the point where it undeniably acts like a filesystem: one can write files, go away, come back later and read those files by name. We can see some of the hoped for attractiveness starting to emerge: Tux3 clearly does scale from the very small to the very big at the same time. We have our Exabyte file with 4K blocksize and we can also create 64 Petabyte files using 256 byte blocks." He went on to discuss some of the remaining features yet to be implemented, including atomic commits, versioning, coalesce on delete, a version of the filesystem written in the kernel, extents, locking, and extended attributes.

Reviewing the above list, Daniel decided he would work next on the coalesce on delete functionality, noting, "without this we can still delete files but we cannot recover file index blocks, only empty them, not so good." He added that at this time he was only going to focus on file truncation, "as soon as file truncation is added to the test mix we will see much more interesting behavior from the bitmap allocator, and we will discover some great ways to generate horrible fragmentation issues. Yummy." Daniel continued to point out that Tux3 is an open source project, and as such is always looking for others to participate, "whoever wants to carve their initials on what is starting to look like a for-real Linux filesystem, now is a great time to take a flyer. The code base is still tiny, builds fast, has lots of interactive feedback and is easy to work on. And you get to put your email address near the beginning of the list, which will naturally write its way into the history of open source. Probably."

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Übernerdy Swiss lighter-than-air fish that flies with electronic muscles? What's not to like?

The actuators on the airship work - like biological muscles - in an agonist-antagonist configuration. While the actuators on one side of the airship are activated, the corresponding actuator on the other side contracts. Thus the body and tail fin are excited in an undulating movement which propels the airship like a fish through the air. The EAPs can be actuated with varying frequency, activation voltage and a phase shift between the body and the tail fin movement. In fluid-dynamical similarity to the rainbow trout, the appropriate motion pattern (deflections, frequency and phase shift) were defined and verified by wind tunnel tests. The expected travelling velocity was calculated. The "skeleton" and passive parts of the airship consist of an ultra-light carbon-sandwich structure and a model-airship hull material developed by aeroix GmbH in Berlin. The electrical supply and control system was developed at Empa and everything was optimized for minimum of weight. The flight of this fish-like airship can be controlled with a joy stick connected to a ground-based portable computer. The flight control data are processed by a LabView program and transmitted by WLAN to the receiver system in the gondola on the airship.

One of the things I helped "show off" at the Expo conference was a new controller that I ran across. Actually, *I* didn't run across it - my friend Gregory Taylor did, and had one sent to me. It is the Manta controller from Snyderphonics, and it is one of the most interesting units I've used in the last five years.

The Manta is a thin, bus-powered USB device that speaks a special variant of the HI protocol; Jeff Snyder (the creator) built a special Max object that makes for a simple interface. Apparently, Jeff spent a fair amount of time with Buchla touch keyboards, and came away with the inspiration for the Manta. It provides a 6x8 hex grid of touch-sensitive pads, two virtual sliders and four buttons.

None of this may sound particular ground-breaking, but in reality it is outrageously inspiring. What makes it different from all other controllers is its feel - it is an etched metal plate, resulting in a device that doesn't require an active button press, but provides enough feedback to invoke a visceral sense of "playing" the device.

Each of the pads has an LED light behind it, so you can see the notes you are playing. But the roughness of the pads produces the most important feedback, and allows for playing without having to look at the device. When I first tried the Manta, I was immediately reminded of playing an autoharp, and I set out making a Max patch that would emulate that instrument.

After a little tweaking (driven by my 8 year-old son, who demands perfection), I came up with a nice, simple patch for autoharping. It provided some of the nicest music I've done in ages - mainly because it provides a different feel from any electronic instrument I've used.

At the Expo conference, I met up with Brad Garton, who had also approached the Manta from a guitaristic perspective. He chose to implement a machine-gun metal guitar patch, with requisite feedback and dive-bomb pressure controls. His patch and mine made for a hilarious combination: his Eddie Van Halen to my Melonie. Nevertheless, we turned a lot of people on to this crazy and unique controller.

Apparently, Jeff is deep into grad school finals, and won't have time to produce these units in quantity for a while. But if you get a chance to see or play a Manta, run (don't walk) for that opportunity. If you happen to be in Colorado, I'd be happy to show it off. Much fun, and and extraordinary example of instrument/controller design.