firehose

Teenager, 1953

François Beaurain

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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The man behind Wednesday's deadly shooting at Fort Hood had mental health issues and was being treated for depression and anxiety before he killed three people and wounded 16 others. "We do know that this soldier had behavioral health and mental health issues and was being treated for that," said Lt. Gen. Mark Milley, head of the Army's III Corps at the Texas post. Lopez was being evaluated for post-traumatic stress disorder, but had not yet been diagnosed for the illness. Lopez, who was on medication, served four months in Iraq in 2011 and had "self-diagnosed" a traumatic brain injury. "He was not wounded in action, to our records," Milley said. McHugh says the soldier was examined by a psychiatrist last month and was found to show no violent or suicidal tendencies. He says the soldier had been prescribed Ambien to deal with a sleeping problem. Army Secretary John McHugh, the U.S. Army's top civilian official, said the soldier did not see combat during his deployment.

MIDICSV:

This page describes, in Unix manual page style, programs available for downloading from this site which translate MIDI music files into a human- and computer-readable CSV (Comma-Separated Value) format, suitable for manipulation by spreadsheet, database, or text processing utilities, and re-encoding processed CSV files into MIDI. No information is lost in transforming a MIDI file to CSV and back.

Via Architectures of Control.

submitted by mondrygo
[link] [9 comments]

Architecture of Ice Fishing | Mike Rebholz | Via

timflach.com


timflach.com


timflach.com

Tim Flach

NEW YORK—Featuring brief career summaries and estimated net worths of some of the most successful and prominent leaders in business, Forbes magazine published Thursday its annual list of the world’s 100 Most Punchable CEOs. Based on cri...

More Americans age 65 and older own either a tablet or an e-reader (27%) than own smartphones (18%)—the reverse of the proportions for the general public, according to the Pew Internet Project’s latest study on how people access the internet.

Among all US adults, more than half (58%) own a smartphone, while 50% own a tablet or e-reader.

A number of factors probably contribute to these numbers. One could be that older Americans are less likely than young people to see the value of paying for the expensive monthly plans that smartphones in the US generally require for data, texting, and talk. The other is simply that smartphones, with their high resolution “retina” displays and tiny type, just aren’t that friendly to older eyes.

(For those of all ages who are tired of squinting at their displays, by the way, modern smartphones have a setting to increase the default size of the type they display.)

When you normally wear grubby overalls, a fancy dress is a nice change of attire and Kaylee Frye’s dress from “Shindig” is one of the most memorable costumes from Firefly. I couldn’t imagine re-creating all those ruffles, but cosplayer Fire Lily put the entire gown together for $160. She used dupioni silk and lots of white sheer voile fabric – yes, she dyed all the pink and peach layers:

The second hard part was the skirt – although the costume was said to have used pre-made silk chiffon hoops, chiffon is entirely too flimsy a fabric to get the correct drape for the ruffles, in my opinion. I opted to use a white sheer voile fabric and dye the peach and pink layers. Each layer of ruffles is edged with rolled hems that I had to run through my sewing machine twice using a zig-zag stitch (omg took forever!). I then sewed each layer onto a plain cotton sheath skirt and attached it to the bodice.

Read more at Fire Lily Cosplay’s blog.

Keeping true to its commitment to open hardware and potential for sharing source to revolutionize desktop manufacturing, Ultimaker has finally been able to launch the “Ultimaker 2″ Printer Source Files:

From day one, we have been recognized for our open source culture and we feel that open source brings the field of 3D printing to a higher level. It is our firm belief that sharing knowledge does not mean losing knowledge. On the contrary, we learn from each other, inspire each other and use each other’s knowledge to create even better products and develop impressive innovations world-wide.

What sets Ultimaker and YouMagine apart is the sharing philosophy. Since the very first time Ultimaker saw the light of day, we have supported open source. We shared our source files and our community gave us valuable feedback. Our YouMagine platform is not only a place where we share our information, it is also a social place, a community, where users can create profiles and start collaborations with other makers. Many contributions by our community can be found in the Ultimaker design as it is today.

The day has come that we are launching the drawings of the Ultimaker 2 and share them with the world. We are excited to see what kind of ideas, innovations, improvements and products this will lead to. We will continue to share our knowledge and experience and look forward to achieving many remarkable 3D printing goals together. Or in the words of Martijn Elserman, co-founder of Ultimaker: “Since its introduction, the Ultimaker 2 received a very positive response and its demand has been beyond expectation. This strengthens our confidence in our philosophy to innovate and improve together with the worldwide community of 3D printer enthousiasts.”

Read More. Get the Ultimaker 2 source files here.

Actress and former mixed martial artist Gina Carano's latest flick is In the Blood, an action thriller where she plays a newlywed on honeymoon whose new spouse goes missing. And just like any action hero worth their salt, she turns out to have been hiding a particular set of skills from her dearly beloved and wades through mercenary blood in order to get them back. Women and Hollywood spoke to Carano about her character in the film, her goals as an actress, and the one question on everybody's mind: so how about that Wonder Woman?

Bruce Timm returned to Batman with a short celebrating the character's 75th anniversary, now available to watch online in its entirety.

The battle between Verizon and T-Mobile for US subscribers is getting pretty ugly. Verizon has for several months been running television ads mocking its rivals’ paltry network coverage. The ad claims that Verizon’s LTE  network, the fastest of its data networks, covers more of America than anybody else’s. T-Mobile hit back in March, with an aggressive ad saying “Fold up your old map, Verizon.” And it announced that it had ”taken legal action demanding that Verizon cease and desist the carrier’s network map advertising.”

But while brand wars can be entertaining, they don’t help consumers much. Which is the better network? OpenSignal, a London-based start-up, looked at the data it collects from its 100,000-odd users on LTE networks in the United States and came to a firm conclusion: It depends.

Verizon is right to claim its LTE network coverage is the best of the lot. It covers more of the population; even T-Mobile admitted in a press release last month that its HSPA+ network—a slightly slower standard than LTE—covers only 230 million Americans to the 303 million covered by Verizon’s LTE. (T-Mobile didn’t say how many people its own LTE network covers at the moment, though it promises to reach 250 million people by the end of the year.)

OpenSignal uses a rather different measure: What proportion of the time are subscribers actually able to use LTE on their networks? Here, Verizon emerged the clear winner. Its average user with access to LTE can connect to the network more than 83% of the time, compared to just 61% for T-Mobile.

Yet what Verizon doesn’t tell you is that while its coverage may be the broadest, it offers much lower average speeds.

So which network is better? It depends on where you live and what you use your phone for. Where T-Mobile doesn’t offer LTE, Verizon may be the better choice for people who want fast mobile broadband. But where it does, T-mobile has consistently been the fastest over the past year. And if you’re not streaming music and videos, it probably doesn’t matter much either way.

When Bridgetown released their initial lineup a couple weeks ago, we crossed our fingers that a few big names would still be added to the list, which was heavy on promising up-and-comers but a bit light on flashy headliners.

WELL, IT HAPPENED! Reggie Watts and Paul F Tompkins were added to the lineup yesterday. Tompkins is bringing his Dead Authors Podcast (yay!) for a one-night gig, and Watts will presumably just be his usual crazily brilliant self.

The fest is Thurs May 8-Sun May 11; tickets here.

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“What Google really wants is for everybody to be signed in to their Google accounts all the time,” a Google insider told me in passing last month.

Around the same time, the official Gmail blog put up a 205-word post explaining the latest update to the Gmail app for Apple devices that run on iOS 7.

The app now fully supports background app refresh, which means your Gmail messages will be pre-fetched and synced so they’re right there when you open the app—no more annoying pauses while you wait for your inbox to refresh.

That’s great! But wait, what’s this:

The Gmail app also now supports sign-in across Google iOS apps, including Maps, Drive, YouTube and Chrome. Sign in to one, and you’ll be signed in to all (this also works for signing out). So you won’t have to type in that 27-character password or retrieve your 2-step verification code every time you navigate to another Google app. You may need to re-login after you update the app, but then you’ll be all set.

That sounds convenient. And it is—but not for you, for Google.

To understand why, you need to look back to the last time Google integrated sign-in across services. That’s a good indicator of what Google has planned for its—and your—future.

A long time ago on an internet far, far away

Until two years ago each of Google’s 70-odd services—from Gmail to Google Docs to Picasa photo sharing—had its own privacy policy. In January 2012, Google announced that it would combine 60 of them into one single privacy policy. This too was cloaked in user-friendliness:

This approach [of separate privacy policies] is somewhat complicated. It’s also at odds with our efforts to integrate our different products more closely so that we can create a beautifully simple, intuitive user experience across Google.

The real purpose however wasn’t to make your life easier, but to simplify Google’s tracking of it:

What does this mean in practice? The main change is for users with Google Accounts. Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.

Regulators—who Google said in that post had ”been calling for shorter, simpler privacy policies”—quickly realized what the changes meant. European authorities opened an investigation into the new policy, calling it a breach of EU law. More than two years later, many cases remain unresolved. France and Spain have both slapped fines on Google, though the combined €1.05 million ($1.45 million today) is roughly as much as the revenue Google will make in the time it takes you read this article. The investigation is ongoing in another four countries, including Germany.

It doesn’t matter. Google’s privacy policy remains unchanged. Google’s total revenue from advertising jumped from $36.5 billion in 2011 to $43.6 billion in 2012 and crossed $50 billion in 2013.

Cut to the present day

By unifying its services on the web, Google strengthened its grip on its users data. But it began to lose its hold, again, as smartphones took off. When not using their phones to talk, smartphone users spend 86% of the time in apps, and just 14% in the web browser. So someone might, for instance, be signed in to check Gmail, but be effectively anonymous to Google when watching videos on YouTube.

Keeping you signed in on all apps fills this gap in Google’s knowledge. But just as importantly, it makes a big difference to how the company measures whether ads—the lion’s share of its business—are working.

For example, you may have seen an ad for something on YouTube on your phone, looked it up using the Amazon app on your tablet, and eventually bought it on your computer. Unless you were logged into YouTube when you first saw the ad, Google can’t tell if the sale was a result of the ad, and can’t prove to advertisers—who spend half their mobile budgets with Google—that the money was well spent. It also can’t tell if it’s shown you the same ad over and over again to no effect—information it could use to target ads better.

This is a problem the entire online ad industry faces. But few have as much to lose as Google does, or the clout to push users around. Most companies would be lucky to get one app on your phone’s home screen. Google has a whole mobile operating system, Android. And even people who use Apple rather than Android devices can use a lot of Google apps on them—Google Earth, Drive, Hangouts, Translate, Blogger or even, yes, Google+ (which exists only to serve as the company’s data gathering tool). Hence its move to unify sign-in across them.

This change affects only Apple users who have upgraded to iOS 7, the latest version—but that’s 85% of iOS devices. They no longer have the ability to remain anonymous as they watch videos on YouTube or navigate their cities using Google Maps.

Back to the future

Google has learned its lesson from the privacy policy fiasco of 2012. Instead of a grand announcement, publicity campaigns or a post on the official Google blog, it mentioned it in passing, without explaining what it means to be signed in to everything all the time. (It’s also telling that the announcement came tucked away in a note about an incremental change to the Gmail app, though implementing such a change would have required work outside that app.) By the time of publication, Google had not responded to a request for comment on why it had kept the announcement so low-key.

The change seems to have gone unnoticed by privacy campaigners and regulators. Tech blogs have reprinted the press release and a few users appear to have belatedly discovered it by accident, but without noting its full importance.

Google will be watching very closely to see if these voices of dissent grow. In interviews, ad agencies, ad-tech companies, data companies, and back-end login-service providers all tell me that login is the future. Google is best placed to force users to accept that new reality. And it is.

Jack Charles Meussdorffer was in the sixth grade when he turned on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and saw the guitar that would become his passion.

"The Stones (were on) and Brian Jones was playing a teardrop. I thought that was the coolest-looking guitar I'd ever seen in my life," he said.

More than two decades later, after his own career as a rock musician, Meussdorffer set up shop in Clatskanie, Ore., and began making his own instruments, inspired by the one he saw Jones playing. But after building a reputation for 21 years as the maker of his trademarked Teardrop, Phantom and MandoGuitars, he’s now facing a lawsuit that threatens to topple his business.

On Sept. 3, 2013, the multinational company Korg Inc. and its affiliates filed a complaint against Meussdorffer and his Phantom Guitar Works company, seeking to cancel several of Meussdorffer's long-held trademarks and claiming "tortious interference" with the brand's own models. Meussdorffer and his legal team filed a counter-claim, and the case has slogged on ever since.

There is no assembly line in Meussdorffer’s Clatskanie workshop: it’s too cluttered with the tools and assembled pieces and wires he uses to hand-make his instruments. In a year, he’ll produce between 250 and 400 instruments styled after the seminal guitars introduced by the British company Vox in the 1960s. But Korg’s instrument production has threatened his sales. Its legal action could do much worse.

Korg's primary legal argument against Meussdorffer is that his trademarks, the Phantom and Teardrop names and shapes, have become generic and thus public domain. Eastern District New York Magistrate Judge Gary R. Brown found Korg's evidence for some of its claims "lackluster," but his advice for a preliminary injunction, which could halt either side’s production, recommended protecting only Meussdorffer’s Phantom trademark -- not the Teardrop, citing the trademark as "less distinctive." That was in February: the lawyers are still arguing about it, with another judge still to face.

Rock history recreated

The Vox guitars first showed up in the hands of the British Invasion bands. By the mid-1960s, groups from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to the Hollies were using Vox amps and playing Vox’s signature guitar line, the Phantom.

Meussdorffer was born in Palo Alto, Calif., but spent his childhood in Portland. His father, a Stanford graduate, was a stockbroker, while his mother worked for the city as a map-maker. It wasn’t long after “Ed Sullivan” that Meussdorffer started playing in bands himself: his first was 1970s folk-rock act Sand. He joined Portland's Quarterflash in the '80s, bringing Vox instruments on the road as the band notched hits such as "Harden My Heart." But as handsome as the guitars were, they were a challenge to tour with. Vox, a small company that was overwhelmed by demand in the booming '60s, had outsourced its U.S. production to Italy, resulting in what Meussdorffer calls "poorly made" instruments that weren't up to his performance standards.

"They were technically wrong, the wrong scale," Meussdorffer said. "I could never keep it in tune. And it always occurred to me, someone should make a workingman's version of this guitar."

Meussdorffer left Quarterflash in 1984 to lead his own band, Mien Street, but the group didn’t pick up his previous act’s national steam. He ended up going to work for Akai's Jackson guitar line, where he gathered the skills to make a handful of his own prototypes, but he never lost his passion for the Vox guitars, which had ceased production entirely in the 1970s. Meussdorffer made it his mission to bring them back: He developed his instruments from the ground up, redesigning "nearly all" of the hardware and pickups. And musicians have embraced his work. Customers for his high-quality instruments include players such as John Mellencamp and the Decemberists' Chris Funk.

“John Mellencamp, I made eight guitars for that band,” Meussdorffer said. “I've done all the tooling and making all the correct knobs, I do every single screw, to make these things look like the original '60s guitars.

“I’m really, really into these things,” he continued. “I have the very first (12-string) prototype that I got from (British '60s musician and producer) Peter Asher, and I've really done a lot of research. Frankly, there wasn't anywhere else to go to do this correctly.”

For his part, Funk wasn't looking for nostalgia. He wanted a workhorse electric 12-string and he was hoping to buy local. He bought a Teardrop and has been playing the model ever since: Meussdorffer even replaced his copy when the Decemberists had some gear stolen.

“It’s the only electric 12-string I’ve had all these years with the Decemberists. I really like the neck on the guitar and the way it plays,” Funk said. “I liked that Jack's in Oregon. He was really available and supportive and friendly.”

A long and winding road

Meussdorffer and Korg have engaged in a legally complex relationship since the musician began making and selling the guitars in 1993. Vox fell into hard times after its '60s heyday, and Korg, founded in Japan in 1963, snapped up the company in 1992, seeking to capitalize on the brand's British Invasion legacy with amp and instrument reissues, including its current Apache line.

Unlike Meussdorffer’s consistent production, Korg has manufactured its versions only intermittently since acquiring Vox, ramping up in 2012 with the Apache models. One of these instruments is currently available at Urban Outfitters, marketed under the Phantom name in flagrant disregard for Meussdorffer’s trademarks. On its own site, Vox is less deceptive, crediting Phantom Guitar Works with the ownership of the Phantom and Teardrop names. Phantom Guitar Works' upscale models run from $750 to $999, but Korg's -- made in Asia, not Oregon -- are half the price, and Meussdorffer has policed his trademarks rigorously as the powerful company pushed into his market.

Apart from its Vox line, Korg makes an array of musical equipment distributed to hundreds of stores: it’s best known for synthesizers such as the MicroKorg. A private company, Korg Inc. does not release its sales figures, but its official website states it has 290 employees: Meussdorffer calls them a "$40 million company." Korg’s publicity department did not respond to multiple Oregonian requests for comment.

The pair’s relationship wasn't always contentious. Meussdorffer began his dealings with the company at the National Association of Music Merchants trade show in the '90s, where he debuted his instruments: in their first encounter, Meussdorffer even loaned Korg representatives his guitars to go with their vintage amps.

"They showed up to the NAMM show with their AC30 amplifiers and came to my booth and said, 'We're Korg and we now own Vox, can we borrow your guitars for our booth?'" he said. "And I said 'Sure.' We were getting along just fine."

Negotiations went back and forth for years. At one point, "they wanted to hire me," Meussdorffer said, and the two parties were discussing licensing before Korg filed its claims last year. He's been a staunch protector of his trademarks on the guitar names and designs, "painstakingly" digging through eBay listings to prevent the terms being applied to similar instruments. He sent out cease-and-desist letters, worried that Korg's editions would confuse customers.

"Korg got sick of it and now have decided I shouldn't have the trademarks," he said.

How did Meussdorffer register trademarks on another company’s vintage guitars? Quite simply, they were available: neither government records nor the case’s legal filings indicate the original Vox ever held U.S. trademarks on “phantom” or “teardrop” (a term Vox didn’t officially use in its '60s marketing), and with his own productions in place, Meussdorffer was able to successfully acquire trademarks on both names and body shapes for his instruments. His legal protections seemingly in hand, Meussdorffer was able to build a business that revived and improved the instruments for a new generation of players.

His trademarks are old enough to be incontestable, a legal status that protects against some but not all of the arguments against them. Lydia Loren, professor of advocacy and ethics at Lewis & Clark School of Law, said the design trademarks could still be under fire for functionality, which is the domain of patent law -- in other words, if the guitar shape has a functional capacity and not just a stylistic look, a trademark can't protect that -- while the name marks, as with the "less distinctive" Teardrop, can be challenged as generic if they're well-known beyond a specific brand. (Like using "Google" as a verb for searching, for instance.)

"That's the fundamental baseline for trademark law, making sure consumers don't get confused," Loren said.

No satisfaction

The legal drama comes with Meussdorffer at a personal crossroads. He said he's separated from his wife and faces the challenge of raising Max, his 14-year-old autistic son. (Another child, Jack, is in school at the University of Portland.) Meussdorffer also totaled his truck in a crash with a deer last year.

"The lawsuit in general is not the best for relationships," he said. "I'm holding up O.K. I feel like right is right. I'm not completely naive about it. I'm worried about it because of the amount of money these guys have… They can make my life pretty miserable because they can wait it out."

He wouldn't say what the suit is costing him, but said he'd taken financial steps with his attorney to "weather such a thing" as earlier negotiations with Korg turned unproductive.

Losing his trademarks "could and most likely would ruin me," he added.

As the case continues, a settlement remains a possibility, as does a successful defense, but the current legal path looks like it very well could leave Meussdorffer with only a partial victory.

"Often times, these are competitors so there's really not a way for them to settle," Loren said. "Unless one side or the other is willing to stop doing something."

For Meussdorffer, it means fighting for two decades of work -- and his grasp on a piece of rock history.

“Phantoms, Teardrops, Strats, Les Pauls… these are iconic body shapes,” he said. “To me, there's only a few things in rock 'n' roll, you can go, ‘That's one of them.’”

-- David Greenwald

Original Source

djempirical

fuck these people.

take all the selfies you want. don’t let snobby assholes take anything away from you. use social media how you like. there’s no wrong way to FB.

fuck these people.

Original Source

Original Source

We’re back at the Huzzik Empire’s Supreme Court for another wacky ruling! Next thing you know they’ll be declaring donuts to be sentient and monkeys to be hot dogs.

They may be right about hot dogs.

You know what you should do? You should buy something from our store. Maybe a t-shirt for the warm weather?

humanoidhistory:

The Sun, as of January 2014, from imagery collected by NASA’s Solar Data Analysis Center. (via)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, Polygon as an organization.

justinaireland:

gothiccharmschool:

In times of trouble

Ellen Ripley comes to me 

Speaking words of wisdom

Nuke the entire site from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.

I need to rewatch this movie.

amygloriouspond:

I got these nifty pens. 

attn @petermorwood : nifty pens