Just another WordPress site
The pinwheel-like drawing above is nothing but black and white lines. When you look at it the right way, though, something strange and beautiful happens: it begins to flicker. You may think it’s just a regular old optical illusion at first, but actually, you’re looking at your very own brain waves.
     |
via Gizmodo This Optical Illusion Lets You See Your Own Brain Waves
There’s a very cool group out there called the Hacker Scouts, which was started last year, trying to get kids interested in cool hacking stuff:
Hacker Scouts is a national non profit organization, founded in the Fall of 2012 in Oakland CA, that focuses on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) education, skill building and community engagement with the aspiration to help our children develop skills in the areas they are truly interested in, abilities that would allow them to dream big and create big. A variety of experts and mentors from the community ensure a well rounded and high level of attention and skill building for all ages through accessible programs that meet the different needs of our young makers. Hacker Scouts provides open source material and a support program for Hacker Scout programs globally.
Awesome, right? Definitely the kind of thing that should be encouraged. But, then the Boy Scouts of America went ballistic and threatened the Hacker Scouts with trademark infringement claims:
For the past several months we have been dealing with an issue that we now feel is at a point where it is important to let you know what is going on. A few months ago, we received a Cease and Desist letter from the Boy Scouts of America when we tried to trademark our name. Through various letters, we have tried to quietly come to a compromise, but the BSA position is clear: change our name or they will take us to court.
This is a difficult situation for us. We believe in our name and our right to use the word “scouts”. The BSA’s main argument is that they have a constitutional charter that they interpret to mean they have the right to use and trademark any word they choose. We disagree. We believe the charter itself may be unconstitutional, and that “scouts” is a world-wide connotation for a youth organization that existed before them and will exist long after them. We have also tried to be very clear in our message that we are not affiliated with the Boy Scouts nor are we trying to replace them. We do not offer the same experience, nor do we have a similar model as they do. We did not base our organization on them.
So, apparently, the Boy Scouts are trademark bullies. There’s no likelihood of confusion here, and the idea of dilution based on the use of the common word “scouts”? Seems ridiculous.
Except… lawyer Ron Coleman dug into things a bit and discovered that Congress, stunningly, has actually passed a special law just for the Boy Scouts that allows them to be trademark bullies. No joke. It’s 36 USC 30905, which is a part of 36 USC 309, which is a law just for the Boy Scouts of America. In 30905, the Boy Scouts appear to be given full “exclusive right” to “emblems, badges, descriptive or designating marks, and words or phrases the corporation adopts.” This goes way, way beyond what traditional trademark law allows, and the Boy Scouts appear to be using it to their trademark bullying advantage.
In fact, Coleman cites a case, Wrenn v. BSA from 2008, in which the court flat out said:
BSA need not demonstrate the likelihood of confusion because it has been granted special protection by Congressional charter
So, there you go. Stunningly, and ridiculously, the US government has given the Boy Scouts of America free reign to be obnoxious trademark bullies, threatening and going after anyone who uses “scouts” even if there’s no likelihood of confusion at all.
Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
| |
via Techdirt. Congress Gave Boy Scouts Special Law To Let Them Be Obnoxious Trademark Bullies
Volquartsen has without question been at the top of the custom 10/22 market since it launched back in the 70′s. The company is also famous for souping up a number of other firearms, but almost everyone knows them first as a manufacturer of premium, high-accuracy, custom parts for the venerable Ruger 10/22. After two years[…..]
via AllOutdoor.com Volquartsen 10/22 upgrades: barrel, trigger, and bolt
If you’ve ever tried to compare cell phone plan prices, you know it’s an exercise in frustration. This calculator from The Wall Street Journal simplifies the 500 or so variations in pricing to tell you whether T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, or AT&T has the best pricing for your specific needs.
Answer five questions and the calculator will show you the cheapest plans and how the pricing breaks down. (Update: Note that the calculator doesn’t include prepaid plans, which could save you a bundle more, but you’ll have to compare those plans yourself.)
In most cases, whether you have one or multiple lines, T-Mobile is the cheapest option of the Big Four providers—something we’ve discussed previously. (I wish this calculator was around back then!) However, if you look at the 2-year prices, sometimes—depending on how many phone lines you need—the other providers are less expensive or close to T-Mobile. That’s because this calculator rolls into the two-year price the cost of paying for an iPhone 5—and T-Mobile customers pay full price for the phones while the other providers subsidize them.
Price isn’t the only factor when choosing a wireless provider, but it’s definitely one of the major considerations. This tool takes the pain out of comparing your different options.
WSJ’s Wireless Savings Calculator | The Wall Street Journal via Consumerist
via Lifehacker This Interactive Tool Shows the Cheapest Wireless Plans for Your Needs
There are a lot of ways to block ads, but with a simple command in the developer console, you can disable all ads on YouTube via an experiment.
Google frequently tries out new features with experiments via TestTube. A less advertised experiment can disable all ads on the site. Here’s how to turn it on:
document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=oKckVSqvaGw; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();Boom. No more ads. Since this is something that Google is allowing, it’s possible it could go away in the future, but while it works, you get a lovely ad-free viewing experience without any plugins. It even works on those pesky video ads.
YouTube Experiment gets rid of all advertisement on site | Ghacks
via Lifehacker Disable Ads on YouTube With This Simple Command
It’s the middle of August. It’s hot. You want to break open every fire hydrant you see. You view ice cubes as a precious resource. You see air conditioning as the greatest invention ever created. You can’t wait to forget that you are a sweaty pig. You are jealous of these three guys in Russia who have hitched themselves to the insides of an excavator that dunks, swings, re-dunks, re-swings, re-re-re-dunks and keeps dunking them in a lake. Who cares if it looks dirty. Who cares if it looks like you’d probably drown. It looks like a hell of a good time. [TurkeyEuropechannel via Geekosystem]
| |
via Gizmodo Using an Excavator As a DIY Water Park Ride Is Death Defying Fun
What a great summer tradition this is. Every so often, these wonderful folks plop down a gigantic human slingshot and fire people at stuff. Sometimes it’s down a slip and slide and into a lake, sometimes it’s that, just double. This time it’s at a mountain, while eating pizza. It still looks like a lot of fun. [YouTube]
| |
via Gizmodo Watch People Get Flung at a Mountain by a Giant Human Slingshot
If the X-Men existed in medieval times, would they be casted as demons or witches? Or perhaps some of them would be worshiped as magical beings? Would a leader emerge amongst them? Illustrator Nate Hallinan explored the idea, which resulted in ‘The Order of X’. This is a personal fan-fiction variation on the X-Men. I thought it would be a fun exercise to do the X-Men in an alternate medieval/fantasy reality. Prejudice and discrimination were rampant in our history. Being a darker and less civilized time, fear and hatred ran deeper making it an interesting setting for the X-Men. The…
Read the full article: If The X-Men Lived In Medieval Times
In what is quite possibly the most comprehensive look at the financial cost of being Batman, Movieclips Trailers analyzed the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy and compared Batman’s gear to current market prices to come up with the definitive price it would take to be the dark knight. The final tally? $79,237,480.98. Not too expensive for a billionaire, right?
| |
common_schema 2.2 is released. This is shortly after the 2.1 release; it was only meant as bug fixes release but some interesting things came up, leading to new functionality.
Highlights of the 2.2 release:
Better QueryScript isolation & cleanup: isolation improved across replication topology, cleanup done even on error
Added TokuDB related views
split with “index” hint (Ike, this is for you)
table_rotate(): a logrotate-like mechanism for tables
better throw()
Drill down:
Better QueryScript isolation & cleanup
common_schema 2.1 introduced persistent tables for QueryScript. This also introduced the problem of isolating concurrent scripts, all reading from and writing to shared tables. In 2.1 isolation was based on session id. However although unique per machine, collisions were possible across replication topology: a script could be issued on master, another on slave (I have such use cases) and both use same (local) session id.
With 2.2 isolation is based on server_id & session id combination; this is unique across a replication topology.
Until 2.1, QueryScript used temporary tables. This meant any error would just break the script, and the tables were left (isolated as they were, and auto-destroyed in time). With persistent tables a script throwing an error meant legacy code piling up. With common_schema 2.2 and on MySQL >= 5.5 all exceptions are caught, cleanup is made, leaving exceptions to be RESIGNALled.
TokuDB views
A couple TokuDB related views help out in converting to TokuDB and in figuring out tables status on disk:
sql_alter_table_tokudb will help you out to generate the complex ALTER statement to TokuDB engine if you happen to used COMPRESSED InnoDB tables with KEY_BLOCK_SIZE specified. The view generates a complex DROP KEYs & ADD KEYs statementl this is due to bug …
tokudb_file_map simplifies the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.Tokudb_file_map table: the original view is not normalized and is difficult to interpret and follow when your table had many indexes or is partitioned (I will write more on this shortly). with common_schema’s tokudb_file_map you get, per table, the list of files representing that table, along with a couple Shell commands to tell you the thing you want to know most: “what is the size of my TokuDB table on disk?”
split
QueryScript’s split device now supports the “index” parameter (or hint), which instructs the split() operation to use an explicitly named index. If used, the index must exist and must be UNIQUE.
table_rotate()
Rotate your tables a-la logrotate with table_rotate(): generate a new, identical, empty table, version your table, pushing older versions along the line; optionally drop older versions. You get the picture. Got some nice use case behind this on cleaning up a test database.
throw()
On MySQL >= 5.5 throw() uses SIGNAL. No more weird “table `Unknown column ‘$t’ in ‘field list’` does not exist” messages. Just plain old:
ERROR 1054 (42S22): Unknown column ‘$t’ in ‘field list’
Get it
common_schema is free and open source. It is licensed under GPL v2. This is where you can find and download latest common_schema release.
Your input is welcome! Please submit your bugs, or otherwise share your experience with common_schema.
via Planet MySQL common_schema 2.2: better QueryScript isolation & cleanup; TokuDB; table_rotate, split params
