My favorite line on this comes from the chickenhawks who say that the Fourth Amendment was written before the All Powerful Threat of Terrorism. Sure thing. Ben Franklin and his pals couldn't possibly have foreseen a world in which the very idea of America was under some kind of military threat. Those candyasses didn't understand what war was about. They were armchair theorists, civilians who'd never anticipated foreign soldiers on American soil -- surely if they'd known that America might some day face an actual existential risk, they would have put a little asterisk next to each clause of the Bill of Rights leading to a footnote that said, "Unless the king president really, really needs to do it."

John McCain vows to continue Bush's illegal warrantless wiretapping program - Boing Boing

Adrian (left) and Vik (right) with a parent RepRap machine, made on a conventional rapid prototyper, and the first complete working child RepRap machine, made by the RepRap on the left. The child machine made its first successful grandchild part at 14:00 hours UTC on 29 May 2008 at Bath University in the UK, a few minutes after it was assembled.

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

Fabrication machine reproduces. Has off spring.

A new survey shows that data retention laws influence the actual behavior of citizens in Germany. 11% had already abstained from single telecommunication acts, 52% would not use phone or e-mail for confidential contacts.

The problem with surveillance is not primarily that some bored officer might learn about some embarrassing private detail (although this is a problem as well). The fundamental problem with surveillance is that it changes people. People under surveillance behave differently than people who are not monitored - differently than free people.

Data Retention Effectively Changes the Behavior of Citizens in Germany « Creation Noise

Luxury Tax (Seen On The Streets Of Chicago)

Nice article in the LA Times about Chinese companies opening up shop in the U.S. Sure, it's more expensive, but the government doesn't get in the way as much.

It seems the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, eh? While we bitch and moan about our government (and we have every right to), there are a LOT of crappier places to be, I suppose. It's strange to think of the U.S. as someone else's "Cayman Islands" or "Switzerland."

Chinese firms bargain hunting in U.S. - Los Angeles Times

Last month I took a photo of an honor payment system at a bookstore in Ojai, California. On a related note, here's an article about the City Café Bakery in Kitchener, Ontario, which uses an honor payment system and almost never gets cheated.

(Photo from MyWorldReviews.com) City Café doesn’t have Interac or accept credit cards. Neither will you see a cash register in the bakery. Instead, customers add up how much they owe themselves and drop their money into a fare box from an old bus.

“I liked the idea of simplifying things and ... the honour system made a whole lot of sense,” [owner John] Bergen says. “What irritated me about going into Tim Hortons, for example, was waiting in line for something as simple as getting a donut and a coffee. So the thought was, someone can pour his own coffee, grab his own bagel, cut it himself, throw the money in, and walk out. We don’t touch 60 per cent of the transaction.”

Because it is up to the customers to total their purchases, Bergen has simplified the cost structure.

“Everything is rounded off to the nearest quarter with taxes included where applicable,” he says. “So every desert is $1.50 (tarts, brownies, and date squares), every pizza lunch is $5, every beverage is $1.25, every loaf of bread is $2.75 (Italian sourdough, multi-grain, and raisin bread on weekends), croissants are $1 each, and bagels are three for $2 (plain, sesame, and multi-grain).”

The bakery conducts audits every six months and Bergen says only once did things come up short.

“Our theory is that two per cent of our sales are being ripped off. ‘Ripped off’ in the sense that there are people who forget to pay or they make a mistake in paying, and then there are people who deliberately don’t pay. And every so often we have to kick somebody out that we know hasn’t been paying,” he says. “But at the same time we figure we’re being overpaid by three per cent. Some people come in and want a $2.75 loaf of bread, but they see we’re busy so they throw $3 in and walk out. Or, although we discourage tips, some people still give them to us. But because the staff is paid well (the average wage is $15.50 an hour), the tips go into the general pot.”

Ontario bakery succeeds with honor payment system - Boing Boing

I'd really like to see some of this elephant art hanging in a real museum. I bet it would fit right in :)

Asian Elephant Art & Conservation Project

Jet packs. What happened to them?

MAKE: Blog: The trials of the jet pack

As CCD sensors cool, tiny "fingerprint-like" imperfections lead to recognizable noise artifacts in images. Given enough processor power, it seems plausible that photos could be linked back to a particular camera based on these noise patterns.

HOWTO anonymize your digital photos - Boing Boing

Apple G3 Mailbox