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Victimless Leather, a small jacket made from mouse stem cells was killed when it outgrew its life support system. It was made to be one of the central works in an exhibition "Design and the Elastic Mind" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York

The jacket, a creation of Australian artists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, was intended to raise questions about our exploitation of other living beings.

The exhibition includes a number of exhibits examining the ways people interact with technology.

The OpenMac is a whitebox computer built to run an unmodified OS X Leopard kernel. Made by the Psystar Corporation, it would be substantially cheaper than any upgrade-capable Apple Mac.

The base model OpenMac with Intel GMA graphics sells for $399. It remains to be seen how long Psystar survive under the onslaught of Apple's legal team.

Update: The Psystar site is already down. Google cache here

Have you ever been at an airport or hotel and clicked on a "Free Public WiFi" SSID?

If so, you were likely disappointed to find the connection didn't give you free access to the internet. You might also be surprised to know you're now part of an increasing viral phenomenom caused by Microsoft's Wireless Zero Configuration tool.

In a very strange design decision, Microsoft structured the tool so when Windows connects to a wireless network, it retains the network's SSID, and if the original network is no longer available, broadcasts it as an ad hoc network. The result is the beguiling, but ultimately frustrating invitation so many computer users are now experiencing.

A legal analysis of Microsoft's Open Specification Promise (OSP), which was purportedly written to give developers protection from patent risk, says the promise should not be trusted. According to the Software Freedom Law Center,

On the back of a chaotic ISO meeting to resolve outstanding specification problems which was described as "Complete, utter, unadulterated bullshit. This was horrible, egregious, process abuse and ISO should hang their heads in shame for allowing it to happen." by Tim Bray, this advice throws more doubt on OOXML's suitability as an international document standard.

Despite these considerable doubts, countries like Australia and New Zealand have not committed their votes, and it's still not clear how the race will run at the March 29 deadline.

The finalists in Microsoft's Next-Gen PC Design Showcase have been announced.

As is usual with design competitions, practicality is not high on the list of requirements, though one of the key selection criteria is;

Entries of note include;

• The Backpacker's Diary, a pc which targets enthusiastic travelling fans, and looks to have been inspired by the OLPC.
• The Cup, which appears to hold more steam than coffee.
• My personal favorite, Momenta, the PC for Life, inspired by The Running Man and Wedlock

Sadly, there's no indication whether the Momenta "enhances the users experience with Windows" by detonating a charge of C4 if WGA decides their collar hasn't been activated recently.

Although the finalists have been chosen, Public's Choice Voting is open until March 15th 2008, so interested Slashdotters can vote for their favourite future PCs. Please try not to elect Skynet.