This one was kind of fun:

http://cassettepunk.com/large-projects/phonetendo/

It's a crappy video phone that was "given away" with a contract, and I got it from a thrift store for $8 or so. Turns out it's got a Linux SBC in it, so between some of my own hacking and others who had reverse-engineered it, I turned it into a video game of sorts.

Jonty, I'm mixing hacking and art and becoming increasingly aware of the self-segragation of creative work into either "art" or "hacking". Here in Vancouver, for example, we have "art" events (art crawls, galleries, etc.) and "maker" culture (maker faires, hackspaces, etc.) with almost zero crossover. The presumption is that art will be expressive, shown in public, and saleable, and hacking will be insular, self-funded, and have limited appeal outside other hackers.

I've exhibited technological work on a small scale to an art crowd and gotten a positive response, but I worry that going further on that side of things will be an uphill battle. The knee-jerk response may be "that doesn't belong here".

Have you encountered this kind of pigeonholing? If so, how have you approached it?

OpenX has been through many twists and turns. I started using it with my employer when it was called phpAdsNew; it then became OpenAds; then OpenX.

It gradually went from a passably supported and FOSS-minded project to a hybrid model, with the FOSS part atrophying very quickly. It became clear to us that this was a liability and we stopped using it. We're now actively avoiding hybrid models like this.

Finding a 7-month-old backdoor vindicates our suspicions.

A grenade implanted in the palm, obviously.

Ever tried to use an iPhone with Linux? If you can't run iTunes you can't do *anything*.

iTunes is a tool Apple uses to avoid using standards and thereby maintain full control over the user's experience. They're tying themselves in knots trying to do it all within a single app, but the alternative -- things like allowing the phone to be used as a USB storage device, as pretty much every other vendor does -- is un-Apple. It's a wonder they even support PTP for photos.

I've happily gone over to Android, which does have its own quirks, but at least my Samsung phone hasn't been crippled by the vendor.

Hi Bruce!

Obviously I'm biased, since I work on the project -- but have you seen Public Knowledge Project's "Open Journal Systems"? It's FOSS and its goal is to automate the management and workflow for publishing an academic-style journal. It wouldn't do your layout etc. for you, but it would help with submission management, peer review, and a lot of the associated stuff that needs doing. See http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs for the details.

Cheers,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

Great, finally there's a way to get these damn lobsters off my crops!