US News & World Report asks an interesting question: if warrantless electronic search of United States citizens is legal as the Bush administration claims, is warrantless physical search also legal? The article doesn’t really answer the question, except to say the White House seems intent on staking a legal position broad enough to cover all kinds of search, and the FBI under Mueller has been keen to disassociate itself from such shenanigans.

The Economist takes a look at what characterizes successful open source projects, and the answer is not immediately obvious: strong controls on who contributes. The article makes open source projects sound less like a new structure, and more like a new way of organizing.

I have a feeling the Celestro SkyScout is the kind of gadget that makes life too easy. Point the SkyScout at a heavenly object and press a button to find out what it is, or ask the SkyScout to locate a planet for you and follow its instructions to find it in the sky. Feels like cheating. I much prefer freezing with a red masked flashlight, trying to figure out which way is north.

Is there such a thing as a sustainability geek? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure I am one. Anyway I love reading about gadgets like Philips’ new woodstove, which uses a fan (powered by the heat generated by the stove) to burn wood hotter and more efficiently, decreasing the amount of wood a family needs and decreasing the amount of particulate pollution emitted. It’s aimed at people in third world countries who use wood as their primary means of cooking and heating?

…and it costs less than $20,000. Of course it has a couple of drawbacks. It’s a three-wheeler, it only seats two, and it doesn’t exist yet.