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June 2006
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Good geek/Kaloogian humor — I've seen Baghdad from this vantage point a few times myself.
The decline of Indiana basketball — I've never even been to Indiana and I find this story sad.
Decoding the map from the blast door on Lost — Doesn't mean much to me. Probably not to the writers either.
Houston Rockets becoming a "Moneyball" basketball team? — They've hired a young stats geek to become their new GM after a one year apprenticeship.
You're busted, moron — Republican Congressional candidate caught trying to pass off a picture of Istanbul as "peaceful Baghdad."
Dahlia Lithwick on the Hamdan case — Will the Supreme Court decide we're a nation of laws?
Sam Ruby has fun with edge cases — He showed today that you can wreak havoc with the deprecated plaintext tag. Who's up for giving isindex a shot?
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition even more ghoulish than you thought — The Smoking Gun has the horrifying details.
Rick Schautt of Microsoft comments on Mac-Intel migration issues — CodeWarrior plus large code base equals pain.
Ruby on Rails 1.1 — Finally, the Rails bug I (and 100 other people) reporters is fixed.
Actual polygamists on HBO's 'Big Love' — One anti-polygamy activist calls it a Hollywood fantasy for men, but the lead character's life looks miserable to me.
RIP Cindy Walker, songwriter — Writer of some of the truly great classic country songs.
The state of the media in Iraq — Fascinating account of the challenges and dangers reporters in Iraq face, from the New York Review of Books.
Closure isn't all it's cracked up to be — Dahlia Lithwick writes about the death penalty for Slate.
The dark underbelly of the largemouth bass world record — This story should be read while listening to Robert Earl Keen's ode to bass fishing, Five Pound Bass.
Now's not a good time to start a company — Caterina Fake hits the nail on the head.
Why making a Universal version of Photoshop is hard — An explanation from Adobe developer Scott Byer. (Via Jason)
Most ignorant public official ever — Not because he doesn't understand Apache, DNS, and Linux, but because he assumes without reason that his systems are under attack.
Flickr has become the eyes of the world — Perhaps the most astounding Web site ever built, you could waste your entire life there and never get bored.
Sex sells better than moronic political argument — Like water, the 24 hour news channels seek their natural level.
Fun new game: The Onion or neocon — I think this is what they mean by self-parody.
Wherein I make another old school weblog list — I may be near the bottom but at least I'm not marked as defunct.
The cynical take on the Washington Post's red state blogger — Karl Martino supsects that the hiring was driven by deviousness rather than stupidity.
Post-disaster etiquette — I noticed something similar when I visited my home town, where they are dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Rita.
Impeach Bush over peak oil? — That's crazy talk. I'll be shocked if it's even an issue in the next Presidential race.
Your tax return for sale? — Something to keep an eye on.
We are the extinction masters — When it comes to wiping out species, catastrophic asteroid strikes have nothing on humans.
There's an accepted definition for civil war — Juan Cole reports that Iraq meets the definition.
NBC reporter in Iraq says things are worse than they appear — The repeated claims by propagandists that the media is overplaying how bad things are in Iraq are absurd.
My Top Ten Tips on how to become a Rock Star Programmer — Actually pretty good for this sort of list. I strongly second the recommendation to know your IDE (or text editor) inside and out.
Weirdest NCAA tournament ever — Someone told me that none of the 3 million entries in the ESPN online pool picked all of the Sweet 16 teams correctly.
Tim Bray on the creation of Atom — How it came about, why it was needed, and how the standards process worked. Good stuff.
Japan defeats Cuba for World Baseball Championship — As a diehard baseball fan, I'm incredibly pleased with the way the tournament went.
Why are poor countries poor? — Tim Harford answers the question in Reason. (Via 3qd)
Hilarious remix of 2003 State of the Union — Is it stupid? Yes. Is it funny? Yes.
Rebecca on blogging and the Marxist ideal — Interesting comment on the discussion at the Berkeley CyberSalon (which was discussed in an earlier link today).
America is a barbaric country — The way our health insurance works is a travesty.
Congress in session only 97 days this year — On one hand, that's pathetic, on another, the more they work, the worse they make things. (Via Think Progress)
Economists speculate on why bread in France is superior — The key to the mystery is the brief window of freshness for a good baguette (in my opinion).
Did you know that blogging realizes a Marxist ideal? — If you, like me, keep a list of people who deserve a savage beating, you should add Andrew Keen to that list.
Mars rover loses a wheel — Let's all pull for the little guy to make it out of danger before winter arrives.
Signs of a bubble? — Business student with no money or skills seeks Ruby developers to implement his Web 2.0 ideas.
Iraq war timeline — Courtesy of the Center for American Progress.
Does Amazon.com's mechanical turk presage dystopia? — Interesting line of thought from pb.
Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing — 1972 documentary on ARPAnet.
Dave Devries's Monster Engine — A very cool art project that defies description. (Via Radley Balko)
Animation showing change in President Bush's approval rating over time — Therapeutic, actually. (Via Follow Me Here)
Did Tom Cruise get an episode of South Park pulled? — If you're privy to the secrets of the universe, do you really need to worry about being ridiculed by a cartoon?
Federal judge rules that people can be prosecuted for receiving classified info — John Young of Cryptome, ask not for who the bell tolls.
Finding fault with Whole Foods — The complaints in the article are kind of a stretch. I do agree that local is the new organic, though.
NetNewsWire 2.1 public beta — Hello my little Universal friend.
RSS, lawsuits, etc etc etc — Shelley Powers reports on the dispute between Rogers Cadenhead and Dave Winer. Shorter version: use Atom.
Users love quick release cycles — Keep the features coming if you want to keep people interested. I think you'd come to the same conclusion f you studied MMORPGs.
Flickr is an awesome place to publish a presentation — A brilliant idea that probably never would have occurred to me. (Simon's slides are really nice, too.)
Setting up reBlog — I've been using a client-side feed reader for awhile, maybe it's time to head back to the server.
29% of Republicans support censuring President Bush — That number stuns me.
DRM files increase power consumption — The extra CPU time required to deal with DRM shortens battery life on some music players up to 25%. (Via Digg)
Morals defined and explained — Courtesy of hilzoy at Obsidian Wings. Amazing to read and think about.
Katherine Harris is too incompetent to steal — She tried to earmark money for a company that illegally donated to her campaign, but missed the deadline for the appropriations bill.
Best NCAA bracket picking strategy ever — Raymond Chen's innovative approach.
Recovered memories of the Iraq invasion — What the media was saying in the early days of the Iraq war. (Via Sisyphus Shrugged)
Jeanne D'Arc on the Abu Ghraib photos — Worth reading for those of us who can't bear to actually look at the photos.
Dave Winer's response to Rogers Cadenhead — He says it was Rogers' idea to get the lawyers involved.
Dave Winer is suing Rogers Cadenhead — An unpleasant episode in the ongoing fight over RSS.
Why prediction markets aren't taking off — Tyler Cowen speculates on why businesses aren't using prediction markets internally.
.NET CLR not widely used in Windows Vista — Analysis of early Windows Vista builds shows that Microsoft is implementing very little of the OS code on the .NET CLR.
Russ Feingold calls Democrats cowards — I approve of this message.
Andrew Brown on the British Army in Iraq — Both the links and analysis are interesting.
How do you spell hypocrisy? — State Department human rights report condemns UAE anti-terrorism law that's less draconian than our own.
CNN discovers people prefer the Mafia to Arabs — Surreal poll question on the CNN Web site.
BioWare is starting an MMORPG studio — Maybe we'll see something awesome in 2010. (Via Greg Costikyan)
Simon Willison's JavaScript tutorial — Now in an easier to consume format.
Judge people by their blogs — James Governor suggests that the best way to assess developers it to read their blogs.
Bruce Schneier says data mining won't foil terrorism — Too many false positives.
How Google works — Summary of a presentation given by Google's VP of Engineering. (Via Digg)
Kevin Kelly on smart filters — Great list of resources for taking the pulse of the Web.
Freedom to be weird — Sage post from Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing regarding the fact that a censorware exec is an "adult baby" fetishist. (If it weren't for CSI, I'd have no idea what that is.)
Reducing guilt is the killer app — Thought provoking idea for the day, courtesy of Kathy Sierra.
The powers of observation — Between ubiquitous digital photography and Flickr, a whale not seen for over two decades was identified.
This American Life interviews former Gitmo detainees — No permalink for this. Here's why you should care.
Google's $90 million click fraud settlement — Click fraud could kill Google, I think.
Office 2007 screenshots — I'm not sure what I think about them yet. (Via Digg)
Apple files for some destructive patents — The patents cover some important syndication-related technology, like auto-discovery. Evil.
Mr. Peters, we need to have a meeting behind the woodshed — Chris Allbritton absolutely hammers Iraq war fan Ralph Peters today. A must read.
Congress set to repeal food safety laws — The prostitutes in Congress are trying to pass a bill to invalidate all state and local food safety laws that are stricter than federal standards.
Is Sun becoming cool again? — Is it just me or is Sun regaining some of the street cred that they had back in the early 90s?
Marc Hedlund's collected wisdom for entrepreneurs — Good stuff here.
Free email sevices drop 1 to 2 percent of email? — Craig Newmark reports that big, free email services drop 1 to 2 percent of email, and not due to mismarking spam. This seems to bear further investigation.
live.com went live last night — Microsoft's new AJAX-ified portal goes beta. (Looks like there are still some kinks to work out.)
Ray Ozzie's Live Clipboard — Very cool browser-independent technique for moving structured data between sites. (Via Scott Rosenberg)
Mozilla board member Chris Blizzard comments on the money thing — A clarification, mainly.
Wal-Mart feeds news to bloggers — Some regurgitate it verbatim.
Films minus the hype — WSJ film critic Joe Morgenstern on how hype distorts movies. One of my best film memories is of seeing The Sixth Sense before knowing a thing about it. (Via Kottke)
My name is Josh Marshall and I'm a switcher — As soon as Josh Marshall posted that he was considering the advantages of the Mac, I knew he was doomed.
Intel Macs and creative pros — For programmers, switching to Intel-based Macs is a no-brainer. Because Adobe is hateful, creative professionals are kind of screwed.
Pay it downward — Andrew Leonard writes about a novel idea for trade that's both free and fair.
Proposed Atom logo from Mena Trott — I dig it. (Via Laughing Meme)
Mozilla Foundation home — Here's the Mozilla Foundation home page. I can't find any information about their budget, can you? (The idea of donating seems kind of silly given their revenue.)
Firefox is a good earner — Mozilla Corp took in $72 million last year, largely from Google for directing searches to it via the built in search box in Firefox.
Bambi Meets Godzilla — Steve Yegge on why programming languages succeed. (Via Tim Bray)
Robert Scoble on snarkiness — It's possible to criticize without antagonizing. As Scoble points out, antagonization sells.
Kenneth Turan on why Crash beat Brokeback — Interesting analysis of the psychology of Oscar voters.
The Health Care Crisis and What to Do About It — Paul Krugman and Robin Wells in the New York Review of Books. For more on the moral hazard issue discussed in the article see Malcolm Gladwell's article on the same topic.
Murray Waas on what Bush knew — Just further confirmation that President Bush knew that everything he told us about Iraq before invading was a lie. (Via Jim Henley)
Jason Levine on the pains of certificate authorities — I've always wanted to start a CA business, I think the market is ripe for a new entrant that's not evil or incompetent, but the problem is getting your certificate included in browsers.
Catch 22, not just a novel any more — It's illegal to torture detainees at Gitmo, but Congress passed a law saying the detainees can't seek relief in court, so they get tortured anyway.
Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell, part 2 — Continuing where they left off yesterday.
Torture evidence may be admitted — Military court trying terrorist suspects from Gitmo decides to evaluate evidence obtained through torture on a case by case basis.
Why didn't President Bush ask any questions? — Slate's John Dickerson wonders why Bush didn't ask any questions during the Katrina briefing caught on video, and explains how that demolishes the image Bush's supporters have cultivated.
The roots of modern Latin music — David Byrne is featuring Afro-Cuban music from the 40s and 50s on his Internet radio station this month.
Bill Simmons interviews Malcolm Gladwell — Hot brilliant writer on brilliant writer action.
Mac fanatics, start your engines — When Josh Marshall suggests that he may be willing to switch to the Mac, I don't think he appreciates the level of evangelism that's coming his way.
The wisdom of crowds indeed — Message board commenters on the original iPod announcement. (Via waxy.org)
Google.cn logs won't be stored in China — Google is going to store the search histories of people using google.cn on servers outside China to protect customer privacy. (Via snowdeal.org)
Barack Obama on energy independence — Nice speech. (Via How the World Works)
Why the RSS spec needs clarification — Very nice illustration of the problem from Rogers Cadenhead.
Trade and terrorism — Kris Alexander on the diplomatic benefits of greater trade with developing countries.
New for Rails 1.1: Integration Tests — They enable you to test interactions that involve multiple controllers in one automated test. A very useful addition.
Dan Froomkin interviews Chas Freeman — Former ambassador to Saudi Arabia weighs in on the war on terror. He says the Saudis are winning their own domestic battle against terrorism. (Via discourse.net)
The salient question on Congressional corruption — Why was Duke Cunningham so cheap?
Is the iPod Hi-Fi really for audiophiles? — The question doesn't really matter to me, I love music but when it comes to equipment I'm not discerning.
