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December 2006
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February 2006
Atom 1.0iPod charges outsell Microsoft Zune on amazon.com — I have a blog post in the works about iPod lock in that's still in the formative stages.
What economists agree on — They all seem to favor free trade (as do I).
Saudi Arabia will go all in to save Iraqi Sunnis if America withdraws — If (when) the US withdraws, I expect that all of Iraq's neighbors will immediately intervene in whatever way they see fit.
Food porn: the best Sandwich Cubano this side of Havana — I'd almost guarantee that this sandwich is better than what you're having for lunch.
Google Answers bites the dust — Yahoo killed them by pitting the world's knowledge against that of professional researchers.
Jacob Weisberg on using NATO to save the mission in Iraq — The deep unrealism of this proposal shows how far gone Iraq really is.
Yahoo launches new TV site beta — It's flashy. It's fancy. It totally sucks. Please give us back the old site that worked.
Did it take a nuclear physics lab to murder Alexander Litvinenko? — A scientific analysis of the question.
Tristan Louis on why boo.com may make it this time — Interesting analysis.
RELAX NG is the best way to define an XML schema — Putting it on the to learn list ...
How do you sign off on your emails? — I generally just use my name, adding "Thanks" if appropriate, but now I'm considering adding something more.
91% of email is spam — Dealing with spam has been a huge time sink for me lately.
Tivo is adding more ads — I love you Tivo, but you have to pick between selling me an increasingly expensive subscription and adding more ads to your service.
Surprising numbers of the day — "Each active GM worker currently carries 2.6 retired workers on their proverbial shoulders. Generous Motors' health care costs alone account for $1,525 per vehicle."
The laziest Congress in US history gets lazier — The salary for members of Congress is $165,200 annually, plus all the perks.
Today's word of the day: Skeuomorph — Design cues that were functional on an original but are added for effect to cheap knockoffs. (This is incredibly common in car design.)
Mark Danner's NYRB mashup of several Iraq post-mortems — As disheartening as anything else you'll read about Iraq not written by morons or people in deep denial.
Last.fm and eMusic need official blogs — Even unofficial blogs would be a start. Tell us what's going on in there.
Most novel argument yet for a high estate tax — It's hard out there for a Detroit Lions fan.
Dennis Perrin on the Michael Richards implosion — Smartest observations on this topic I've read. (via A Tiny Revolution)
All of the takes of the crocodile scene in Live and Let Die — In 1973, if you wanted to do a scene with a guy running across the backs of crocodiles, a guy had to run across the backs of crocodiles.
President Bush appoints yet another unqualified whack job to a high position — In this case, an ob/gyn who claims believe that premarital sex alters brain chemistry and condoms don't work will head federal family planning programs.
Most popular camera phone on Flickr not available in America — Why is the US such a hinterland for mobile phones?
On November 3 Malachi Ritscher immolated himself in protest of the Iraq war — Not an endorsement, I just feel like his protest shouldn't go unnoticed.
The social implications of freely copyable objects — What applies today in Second Life applies almost as easily in the physical world.
John Siracusa speculates on undisclosed features in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) — Maybe Apple has a new look and feel on the way, maybe there's nothing on the way.
Flickr guest pass — Now that's a useful feature.
Kevin Kelleher exposes Yahoo memo-writer Brad Garlinghouse — People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Yet another explanation of the results of the Lancet study on mortality in Iraq — This one is from the folks who conducted the study and rebuts a Fred Kaplan piece that I linked to previously.
Alberto Gonzales channels any given Soviet Communist flunky — The state grants you rights so that you can voluntarily give them up in the name of security, or something.
Why the reported "kill switch" licensing in Windows Vista is a security nightmare — The possibilities for profit-seeking malefactors are nearly endless.
How changing CAFE standards would reduce fossil fuel use — I agree with the writers that smarter CAFE standards are a better tool for improving gas mileage than raising taxes on gasoline.
What makes a Muslim radical? — No easy answers are suggested by these poll results.
How leaks work, a remedial course — Using the Yahoo memo everyone is talking about as an example. .
Wikipedia warnings, courtesy of Cracked — Funny.
Paul Kedrosky on spam and dump stock schemes — Includes links to some sites that track the effectiveness of stock spam.
Blockbuster pays off the Weinsteins to be the exclusive rental provider of their films — Dear Blockbuster and Weinsteins, I hate you. You suck.
Shorter Yahoo SVP Brad Garlinghouse — About a fifth of you need to be laid off.
The scoop on "Hang On Sloopy" and the Ohio State University marching band — I had long wondered why the OSU band always played that song.
Traffic in Moscow is insane — One rental firm offers motorcade rentals so you can blow through traffic with a police escort.
Gory details of the PS3 internals — "If someone had shown me the PS3 motherboard from afar without telling me what it was, I would have assumed it was for a network switch or an enterprise server."
Wal-Mart is vindictive — A staffer for Wal-Mart critic John Edwards called about getting a PS3 and the store outed him as a hypocrite to the media.
Microsoft CEO claims all Linux users are subject to lawsuit from Microsoft for patent violations — Except SUSE users because Novell paid off Microsoft, sort of.
Nelson Minar says he wouldn't build an API with SOAP again — He's the original developer of Google's SOAP APIs for search and AdWords.
Timothy Noah says the Democrats need to put Nancy Pelosi on probation — Her seeming preference for the ethically challenged over her personal adversaries is a big problem.
Copyright trolls and the destruction of hip hop music — Copyright holders have been suing samplers for years, and it really pisses me off.
New York Times obituary for Milton Friedman — Agree with him or disagree, his theories on economics must be addressed.
Entertaining Democratic gloating video — Indulge in a little guilty pleasure.
Interview with CDDB co-creator Steve Scherf — CDDB/Gracenote is one of the earliest examples of what happens to free Internet services that outgrow the capacity of their creators to manage them.
Op-ed by S R Sidarth, the campaign worker George Allen called "macaca" — Sidarth says that Virginians of all political stripes treated him with respect and hospitality.
Now is probably a good time to add a site map to your site — Yahoo and Microsoft have adopted the site map format that Google created.
General John Abizaid: America has exactly the right number of troops in Iraq — He rejects suggestions to both reduce and increase the troop level. Good thing our strategy is not "stay the course."
John Murtha and ABSCAM — A sordid and entertaining tale of backroom dealing and dirty Congressmen.
United Airlines charges you to move to exit row seats — How to make your customers hate you in one easy step.
How to archive and view YouTube videos locally — The availability of these tools makes YouTube more useful for file swapping and thus more likely to be aggressively attacked by the copyright industry.
The demise of the "bus plunge" story in the New York Times — It all has to do with typesetting.
Fake-anthrax-mailing terrorist turns out to be a Freeper — He loves Michelle Malkin, too. Can't even feign surprise at this.
Open source Java drops today — Tim Bray's comments.
Why shows like Lost should have a limited run — I feared that Lost would eventually descend into a morass, X-Files style. Turns out I was right.
TPM Reader DK drops the anonymity — He's now blogging as David Kurtz. (I noticed his real name started appearing in bylines a few days ago.)
Joel Spolsky on management consulting — It's almost always a scam.
Maybe Robert Gates is the right guy for the Secretary of Defense job — Fred Kaplan on Gates.
Why Robert Gates may not be the best choice for Secretary of Defense — I doubt it matters. Now that the Dick Cheney cronies have struck out, Bush 41 cronies are up to bat.
Ten places where Congressional oversight of the Bush administration should start — The GOP-controlled Congress shirked these responsibilities completely.
Nice thank you from Patrick Nielsen-Hayden to Ned Lamont — See also Josh Marshall's note on Harold Ford.
"Mission Accomplished" banner removed from official White House video of carrier event — Now nobody will remember, I'm sure. (via Jim Henley)
If you have problems voting, call 866-OUR-VOTE — They will also tell you where to vote if you are registered but don't know your polling place.
Bank of America has honest customer arrested — They called the police and had him arrested when he went to the bank to find out whether a check he suspected was fraudulent was in fact valid.
Time For Us To Go — Time for us to go
Some Iraqis are getting tattoos to assist in identifying their bodies — If I remember correctly, this is one of the reasons tattoos became popular with sailors as well.
109 reasons to dump the 109th Congress — Hell yes.
The Republican party is harrassing voters and trying to trick them into thinking Democrats are behind it — The scheme is somewhat complex and devious. Follow the link for the details.
One time Iraq war cheerleader Michael Ledeen tries to claim he was never for invading Iraq — This is a tune Iraq hawks will reprise many times in the months and years to come.
Wikipedia on hedge funds — Great article on a poorly understood subject.
Military trade publications call for Rumsfeld's resignation — Big news the day before the election.
Detainee denied access to his lawyer so he can't say how he was tortured — Land of the free, home of the brave.
President Bush hands out free money to help with campaigning — Immediately before going to Missouri to campaign he declared the state a disaster area due to some storms from back in July.
Tracks purchased from MSN music won't play on the Zune — Yes, DRM really is a scam.
Lengthy post on evangelical leader Ted Haggard and his homosexual affair — Another hypocrite brought low by the very sin they claim to detest.
Jeff Bagwell corn maze — An odd tribute to one of my favorite baseball players.
Comedy Central clips return to YouTube — Easy availability of clips from the shows really adds to the Daily Show and Colbert Report buzz.
Anecdotal evidence of gloom at Yahoo — It seemed a few months ago that Yahoo was hiring everybody smart and buying up everything interesting.
Iraq documents released for "open source intelligence analysis" include plans for nuclear weapons — The documents were only released as part of a political ploy to blame the CIA for failing to find WMD.
The seas are going to run out of fish in 50 years or so — Enjoy that yummy broiled grouper while you can.
Watching "soft news" coverage of candidates is an effective way to decide who to vote for — It turns out my incessant political blogging is a big waste of time after all.
Google is fighting open source license proliferation — Google Code only lets you choose from among 7 licenses.
Matt Haughey on the security features in Windows Vista — The nanny operating system.
Ruy Teixeira runs the poll numbers with six days to go — In short, if voting results match the lead Democrats have in the polls among independents, it will be a good Tuesday for them.
The Republican political ads of 2006 are distinctly nasty — The assertion that Democrats are as bad as Republicans in this regard is false, at least this time around.
Tyler Cowen on The Omnivore's Dilemna — From an economic perspective, the book's not very good.
Raymond Chen on how ISVs abuse Windows features — Interesting info about the Quick Launch bar, taskbar notifications, and taskbar toolbars.
The Pentagon may lie on behalf of President Bush, but they know the truth — Leaked Central Command memo shows Iraq tending toward chaos.
The CIA's classified wiki for intelligence sharing — US intelligence agencies are using Mediawiki to collaborate on intelligence gathering.