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January 2007
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Atom 1.0Xinhua news agency's list of banned terms — "For example, it is prohibited to use 'Mongolian doctor' for a charlatan doctor, or to use 'Mongolian' to refer to the condition of Down syndrome."
Joel Spolsky argues that the Microsoft laptop giveaway was unethical — Contrary to my previous statement, I think he's right.
Gerald Ford's greatest legacy? Nominating Justice Stevens to the Supreme Court — The fact that Stevens was nominated by a Republican shows how much the country has changed in 30 years.
Gmail vs Exchange Server — Draconian disk space limits and limited access from home drive corporate users to Gmail.
Steve Jobs was improperly granted options, Apple covered it up — It is important to note that Jobs returned the options before exercising them, so he didn't profit from the improper behavior.
Microsoft sends out free laptops to bloggers — I think this is fine, as long as the bloggers who get the laptops disclose their gift when they blog about Microsoft or its competitors.
Gerald Ford gave Indonesia the green light to invade East Timor — I didn't see this mentioned in either of the big op-eds I linked to.
RealClimate year in review — I was just glad to be reminded of the bizarre "CO2 is life" ad.
The Washington Post obituary for Gerald Ford — Interesting mainly in that Ford outlived the writer of his obituary, J.Y. Smith.
New York Times obituary of Gerald Ford — Nobody does better obits than the NYT.
The emperor's new chocolate — Amazing food reporting from DallasFood.org, exposing Noka chocolate as a scam, and providing a great education on fine chocolate. (via Q)
Anil Dash on James Brown — James Brown is one of the few most influential musicians of all time.
John Siracusa says .Mac is irreparably broken — I've never used it myself (probably because I've always heard bad things about it).
Bruce Schneier on your "potential terrorist" score — At least they haven't outsourced the project to Experian.
18 Movie Musicals You Can Actually Sing Along With — The Onion AV Club runs down the essentials.
New York Times runs op-ed with sections redacted for reasons of "national security" blacked out — Everyone thinks the editorial was censored for political reasons.
Habitat for Humanity tears down houses to raise funds — Recovered building materials are resold for charity, homeowners pay less for demolition, and significantly less waste goes into landfills.
USA Today reports on the injury risk of hard to open blister packaging — The blister packages that everything from razors to memory sticks come in these days is incredibly customer-hostile.
Everybody's doing it — And they have been for a long time.
How Michel Gondry faked solving a Rubik's Cube with his feet — The manner in which he faked it was cool, as is this Sherlock Holmes-esque response.
Are widgets replacing data APIs? — Dave Megginson asks a good question.
The annoying legalese appended to many emails these days is useless — I think I have about 200 megs of those "agreements" in my Gmail mailbox.
Rogers Cadenhead gets in a fight with MGM over wargames.com — How can a humble computer book author find himself in trouble so regularly?
Donald Rumsfeld passing the buck, a retrospective — The man is allergic to accountability.
How the deaf are using YouTube — It's an online forum through which they can communicate in sign language. Very cool.
Possible cure for diabetes found — Meet you at Krispy Kreme to celebrate!
SMU faculty oppose hosting Bush Presidential library, nobody disagrees — How unpopular is George W Bush? Check out the comments on this blog post from Texas Monthly. (via TPM)
Word is that a public beta of Adobe Photoshop CS3 (with MacIntel support) is due today — That's the URL where it will be posted.
Pages tagged with "leslieharpold" on del.icio.us — A simple, powerful, organic memorial.
Michael Crichton maxes out the pettiness scale — He fictionalized one of the critics of his views on global warming as a child rapist in his latest novel.
Sara Dickerman on the mystique of the pig — Of all of the animals eaten by humans, pigs really do seem to invoke the most emotional reaction.
South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson was hospitalized due to an AVM — Baseball manager Larry Dierker was treated for the same condition after collapsing with a seizure during a game in 1999.
Bruce Schneier analyzes the results of a MySpace phishing attack — Decent sample of the passwords people are choosing, although everyone in the sample was tricked into get phished.
Yet another article on traffic calming — I love this idea, and know just where it should be implemented in Raleigh, NC.
John McCain has introduced legislation hostile to bloggers — If he really hates bloggers, why would he make news that every blogger will blog about?
Google offers patent search — It looks like they're still shaking things out, but the performance is incredibly good.
Ten Questions With Aziza Mohmmand — Guy Kawasaki interviews an Afghan woman who attended one of his lectures while taking a class on entrepreneurship here in the US.
What would radical transparency mean for Wired? — Interesting rumination.
Moving occupants from place to place consumes 1% of the total energy a car uses — The rest is used to move the weight of the car itself, produce heat, etc etc.
The Japanese art of weaving handmade kimonos is fading away — A sad casualty of globalization and changing fashion.
Mohammed Yunus' Nobel lecture — His Bonsai tree analogy is wonderful.
Eric Muller's powerful, personal response to Holocaust deniers — I have nothing to add.
Leslie Harpold, RIP — One of the originals.
The Google Web Toolkit is now open source — I confess that I have not investigated it very deeply, now that I'm all into the Ruby on Rails.
Nelson Minar on the unnoticable release of Java 6 — I never even moved to Java 5.
Database of Congressional staff salaries — Working for a legislator for meager pay should be seen as investment in a lucrative lobbying career down the road, I guess.
Insurgents Form Own Study Group — Funny. (via Jim Henley)
Your inner dialogue is bad for you — In the words of Crash Davis, "Don't think -- it can only hurt the ballclub."
Anne Applebaum on Iran's holocaust denial conference — The world is a worse place for it.
Incoming House Intelligence chair doesn't know crap about Sunnies and Shiites — Disheartening that someone in such an important position knows jack. Go read some blogs, Silvestre.
How Ask Mefi beat Google — Forget Yahoo Answers, the case study for Ask Mefi is a lot more interesting.
Wikia gives everything away — What's the catch?
The New York Times makes its support for permalinks official — Looks like they're continuing with the same scheme they have long supported.
The LA Times on "pay option" mortgages — It's like buying your house on a credit card.
Popular Science on the Hurriquake nail — I think it's great that something as simple as the common nail could be radically redesigned like this.
Google Earth/Panoramio/Wikipedia mashup — Seems like you could tie into geotagged images on Flickr as well.
How the US government really works — Independent milk producer gets rich working outside archaic regulatory framework, his competitors buy enough Congressmen to get the government to screw him.
ESPN on professional athletes and their love of guns — Hard to believe I'm saying this, but I agree with Karl Malone completely on this one. Oh, and Luke Scott is a freak.
Iraq has a serious refugee problem — One of the pro-war arguments was, "If things are so bad, where are the refugees?" There's the answer.
Jon Udell is joining Microsoft — He's going to be doing the same stuff he does now, only he'll be on the Microsoft payroll.
Implementing the Microsoft Word XML format is estimated to take 20 man years — I'm so happy Microsoft is embracing open formats.
I think Lindsay Lohan is poorly educated — Apparently not all of these parents "home schooling" child stars are up to the task.
Newspaper bias is slanted toward the preferences of readers — Chalk up another one for economics.
Kevin Drum on a strange phenomenon in political reporting — Bogus stories about pranks from outgoing Clinton staffers made the front page, dereliction of the most basic responsibilities of Congress by Republicans is met with a yawn.
After 6 years of inaction, Bush takes Clinton approach on North Korea — Only now the North Koreans actually have nukes. Heckuva job.
Why Digg is already dead — It's become too big to organically bubble up genuinely interesting stuff.
What the Iraq Study Group doesn't recommend — A useful reminder.
Analyst James Governor attends an Apple briefing on their enterprise products — I can't wait to see the promised wiki/blog application that allows WYSIWYG editing.
How spammers are circumventing spam filters — I do the best I can to filter out spam and hundreds of messages still get through every day.
Smart observation on spam from Paul Kedrosky — Spam is now so cheap to spend that spammers don't even need to include hyperlinks.
The Kim family was travelling on a road recommended by Google Maps — The most direct route isn't always the safest, unfortunately.
Conflict diamonds? How about conflict cassiterite? — Or child labor cocoa? A list of goods with proceeds that go into the wrong hands.
Turns out sports video games are a great way to learn about sports — Remind me to pick up the latest and greatest soccer game before the next World Cup.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden on blogging about current events — The media sure isn't going to save us.
Tim Pritchard on the pivotal battle of Nasiriya — I remember reading reporting about the battle at the time, but not about its implications.
Robert Dreyfuss on President Bush's meeting with Abdel Aziz al-Hakim — Hakim is one of the main promoters of sectarian strife in Iraq.
China's hukou "internal passport" system and the exploitation of workers — I only learned that this system existed today.
How Japanese automakers killed Ford and General Motors — As the article points out, Ford and GM are dying mostly of self-inflicted wounds.
TivoToGo DRM cracked — The copyright industry is really going to have to learn not to rely on this stuff.
Scott's pictures of the local Extreme Makeover Home Edition shoot in Raleigh — He lives a short distance from the site where they're building the new house.
Malcolm Gladwell comes up with a way to rate racially charged outbursts — A sliding scale based on intention, conviction, and content.
Donald Rumsfeld's final memo — Why weren't we doing some of this stuff from the beginning?
Teresa Nielsen Hayden on some new Web 2.0 business models — One is spam, one isn't.
MeeVee is a pretty good Yahoo TV alternative — If you hate the redesign of Yahoo TV, check out MeeVee. It's pretty good.
In college football, it can pay to lose — By losing to Boise State, the University of Nevada guaranteed itself a $1.5 million chunk of the $15 million a BCS bowl will pay the WAC.