Planet 無
July 04, 2009 08:51 PM
July 04, 2009
Man: (sneezes)
Woman: Swine flu!
--14th St
Overheard by: moxychique
July 04, 2009 09:00 PM
El ciclista español marcó el segundo mejor tiempo (19:50) en el prólogo, sólo superado por el espectacular tiempo del suizo Fabian Cancellara (19:32). Leer
July 04, 2009 08:27 PM
Klein, que manejaba los asuntos de los Beatles y los Rolling Stones, ha muerto a los 77 años en Nueva York. Leer
July 04, 2009 08:24 PM
Cientos de miles de personas colapsan el centro de Madrid en una marcha encabezada por la ministra de Igualdad, Bibiana Aído. Leer. Escuchar
July 04, 2009 08:22 PM
It’s Independence Day, so what better topic to discuss than the juridical matters of the United States? (Frankly, there are more substantive topics to address, to be sure — as a palliative I direct your attention [yet again!] to the Federalist Papers for one such topic — but a dash of humor with underlying substance is never out of order.) Here follows a brief anecdote I ran across recently:
In Gilchrist v. O’Keefe, 260 F.3d 87 (2001), Sotomayor wrote for the panel, which rejected an inmate’s claim that he was unconstitutionally deprived of his right to counsel during his state sentencing proceeding when the trial judge declined to appoint a new attorney to replace the attorney who withdrew after the inmate punched him in the head.
See the original source, as well as the decision itself.
It is worth highlighting that the fact that the deprivation occurred during “state sentencing” is critical to the opinion, as 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1) (the relevant clause in US code) prevents granting relief in response to a state proceeding, assuming the decision was not “contrary to clearly established Federal law” (which, the decision notes, it was not). As a consequence the decision need not (and does not) reach any question along the most obvious line suggested by the quote, at least not outside of dicta (with which, tangentially, I am not particularly inclined to disagree) — an example of how legal decisions need not be as obvious as they seem, and an example of how common sense may play little to no part in the legal reasoning of a “common-sense ruling”.
by Jeff at July 04, 2009 08:17 PM
Negotiations toward the sale of GM's Opel unit are progressing and should soon be complete, according to the head of GM Europe.
July 04, 2009 08:10 PM
El grupo madrileño ha logrado cuatro de los 26 galardones en la I edición de los Premios de Música Independiente. Leer. Escuchar
July 04, 2009 08:04 PM
Courtesy of Wonkette commenter Atheist Nun, here’s your Fourth of July Blingee, featuring history’s lamest whining quitter. Whether Sarah Palin will be indicted and put in prison forever or not, we will always appreciate her, in our hearts, for ruining the teabaggers’ big plans to have all 500 teabaggers meet in a park somewhere to complain about having socialist parks where they can meet. Sorry, teabaggers! Happy Independence Day, everybody! Click the to watch Barack Obama’s happy July 4th video e-card!
Ahhh, takes the sleazy Palin flavor right out of your soul.
by Ken Layne at July 04, 2009 08:00 PM
A hotshot fighter pilot teamed up with one of her heroes to get the Congressional Gold Medal awarded to a group of women most Americans have never heard of.
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July 04, 2009 07:49 PM
Sun announced this week the availability of VirtualBox 3, the latest version of its open source virtualization solution. The new version introduces experimental 3D graphics support and the ability to expose multiple CPUs to guest operating systems.
VirtualBox was originally developed by InnoTek, which was acquired by Sun last year. InnoTek launched an open source edition of VirtualBox in 2007, releasing most of the program's code under the GPL. Alongside the open source version, the company has continued to sell a commercial version that has additional features, such as a built-in RDP server and full USB support. VirtualBox is cross-platform compatible and is available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.
Click here to read the rest of this article
July 04, 2009 07:30 PM
HAPPY 4TH OF JULY.... The president's weekly multimedia addresses aren't usually worth noting, but in light of the holiday, I kind of like today's edition. After addressing education, health care, and energy policy, the Obama said, "These are some of...
by Steve Benen at July 04, 2009 07:15 PM
French unions for Oracle say the software company plans to cut between 850 and 1,000 jobs in Europe in response to slowing growth.
July 04, 2009 07:14 PM
Se trata de Itziar Plaza, Asier Borrero y Iurgi Garitagoitia. Los expertos les consideran "piezas clave" en estos momentos dentro de ETA. Leer. Escuchar
July 04, 2009 07:08 PM
kaninka.net : hallakol:
Tattoo by Yannou at www.yourmeatismine.com
July 04, 2009 07:00 PM
deusx : That Cheesecake Sitting On The Table: What If It Accidentally Fell Into Your Mouth? | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
Tags : cheesecake theonion accidents funny
July 04, 2009 07:00 PM
Take A Walk Outside
by digby
...It's the 4th of July
And keep in mind that no matter how gloomy things may seem, at least this we don't have to put up with this:
.
July 04, 2009 07:00 PM
Marek Fuchs, TheStreet.com's media critic, slays The New York Times for ignoring a big AIG promise.
July 04, 2009 07:00 PM
Kid #1: How old is she?
Kid #2: Six.
Kid #1: And she's goth?
--Myrtle Ave & Washington, Brooklyn
Overheard by: Dark Lord in Training
July 04, 2009 07:00 PM
El enfermo, que tiene complicaciones respiratorias y está grave, acababa de llegar de EEUU cuando comenzó a tener los síntomas. Leer
July 04, 2009 06:59 PM
Nutty Palin spokeslady Meg Stapleton was in New York when Nutty Palin suddenly resigned as governor of Alaska, the state that elected her as governor two-and-a-half years ago. Listen to Meg make NO SENSE as a baffled Anderson Cooper asks her again and again, “Lady why are you talking about basketball, and how does quitting equal leadership, and I don’t know who the hoop is, and who the ball is.” Cooper’s expressions around 4:40 are priceless. [CNN/YouTube]
by Ken Layne at July 04, 2009 06:55 PM
El gobierno de Honduras comunicó su decisión de abandonar la OEA 'un minuto' antes de saber que iban a ser expulsados. Leer. Escuchar
July 04, 2009 06:52 PM
Aparece en Ecuador una niña que podría ser la menor secuestrada en Panamá. Lo dirán las pruebas de ADN. Leer. Escuchar
July 04, 2009 06:46 PM
WIN OF THE AFTERNOON: In the middle of this monster Palin Chaos Theory post, commenter-person Alaska Girl reminds us why Sarah Palin’s latest “I’m gonna take my ball and go home” move is standard Wasilla Snowbilly behavior: “She didn’t finish her term as mayor, stepping down to run for Lt. Governor. She didn’t finish her term on the petroleum board ethics panel, she resigned in protest and then ran for Governor. She doesn’t want the office, she just likes running for office. She doesn’t want (can’t actually) accomplish anything, she just wants to talk about it.”
by Ken Layne at July 04, 2009 06:45 PM
Soriano y el grupo inversor compran los títulos de Juan Soler y Vicente Silla. El futuro de la ampliación de capital es una incógnita. Leer
July 04, 2009 06:20 PM
kaninka.net : fuckyeahtattoos:
metro line (via sylvie LS)
July 04, 2009 06:00 PM
deusx : Zombies: Still Undead, And Suddenly Everywhere : NPR - "George A. Romero certainly didn't invent zombies, but with his 1968 cult classic Night of the Living Dead, he created a lasting cinematic mythology for them.
In Romero's taxonomy of horror, zombies are undead creatures that feed on human
Tags : zombies horror brains
July 04, 2009 06:00 PM
There's a 2.1.1a2 release of SimpleParse out. The only significant change is to allow building on Python 2.6 with Mingw32. Anthony Tuininga pointed out that the only place the compiler actually had difficulty with was in a debug printing function that isn't particularly necessary. I've completely gutted the function for now.
Thanks also to Alan G. Isaac, who recruited Anthony to look into the problem.
July 04, 2009 05:52 PM
Kumbaaya In A Box
by digby
From Ceci:
President Obama, strategizing yesterday with congressional leaders about health-care reform, complained that liberal advocacy groups ought to drop their attacks on Democratic lawmakers and devote their energy to promoting passage of comprehensive legislation. In a pre-holiday call with half a dozen top House and Senate Democrats, Obama expressed his concern over advertisements and online campaigns targeting moderate Democrats, whom they criticize for not being fully devoted to "true" health-care reform.
"We shouldn't be focusing resources on each other," Obama opined in the call, according to three sources who participated in or listened to the conversation. "We ought to be focused on winning this debate."
Specifically, Obama said he is hoping left-leaning organizations that worked on his behalf in the presidential campaign will now rally support for "advancing legislation" that fulfills his goal of expanding coverage, controlling rising costs and modernizing the health system.
In the call, leaders of both chambers expressed optimism that they will hold floor votes on legislation to overhaul the $2.2 trillion health system before Congress breaks in early August.
For his part, the president vowed to use his strong approval rating with voters to continue making the case for sweeping reform, according to one congressional staffer with knowledge of the conversation. Obama also hinted that efforts are under way to discourage allies from future attacks on Democrats, according to the source, who did not have permission to speak on the record about the discussion.
God I hate it when politicians insult your intelligence right to your face. That simplistic kumbaaya bullshit is about as useful as telling us to join hands and think happy thoughts and then we'll all have health care. I hated it when george W. Bush spoke to the public as if they were 5 year olds, but at least it was clear that he actually thought like a 5 year old himself. When Obama does it, it's infuriatingly condescending. (These comments remind me of a month or so ago when the white house official was asked by a reporter why the insurance companies were offering up all these cost savings and replied, "because they're good Americans.")
All you have to do is read the paper to know that the people standing in the way of any workable health care reform are mushy, centrist robots and insurance company whores in the Democratic Party. We have the majority, the Republicans are imploding, there is no debate at the moment among anyone but Democrats. In the middle of this hot negotiation, putting ads on the air that say "let's get some health care!" is a joke.
I suspect that the truth is that he thinks he's clumsily triangulating. But the groups that he's criticizing are actually trying to
support his position on the public plan and attacking them undermines the public plan as well. (Of course, it's always possible that's the intention, but I hope not.)
The problem is that triangulation is for the purpose of positioning the president between two poles in the debate. He's just set one of the poles as the public plan, which says to certain wobbly Senators that it's negotiable. I would have thought the better way to deal with this is to assure these congressional twits (who gladly ate tremendous amounts of shit from right wingers for years, but get livid at the tiniest criticism from the left) that he isn't endorsing any of these attacks, but that there's not much he can do about it. It's a free country. These waverers might just realize that he's serious about getting a public plan without him having to explicitly telling them so.
By now it's obvious that dismissing and humiliating the base is a conscious White House strategy and I'm sure it's sometimes quite useful, even though it's a distinctly unsavory political tactic (and one that erodes support over time.) But in this case, if they really want health reform, it's counterproductive. He needs the outside groups to play this role and by publicly reprimanding them he's undermining these groups with their already skittish donors --- and the cause itself.
But again, that's assuming that's not exactly what they want to do. If they want to undermine the public plan then this is one good way to do it.
.
July 04, 2009 05:40 PM
The Tour de France starts today in Monaco, and despite all the turmoil and troubles of recent times, this year's Tour is forecast to be one of the most exciting ever. The organizers hope to re-emphasize the race as a test of the riders, not their supporting technology. Drug testing will be tougher than ever, and Lance Armstrong will be hoping to restore his reputation as king of the Tour against some fierce competition.
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July 04, 2009 05:40 PM
Cold Fusion and some PHP sites are being hit hard over the last 24 hours by what appear to be Chinese cyber-criminals using an exploit found within the popular browser-based editor component FCKeditor. The vulnerability allows for remote code execution / uploading of files to arbitrary locations / installation of remote shells and it would appear that many sites are being attacked.
Versions <= the current shipping version (FCKeditor <= 2.6.4) are vulnerable. A patch does not yet exist; in the mean time disabling the file browser is one of the mitigation steps.
A number of Python projects utilize this editor component.
oCERT Advisory: http://www.ocert.org/advisories/ocert-2009-007.html
July 04, 2009 05:36 PM
This week, an advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration raised a red flag about a very popular and very effective painkiller — acetaminophen. The panel of experts has recommended lowering levels of acetaminophen in prescription and over-the-counter drugs because of concerns about liver damage.
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July 04, 2009 05:36 PM
The Marines of the 2nd Battalion, 8th Regiment — known as "America's Battalion" — are prepared for anything as they move into the southern village of Sorhodez in the Marine offensive to wrest Afghanistan's Helmand River valley from Taliban control.
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July 04, 2009 05:33 PM
THE SEQUELS ARE RARELY AS GOOD AS THE ORIGINAL.... The lasting impact of the "Tea Parties" in April has been minimal. A few months later, it's still not clear what the point was, or what organizers hoped to accomplish. In...
by Steve Benen at July 04, 2009 05:30 PM
President Obama devotes his address this week to remembering the “indomitable spirit of the first American citizens” who built this country and the lessons we can apply to the current challenges:
That is the spirit we are called to show once more. We are facing an array of challenges on a scale unseen in our time. We are waging two wars. We are battling a deep recession. And our economy – and our nation itself – are endangered by festering problems we have kicked down the road for far too long: spiraling health care costs; inadequate schools; and a dependence on foreign oil. [...]
These are some of the challenges that our generation has been called to meet. And yet, there are those who would have us try what has already failed; who would defend the status quo. They argue that our health care system is fine the way it is and that a clean energy economy can wait. They say we are trying to do too much, that we are moving too quickly, and that we all ought to just take a deep breath and scale back our goals.
These naysayers have short memories. They forget that we, as a people, did not get here by standing pat in a time of change. We did not get here by doing what was easy. That is not how a cluster of 13 colonies became the United States of America.
Watch it:
by Amanda Terkel at July 04, 2009 05:29 PM
Many investors lost everything in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme and there have been some pretty heartbreaking stories. Host Scott Simon talks to New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera about Madoff's 150-year sentence and what it means for the victims.
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July 04, 2009 05:20 PM
THIS WEEK IN GOD.... First up from the God Machine this week is an angle to the debate over health care reform that shouldn't go overlooked: some religiously-motivated activists are weighing in heavily on the side of reform. Liberal-leaning religious...
by Steve Benen at July 04, 2009 05:05 PM
nelson : Lost Coast Tangerine Wheat - I had this beer on tap at lunch yesterday, it was great. Not usually one for flavoured beers, but this worked.
Tags : beer lostcoast wheatbeer
July 04, 2009 05:00 PM
nelson : Obama's pronounciation - Pronouncing names right is a simple way of showing respect
Tags : obama diplomacy pronounciation
July 04, 2009 05:00 PM
nelson : Shockwave crash icon - Love the image: sad puzzle piece
Tags : shockwave flash badtech crash computers
July 04, 2009 05:00 PM
kaninka.net : "Ef fólk er ekki tilbúið til að gefa kapítalismanum langt nef, þá finnst mér að það ætti að velja..." - “Ef fólk er ekki tilbúið til að gefa kapítalismanum langt nef, þá finnst mér að það ætti að velja fyrri kostinn, borga og halda kjafti. En mig grunar að margir þeirra sem vilja sleppa því að greiða Icesave, vilji líka halda í gróð
July 04, 2009 05:00 PM
Hipster guy: Then, she sent me all these naked pictures of herself.
Hipster chick: So what did you do?
Hipster guy: Went to McDonald's. Big Macs clear my head.
--87th & Lexington
July 04, 2009 05:00 PM
A final Revolutionary War battle has come to an end. Plans for a $200 million museum complex inside Valley Forge National Historical Park — where George Washington's army once camped — have been scrapped. After vocal opposition and legal challenges, the planned American Revolution Center will now be built about 25 miles away, in the heart of Philadelphia.
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July 04, 2009 04:58 PM
Tras una campaña sucia como pocas, México contempla entre el desencanto y la curiosidad las legislativas de este domingo. Leer. Escuchar
July 04, 2009 04:55 PM
The editor of the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz recently tried an unorthodox experiment. In celebration of Hebrew Book Week, he told most of his staff reporters to take a day off. Instead, he brought in a team of unlikely replacements — 31 of Israel's most acclaimed authors and poets — and asked them to report the day's news.
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July 04, 2009 04:53 PM
What does it mean these days when when the government makes something public? Just print it and put it on a shelf somewhere until somebody slips it to Bob Woodward? Host Scott Simon speaks to Andrew Rasiej, founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, about redefining citizenship in the digital age. Rasiej also talks about what social media and technology experts have learned in the aftermath of Iran's disputed elections.
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July 04, 2009 04:49 PM
Iranian-American Marzieh Hashemi was born in New Orleans but moved to Iran a year ago and reports for Iran's Press TV. As one of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad supporters, Hashemi tells host Scott Simon that that much of the world has a distorted view of what has happened in Iran in the aftermath of the disputed election.
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July 04, 2009 04:45 PM
Host Scott Simon speaks with NPR News Analyst Juan Williams about the announcement of Sarah Palin's resignation, Michael Jackson and Afghanistan.
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July 04, 2009 04:38 PM
Yesterday, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin announced she'd be resigning on July 26th. NPR's Martin Kaste reports.
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July 04, 2009 04:36 PM
La pequeña de las Williams ganó en dos sets a su hermana Venus (7-6, 6-2) y logra su tercer título en el All England Club. [ÁLBUM DE LA FINAL] Leer
July 04, 2009 04:22 PM
Jesús Caldera recordó a Felipe González que dictó una moratoria nuclear en 1983 tras las críticas que despechó el ex presidente. Leer. Escuchar
July 04, 2009 04:20 PM
Gaming news this week began with a bang—our famed Mole revealed that price drops on both the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 consoles are coming this fall, along with some tasty new bundles.
A huge rush of news about StarCraft 2 has hit the gaming blogs this week. We break down the news reports and bring you the surprises, the oddities, and the pleasant surprises. The takeaway? The game looks great.
Click here to read the rest of this article
July 04, 2009 04:18 PM
El presidente del PNV ha liderado una marcha con ikurriñas al Gorbea, donde hace una semana militares españoles pusieron la española. Leer
July 04, 2009 04:08 PM
Miles de fans se quedarán sin ir al funeral porque únicamente pueden registrarse en la web para pedir entradas los residentes en EEUU. Leer. Escuchar
July 04, 2009 04:05 PM
Ladies and gents. Tomorrow, the great Bluetooth presentation! Come and join in the chuckles. A superb presentation that the New York Times calls «Inexplicably enticing», an anonymous KDE developer say it's «Dumbed down, and not Cross-desktop und so weiter».
Where: Palacio de la Música
When: 12:00 to 12:30
Who: Y.T.
What: ¡la mejor presentación de Bluetooth en el mundo!
July 04, 2009 04:04 PM
nelson : RIP Compuserve - Old infosystem finally shut down
Tags : internet history compuserve cis
July 04, 2009 04:00 PM
Join the Mad About Options crew as they take a look back at the week that was June 29th-July 3rd 2009.
July 04, 2009 04:00 PM
YOUR GUESS IS AS GOOD AS MINE.... Towards the end of her strange speech yesterday, Sarah Palin said, "[I]t hurts to make this choice but I'm doing what's best for Alaska, and I have explained why..... I've given my reasons."...
by Steve Benen at July 04, 2009 03:50 PM
Suerte de varas. El callejón del Infante, citado más de una vez en esta tribuna por su mágica tranquilidad dentro del 'maremagnum' de Huertas, se ha quedado huérfano hace unos meses. Leer
July 04, 2009 03:48 PM
Scientists are increasingly worried that the beautiful fireworks millions of Americans will be watching this Independence Day contain toxic chemicals that may pose a threat to the environment. A particular focus is perchlorate, which helps “create the combustion reaction needed for the explosion.” According to a 2009 article in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, “the amount of perchlorate in nearby bodies of water could increase by anywhere from 24 to 1,068 times the amount present before the fireworks, and that it takes 20 to 80 days for the chemical levels to subside.” When ingested, perchlorate can hinder the thyroid’s production of growth hormones. In response, some chemists are looking for other solutions, including cleaner-burning fireworks that use nitrate-based oxidants.
by Amanda Terkel at July 04, 2009 03:44 PM
Off to GCDS to join
the rest of the happy Collabora massive, hurrah. :)
July 04, 2009 03:35 PM
Social media are setting the news agenda. Make sure your company is paying attention to -- and participating in -- the conversations about it in cyberspace.
July 04, 2009 03:19 PM
RUNNING WITHOUT A DAY JOB.... Since Carter and Reagan were able to mount successful presidential campaigns after leaving their governorships behind, many have come to believe the best way to launch a national campaign is to run without a day...
by Steve Benen at July 04, 2009 03:15 PM
A partir de 70 euros se pueden comprar lingotes de este metal, convertido en un activo refugio tras el estallido de las hipotecas basura. Leer
July 04, 2009 03:15 PM
It's now a holiday weekend here in the US, but that doesn't mean last week wasn't exciting. Here's a recap of the Week That Was.
The big news, of course, was the long-awaited release of Firefox 3.5. With support for HTML 5 tags like <video> and a high-performance JavaScript engine, 3.5 is lightning fast and ready for the future.
While Firefox was busy showing us the possibilities of the future, science was busy showing us just how petty we can be. Turns out that people will even reject free money if they think that they can screw over a rival by doing so.
Click here to read the rest of this article
July 04, 2009 03:04 PM
July is finally here, proving that the world of Apple can in fact keep turning while Steve Jobs is away. This week's top Apple news examined the adoption rate of iPhone OS 3.0, a Newton bug, fraudulent iTunes gift cards, the disappearance of .Mac HomeSites, and more. Catch up here on the week that was with our news roundup—between throwing brats on the grill and checking out fireworks, of course.
What's the uptake on iPhone OS 3.0? How quickly are users of Apple's mobile devices jumping on the 3.0 bandwagon? Conflicting data points from multiple sources give us anything but a clear answer. If you want to participate in our own poll on the matter, though, let us know whether you have upgraded yet and why (or why not).
Impending Newton Y2K10 apocalypse narrowly averted: A dedicated Newton fan and hacker has developed a patch for Apple's long-since-discontinued PDAs that will keep them humming along just fine after this New Year's Eve. The patch isn't for the faint of heart, but then again, neither is using a 20-year-old PDA.
Click here to read the rest of this article
July 04, 2009 03:04 PM
Portly man: So what are you trying to tell me?
Skinny blond teen: He choked to death on a live hampster!
--Times Square
Overheard by: Not how I wanna go
July 04, 2009 03:00 PM
Quim just gave his keynote, announcing that maemo will switch to Qt as the main toolkit in the future, with GTK+ being a part of the maemo platform that will become supported by the community. Not a big surprise, since Nokia acquired Trolltech a while ago.
The interesting thing, though, is that, listening to Quim's talk, maemo is still a big GNOME Mobile user: the maemo platform will actually still more or less be GNOME Mobile, except that it will be using Qt instead of GTK+. This may come as a surprise to some people since for many, GNOME is GTK+ and GTK+ is GNOME. GNOME is actually way more than GTK+ and the GNOME Mobile platform in particular covers a good number of technologies (glib, dbus, gvfs, bluez, telepathy, avahi, gstreamer, gconf, etc.). All of those technologies are historically close to GNOME (usually living on freedesktop.org), or even part of GNOME.
So while the move to Qt is a logical move from Nokia, it's good to see that Nokia stays firmly committed to GNOME Mobile. It's actually quite amazing to see that what we built there is attractive to a big industry player like Nokia (and, well, a bunch of other players ;-)).
July 04, 2009 02:46 PM
Publicado en Diario de Noticias
MILENIO
Jueves 25 de junio de 2009
Cada año llega este momento, al poco del solsticio que marcó el pasado domingo el comienzo del verano astronómico, cerca de la noche de las hogueras y en plena efervescencia casi apocalíptica que antecede las fiestas de julio. Colgamos el cerrado por estiaje, que los pastos de este columnista ya están imposibles de digerir, y hay que ir a otros contenidos más tiernos para la contraportada. Como los periódicos viven sólo un día, pongamos que como algunas mariposas (que adecuadamente lo emplean en procrear, que es lo suyo) estas columnas desaparecen rápidamente, a lo más sirviendo para envolver algo al día siguiente (todo un honor, conste). Internet ha venido a contrariar ese proceso natural, y es cierto que eso produce una distorsión que permite echar un vistazo hacia atrás. Y qué quieren que les diga, no es que merezca especialmente la pena: con el trascurso de los años me he vuelto en este espacio más intemperante, más anticlerical y más dogmático (¿más? Posiblemente era la marca de la casa desde el principio). No lo digo como reconocimiento de pecado, sino como asunción del marco en que me muevo.
Así que en vez de pensar que la última columna de la temporada podría ser un brindis a este sol que llega, a las enormes posibilidades que nos debería dar el verano, iré a lo mío, a cabrearme una vez más por la intolerancia de los poderes, pero esta vez (una vez más gracias a Amnistía Internacional) con una propuesta activa: exigir dignidad. Una campaña que desde esta organización por la defensa de los derechos humanos intenta hacernos ver lo obvio: que la pobreza no es inevitable, pero sobre todo que hay quien debía evitarla porque es responsable de ella. Inexistentes, pobres, hambrientos, enfermos y sin derechos, miles de millones de personas son las víctimas de un estado de cosas que sostenemos todos. Si no ayudamos a que esas gentes puedan conseguir lo mínimo que exige una dignidad humana, estamos además siendo cómplices con la situación. ¿Se animan?
July 04, 2009 02:43 PM
THE WRONG METAPHOR FOR THE OCCASION.... One of the more memorable moments in Sarah Palin's ridiculous announcement yesterday came when she compared herself to a point guard. "Let me go back quickly to a comfortable analogy for me -- sports,...
by Steve Benen at July 04, 2009 02:30 PM
Catch up on his thinking on the hottest topics of the past week.
July 04, 2009 02:00 PM
'ACCOMPLISHMENTS'.... Bill Kristol thinks Sarah Palin's bizarre resignation may be "shrewd," in part because she's "probably accomplished most of what she was going to get done as governor." Now, perhaps it's unfair to expect Palin to have "accomplished" much. She's...
by Steve Benen at July 04, 2009 01:55 PM
Here's a sampling of what Don Dion blogged about this week on RealMoney.
July 04, 2009 01:23 PM
elmundo.es ofrecerá en directo los encierros, que se podrán ver en vídeo. Y por las tardes, vídeos de las corridas. Leer. Escuchar
July 04, 2009 01:15 PM
Pocos acontecimientos levantan tanta expectación como la corrida que lidiará el 5 julio José Tomás en Barcelona. Leer. Escuchar
July 04, 2009 01:08 PM
MAKING SANFORD LOOK SOUND AND REASONABLE BY COMPARISON.... Sarah Palin's decision to resign is difficult to understand, but nearly as interesting as the announcement was the way in which it was made. Or, put another way, have you seen the...
by Steve Benen at July 04, 2009 01:05 PM
This weekend, one viewer asks whether Diana Shipping is still a good way to play China and shippers after the company made bearish comments.
July 04, 2009 01:00 PM
Hipster #1: They thought it was the coolest thing they'd ever done.
Hipster #2: The firemen?
Hipster #1: The girls.
--Lafayette & E 4th
Overheard by: Jon A.
July 04, 2009 01:00 PM
Hay 70 varones, 5 mujeres y 4 menores. En las últimas 24 horas han llegado 7 pateras con 108 inmigrantes. Leer
July 04, 2009 12:32 PM
kaninka.net : txtsfrmlstnght:
(858): in retrospect, sexting while high was a mistake - I meant to say “I’ll fuck... - txtsfrmlstnght:
(858): in retrospect, sexting while high was a mistake - I meant to say “I’ll fuck you stupid, baby” but of course I said “I’ll fuck your stupid baby”
July 04, 2009 12:00 PM
Crazy lady, pointing at Christmas tree: Is the tree real?
Doorman: Yes, ma'am.
Crazy lady: Can I go smell the tree?
Doorman: Yes, ma'am.
Crazy lady, going over to tree: Can ah smell yo, tree? (giggles)
--Upper West Side
Overheard by: Neck Twister
July 04, 2009 11:00 AM
Es lo que tienen los días de afelio. Lo ponen patente, y se lo copio, donde el Agente Smith: esto es cerca esto es lejos
La imagen:
Muy diferente del dibujo habitual de la órbita de la Tierra, que hace creer que realmente esto es una elipse MUY excéntrica (pues no, los excéntricos somos nosotros, que aprendemos ciencia con dibujos tan raros; me recuerda eso que contaba Bill Bryson de que durante mucho tiempo creyó que en un lado del Atlántico había un corte que llegaba hasta el centro del planeta y de donde los geólogos habían aprendido la estructura de capas del manto, y demás...)
Véase:
Añadido a las 16.53
Como suele pasar, esto del afelio le mueve a más de uno, y yo tenía la mosca en la oreja (o detrás) porque me sonaba que hacía unos días alguien me había hablado del asunto de la excentricidad (escasa) de la órbita terrestre y demás. Y así era. Félix Ares había sido el que me había mencionado el asunto, y quien escribe una entrada en su blog en diariovasco sobre el tema.
July 04, 2009 10:44 AM
<p>I replaced the LED nightlight in our bathroom with a <a href="http://macetech.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&amp;cPath=1&amp;products_id=9">MegaBrite</a>.</p>
<p>I got some <a href="http://cgi.ebay.com/8-White-Acrylic-Plastic-Semi-Translucent-2%22-Dome-Globes_W0QQitemZ110405881744QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxZ20090623?IMSfp=TL090623158002r17959">plastic domes on eBay</a>. Do you want one? I have several extras.</p>
<p>I attached the dome to the ceiling by tying some bicycle tire around pushpins that press out against the inside of the dome. Here are a few other <a href="http://www.instructables.com/id/10-of-1000-Uses-for-Old-Bicycle-Tubes/">uses for old bike tubes</a>.</p>
<p><img src="http://photo.bigasterisk.com/digicam/dl-2009-07-04/img_6027.jpg?size=large" alt="" width="600" height="450" /></p>
<p><img src="http://photo.bigasterisk.com/digicam/dl-2009-07-04/img_6029.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="188" /></p>
<p>Here are some unretouched photos of the MB with its dome lighting up the bathroom. Shutter times are 1/2 and 1 sec.</p>
<p><img src="http://photo.bigasterisk.com/digicam/dl-2009-07-04/megabrite-colors.jpg?size=full" alt="" width="894" height="296" /></p>
<p>When I was testing the MegaBrite, it was hanging down from the ceiling and I happened to have a glass of water nearby:</p>
<p><img src="http://photo.bigasterisk.com/digicam/dl-2009-07-04/megabrite-cup.jpg?size=full" alt="" width="350" height="266" /></p>
<p>The first two pictures are from different positions of the MB in the glass; in the third one I am sloshing around the water:</p>
<p><img src="http://photo.bigasterisk.com/digicam/dl-2009-07-04/megabrite-water.jpg?size=full" alt="" width="1200" height="339" /></p>
<p>I'm controlling the MegaBrite with a parallel port, which is very simple to do. I'm getting LED power from the 5V rail of an old computer power supply. The power is going over perhaps 50 feet of cat5 which probably adds a lot of resistance. I measure 4.7V at the MB end (with the MB turned on). The <a href="http://bigasterisk.com/darcs/?r=pixel;a=headblob;f=/shiftpar/shiftpar.py">parport control code is here</a>. It has no attempt at optimization yet, and I think it takes just under 1ms to do a single update. If I add more MBs to this chain I may need to fix the inner loop in that code.</p></content>
July 04, 2009 10:43 AM
あるAnonymous Coward 曰く、
毎日射精している男性のほうが、そうでない男性よりも DNA損傷が少ない「質の良い」精子になることが分かったそうだ（ロイター記事・本家記事・European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryologyのプレスリリース）。
オーストラリアの体外受精研究機関、シドニー IVFの David Greening博士は毎日の射精が精子の質に及ぼす影響を実験したとのこと。実験では精子の質があまり良くないとされる、118名の被験者を対象に実験前の精子の DNAダメージ指数（DFI：DNA Fragmentation Index）を検査し、その後１週間毎日射精してもらった。その結果、81%の男性では DFIが12%減少したが、残りの19%では10%増加するという入り混じった結果となったそうだ。しかし全体の DFI平均値は26%となり、多くの被験者の精子の質が「良い」と分類できるレベルに向上したとのこと。
この精子の質の向上が理論上は妊娠の確率を高めるとのことで、博士曰く、排卵日の1週間前から毎日性交渉を行うのが良いと考えられるとのことだ。
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| サイエンスセクション
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| サイエンス
関連ストーリー：
コンピューターゲームで若年層の妊娠を防げ
2008年07月15日
人工甘味料は子作りの敵
2003年03月28日
by soara at July 04, 2009 10:10 AM
 | | 新型インフルエンザに備えるビジネスモバイル活用術をご紹介！詳細・申込はこちら！ |
July 04, 2009 10:10 AM
Dan Dicker, TheStreet.com's expert trader, reveals why now is the best time to buy shares of oil refiners and which stocks he's betting on.
July 04, 2009 10:00 AM
- Arrived on Thursday, and had dinner with Stormy, Rosanna, Jonathan and the evil Lucas. Turned out Lucas and I still have this bad habit of talking in front of a hotel for a long time...
- Yesterday, we had the first board meeting with the new board. It went amazingly well, with good work going on. It was definitely a good thing to move the elections period to have the meeting at the beginning of the board term.
- We then went to register for the conference. It always feels good to see familiar faces again :-)
- Canonical hosted a party yesterday evening, a good occasion to catch up with even more people.
- At the opening right now. Quite funny to see a warm welcome, with some notes about collaboration from Adrian (from KDE) and Behdad (from GNOME) while they are each at one extreme side of the table ;-) And Behdad has this
what am I doing here?
funny look; hopefully someone took a picture of him!
July 04, 2009 09:54 AM
Jersey teen on class trip: I wonder if they've got Billy Joel here.
Friend: Dude, isn't he some preacher in Texas?
--Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame Annex, Mercer St
Overheard by: stillrockn'rolltome
July 04, 2009 09:00 AM
Ok, let’s go for another big issue on the road to build a complex distro .. Maintainers tend to include one feature after one .. and now Debian is getting closer to bloat ..
Anyway, sometime ago the HAL was introduced in Xorg. This allow you to hotplug mouse / keyboard … But if for a reason, your HAL is buggy .. you can’t use a keyboard or a mice in Xorg. That’s a bullshit ! I discover a bug in RAID + HAL, and HAL is now segfaulting on my computer .. so I need to get ride of this Xorg / HAL …
First you must modify /etc/X11/Xorg.conf with something like this :
Section "ServerFlags"
Option "AutoAddDevices" "False"
Option "AllowEmptyInput" "False"
EndSection
This disable the hal support, but if you want to have the keyboard and mice, you must install the following packages :
- xserver-xorg-input-kbd
- xserver-xorg-input-mouse
That’s it… no HAL support Xorg anymore, that works fine …
July 04, 2009 08:18 AM
Jet takes off
Video …
July 04, 2009 08:02 AM
Task organiser that's more about tasks than organisation
iPhone App Review Task manager apps all pose the question: 'How organised are you?' They imply that you're not very organised at all, or you wouldn't be considering software to help you get on top of things.…
July 04, 2009 08:02 AM
Jet takes off
Video …
July 04, 2009 08:02 AM
Task organiser that's more about tasks than organisation
iPhone App Review Task manager apps all pose the question: 'How organised are you?' They imply that you're not very organised at all, or you wouldn't be considering software to help you get on top of things.…
July 04, 2009 08:02 AM
We had a good day of sprinting today. There was a short list of five bugs on
the menu (see previous entry),
so we immediately divided up in pairs and just started fixing the bugs.
- The xmlrpc bug was fixed by a new zope.publisher 3.4.8 release done remotely
by Michael Haubenwallner.
- I paired with Christian Klinger on the view/codeview split and got that all
sorted out. It is still on a branch as we want to bring the code coverage
of grokcore.view up to 100% (it is now at 96). Getting it the first 1% up
already uncovered one bug :-)
- Uli and Martijn made a change in zope.publisher and tweaked around with
unauthorized exceptions for the login.html/wsgi problem. It seems to work,
but needs polishing and testing.
- Todd, Souheil and Kevin fixed the zope.public permission bug by creating a
grok.view permission. Grokproject now gives everyone that permission, so if
you want to close down your site: just remove that permission. A new
grokproject release has to await a new grok release because of the version
numbers.
- The template dir for multiple views was worked on by Godefroid and Vincent,
but this needed more discussion than initially thought so the bug is still
there.
So: I'm totally happy with the outcome!
July 04, 2009 07:49 AM
There's Something About This I Just Don't Understand ... Anderson Cooper interviewed Sarah Palin's spokesperson tonight. He asked what Sarah Palin would be doing next. Here's her answer: "STAPLETON: OH, everything under the sun that you can possibly think of....
by Hilzoy at July 04, 2009 07:29 AM
I still see bugreports that blame HAL for various things including my mouse buttons don't work", "the pointer jumps", and various other things. In none of these cases HAL is at fault. From the X server's point-of-view, HAL is merely a replacement for the xorg.conf.
The simple tasks HAL does for us in the X server is:
- List all input devices (the equivalent to the InputDevice sections in the xorg.conf).
- Nominate the appropriate driver for each input device (the equivalent to the Driver "..." line in each InputDevice section).
- Provide user-configured extra options such as the keyboard layout (the equivalent to the Option "Foo" "bar" lines).
Note that 2 and 3 are a result of your local configuration files and not some random guesses.
So whenever it's unclear if a problem is in fact caused by HAL ask yourself: if you had a xorg.conf, could this problem be fixed by editing it? If not, then you need to report the bug against the input driver or the X server. Here's Fedora's rough
checklist for reporting input bugs.
That HAL is being replaced by DeviceKit everywhere is a completely different issue as well.
July 04, 2009 07:25 AM
Old tourist woman to daughter, about gangsters shouting slang to each other: Is that French?
Daughter: No... That's Ebonics.
--Broadway & Waverly
Overheard by: Noah
July 04, 2009 07:00 AM
Based on newsgroup postings, users did not get the news that Firebug 1.4 requires a manual reload the first time you open it on a site. Ok, no I don’t know how they would know. So here it is:
In 1.4, when you open Firebug on a page it does not automatically reload the page. You have to do it manually.
In 1.3, the page was reloaded for you. We made this change because some users (ok it was Steve 
, complained that the reload was not always necessary and sometimes wastes time. This is especially true for users who are primarily interested in HTML and CSS or for users who want to know just when the reload is triggered so they can watch how the page loads.
But why do we need to reload at all? Well to track net traffic, to track script loading, and to listen for console logging we have to add listeners on the page before the page load begins. If Firebug is not active at the time of page load, none of this happens. So after you open Firebug you have to reload to get all the info. That was true in 1.3 and it still true in 1.4. The only change here is that 1.4 you have to do it manually.
By now my brain automatically hits reload when I open Firebug, since I always want all the info on all the panels
jjb
Please post follows to the newsgroup.
by johnjbarton at July 04, 2009 05:03 AM
Long-hair hobo: All America is an insane asylum.
Hobo friends: (chuckle)
--18th St & 6th
Overheard by: Moose
July 04, 2009 05:00 AM
President Obama this week pledged to push for change to the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. While it remains in place, gay servicemen and women continue to keep their lives — and their partners — hidden from the military or risk dismissal.
» E-Mail This » Add to Del.icio.us
July 04, 2009 04:49 AM
With dividends outpacing stock buybacks, David Peltier looks for growth in two higher payouts.
July 04, 2009 03:59 AM
Menos de un mes han tardado en 'liberar' el nuevo iPhone 3GS para poder usarlo con total libertad, a través de cualquier operador y con aplicaciones no aprobadas por Apple. Es algo más de tiempo del que se tardó en desbloquear la versión 3G pero a cambio se puede hacer con una simple aplicación que, por ahora, sólo se puede instalar a través de Windows -no la versión 7- e iTunes. Leer
July 04, 2009 03:57 AM
I have been accepted to present a short paper entitled “Ubiquity: Designing a Multilingual Natural Language Interface” at the ACM SIGIR Workshop on Information Access in a Multilingual World in Boston on July 23rd. I’ll probably be there in Boston a few days before or after as well in order to find an apartment for the fall. If anyone is in Boston at that time and would like to meet up, or if you’re near Cambridge and looking for an apartment-mate, please let me know. 
If you would like to see a preprint of the paper, please contact me at x@x.com where x=mitcho.
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by mitcho at July 04, 2009 03:10 AM
Gay, complaining about relationship: I'm so tired of this...do you think love lasts forever?
Girl, obviously frustrated about being single: Fuck it, Jaimie, the real question is whether it ever starts.
--H&M, NoHo
Overheard by: Yeah I'd like to know too
July 04, 2009 03:00 AM
live-gon 曰く、
各報道が伝えているが、今年のツール・ド・フランスに 2人の日本人が出場することが決定した（参考：新城幸也氏出場決定の記事、別府史之氏出場決定の記事）。日本人の出場は戦後では13年ぶり、2人目と3人目となる。出場を祝うと共に、ささやかでも存在感を示せることを願ってやまない。
#旧聞だけどタレコミがみつからなかったのでしてみた。自転車はスラド向きだと思うんだ。
すべて読む
| スポーツ
| 日本
by live-gon (posted by soara) at July 04, 2009 02:20 AM
I was trying to figure out how to create a word that's not a word. What I ended up doing was creating a way of generating a random syllable, and then simply appending 2 or 3 of them together. It seems to work well enough. Here's what I got in Python:
import random
vowels = ["a", "e", "i", "o", "u"]
consonants = ['b', 'c', 'd', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'p', 'q',
'r', 's', 't', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z']
def _vowel():
return random.choice(vowels)
def _consonant():
return random.choice(consonants)
def _cv():
return _consonant() + _vowel()
def _cvc():
return _cv() + _consonant()
def _syllable():
return random.choice([_vowel, _cv, _cvc])()
def create_fake_word():
""" This function generates a fake word by creating between two and three
random syllables and then joining them together.
"""
syllables = []
for x in range(random.randint(2,3)):
syllables.append(_syllable())
return "".join(syllables)
if __name__ == "__main__":
print create_fake_word()The first four functions are for generating an individual type of syllable (V, CV, or CVC) and then _syllable() just chooses one of them at random. Finally, create_fake_word() calls _syllable() a few times and joins them together. Here is some example output:
hojocina
eliphaa
deaketyed
ciboa
tiuzi
I haven't a clue whether or not there is a better means of generating words that look somewhat real. If you know of a better method, I'd love to hear it!
July 04, 2009 02:02 AM
TarZ 曰く、
アルゼンチンアリというアリがいる。このアリは南米原産だが、主に人間の経済活動で運ばれることによって、今では南極を除く世界各地に広がっている。日本でも繁殖が確認され、特定外来生物被害防止法では、ブルーギル、セアカゴケグモなどと並んで真っ先に特定外来生物指定されたほど問題になっている。
アルゼンチンアリはときに長さ数百kmを超える巨大なコロニー(super-colonies)を構成することがあるが、コロニーの一つはどうやら全世界規模のサイズに達しているらしい、いう研究結果が出た(本家記事、BBC News)。
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| 地球
関連ストーリー：
めだかの学校が乗っ取られそうになる
2007年02月19日
アリの巣がヨーロッパを横断
2002年04月18日
by TarZ (posted by soara) at July 04, 2009 02:00 AM
During a townhall in Waukon, IA Tuesday, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was asked by a constituent of his: “Why is your insurance so much cheaper than my insurance and so better than my insurance?” When Grassley struggled to explain the details of his own health care plan, the elderly man followed up, “Okay, so how come I can’t have the same thing you have?” Grassley said, “You can. Just go work for the federal government.” Watch it:
Grassley has been at the forefront of railing against Obama’s health care plan, declaring, “We need to make sure that there’s no public option.” As Igor Volsky notes, there is an irony in government workers like Grassley complaining about “government-sponsored health care.” If Grassley wants to stand on principle, he could abandon his government-sponsored insurance and try his luck in the individual health insurance market.
by Faiz Shakir at July 04, 2009 01:40 AM
Barracuda I just watched Sarah Palin's announcement that she will step down as governor, which was surreal even by her standards. It's hard to pick just one favorite moment, though this has to be on anyone's list: "Life is too...
by Hilzoy at July 04, 2009 01:26 AM
This motorsports company has been speeding up the charts, but with earnings coming up and unemployment high in key states, its shares could crash.
July 04, 2009 01:00 AM
Guy: Of course I thought about it before I did it!
Girl: So you're a premeditated moron.
--55th & Broadway
Overheard by: Cornbread Jim
July 04, 2009 01:00 AM
Max Blumental reports on The Daily Beast that Sarah Palin may have quit her job today because she was trying to avert a major, yet-to-be-disclosed corruption scandal. The gist of the rumor is that an Alaska building company called Spenard Building Supplies (SBS) was awarded a contract by Palin to build a hockey arena in Wasilla, AK, and in return, SBS helped construct Palin’s home:
Many political observers in Alaska are fixated on rumors that federal investigators have been seizing paperwork from SBS in recent months, searching for evidence that Palin and her husband Todd steered lucrative contracts to the well-connected company in exchange for gifts like the construction of their home on pristine Lake Lucille in 2002. The home was built just two months before Palin began campaigning for governor, a job which would have provided her enhanced power to grant building contracts in the wide open state.
SBS has close ties to the Palins. The company has not only sponsored Todd Palin’s snowmobile team, according to the Village Voice’s Wayne Barrett, it hired Sarah Palin to do a statewide television commercial in 2004.
Though Todd Palin told Fox News he built his Lake Lucille home with the help of a few “buddies,” according to Barrett’s report, public records revealed that SBS supplied the materials for the house. While serving as mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin blocked an initiative that would have required the public filing of building permits—thus momentarily preventing the revelation of such suspicious information.
Just months before Palin left city hall to campaign for governor, she awarded a contract to SBS to help build the $13 million Wasilla Sports Complex. The most expensive building project in Wasilla history, the complex cost the city an addition $1.3 million in legal fees and threw it into severe long-term debt. For SBS, however, the bloated and bungled project was a cash cow.
Alaska bloggers have reported in recent weeks that “a long simmering embezzelment/IRS scandal is still being looked at by the feds.” In her press conference today, Palin asked the public to “trust me with this decision and know that it is no more politics as usual.” But she also bemoaned “political operatives” who have “descended on Alaska” to investigate “all sorts of frivolous ethics violations.” Palin said this “politics of personal destruction” was one of the key motivating factors behind her decision today.
by Faiz Shakir at July 04, 2009 12:47 AM
One From Column A
by digby
One of the best arguments in the health care debate is the one that says every American should get the same health plan that members of congress have. Taxpayers pay for it so why shouldn't they be able to choose the same plan?
Just for informational purposes, for those who may not know, here's a brief primer on what we're already paying for:
As soon as members of Congress are sworn in, they may participate in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). The program offers an assortment of health plans from which to choose, including fee-for-service, point-of-service, and health maintenance organizations (HMOs). In addition, Congress members can also insure their spouses and their dependents. Not only does Congress get to choose from a wide range of plans, but there’s no waiting period. Unlike many Americans who must struggle against precondition clauses or are even denied coverage because of those preconditions, Senators and Representatives are covered no matter what - effective immediately.
And here’s the best part. The government pays up to 75 percent of the premium.
That looks like a public plan worth having to me.
.
July 04, 2009 12:14 AM
Rangina Hamidi, CEO of Kandahar Treasures, which sells handmade embroidery, talks about the surge in Helmand province. She says that to defeat the Taliban, American troops must help Afghanistan build infrastructure and maintain security.
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July 04, 2009 12:08 AM
Some 4,000 Marines, along with several hundred British and Afghan troops, are fanning out in the valley of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, establishing small outposts. So far, there's been little fighting with Taliban militants, although Marines did meet stiff resistance in one area.
» E-Mail This » Add to Del.icio.us
July 04, 2009 12:03 AM
For Our Own Good
by digby
This is interesting:
The military officers who rushed deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya out of the country Sunday committed a crime but will be exonerated for saving the country from mob violence, the army's top lawyer said.In an interview with The Miami Herald and El Salvador's elfaro.net, army attorney Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza acknowledged that top military brass made the call to forcibly remove Zelaya -- and they circumvented laws when they did it.
It was the first time any participant in Sunday's overthrow admitted committing an offense and the first time a Honduran authority revealed who made the decision that has been denounced worldwide.
''We know there was a crime there,'' said Inestroza, the top legal advisor for the Honduran armed forces. ``In the moment that we took him out of the country, in the way that he was taken out, there is a crime. Because of the circumstances of the moment this crime occurred, there is going to be a justification and cause for acquittal that will protect us.''
I think this is a natural outgrowth of the example the US has set over the past few years. People no longer believe that the rule of law is something they must adhere to as long as they can justify their actions as being done to "protect the country." I suppose it was always so, but America has made a fetish out of this excuse through this decade so I think it's taken on a new veneer of legitimacy. Certainly, it has made it impossible for any American leader to condemn this sort of thing with even the slightest bit of credibility.
This is the paternalistic view espoused by Henry Hyde during the Iran Contra scandal, in which he claimed that if the executive broke the law for the good of the country it wasn't a crime. (He said this to justify his view that Reagan's breaking of the laws was ok while Clinton allegedly lying in a deposition was an impeachable offense.) I suppose this concept is also an outgrowth of Nixon's famous statement that if the president does it it's not illegal. When President Nixon said that, however, it was shocking to average people. However obvious it was in practice that presidents routinely evaded the power sharing intent of the constitution, very few people thought it was a good thing that the president actually wasn't required to follow the rule of law. I'm not so sure about that now.
For the last several years, many people have been saying that the president has to do whatever's necessary to keep the country safe. That's what both Bush and Obama say to justify something like preventive detention and that's what the Honduran military says it was doing when it deposed a democratically elected president. (Cap'n Ed called it a "military impeachment.") And it seems to me that people are beginning to accept this idea --- when it comes to national security, the president and the military must not be limited by such prosaic concerns as the constitution. Someone might get hurt and that must be prevented at all costs.
Once again, I think we have to ask why, as an individual American, that logic wouldn't then apply to other things. Why should the government be hindered by the rule of law at all when lives are at stake? The police and the FBI and the DEA and the ATF and Homeland Security and the Border Patrol and any of the other agencies in the vast security state apparatus should not be hindered in their jobs to keep Americans safe any more than the president is hindered in keeping America safe from terrorists. Certainly, I can't understand how you could take a chance that someone like Charles Manson or Tim McVeigh or some sociopathic gang member might be released back onto American streets, but the mere possibility that a terrorist suspect could be free anywhere in the world precludes them even having a trial. It makes no sense.
Implicit in the constitution is the understanding that we cannot be safe from all dangers --- and that one of the gravest dangers to our safety is a government which does not respect civil liberties and the principles of democracy. This "protect at all costs" mentality stands that on its head. Once you say that the government doesn't have to adhere to the rule of law for the good of the country, the whole thing loses its meaning --- and unpredictable things start to happen. Like "military impeachments."
.
July 04, 2009 12:00 AM
July 03, 2009
Here's a quick-and-dirty way to validate URLs in your model. Updated: Only allow certain schemes.
require 'uri'
class Film < ActiveRecord::Base
VALID_URI_SCHEMES = ['http', 'https']
validates_presence_of :url
validate :url_must_be_valid
protected
def url_must_be_valid
parsed = URI.parse(url)
if !VALID_URI_SCHEMES.member?(parsed.scheme)
raise URI::InvalidURIError
end
rescue URI::InvalidURIError => e
errors.add(:url, 'is not a valid URL')
end
end
July 03, 2009 11:37 PM
First of all, Sarah Palin, go to HELL for ruining your editor’s day of patriotic rest and BBQ. Second, why did you really quit, crazy lady? We admit to “jumping to conclusions” (trying to hurry up and get back outside to our cocktails and friends), but the story may be more complicated than “Sarah Palin is a sociopath who will just quit being governor of Alaska THREE-AND-A-HALF YEARS before the next presidential election, just to show her, uhm, Leadership Credentials, which means constantly yelling at David Letterman about a joke she couldn’t comprehend.” But there are so many more crazy theories about America’s craziest Alaskan Anger Bear, the snowbilly grifter and strip-mall Ice Queen of Wasilla. Let’s examine them, together!
- Andrea Mitchell’s sources say Sarah Palin is not running for anything, ever, and that she’s “out of politics for good.” But who will fill the other half of the Santelli 2012 ticket?
- Sarah Palin (or somebody!) is pregnant again! CNN’s Rick Sanchez suggested this “why not?” reason.
- Palin’s nutball spokeswoman, “Meg,” denies Andrea Mitchell’s account, and says that Palin will actually be going “outside government,” which, uhm, is not actually a denial at all, right? DailyKos commenter bluedonkey08 says in response, “You know, sometimes I think it’s not worth trying to understand what she says. Your sanity will appreciate it.” Noted.
- Palin’s brother called the cable news to give his own theory, based on some conversation with Sister Sarah at a ski resort somewhere, two months ago. According to this relative, Palin has been spending “80% of her time defending herself” from the Media. You know, because it’s super important to yell at David Letterman for weeks at a time, for being a teevee comic who makes jokes about politicians. (Sarah Palin apparently spends the remaining 20% of her time at ski resorts.)
- Mean old Washington Post beltway neocon Charles Krauthammer said the other day on Fox News that Palin is “not a serious candidate” for Republicans. Did Krauthammer make emo Sarah cry and quit?
- She’s just plain crazy and you’re just wasting your time trying to make sense of her erratic behavior. This is the theory suggested by CBS News, which described her speech as “rambling and sometimes confusing.”
by Ken Layne at July 03, 2009 11:09 PM
Smoking scenester #1 to another, after seeing toy poodle: Hey, look, that must be one of them dumb city rat dogs.
Girl with poodle to smoking scenester #1: Hey, look, you must be one of those dumb bridge & tunnel cunts.
--11th & 1st
July 03, 2009 11:00 PM
When AV attacks
IT admins across the globe are letting out a collective groan after servers and PCs running McAfee VirusScan were brought down when the anti-virus program attacked their core system files. In some cases, this caused the machines to display the dreaded blue screen of death.…
What is your recession sales strategy?
July 03, 2009 10:48 PM
When AV attacks
IT admins across the globe are letting out a collective groan after servers and PCs running McAfee VirusScan were brought down when the anti-virus program attacked their core system files. In some cases, this caused the machines to display the dreaded blue screen of death.…
What is your recession sales strategy?
July 03, 2009 10:48 PM
FRIDAY'S MINI-REPORT.... Today's edition of quick hits: * Yesterday, U.S. troops faced minimal resistance in Afghanistan. Today was far more difficult: "Taliban insurgents stepped up attacks Friday against U.S. Marines in southern Afghanistan's Helmand River valley, forcing troops in some...
by Steve Benen at July 03, 2009 10:25 PM
Ammo
by digby
The Urban Institute has released a study on the public plan option that should be of interest to those who are following this debate. They focus on the competition factor, particularly on the fact that consolidation and concentration have already made any complaints on that count moot, something we've written about here a few times:
This paper makes the argument that a public plan is important to health reform because it will contribute to cost containment, primarily by addressing problems caused by increased concentration in insurance and hospital markets. We describe how the public plan might be structured, how many people might be expected to enroll, and how much money the public plan might save. We discuss the most frequent arguments that are made in opposition to the public plan. We conclude that the private insurance industry would survive at about the same size but be more efficient and more effective in controlling health care spending.
Unfortunately, the debate over whether to provide a public health insurance option as a competitor to private plans under comprehensive health care reform seems to have become an ideological litmus test. Conservatives are fervently aligned against the option while liberals are as strongly in favor it. Those who oppose it fear that the public plan will have so many inherent advantages that private plans will be unable to compete, eventually leaving the system entirely in government hands by destroying a competitive insurance market. Supporters believe that a public plan is a critical fallback option in a universal system that would cover many high-need and low-income groups.
The arguments around the public plan too often ignore what we believe is the central reason for including a public plan as a component of reform: that health insurance markets today, by and large, are simply not competitive. And as such, these markets are not providing the benefits one would expect from competition, including efficient operations and consequent control over health care costs. We believe that the concentration in the insurance and hospital industries that has taken place over the past several years has been a significant contributor to this problem. The role of the government plan is to counter the adverse impacts of market concentration and, in doing so, slow the growth in health care costs.
In this paper, we first describe problems with competition in current insurer and provider markets, in particular focusing on the implications of consolidation in both markets. We then discuss how a public plan could help address these problems. Next, we examine how a public plan might be structured and how much money a plan might save. We address how large the public plan would be and what impact it would have on the current private insurance industry. We then examine the most common arguments against the public plan. We conclude by arguing that private insurance plans would survive but be more efficient and more effective controlling health care spending.
The survival of the insurance companies isn't something I personally lose much sleep over, but this info might be useful to those who need to refute the idea that the insurance companies will all be driven out of business if they are forced to constrain their enormous profits and pay their CEOs less than
15 billion dollars in compensation.* United Health Group
CEO: William W McGuire
2005: 124.8 mil
5-year: 342 mil
* Forest Labs
CEO: Howard Solomon
2005: 92.1 mil
5-year: 295 mil
* Caremark Rx
CEO: Edwin M Crawford
2005: 77.9 mil
5-year: 93.6 mil
* Abbott Lab
CEO: Miles White
2005: 26.2 mil
5-year: 25.8 mil
* Aetna
CEO: John Rowe
2005: 22.1 mil
5-year:57.8 mil
* Amgen
CEO: Kevin Sharer
2005:5.7 mil
5-year:59.5 mil
* Bectin-Dickinson
CEO: Edwin Ludwig
2005: 10 mil
5-year:18 mil
* Boston Scientific
CEO:
2005:38.1 mil
5-year:45 mil
* Cardinal Health
CEO: James Tobin
2005:1.1 mil
5-year:33.5 mil
* Cigna
CEO: H. Edward Hanway
2005:13.3 mil
5-year:62.8 mil
* Genzyme
CEO: Henri Termeer
2005: 19 mil
5-year:60.7 mil
* Humana
CEO: Michael McAllister
2005:2.3 mil
5-year:12.9 mil
* Johnson & Johnson
CEO: William Weldon
2005:6.1 mil
5-year:19.7 mil
* Laboratory Corp America
CEO: Thomas MacMahon
2005:7.9 mil
5-year:41.8 mil
* Eli Lilly
CEO: Sidney Taurel
2005:7.2 mil
5-year:37.9 mil
* McKesson
CEO: John Hammergen
2005: 13.4 mil
5-year:31.2 mil
* Medtronic
CEO: Arthur Collins
2005: 4.7 mil
5-year:39 mil
* Merck Raymond Gilmartin
CEO:
2005: 37.8 mil
5-year:49.6 mil
* PacifiCare Health
CEO: Howard Phanstiel
2005: 3.4 mil
5-year: 8.5 mil
* Pfizer
CEO: Henry McKinnell
2005: 14 mil
5-year: 74 mil
* Well Choice
CEO: Michael Stocker
2005: 3.2 mil
5-year: 10.7 mil
* WellPoint
CEO: Larry Glasscock
2005: 23 mil
5-year: 46.8 mil
* Wyeth
CEO: Robert Essner
2005:6.5 mil
5-year: 28.9 mil
TOTAL 2005: 559.8 mil
TOTAL 5-Year: 14.9 billion
.
July 03, 2009 10:00 PM
Dell's shopping for growth heats Acer speculation, and TomTom watchers say Apple is interested. TheStreet.com's Scott Moritz separates fact from ridiculous rumor.
July 03, 2009 10:00 PM
Mining company Teck Resources says it is selling a 17% stake to China Investment Corp. for $1.5 billion as it seeks to reduce its debt.
July 03, 2009 09:05 PM
Man #1, to dog: See you later, Cody.
Man #2 (dog owner): His name is Toby.
Man #1: But I've been calling him Cody for ten years!
Man #2: I know.
--Hell's Kitchen
Overheard by: M. Blair
July 03, 2009 09:00 PM
PALIN TO RESIGN.... Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) decided to shake up an otherwise slow news day with an astounding announcement: not only has she decided to skip a re-election campaign next year, she's also resigning from office altogether later...
by Steve Benen at July 03, 2009 08:40 PM
Some of us have been on vacation since Wednesday, at the delightful Beach, but how could we miss Sarah Palin’s latest cosmic sack o’ lies and demons and terror? Watch her “I’m going to resign because governing a state is hard when you have absolutely no interest in governing a state” speech, it is packed with funnies. We are sobbing. There are evil monsters screeching in the background. And Piper’s feet itch! [YouTube]
by Jim Newell at July 03, 2009 08:39 PM
Bizarre
by digby
Gov. Sarah Palin will resign her office in a few weeks, she said during a news conference at her Wasilla home Friday morning.
Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell will be inaugurated at the Governor's Picnic at Pioneer Park in Fairbanks the weekend of July 25, Palin said.
There was no immediate word as to why she will resign, though speculation has been rampant that the former vice presidential candidate is gearing up for a run at the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
Palin made the announcement flanked by Parnell and most, if not all, of her cabinet.
Why not serve out her term? The presidential election doesn't begin for at least another two years. Wouldn't it be better to have a full term as governor of Alaska under her belt? In fact, I assumed she'd want to run for governor again so she could run for president
as the second term Governor of Alaska. Give her a tiny bit of gravitas, which she badly needs.
I guess the base loves her so maybe all she has to do is run the megachurch and teabagger circuit for the next three years to get the nod. Who knows what the path to GOP leadership is these days? But whatever she does, it looks like she's going to do it her way. It should be fascinating to watch.
Update: And by the way, to those who insist that Palin hasn't governed as a social conservative,
this pretty much proves otherwise.
And I don't know if you saw her press conference, but I almost expected her to start babbling about soul mates and David and Bathsheba. The Republicans are getting more deeply weird every day.
.
July 03, 2009 08:37 PM
SonyInsider dug up an FCC filing that indicates that the forthcoming PSP Go will have a significantly faster top processor speed than than current PSP models. Specifically, the Go's CPU can clock up to 480MHz, compared to the 333MHz speed of the existing models.
The site ends the post by asking the obvious question: "What will a 480MHz PSP Go bring to the table?" I suspect the answer to this is, "Nothing that hasn't already been announced." Let me explain.
Click here to read the rest of this article
July 03, 2009 08:34 PM
In March, I posted about using article feedback to improve knowledge base articles and the importance of making knowledge base articles easy to read; but those are specific areas that are part of a greater knowledge base goal, which is to make the process of Firefox self-help as easy as possible.
There are few sources of information to we draw from:
- Top searches: The most common search terms in the SUMO Weekly metrics document.
- Weekly common issues: Our Weekly Common Issues page tracks the most common support issues each week.
- Article polls: At the bottom of each article, there are poll questions: “Did this article solve a problem you had with Firefox?“, “Was this article easy to understand?“, and “Please rate your experience with solving your problem on support.mozilla.com from 1 to 5” (For more precise data there’s the PageView Data.)
- And of course, Article comments: There is a text field on each article for users to provide feedback about the article. When logged in as a contributor, that feedback is displayed at the bottom of the article.
Here’s how that data is utilized to measure the quality of the knowledge base, and make it better:
The top search terms are tested to find out if the first search results contain the article the user is most likely searching for.
If they don’t:
- The correct article may need to be renamed to match the search term.
- The top article in search results may be mistaken for a different issue; so a link to the correct article is added in the intro of the first search result. If users are being redirected to the correct article, the poll data should improve.
- Keywords that match the search terms are added to the correct article.
For generic search terms the article comments for each result may clarify what users are asking about.
The weekly common issues page is checked for any items that need documentation in the knowledge base. If enough information is available to create documentation, the relevant articles are updated or a new article is created.
The comments in articles with the lowest understandability score are checked to get details on what is not understandable in the article, so we can assess what can be done to eliminate that confusion. Sometimes that means rewording or reformatting the article. In some cases it is a matter of adding screenshots. In other cases, it’s a matter of streamlining or purging the article to simplify it for users.
In the end, it’s about taking the data, analyzing why the data is what it is, and what we can do to improve each issue. As a result, the article poll scores should go up, and users will get answers to their questions about using Firefox. We’ve outlined these tests in a contributor page, so everyone as a community can be most affective in making the knowledge base better each week. You can post any suggestions for improvement in the Contributors forum.
by Chris Ilias at July 03, 2009 08:06 PM
Come on, we are supposed to be celebrating AMERICA this July 4th Weekend, but of course with Sarah Palin, it’s all about Sarah Palin. So she has RUINED our Independence Day by announcing that she’s quitting the governor’s job (boring!) and handing over power to the lieutenant governor, and this apparently means she’s running for the GOP nomination for PRESIDENT (we just elected one!) in 2012, the end? Probably not. [Fox News/CNN]
by Ken Layne at July 03, 2009 08:04 PM
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) announced this morning from her home in Wasilla that she will not be seeking re-election and that she will be stepping down in a few weeks. Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell will be inaugurated as Alaska’s governor on July 25. A local NBC affiliate reports that “there was no immediate word as to why she will resign, though speculation has been rampant that the former vice presidential candidate is gearing up for a run at the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.” Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News yesterday that Palin “is not a serious candidate for the presidency.” “You cannot sustain a campaign of platitudes and clichés over a year and a half if you’re running for the presidency,” he said.
After running through her accomplishments as governor during the announcement, Palin said, “This success I am proud to take credit, for hiring the right people.” She said she decided to “veto” those “stimulus dollars” because “some of those dollars would harm Alaska and they harm America.” “So that Alaska may progress, I will not seek re-election as governor,” she said, adding, “I’ve determined it’s best to transfer the authority of governor to Lieutenant Governor Parnell.” Watch it (note the video feed cut out before Palin finished her statement):
by Ben Armbruster at July 03, 2009 08:00 PM
QUOTE OF THE DAY.... Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) of Nevada. Reid says he expects the tactic of gentle persuasion to work best, given the size of his Senate Democratic flock and the political divergences within it. "I don't...
by Steve Benen at July 03, 2009 07:25 PM
Communities don’t usually “just happen” there is idea, or vision that attracts people, and there are community organizer(s) or catalysts that proactively seek out others who share a vision and help bring a community together.
Growing community, cultivating community, nurturing community, weaving community, building community, creating community – all slightly different metaphors describing this process that happens when people make the effort to create space (an environment) for people to meet, inviting people into the space and encouraging conversations that help connections and foster relatedness.
Community is what unfolds when people come together voluntarily, learn about one another, begin to care about one another, and start to do things together. In doing things together that are successful, trust develops and people begin to work and act together IN community, doing progressively more difficult things, becoming strong and more resilient.
Thanks to Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point we know about Connectors, Mavens, and Salespeople, social archetypes that play different roles, each with their own value in helping information flow, networks form and communities emerge.
It was great to have him articulate this i finally had a label for my own activity/passion – I have become a maven of a few things throughout the years. user-centric digital identity was a subject I really got into in 2003-4. I read everything I could about the subject as I began to meet some of the people thinking about it. I became passionate about the topic and applied my connector skills and started meeting finding people who were interested in the subject. Those who didn’t know about the subject I sold them on the idea 
. I am not by nature a sales person about “anything” but only those things I believe in.
One can also see a community as the evolution and maturing of a network, that is the relationships between people. When beginning the links might be very weak, but in time as the potential community members get to know each other and take action together and the ties strengthen; they become a stronger and more resilient “real” community. A paper that was very influential in my understanding was Building Smart Communities through Network Weaving by Valdis Krebs and June Holley that I read in 2003 (along with every popular science book on network science out then: Linked, Sync, Six Degrees, Emergence, Nexus)
This paper investigates building sustainable communities through improving their connectivity – internally and externally – using network ties to create economic opportunities. Improved connectivity is created through an iterative process of knowing the network and knitting the network.
Knowing the network and knitting the network have been foundational in my practice of community weaving. I regularly meet with people in the community and help them get connected to others who’s work is related to their goals. Two examples first RSA as often happens those new to the community “knock on my door” and ask to meet for lunch or coffee to share what they are doing and learn more about who they should connect to in the community. Mike wanted to meet with me he to share about his new company Gluu that does inter-domain identity. It was great to learn what he was up to and also share papers/doc’s/projects relevant to his work and people he should meet. Yesterday I followed up with someone I invited to/and attended IIW. I spent 2.5 hours talking with Joe Johnston who attended about his efforts to bring interoperable identity (OpenID and other things) to Pachamama Alliance and other organizations with similar missions.
In terms of knowing and knitting networks between different communities/standards bodies/consortia/projects I wrote a post about Community Diplomats and Community Diplomacy last year thinking about different community-connecting roles and how if they are named they can be seen better and foster inter-group collaboration and communication.
Another essential but often un-named aspect/milestone of community development is communities development is shared language and then shared understanding. Shared Language is a prerequisite to collaboration enabling what were different perspectives and world views to sync, and then out of that it is much easier to work together. Eugene articulates three elements needed to create shared language:
- Share individual contexts
- Encourage namespace clash
- Leave enough time and space to work things out
An example of shared language that was developed in the community was the identity gang lexicon that Paul and others worked on in 2004-2005 so that when discussing different identity technologies there was at least a common language to talk about them.
Another example of the evolution of the communities shared understanding grew out of Johannes original presentation at IIW2006 with the identity triangle with three pillars – user-controlled, company controlled and then microsoft controled. He did an updated it almost a year later explaining of the community language and understanding had evolved. This starting point was moved forward by Eve Maler creating the Venn of Identity and became an IEEE paper written by her and Drummond Reed. Johannes has continued to be a wholistic thinker about the landscape and in 2008 he articulated an onion to think about which identity technologies are applicable where.
Space and Spaciousness for community to form is a key part of what the Internet Identity Workshops have been about about. We have never “set the agenda” there but instead allow anyone attending to post a session idea. We encouraged dialogue with space rather then having an agenda.
We have an amazingly rich community fabric of working relationships that is both resilient and delicate.
July 03, 2009 07:03 PM
This is cross posted on the IIW blog .
When we first started meeting (the early “seedling” meetings of community) at other people’s conferences, there were Microsoft people, Liberty Alliance/SAML people, Shibboleth implementers, user-centric folks (OpenID, LID, sxip, i-names/xri), big idea folks (Doc Searls), etc. We met for a couple of hours at a time and knew there was common ground, but knew we needed more time to really understand each other: to have more of a shared language and develop enough strength in the relationships in the community to work together. We figured we needed to have more time to meet together, so we convened the Internet Identity Workshop. That first event was amazing and quite formative – kicking off the conversation that would lead to OpenIDv2 via Yadis. Kim Cameron presented his 7 laws of identity that have become foundational to community thinking and introduced the idea of information cards and selectors; much work is now happening around this.
Soon afterward Brett McDowell the ED at Liberty Alliance approached me and Phil about having an Internet Identity Workshop (IIW) next to (the days following and in the same location) an upcoming Liberty Alliance meeting. We thought this was a great idea to create more space for people to meet about user-centric identity technologies and issues. When Microsoft got wind of this, boy did I get an earful – they felt that the neutrality of IIW would be totally compromised if it came to be that closely associated with Liberty Alliance (remember Liberty Alliance was originally formed by Sun and others in response to Microsoft Passport).
IIW had provided a forum for anyone working on user-centric identity technologies to come together without anyone making an “agenda” for the meeting or creating a “technology road map.” Literally anyone who came could put a subject on the agenda on the day of the event. All parties did want to increase dialogue and cross-pollination among the groups, and we found a way through by jointly (IIW and Liberty Alliance) producing what we named the Identity Open Space (we also said we would be open to co-producing with others who asked – we did two with Digital Identity World). It was in Vancouver Canada and Kim Cameron along with several Microsoft folks along with many in the user-centric community attended and because it was the two days after a Liberty Alliance meeting many Liberty people were also there, and it was a good event that moved the industry forward.
Right in the middle of getting this worked out – I on a personal level had a very intense experience being caught in the middle – a giant trade association on one side and Microsoft on the other. We (me, Phil, Doc, Kim, Brett) managed to navigate this as a community and do the right thing and we became stronger as a community for having done so.
We continued to have IIW’s every 6 months and in 2006 it was clear we were going beyond just IIW and needed a community home/container to connect community efforts and provide common services (blogs, wikis, bank account for doing common work like holding events). We held a series of conversations and decided to create a community organization, drawing on an existing one, Identity Commons – the community liked the purpose and principles approach for bringing people together. As a codition of brand transfer to a our nonprofit organization we worked on our version of purpose and principles. There were some delays in actually getting the organization legally formed and the brand transfered, but in 2007 we were an official organization: a network of organizations, initiatives, and projects all working on different aspects of a people-centric identity layer of the web. There are several places you can read about community history and background around Identity Commons. I wrote “What the heck is Identity Commons?”.
Next fall we are hosting our 9th event. Many things have move forward significantly in the community – OpenIDv2, OAuth, Venn of Identity paper, OSIS Interop, Concordia use-cases, Information Card evolution including Augmented Browsing with Action Cards, Portable Contacts, Open Social, OpenID/OAuth hybrid, Activity Streams, Distributed Social Networking, Discovery particularly XRD. So what has made IIW work so well in fostering the kind of collaboration and innovation that has emerged from it?
- We have kept the space free: no one has the ability to buy time at the conference.
- All ideas are welcome: there is no committee controlling the agenda, so politics about what is “on the agenda” or “not” just doesn’t happen.
- It is a working workshop to solve real problems, move technical projects forward and discuss interoperability among them.
- We put attention towards creating the space for relationships between people to form naturally over time and thus enabled trust to grow.
July 03, 2009 07:03 PM
This past month has been interesting for Facebook – they hired Timothy Sparapani as their lobbyist in Washington:
As a prominent privacy advocate, Timothy Sparapani, former senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that Internet companies have too much control over consumers’ data. The self-described “privacy zealot” didn’t join Facebook until seven months ago because he was uneasy about revealing personal information on the site.
He joins 24-year-old Adam Coner for the last year who has had as his main job “educat[ing] members of Congress and Capitol Hill staffers about leveraging Facebook to reach constituents.”
The current Chief Privacy officer Chris Kelly will be going on a leave of absence in September to focus on running for Attorney General of California.
EPIC has a very detailed page about Facebook Privacy. It is an impressive page that will give you pause. It outlines all the major features of the service it has concerns about. It has a list of all the EPIC Actions related to Facebook too.
This week Facebook is taking some steps to improve privacy from its website:
The power to share is the cornerstone of Facebook. Privacy and the tools for tailoring what information is shared with whom are at the heart of trust. Over the past five years, Facebook has learned that effective privacy is grounded in three basic principles:
- Control. When people can easily control the audience for their information and content, they share more and they’re able to better connect with the people who matter in their lives.
- Simplicity. When tools are simple, people are more likely to use them and understand them.
- Connection. With effective tools, people can successfully balance their desire to control access to information with their desire to connect – to discover and be discovered by those they care about.
That’s why in the coming days, we’ll be improving privacy on Facebook by launching a series of tests that guide people to new, simpler tools of control and connection.
I wrote about some of the issues I have with Facebook when I heard Dave Morin talk at SXSW “Am I to “old” to get Facebook – or do they not get it?”. I highlighted 3 different issues:
- What Blane Cook describes as “being in a room with everyone you ever met all the time”: all my friends from different contexts of my life get all the same ’status’ updates and I don’t use them cause I feel like it is social spam to speak to them with the same voice and same frequency. I also don’t like that it broadcasts everything I “do” in the network to everyone.
- “Real Names” vs. handles online – their belief they have “everyone’s real name in facebook”
- The difference that women experience in online space and how they manage and protect their identity and what information is online.
Here is what they are saying about how to address this issue:
They are introducing a Publisher Privacy Control so that on a per-post basis users can control who sees each post. Friends, Friends and Family etc. On the other end of the spectrum, you can also share with “everyone” now.
They are simplifying their privacy settings. Hopefully this will make it more usable.
They are figuring out how to gracefully help people transition between the old settings and the new way.
They are asking everyone to revisit their settings…because:
We think Facebook is most useful when people can find and connect with each other, which is why this tool will enable you to make available those parts of your profile that you feel comfortable sharing in order to facilitate better connection. You will have the choice of being as open or as limited in the sharing of this information as you want.
The byline on the post is cute:
Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, is glad to be offering you more control.
Read Write Web goes into their understanding of the announcement and user experience. This is a long, good piece.
July 03, 2009 07:03 PM
This is really exciting news for the identity community since getting mainstream adoption of OpenID has been a challenge for the community. They worked with JanRain on implementing the project. Here is the RWW story.
I just went to the KMart site to “join”, and at first I thought it wasn’t there. Turns out the option to sign up with OpenID is below the fold; you have to scroll down to find it. This is disappointing – it turns out that many web users don’t actually know how to scroll! Facebook, Yahoo!, Google, AOL, Twitter, and MySpace are on the first set of options; OpenID and Windows Live ID are on the second.
I choose the OpenID option and entered my i-name (yes, I still use it) and it worked. I like the new “pop-up” method of supporting authentication – it does the redirection without taking you away from the website. I think the OpenID community is improving the UI by leaps and bounds.
One thing I don’t like is having to “pick a screen name” I always get stuck I went with Kaliya figuring that this would be a profile I would almost never use. I may delete it.
Congratulations!
July 03, 2009 07:02 PM
Tom Sorell, chief investment officer for Guardian Life Insurance, says commercial mortgages are the next big threat to America's economy.
July 03, 2009 07:00 PM
Guy #1: He wouldn't stop telling me to eat the cactus, so I just broke down and did it.
Guy #2: Wow, what about the needles?
Guy #1: I put it in a blender first, dumbass.
Guy #2: Oh. So what happened?
Guy #1: I drank like three quarters of it and I threw up. A lot. Like "mother of god."
Guy #2: Sheesh, then what?
Guy #1: I passed out for about 9 hours.
Guy #2: Awesome.
Guy #1: Yeah.
--G Train
July 03, 2009 07:00 PM
Usability guru Jakob Nielsen opened up a can of worms when he made the case for unmasking passwords in his blog. I chimed in that I agreed. Almost 165 comments on my blog (and several articles, essays, and many other blog posts) later, the consensus is that we were wrong.
I was certainly too glib. Like any security countermeasure, password masking has value. But like any countermeasure, password masking is not a panacea. And the costs of password masking need to be balanced with the benefits.
The cost is accuracy. When users don't get visual feedback from what they're typing, they're more prone to make mistakes. This is especially true with character strings that have non-standard characters and capitalization. This has several ancillary costs:
- Users get pissed off.
- Users are more likely to choose easy-to-type passwords, reducing both mistakes and security. Removing password masking will make people more comfortable with complicated passwords: they'll become easier to memorize and easier to use.
The benefits of password masking are more obvious:
- Security from shoulder surfing. If people can't look over your shoulder and see what you're typing, they're much less likely to be able to steal your password. Yes, they can look at your fingers instead, but that's much harder than looking at the screen. Surveillance cameras are also an issue: it's easier to watch someone's fingers on recorded video, but reading a cleartext password off a screen is trivial.
In some situations, there is a trust dynamic involved. Do you type your password while your boss is standing over your shoulder watching? How about your spouse or partner? Your parent or child? Your teacher or students? At ATMs, there's a social convention of standing away from someone using the machine, but that convention doesn't apply to computers. You might not trust the person standing next to you enough to let him see your password, but don't feel comfortable telling him to look away. Password masking solves that social awkwardness.
- Security from screen scraping malware. This is less of an issue; keyboard loggers are more common and unaffected by password masking. And if you have that kind of malware on your computer, you've got all sorts of problems.
- A security "signal." Password masking alerts users, and I'm thinking users who aren't particularly security savvy, that passwords are a secret.
I believe that shoulder surfing isn't nearly the problem it's made out to be. One, lots of people use their computers in private, with no one looking over their shoulders. Two, personal handheld devices are used very close to the body, making shoulder surfing all that much harder. Three, it's hard to quickly and accurately memorize a random non-alphanumeric string that flashes on the screen for a second or so.
This is not to say that shoulder surfing isn't a threat. It is. And, as many readers pointed out, password masking is one of the reasons it isn't more of a threat. And the threat is greater for those who are not fluent computer users: slow typists and people who are likely to choose bad passwords. But I believe that the risks are overstated.
Password masking is definitely important on public terminals with short PINs. (I'm thinking of ATMs.) The value of the PIN is large, shoulder surfing is more common, and a four-digit PIN is easy to remember in any case.
And lastly, this problem largely disappears on the Internet on your personal computer. Most browsers include the ability to save and then automatically populate password fields, making the usability problem go away at the expense of another security problem (the security of the password becomes the security of the computer). There's a Firefox plugin that gets rid of password masking. And programs like my own Password Safe allow passwords to be cut and pasted into applications, also eliminating the usability problem.
One approach is to make it a configurable option. High-risk banking applications could turn password masking on by default; other applications could turn it off by default. Browsers in public locations could turn it on by default. I like this, but it complicates the user interface.
A reader mentioned BlackBerry's solution, which is to display each character briefly before masking it; that seems like an excellent compromise.
I, for one, would like the option. I cannot type complicated WEP keys into Windows -- twice! what's the deal with that? -- without making mistakes. I cannot type my rarely used and very complicated PGP keys without making a mistake unless I turn off password masking. That's what I was reacting to when I said "I agree."
So was I wrong? Maybe. Okay, probably. Password masking definitely improves security; many readers pointed out that they regularly use their computer in crowded environments, and rely on password masking to protect their passwords. On the other hand, password masking reduces accuracy and makes it less likely that users will choose secure and hard-to-remember passwords, I will concede that the password masking trade-off is more beneficial than I thought in my snap reaction, but also that the answer is not nearly as obvious as we have historically assumed.
by schneier at July 03, 2009 06:42 PM
PONDERING RATINGS SUCCESS.... Reader D.R. posed a question via email the other day, and I promised him I'd respond online. He asked: I detest Fox News (except Shepard Smith) but why are their ratings zooming so high? They are on...
by Steve Benen at July 03, 2009 06:35 PM
In the first installment in a three-part series, corporate crisis expert Richard S. Levick explains how cyberspace creates very real challenges for companies.
July 03, 2009 06:35 PM
There is another bill [PDF] in the SCO bankruptcy for us to go over with a fine-toothed comb, this one from Pachulski Stang, their 20th bill. There is another from Tanner [PDF]. And we have finished doing the text of the exhibits to SCO's proposed sale, and I noticed some things in the trademark list I thought I might highlight. It always pays to do these text versions. You do notice things that otherwise don't seem to stand out.
First, I notice a trademark on the list is actually dead, WEBMIN, cancelled as of January of this year, so I think it might be useful to go through that list more carefully than SCO did. Certainly a potential buyer would want to know what it is actually getting, I would think. And creditors might want to know if the sale price makes any sense.
And that's not the only odd thing.
July 03, 2009 06:34 PM
Fur enough
Strategy Boutique You might notice that there's something subtly different about the new look of Firefox - the popular virtual memory stress test tool that's cunningly disguised as a web browser. With an icy blast from the Arctic, the British Isles - or something that used to look quite like them - have disappeared beneath sheets of glaciers.…
What is your recession sales strategy?
July 03, 2009 06:23 PM
Fur enough
Strategy Boutique You might notice that there's something subtly different about the new look of Firefox - the popular virtual memory stress test tool that's cunningly disguised as a web browser. With an icy blast from the Arctic, the British Isles - or something that used to look quite like them - have disappeared beneath sheets of glaciers.…
What is your recession sales strategy?
July 03, 2009 06:23 PM
Cryptofascist warblog The Politico has won the long weekend (and, by retroactive default, the Revolutionary War) with their crucial SCOOP on Obama’s weird obsession with pronouncing proper nouns—names of places he’s visiting, names of people he’s speaking to, that sort of thing—in the way in which they are actually intended to be pronounced. Quoth Politico’s Carol “Robert” E. Lee: “In Obama’s view, pronouncing someone’s name or hometown correctly is a simple way of showing respect.” This is called Obamanomics, and it’s foreclosing America’s jobs.
This is because Barack Obama’s name (”Barack Obama”) has also been mispronounced on occasion! ACTUAL LEDE of this patriotic linguistic exegesis:
“Bill Clinton. George Bush. Jimmy Carter. They’re all pretty easy to pronounce.
But Barack Obama is not so simple.”
Phonetically, it is “Blagojevich.” But the Queen’s English was not invented by Jesus for use towards such recalcitrant vowelage!
We’re going to get into some heavy psychological shit for a minute, but we totally get it, you know? Obama’s wonky obsession with “correctness” and “facts” is mayhap tied to America’s habitual inability to properly intone the 6 letters—of which all 6 are vowels—of the Hawaiian alphabet. But that still begs the question: Why is Liz Becton blogging for Politico under the pseudonym “Robert E. Lee”?
[It's Pronounced "Drudge Bait"]
by Juli Weiner at July 03, 2009 06:06 PM
What we’ve done so far over the past 3 months:
- 2,636 manual test cases run via litmus
- 150 Bugs created spanning multiple Mozilla related projects
- 8 MozMill Testscripts created
- 15 Website Test Reports collected
- An average of 39.3 Testday participants on IRC partaking in the day’s activities
I’m pretty proud of the work that’s been done so far by the Mozilla QA Community since we re-started Testdays on a bi-monthly basis. That’s a lot of results over a time when we were still trying to figure out how to use Testdays in the best way possible and squeeze the amount of participation with what we had at the time.
Of course, it’s still in its infancy as a lot of infrastructure is still in need of being built up ( i.e. standard test guides, indexing participants and their contributions over individual as well as multiple Testdays, QMO work, creating a persistent Testday personality, etc. ) as well as finding a way to spread the word to people who really do need these events to hone their skills and/or learn new ones ( i.e. currently discouraged workers, students [high school and college], those who are just interested in web QA work, those interested in the advocation of the quality of the internet’s content, etc. ). A lot of it is already in the process of being done, so expect us to get a lot better and a lot more efficient in the coming months as we continue to drive this to wherever it may go.
With all of that said, what would you like to see out of Testdays that you haven’t seen already? I’d love to hear anything, especially comments and concerns, about what the Mozilla Community has seen so far and would like/like not to see again!
by ahdesai at July 03, 2009 06:05 PM
Dodge the shareware sledgehammer
Mac Secrets QTMovie, the principal class inside the QTKit framework, isn't just for playing movies.…
What is your recession sales strategy?
July 03, 2009 06:02 PM
Dodge the shareware sledgehammer
Mac Secrets QTMovie, the principal class inside the QTKit framework, isn't just for playing movies.…
What is your recession sales strategy?
July 03, 2009 06:02 PM
Blue grass county hit by Trojan-fueled cybercrime
A gang of cybercrooks has made off with $415,000 from the coffers of Bullitt County, Kentucky following the conclusion of an elaborate phishing scam, The Washington Post reports.…
Offloading malware protection to the cloud
July 03, 2009 06:01 PM
Blue grass county hit by Trojan-fueled cybercrime
A gang of cybercrooks has made off with $415,000 from the coffers of Bullitt County, Kentucky following the conclusion of an elaborate phishing scam, The Washington Post reports.…
Offloading malware protection to the cloud
July 03, 2009 06:01 PM
You want to use @font-face, then you realize it’s got some downsides. First of all, it’s another HTTP request, and we know that the golden rule of web performance is to keep HTTP requests to a minimum. Secondly fonts aren’t even small files, they can be 50k+ in size. Lastly the lag of fonts loading last means you page seems to morph into it’s final form.
Here’s a cool little optimization. By using a data: URL you can use the font inline by encoding in base64. For example:
@font-face {
font-family: "My Font";
src: URL("data:font/opentype;base64,[base-encoded font here]");
}
body { font-family: "My Font", serif }
You can see this in action here. This seems to work fine in Firefox 3.5, and Safari 4 (presumably any modern WebKit based browser). Other browsers will simply act as if they don’t support @font-face.
In practice I’d recommend putting it in a separate stylesheet rather than inline CSS so that your pages are smaller and CSS can be cached for subsequent pageviews.
Data URL’s are part of Acid2, which most modern browsers either pass or plan to pass. If you use an Open Type font you’d get pretty decent compatibility (IE only supports Open Type). Using True Type you’d still get pretty good compatibility sans IE. Check the @font-face page on MDC for more details. Unlike images, browsers that support @font-face are likely to support data: URL’s as well, making this a pretty good solution.
Special thanks to Open Font Library for having some nice free fonts with awesome licensing. This post was partially in response to a comment left the other day on my @font-face hacks blog post.
by Robert at July 03, 2009 06:00 PM
Talk And Action
by digby
Thank you all for being so generous with your time, comments and donations to Blue America's Campaign For Health Care Choice and our project to tell Finance Committee Senator Blanche Lincoln that health care reform without at least a public plan is no plan at all. Now that the HELP Committee has released its report and all the Democratic Senators have committed to it, the action moves to Finance --- and Blanche Lincoln is one of the only Senators on that committee who is up for reelection in 2010. Next week she's going to be hearing from her constituents about her unwillingness to back a quality public plan.
You've been amazingly supportive and we appreciate it. You can still vote for the ad of your choice by clicking here.
But we aren't the only ones doing this sort of thing. Change Congress is also pressuring Mary Landrieu to support a public plan. Landrieu has been pretty strident and explicit in her condemnation of the public plan choice, but needless to say, if there was ever a state that needs more support, not less, it's Louisiana. It's outrageous that she would stand in the way of health care reform:
And the PCCC, DFA and Move On are running an ad in Washington DC with the names of thousands of people who are asking for a public option. You can ad your name to the ad here.
Finally, MoveOn is running this one in California, which is giving Difi heartburn. (The other day she sniffed that it "wasn't helpful," which means, it wasn't helpful to her. And that, of course, is the point.)
Adam Green has written about the various ad campaigns at Open Left today.
Obviously, nobody knows what's going to come out of the legislative meat grinder yet. Everything is very fluid. (What happened to those co-ops?) The devil, as always, is in the details and the details are changing every day. But we're hopeful that we can help guide the basic contours of the debate with this insistence on the inclusion of the public plan. We'll see what happens.
It's going to be a long hot summer.
.
July 03, 2009 06:00 PM
Yes, Utah
The ultra-secretive National Security Agency plans to build a 1-million-square-foot data center in Utah as it seeks to decentralize its computing resources and tap regions with ample supplies of lower-cost electricity.…
What is your recession sales strategy?
July 03, 2009 05:53 PM
Yes, Utah
The ultra-secretive National Security Agency plans to build a 1-million-square-foot data center in Utah as it seeks to decentralize its computing resources and tap regions with ample supplies of lower-cost electricity.…
What is your recession sales strategy?
July 03, 2009 05:53 PM
El jugador, conocido como Ricdic, cambió el dinero por casi 4.000 euros para, entre otras cosas, pagar facturas médicas. Leer. Escuchar
July 03, 2009 05:46 PM
