Author: Tim's Bookmarks

The occasionally cranky Cory Doctorow is spot-on here. First they came for the rectal-cavity terrorists, but I didn’t speak out because… wait a minute…

One side effect of the steady downward spiral of newspapers: two hours of choral singing get two sentences in an otherwise nice, if brief, review.

Ouch: “By all means, then, let’s have a new ‘Tosca.’ But it needs to be good. And this is not. Although Bondy has conceived potent stagings of ‘Salome,’ ‘Don Carlos,’ and Handel’s ‘Hercules,’ among other operas, he has failed to find a clear angle on ‘Tosca,’ and instead delivered an uneven, muddled, weirdly dull production that interferes fatally with the working of Puccini’s perfect contraption.”

Nokia’s new platform documentation includes a pretty good chapter on mobile application security.

The meltdown as a system dynamics problem.

I mourn the death of Mr Safire, a humane conservative and a great writer, in a time when both seem rare. I read his columns on language with the purest pleasure.

Makes me want to say Hwæt!

Interesting practical web usability findings.

Arguments from a writer in favor of Google Books. I agree–it’s been invaluable in writing the history of something whose history has never been written but which is scattered across hundreds of books and documents.

Details the legal efforts required to establish that City Hall employees were deleting emails in violation of retention policy, and that the retention policy wasn’t enforced.

What I should probably be doing this weekend.

Arvo Pärt’s Fourth Symphony–review of the forthcoming recording from the LA premiere. Can’t wait.

Sounds like some interesting wine choices, from a region I’ve never heard of.

Quantifying the nadir of the UVA football program under Groh.

Full video of the president’s appearance on the Letterman show.

The basic issues: a retention policy with lots of room for leeway, and no automation.

Description of the basics of the standard encryption algorithm, by stick figures.

Positive unintended consequences of London’s city streets tax.

Security moves up the IT stack.

Fixes “issues browsing the iTunes store.” Not including fixing iTunes Plus and Complete My Album links–still MIA.

Farewell to Ann Hobson Pilot at the BSO. I wish I could see the premiere of the concerto John Williams wrote for her on Friday night.

Looks like classical music will be alive and well in Boston. Maybe now they’ll play some real music.

“By contrast, she said, the FCC appeared to be engaging in ‘regulatory intervention into a vibrant marketplace.'” The irony being that it’s the carriers who propose to quash innovation by discriminating based on protocols.

Using scripting additions to inject 32 bit Safari plugin code into the 64 bit Safari process. Code injection as a feature raises my eyebrows a little, but I suppose this is no different from any plugin.

Pictorial guide to replacing the battery in a VW Passat key remote.

Man, what a nasty thing this is. Someone browsing to the Curious George PBS page is just trying to entertain their kid, and then suddenly they get infected with malware.

Putting checks and balances into the PATRIOT Act, and curbing the warrantless wiretapping, is finally some real progress on the constitutional front. Yay.

You have to see the type specimens (actual size) to believe. Really incredible.

Address space randomization still not fully implemented in Snow Leopard, but data execution prevention is, and the new QuickTime should close some holes too. It’s more secure than Leopard but lacks security features present in Vista and Windows 7. Of course, it’s a smaller target than either of those OSes.

Application vulnerabilities exceed OS vulnerabilities.

Nice essay on the benefit of “list-of-n-things” style writing.

Music geek humor: the first seven notes of “Never Gonna Give You Up” encircle the temporary score — er, scaffold — around the Great Dome of MIT.

A good reminder: “Someone with less passion and talent and poorer content can totally beat you if they’re willing to work longer and harder than you are.”

Awesome DIY iPhone dock built from Lego.

Detailed walkthrough on how Apple is using HTML + CSS + Javascript in the iTunes LP format to produce Flash-like effects.

I can see this coming in handy when I rip vinyl.