Author: Tim's Bookmarks

Interesting if retroactively obvious way to future-proof URL shortener links.

Chris Eng shows how crypto is done. Finishing in the top 3 isn’t too bad and whoever dreamed up the cipher in the cover clearly had a lot of fun with it.

The MIT hackers strike again. Too bad they couldn’t get a full-size Red Line car up there though.

Trenchant as always: “So Bobby Jindal makes fun of “volcano monitoring”, and soon afterwards Mt. Redoubt erupts. Susan Collins makes sure that funds for pandemic protection are stripped from the stimulus bill, and the swine quickly attack.

What else did the right oppose recently? I just want enough information to take cover.”

“For the old country, the benefits would be obvious. A more intimately sized Congress would briskly enact sensible gun control, universal health insurance, and ample support for the arts, the humanities, and the sciences. Although Texas itself has been a net contributor to the Treasury—it gets back ninety-four cents for each dollar it sends to Washington—nearly all the other potential F.S. states, especially the ones whose politicians complain most loudly about the federal jackboot, are on the dole. (South Carolina, for example, receives $1.35 on the dollar, as compared with Illinois’s seventy-five cents.)” A couple other trenchant points in this meditation on the idiocy of secession.

So that’s how it’s done. Using a mill bastard file to sharpen a lawnmower blade. Probably a good idea before the season starts in earnest.

From last summer, Carole King’s thoughts on hearing the TFC in rehearsals last summer. Awesome.

And what, exactly, are they going to keep secret? 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0?

I have to say, the Company Picnic, perhaps because I went to it without my wife, was one of the creepiest, most Stepford-like events I ever did as a Microsoft employee. On the other hand, there was free beer.

Doc Searls points out how headline writing can be sensationally unfair to a key newspaper competitor, but there’s also a point to be made about how Craigslist is or is not handling its response.

Another industry “takes advantage of news media norms requiring neutral coverage of issues, just as the tobacco industry once had.” No, not the GOP.

That Dick Cheney is filing FOIA requests to obtain “secret” documents to show his side of the torture issue strikes me as nothing short of laughable.

Things to do with an old iPod. Though items # 3, 4, 7, and 8 are obsolete if you have a working iPhone, I like #5 quite a lot. Thanks to Steve Whitaker for the tip.

Interesting–might have to check this out. I like the GIMP but it can’t edit text layers in PSD files; wonder if this plugin will?

I say, if Texas wants to secede, we should let them. Provided, of course, that they allow Austin to be an independent city-state (like the Vatican), and that they pay us back all the federal tax dollars that have flowed down there year after year.

Notes from the panel discussion with Chris Wysopal of Veracode and Brian Chess of Fortify at this year’s RSA conference. Bottom line: regardless of whether you scan binary or source, scan your code. The story did get one point wrong: Chris is quoted as saying “What’s better in source analysis is that you can point to the exact line of code that’s causing issues.” We can do that in binary too.

How to cure and cold smoke your pork bellies to get delicious Vitamin B.

The New York Times’s API for fetching data about Congress is bounding along. Very nicely done way to think about what “the news” means in a digital setting.

We always suspected it, but the Bush administration’s claim that they turned to torture after lesser methods failed was a lie. They went to it right at the beginning and twisted the law until it looked legal. Is there still doubt that there should be prosecutions?

Incredible photo essay of Saturn from the Cassini probe.

Interesting outline of the direction that Obama would like to take with the American economy. It is probably a little premature to speculate about post-recession economic policy.

A fairly brilliant hack to “encourage” people to upgrade away from IE6. I say, the sooner the better.

A spec proposal for tying short URLs in a persistent way to an HTML document.

HTML 5 introduces additional link relations to enrich documents.

Burning a hole through a steel pan with the power of oxygen + bacon. Well, prosciutto, really.

Protesting taxation with representation.

The specific URL format for Rally burndown charts is provided for mashing with other web sites.

The constant ripples of undirected communication as a metaphor for what is lost in working remotely is only a beginning for this insightful post about how to manage a remote worker successfully.

Heh. See “Requirement: n. A statement of need by a Product Manager, seen as a loose suggestion by Development, and as a firm commitment by Sales.”

Alas. I knew I wouldn’t get a chance to go but I’m disappointed anyway.

Cool series of real (not digital) tilt shift photos of the University. My two favorites are the one showing the endzone in Scott Stadium, and the aerial view of the South Lawn project.

Watch out, all you command line hackers! Thanks, BC, for making Boston look ridiculous AGAIN.

Capsule review of “Love is a Mix Tape,” a new memoir by a UVA grad about his wife, their love and life in Charlottesville, and her early death, told through old mixtapes.

Using the referrer to send special content to Digg as thanks for framing your page and stealing your link.

The prosaic origin of a (somewhat) iconic toy. Definitely the strangest critter to ever get its own comic book.

Wonder how many web CMSes use hyperlink based deletes and no access control?

OMFG. When even the AP can’t remember what it’s given its affiliates permission to do, there’s a problem there…

Wow. Ebert kneecaps O’Reilly: “Dear Bill: Thanks for including the Chicago Sun-Times on your exclusive list of newspapers on your ‘Hall of Shame.’ To be in an O’Reilly Hall of Fame would be a cruel blow to any newspaper. It would place us in the favor of a man who turns red and starts screaming when anyone disagrees with him.”

Underscores the need for much stronger focus on computer system security. Hopefully the response won’t be as closely tied to “network security” as the Bush administration’s was. This is a network, systems, and applications problem and needs to be addressed at all levels.

Time to check out Astra.

Call me nuts, but I don’t like the idea of a service holding my account information in escrow.

37% of the UVA first year class uses a Mac, up from 4% in the late 1990s through 2003.

It’s starting to look like the beginning of a reinforcing feedback loop: students have “noticed many more Macs on Grounds recently”, “I like the way that it navigates and I feel like they are very reliable … We can always get my sister’s fixed easily when it has a problem”…

A set of brilliantly impassioned arguments about how to restructure the Globe for continued viability come down to a few main points: the paper should have recognized that it was doing a poor job of delivering its primary revenue source, ads, compared to the Internet long ago; they aren’t doing a good job delivering their primary VALUE, differentiated stories, either.

An appreciation of Marian Anderson and her role in music, and in American history.

Interesting perspective on the success or failure of Fortify’s pitch around government software security, or how not to do it.

Thoughts toward putting together an application security portfolio. Aimed more at a consultant than a business user.

Social media and press announcements, or how to break the traditional press release cycle.

Index of all the Jefferson architectural drawings.

One of our big initiatives kicks off.