Category: linkblog

“Blaming blogs for not being real newspapers is too silly. Newspapers in the main are no longer real newspapers either.”

Rands continues to plumb the depths of organizational psychology. Good stuff.

It’s rare that NYT has a public web fail–generally they seem to understand how to work on the web. But nuking old URLs without implementing redirects is the worst kind of fail, because it kills conversation and reputation as well as content. I also wonder how many {{deadlink}}s there are on Wikipedia in references now because of this.

I like the “marketing” (editorial) short URLs, but I like the amzn.com/ASIN (Amazon stock ID number) even better. Every product on Amazon has an ASIN, so it’s easy to go directly to the product you want to point to.

Yet another reminder: applications are the perimeter.

I know what I’m doing tonight…

This is the iron trap that newspapers are in, and it reveals that they still don’t understand tech strategy after 20 years of trying to make it in a digital world.

Explanation of the process of the stress tests.

Talk about a refreshing statement: “One thing you’ll find less of: celebrity news. Our research told us you didn’t want it, which is a relief since we were doing it only because we thought we had to.”

There’s probably a version of these markings for Mahler’s #2, because many of them look appropriate, e.g. “Langsam – Slowly; Schleppend – Slowly; Dampfer auf – Slowly; Mit Dampfer – Slowly; Allmahlich in das Hauptzeitmass ubergehen – Do not look at the conductor; Im Anfang sehr gemaechlich – In intense inner torment; Alle Betonungen sehr zart – With more intense inner torment; Getheilt (geth.) – Out of tune.”

Might have to check this out. I hate the feeling that I'm killing the planet every time I put a new AA in the Wiimote.

Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. This is the funniest thing I've seen in a good long time.

You know, my admiration for Uncle Joe continues to grow.

Digging into the Cluetrain, ten years on.

Aaargh. I really really really want to kick this browser to the curb. Far be it from me to incite a riot, but could someone please write a worm that goes through and upgrades people's IE6 machines to IE7 or IE8?

Old but good article positing that socially constructed media comes out of the social surplus created when people stop watching so much TV.

Dead simple: a new Facebook app that takes your news feed from Facebook and republishes it as RSS.

Alternative cuts of meat for recessionary times.

Aaand Biden has some connection to Specter’s switch too.

An interesting thread–how Hillary’s continued candidacy helped bring about the shift in Pennsylvania voting patterns that led to Specter’s change of party.

A sober counterpoint, based in statistics, to the conventional understanding of the average family’s economic situation.

Shorter Steele: “Don’t hold us accountable for anything that we do as a grand gesture. This is theater, not government.”

OMG. Felling healthy trees and re-laying bricks because no one checked the handicap accessibility? Yagottabekiddin.

I like how the hype circle (unconfirmed reports of swine flu) is so much bigger in Mexico, but there’s no hype circles at all in Canada.

I like #9 and #4.

Main points: 1. Oracle has so far used the open source it’s bought as a more or less unsuccessful upsell path to its leading closed source technology. 2. MySQL is doing a good enough job of stagnating on its own.

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.