Category: linkblog

A sobering portrait of Obama's reception in rural America. It ain't the race (though there may be coded racism just like there's coded sexism, sure), it's the class, the suspicion about intellectualism. And what the hell is Joe Biden doing? How can a story like this one talk about how Obama, McCain, and Palin play in rural America but not mention coal-country Biden?

This is, of course, why I have such a hard time getting rid of books. Of course, even I have to admit sometimes that enough is enough.

Like it says. I've gotten wary of tinyurls and the like that come from other people, so this is really useful.

Interesting digital camera tips. It's all about the lighting and the postprocessing.

"The media are getting mad." Well, it's about time.

"Alex Koppelman immediately caught the biggest gaffe of the interview: Palin's deer-in-the-headlights ignorance about the 'Bush doctrine' that claims for the U.S. the right to unilateral, 'preventive' war against nations perceived as fomenting threats against us. Her answer committing us to defend Georgia or the Ukraine against Russia was almost as bad…"

Newsjunk's roundup of links from 9/11/2008 shows the segue in discourse from remembrance to horror at Palin's interview performance. Really good demonstration for the effectiveness of the technology.

The press, at least, was not impressed by Sarah Palin's softball interview with Charlie Gibson last night. What will swing voters think?

Having made quite a few recipes from Marcella’s classic cookbook, I’m not surprised that she’s murder to get along with. Some are dead easy and some will wreck you. And of course they all taste fabulous.

Nice collection of digital revivals of early 20th century fonts. Apparently made for Call of Cthulu games, so if you are dragged into tentacled horror and madness you'll know why.

The physics major in me thinks this is really cool. The webcomics geek in me groans at the discovery of another good webcomic to catch up with.

Another name for SQL Injection. Arguably obfuscated SQL Injection attacks don't deserve their own subclass, but some of the information about attacks being canonicalized at the DB layer is interesting.

This answered a couple of important questions I had after reading the other coverage, like: are the newspapers going to be as PO'd about this as the book publishers were? (A: Maybe, but it's set up to give them a cut of the AdWords revenue, so maybe not.)

Bad vuln? Yes. See WordPress 2.6.1.

“What struck me about Palin was her cowardice. Before letting us know anything about her intelligence or knowledge, or the quality of her ideas, she was sarcastically trashing a man we’ve gotten to know and respect over the last X months, a man who had to keep his cool as the press went after his church, community and family, and kept his grace even humor at every step. Palin, in contrast, not only hasn’t been even slightly vetted, has absolutely no basis for her arrogance, no foundation. … She needs to slow down and sober up, she’s asking for a big job. It’s serious. If she were a man I’d say she was a dickhead.” One of Dave’s finer pieces in recent memory.

Heh. Behind McCain’s acceptance speech: a big ol’ picture of Walter Reed. Not the hospital, a middle school. Someone gonna get a whippin’.

It’s a good thing http://www.google.com/search?q=uva dorms kellogg global warming is fictional, cause otherwise with all the ice sheets breaking up I’d be worried.

“One of the most enduring taboos in American politics, the airing of graphic images from the September 11 attacks in a partisan context … was pronounced dead at approximately 7:40 CST, when a video aired before delegates at the Republican National Convention included slow-motion footage of a plane striking the World Trade Center, the towers’ subsequent collapse, and smoke emerging from the Pentagon.”

Interesting coverage of two interviews: Obama and O’Reilly and Katie Couric and Mrs. McCain, who didn’t seem to know which way John McCain was going on Roe vs. Wade.

An all in one iTunes assistant: lyrics and artwork download, Last.fm scrobbling, and remote. Now if GimmeSomeTunes did lyrics for songs *that weren’t currently playing we’d be in luck. Replaying all 25,000 songs in my library just to get lyrics isn’t an option.

Detailed fact check of Palin’s speech.

I bet the GOP would feel pretty foolish about slamming Obama’s faith-based community service if they thought anyone cared about the substance of what they said. Do they? Do we?

Paints a picture of Chrome as a natural extension of Google’s existing offerings.

Fascinating rundown of how political and social mobility (the creation of the middle class) influenced artistic performance (the modern conception of the classical music concert). For better or for worse?

Of course, now I want the same capability for ACC football too. I can’t believe there’s no comparable client for other sports.

Does a speech http://www.google.com/search?q=uva dorms kellogg whips up the base torpedo your chances with independents? It might, if enough of them identify “the base” with the problems that they are experiencing right now.

An interesting runthrough of some of the default Ubiquity commands.

Oooh. Histogram!

I just heard the first reason to take a look at IE8. I wonder how effective/ hackproof this anti-XSS filter really is?

Are you kidding me? Has anyone ever heard of freedom of speech?

Oboy. A little open mic moment opens up the conservative side of the conventional wisdom. Now the only people who haven’t weighed in on Palin and McCain are the swing voters.

One Two Three Pull! Hee hee.

Guess we have to see how it goes tonight to see if Jay is correct, but this is scary shit.

I won’t miss the gross incompetence and malfeasance of the Bush administration.

This is an interesting thought: Google Chrome is really closer to an OS project than a browser.

Did anyone do more than look at Sarah Palin’s picture before offering her the veep slot? I’d say having your spouse be a member of a secessionist party is probably more damning than having them, say, write a thesis about racism in the Ivy League.

Hilarious dissection of Google’s blog posting announcing the new Chrome browser.

Security = privacy? Does Google Chrome have any better anti-phishing, anti-CSS, or anti-malware features? If not, why bother building a new browser?

Or, where the really, really shitty iPhone apps come from: business plans! With synergy! And corporate sponsorship! You gotta be kidding me.

Am I nuts, or does this sound like a new malware vector? Still, lyrics would be nice…

Interesting approach allowing cross-domain interaction between data and functionality in a secure way.

Interesting example of JavaScript code manipulation across iframes.

Open source media player alternative to Front Row gets facelift.

On being Alec Baldwin. No, wait. The article is actually funny.

Well, this certainly puts his (adult-audience) Uncle Oswald stories in a different light.

Fairly brilliant concept–I may need to use it when I finally redirect my old blog to the WordPress site.

The Palin pick was a second choice?

So let me get this straight: Comcast has slower bandwidth than everyone else AND they’re going to cap your usage AND they’re not providing you with a way to monitor that AND if you breach it twice, they shut you off for a year? Sign me up!!!

I hadn’t heard of a couple of these approaches. The login-lockdown and CHAP signing plugins sound particularly interesting.

For those who have spent just way too much time on Wikipedia, particularly in administrative processes. (Don’t forget to look at the Discussion.)

Heh. The reports of Steve Jobs’ death, etc.

What the framework concept is all about.

A brief history of the 520 bridge across Lake Washington, a floating bridge that both a beautiful drive and my least favorite part of living in Kirkland. Apparently they’re going to replace it. That would be nice.

The Times catches up to the fact that beer comes in high and low alcohol varieties. Which is not to knock the article: there’s a bunch of session beers they list that I am quite curious to try.

Putting Hillary’s convention appearance in context.

How to guide.

“In its fight against the American Issues Project, Mr. Obama’s campaign is essentially arguing that the group should fall under more strict election laws because its sole purpose seems to be to defeat Mr. Obama at the polls; issue groups are allowed to run some political advertising so long as affecting an election is not their primary purpose. Under election laws, Mr. Simmons would not be able to exceed a donation of $42,000 to the group and others like it.” –About damned time they stood up. So why didn’t Kerry do the same in 2004?

Now can we put all the talk of PUMAs behind us?

It ain’t the DNS, kids. Learn the acronym BGP, and start agitating for a fix for this.

Looks like an invitation for your own personal RIAA takedown notice.

Interesting article highlights some of the capabilities and limitations of using Silverlight to talk to Java on the back end.

Encapsulates everything that’s wrong with the 24 hour news channels. Talking over the speeches and then complaining that they can’t hear the Democrats attacking loudly enough.

Wow. Congrats to Eric and Phillip. I haven’t written anything for BC in a long time, but this is certainly cool news.

I haven’t downloaded any Tetris for my iPhone, but this thoughtfully written article uses two different versions as an object lesson in what makes a good iPhone app: solid user experience, quick start, and pause are important for all apps, not just games.

Some fairly cogent writing on the relationship between the consumer culture and the falling fortune of classical music.

“For its part, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus sang with impressive heft and clarity, outdoing its fine performance in Friday’s Mass in C.”

“Choristers are so familiar with the piece that, in rehearsal, those who have not sung it before are hauled to their feet and applauded.” — This makes more sense if you know that the reviewer is a chorister herself.

God help us (irony not intended) that we have come to this: we have to explain to kids that science and faith are different things that ask different questions.

The article references a new blog I’ll have to check out: http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/.

Exceeding the credit limit on McCain's war history as an excuse for his behavior?

Text, video, and highlights from the VP announcement. Favorite is from the linked story: "John McCain will have trouble deciding which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at."

Yes, yes, yes.

Amazing Lego recreation of the Olympics venues. 4500 minifigs!

Interesting long-form piece about Biden from last year.

Certainly a candidate for funniest album title of all time.

It’s Biden time. Guess we’ve forgiven the “articulate” thing.

“scheduled for day three at SorCon include a panel discussion on rapid-fire dialogue, an American President debate on what sorts of policy deals would cause the president’s girlfriend to break up with him in the modern day, and a seminar on how freebasing cocaine can improve your screenwriting.”