2009 Dec 31, 1:50Har har: "I had a fantasy in which the Fed and the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) switched roles. If a bank failed at 9 a.m. one morning and shut its doors, the TSA would announce that
all banks henceforth begin their business day at 10 a.m. And, if a terrorist managed to get on board a plane between Stockholm and Washington, the Fed would increase the number of flights between the
cities."
economics humor airplane emanuel-derman tsa fed government 2009 Dec 18, 2:27"...this week we launched an improvement to Google Maps India that describes routes in terms of easy-to-follow landmarks and businesses that are visible along the way. We gathered feedback from users
around the world to spark this improvement to our technology, and we thought we'd give you a glimpse at our thinking behind this launch."
google map geography geo india 2009 Dec 13, 1:27
I was reading Makers, Cory Doctorow's latest novel, as it was serialized on Tor's website but with no ability to save my place within a page I set out to find a book reading app
for my G1 Android phone. I stopped looking once I found Aldiko. Its got bookmarks within chapters, configurable fonts, you can look-up words in a
dictionary, and has an easy method to download public domain and creative common books. I was able to take advantage of Aldiko's in-app book download system to get Makers onto my phone so I didn't
have to bother with any conversion programs etc, and I didn't have to worry about spacing or layout, the book had the correct cover art, and chapter delimiters. I'm very happy with this app and
finished reading Makers on it.
Makers is set in the near future and features teams of inventors, networked 3d printers, IP contention, body modifications, and Disney -- just the sort of thing you'd expect from a Cory
Doctorow novel. The tale seems to be an allegory for the Internet including displacing existing businesses and the conflict between the existing big entertainment IP owners and the plethora of fans
and minor content producers. The story is engaging and the characters filled out and believable. I recommend Makers and as always its Creative Commons so go take a look right now.
tor aldiko cory doctorow g1 makers ebook android book 2009 Dec 8, 12:02"This illustration, from the September 10, 1910 New York Tribune, imagines the rooftop burglars of the future. 'BURGLARS LEARN TO HANDLE THE AEROPLANE WITH PRECISION AND SILENCE: Our artist takes a
look into the future and foresees the time when roofs must be secured as carefully as any other part of the home.'"
humor history burglar crime newspaper news 2009 Dec 2, 3:00"These are tough questions, but the horrific problems of the "Victorian Internet" suggest that government overreach isn't the only thing to fear. In 1876, laissez-faire "freedom for all" meant (in
practice) the freedom for Henry Nash Smith to read your telegrams if he didn't like who you supported for President. It meant freedom for Associated Press to block criticism of Western Union, and
even to put potential critics and competitors out of business. And it meant freedom for a scoundrel to hijack the system at his leisure."
net-neutrality internet government politics communication telegraph technical 2009 Nov 27, 6:04"Megafonzies (coolness): We don’t know if Professor Hubert Farnsworth, inventor of the Finglonger, coined the term ‘Megafonzie.’ We can assume that one Fonzie is the amount of coolness generated by
Arthur Fonzarelli...", "Warhols (fame duration): 1 Warhol equals 15 minutes of fame, So if you’ve been famous for three years, that’s just over 105 kilowarhols..."
via:kottke humor measurement nerd 2009 Nov 23, 11:33A map of the sciences generated via science web portals: "Over the course of 2007 and 2008, we collected nearly 1 billion user interactions recorded by the scholarly web portals of some of the most
significant publishers, aggregators and institutional consortia...The resulting model was visualized as a journal network that outlines the relationships between various scientific domains and
clarifies the connection of the social sciences and humanities to the natural sciences."
via:pskomoroch visualization science map graph 2009 Nov 15, 6:17Once again a wonderful gift for a very small set of people I know but a bit pricey: "This package includes Bruce Schneier's custom action figure head mounted on a matching DiD or Dragon action figure
body with a choice of 2 different clothing styles. You can also buy Bruce Schneier's head on its own and fit it onto your own figurines."
humor action-figure bruce-schneier security gift purchase wishlist 2009 Nov 13, 6:36Hooray for the Internet Archive! "The Internet Archive and founding companies announce today the launch of 301Works.org, a service to archive shortened Universal Resource Locators (URLs). This will
enable redirect services to incorporate these shortened URLs when a member company ceases business activities."
url http redirect internet web internet-archive archive via:waxy technical 2009 Nov 9, 11:39A montage of lines from movies containing the title of the movie. Worth it for the comments: "I'm just so tired of all these Star Wars." "That sounds really terrible. I will make sure write it all
down in my TYLER PERRY'S DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN."
humor video via:waxy movie film quote 2009 Oct 28, 11:02"This session will expose the goodness in JavaScript, an outstanding dynamic programming language. Within the language is an elegant subset that is vastly superior to the language as a whole, being
more reliable, readable and maintainable." Zeke recommended listening to his talks.
google video technical douglas-crockford javascript programming presentation jslint web browser 2009 Oct 25, 5:50Every level has its own twist. In one, P switches stop time as in enemies freeze as well as the level clock, which starts at 60 seconds. The enemies are taken from previous Mario games, Donkey Kong
Country, Chrono Trigger, and others. Entertaining!
game mario download hack rom emulate nes nintendo japanese 2009 Oct 22, 12:33"When asked for the most valuable topic in Demand’s arsenal, he replies instantly: “‘Where can I donate a car in Dallas?’"
via:kris.kowal wired internet video howto automation business media marketing economics advertising 2009 Oct 20, 8:24Against Transparency - The perils of openness in government. - Lawrence Lessig - October 9, 2009
lawrence-lessig transparent government essay privacy politics 2009 Oct 5, 9:51"What if the logos we’re used to seeing in Helvetica were redone in Arial? Would you even notice if the next time you saw the American Airlines logo it was redone in Arial?" Quiz of 20 logos
presented in their original Helvetica along side Arial and you must determine which is which. I got them correct but only due to the Arial and Helvetica overlay poster from last week.
typography helvetica arial blog quiz logo font 2009 Oct 5, 8:44Brief history of the Luddites. "Are we all Luddites now? ... If you are reading this essay on your laptop or iPhone, chances are that you aren't an unemployed weaver staring starvation in the face."
Also: "The Luddites didn't oppose technology; they opposed the sudden collapse of their industry, which they blamed in part on new weaving machines." So the TV and newspaper associations and Rupert
Murdoch are Luddites.
history technology luddite 2009 Sep 30, 4:07The hashing part makes sense, but not the 'why no URL query' bit: "But because victim=12345 has already been visited they satisfy condition 2 and they get the 404 page fooling them into thinking the
site has already been taken down. So query strings don't really work." You could implement the same thing in the path and even were that not the case there's no telling that removing the query would
get you the same page. What's described here is a general method to circumvent the AP filter not an explaination as to why it avoids the query portion of the URL.
phishing technical web browser http url hash 2009 Sep 17, 11:12This Javascript Nintendo emulator works amazingly well in Google Chrome. You can play Dr. Mario, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, The Legend of Zelda, etc.
browser javascript nintendo nes game videogame google tetris emulator 2009 Sep 3, 7:17"This specification defines a lossless compressed data format that compresses data using a combination of the LZ77 algorithm and Huffman coding." Also see RFC 1950 zlib, a wrapper compression format
that can use deflate, and RFC 1952 gzip, a compressed file format that can use deflate.
technical rfc ietf compression http deflate gzip zlib 2009 Sep 1, 4:25"Each unit has a stable URI, making it possible to link to it from your own domain models in a reliable way. For each unit, the ontology defines some useful metadata including abbreviation, a link to
DBpedia and a categorization of units into groups, such as length units."
semanticweb via:connolly web unit conversion uri technical
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