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YOU'RE FUCKED (i.imgur.com)submitted 12 hours ago by EnjoyMyDownvote188 commentssharesavehidereport
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SQL Injection Pocket Reference - Google Docs
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steelweaver - Reality as failed state - tl;dr version (I like doing this)
So maybe what we have today are not problems, but meta-problems.
It is very useful to confirm our understanding with others, to meet with fellow humans – preferably face-to-face – strength flows from this.
However, disquiet remains - no pre-catastrophic change of course seems in any way likely. What we might call ‘Fabian’ environmentalism has failed.
Occasionally a scientist will be so overcome with horror that he will make a radical public pronouncement – like the drunken uncle at a wedding, he may well be saying what everyone knows to be true, pulling the skeletons out of the family closet for all to see, but, well, it just doesn’t do to say that sort of thing out loud at a formal function.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
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Friday, July 29, 2011
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Method of Action - You're already a pretty good designer
I've heard this story a couple of times in the ten years I've been working with programmers. Programming is a damn hard craft to learn. My mind is blown by the level of complexity software has achieved given the basic elements of programming—variables, conditions, loops, functions and objects. At times, it feels like you have a quarry, wood, rope, a saw, and a chisel and then an architect asks you to build a cathedral.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
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How we got to the archipelago world | Compass
Ten years after the attacks of September 11th, the brief moment of global solidarity that followed when we were “all Americans,” in the words of Le Monde, seems as improbable as it is distant. Barring a global catastrophe, the world is unlikely to unite again as it did on that day – and not just because of the conduct and course of the wars of 9/11 in Afghanistan and Iraq. A deeper – and more radical – shift is at work in the politics of the global economy. A fragmentation of power, capital and ideas is creating a new map of the world – with lasting implications for investors and policymakers alike.
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Will Windows 8 Kill Microsoft? | John C. Dvorak | PCMag.com
If Microsoft puts a UI that's optimized for touch-based phones and tablets on desktops with Windows 8, it may be committing suicide.
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Report: PayPal User Charged $4,000 for Mac OS X Lion Download | News & Opinion | PCMag.com
Apple released Mac OS X Lion last week, and in its full review, PCMag said it was "hands-down the best consumer OS on the market today." But would you pay $4,000 for it?
According to MacRumors, John Christman bought Lion on July 23 for $31.79, the price after tax. But then, for unexplained reasons, his PayPal account was charged another 121 times, adding up to a grand total of $3,878.40. -
How Exercise Can Keep the Brain Fit - NYTimes.com
For those of us hoping to keep our brains fit and healthy well into middle age and beyond, the latest science offers some reassurance. Activity appears to be critical, though scientists have yet to prove that exercise can ward off serious problems like Alzheimer’s disease. But what about the more mundane, creeping memory loss that begins about the time our 30s recede, when car keys and people’s names evaporate? It’s not Alzheimer’s, but it’s worrying. Can activity ameliorate its slow advance — and maintain vocabulary retrieval skills, so that the word “ameliorate” leaps to mind when needed?
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Can’t We Do This Right? - NYTimes.com
There is only one thing worse than Republicans and Democrats failing to agree to lift the debt ceiling, and that is lifting the debt ceiling without a well-thought-out plan and with hasty cuts totaling trillions of dollars over a decade. What business do you know — that is still in business — that would operate this way: making massive long-term cuts, negotiated by exhausted executives, without any strategic plan? It certainly wouldn’t be a business you’d expect to thrive. Maybe you can grow without a plan. But if you cut without a plan, you will almost surely hit an artery or a bone that could really debilitate you. That, I fear, is where we are heading.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
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Intellectual Ventures And The War Over Software Patents : Planet Money : NPR
Update, July 26: This story from Planet Money's Alex Blumberg and NPR's Laura Sydell aired this weekend on This American Life. (Check out TAL's "Ways to Listen" page to find how you can hear the story.) A shorter version of the piece is also airing today on All Things Considered. Here's the story.
Nathan Myhrvold is a genius and a polymath. He made hundreds of millions of dollars as Microsoft's chief technology officer, he's discovered dinosaur fossils, and he recently co-authored a six-volume cookbook that "reveals science-inspired techniques for preparing food."
Myhrvold has more than 100 patents to his name, and he's cast himself as a man determined to give his fellow inventors their due. In 2000, he founded a company called Intellectual Ventures, which he calls "a company that invests in invention." -
Help-Wanted Ads Exclude the Long-Term Jobless - NYTimes.com
The unemployed need not apply.
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ROOM FOR DEBATE
The Bias Against the Unemployed
Should employers be allowed to discard a résumé because the applicant is not currently working?
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A recruiter told Kelly Wiedemer, an information technology operations analyst, that despite her skill set she would be a “hard sell” because she had been out of work for more than six months.
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That is the message being broadcast by many of the nation’s employers, making it even more difficult for 14 million jobless Americans to get back to work.
A recent review of job vacancy postings on popular sites like Monster.com, CareerBuilder and Craigslist revealed hundreds that said employers would consider (or at least “strongly prefer”) only people currently employed or just recently laid off. -
Microsoft-Watchers See A Company In Decline
Today at BYTE it wasn't all Google+, Apple OS X Lion and Ubuntu talk. Rather, we've been debating a question that--in all my years covering tech, beginning as a beat reporter on Microsoft--was one I thought I'd never hear.
Is Windows dying? And then, riffing off of that, the discussion moved to the Windows Phone 7 update code-named Mango, due this fall.
And then it migrated to the fate of Microsoft in general, given the steady erosion of Redmond's influence in a now tablet- and mobile-focused world. -
Recession Study Finds Hispanics Hit the Hardest - NYTimes.com
WOODBRIDGE, Va. — Hispanic families accounted for the largest single decline in wealth of any ethnic and racial group in the country during the recession, according to a study published Tuesday by the Pew Foundation.
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Room For Debate: How Cuts Will Change the Black Middle Class
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The study, which used data collected by the Census Bureau, found that the median wealth of Hispanic households fell by 66 percent from 2005 to 2009. By contrast, the median wealth of whites fell by just 16 percent over the same period. African Americans saw their wealth drop by 53 percent. Asians also saw a big decline, with household wealth dropping 54 percent. -
For Suspected Hackers, a Sense of Social Protest - NYTimes.com
SAN FRANCISCO — The F.B.I.’s arrests of 14 people last week were the most ambitious crackdown yet on a loose-knit group of hackers called Anonymous that has attacked a string of government agencies and private companies over the last eight months.
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Kelly Jordan for The New York Times
Keith Downey, 26, likened bombarding PayPal online to a sit-in.
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16 Arrested as F.B.I. Hits the Hacking Group Anonymous (July 20, 2011)
But at least some of the suspects are not your typical hard-core hackers, judging from interviews with two of them and the online traces of others. Some did not bother to cover their digital tracks as they participated in what they saw as an online protest. And some say they were unaware that their feverish clicks on a home computer may have been against the law.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
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http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2011.htm
Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.
Sue Fondrie
Oshkosh, WI
The winner of the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is Sue Fondrie, an associate professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh who works groan-inducing wordplay into her teaching and administrative duties whenever possible. Out of school, she introduces two members of the next generation to the mysteries of Star Trek, Star Wars, and--of course--the art of the bad pun.
Prof. Fondrie is the 29th grand prize winner of the contest that that began at San Jose State University in 1982. The contest challenges entrants to compose bad opening sentences to imaginary novels takes its name from the Victorian novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who began his “Paul Clifford” with “It was a dark and stormy night.” -
Alternatives to malloc and new « #AltDevBlogADay
Obligatory Introductory Parable
I really like Sushi, it’s tasty and convenient. I like the immediacy of being able to go into a Sushi restaurant complete with conveyor belt and being able to take a seat and grab something fresh and delicious from the belt without blowing my entire lunch hour. Having said that, what I really wouldn’t like is to be a member of staff in a Sushi restaurant, especially if it was my job to show the diners to their seats and here’s why… -
Not just an accident | George Chen
We’ve talked about whether China’s economy will have a soft or hard landing. In fact, what China needs is a pause. Lots of things in China may be moving way too fast. Including our trains.
On Saturday, at least 35 people died when a high-speed train smashed into a stalled train in eastern Zhejiang province, raising new questions about the safety of the fast-growing rail network. -
Online commenting: the age of rage | Technology | The Observer
The worldwide web has made critics of us all. But with commenters able to hide behind a cloak of anonymity, the blog and chatroom have become forums for hatred and bile
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"We Could've Had the Moon" (July 13, 2011)
I do not normally choose to appropriate images when I can draw instead, but once I’d searched for photo references of Afghanistan and the Moon the similarity between them was too hilarious not to use actual photos. You would only have assumed that my drawings were unfair exaggerations.
Last week the cover article in The Economist was “The End of the Space Age.” Regular readers of The Pain know that the author is a serious weenie when it comes to space exploration, and the last flight of the U.S. shuttle program, currently in progress, saddens me. Not that I was ever all that excited about the shuttle, except for the time when I personally saw a launch, but after this one lands, for the first time since the fifties, America will be without a manned space program. We’ll now be hitching rides with the Russians to the space station, a more humiliating situation than which is hard to envision. By dispiriting coincidence, we're approaching July 20th, the 42nd anniversary of the moon landing. It now looks like 1969 may have been the high water mark of America as a scientific and technological power. -
Print - The Bomb That Didn't Go Off - Esquire
Since September 11, 2001, we have finely honed our fear of the other. But the truth is, the overwhelming majority of our terrorism has always been homegrown. And it is times like these — times of anger and disaffection — when we turn on ourselves, and kill.
By Charles P. Pierce
Flag Art
In 2009, in the city of Spokane, Washington, the Public Facilities District bought a bench. It was metal. It was aluminum, its powder coat a bronze that ran toward brown. It sat three people. The city bought the bench from a company called Landscape Forms in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The bench cost $2,679.46, delivered. -
The Principles of Good Programming
Summary
Over the years I have found that following a relatively small number of fundamental guiding principles has helped me become a much more effective programmer.
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Today's post is a lightly edited repost from my blog at The Area, a web-site dedicated to users of Autodesk media and entertainment products. I came up with this list of principles to help with a recent C# training I gave, and I thought that members of the Artima.com community could appreciate these principles and have some interesting insights to share.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
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NoSQL is a Premature Optimization « SmoothSpan Blog
There’s been a lot of back and forth lately from the NoSQL crowd around Michael Stonebreaker’s contention that reliance on relational technology and MySQL has trapped Facebook in a ‘fate worse than death.’ This was reported in a GigaOm post by Derrick Harris. Harris reports in a later post that most of the reaction to Stonebreaker’s contention was negative:
By and large, the responses weren’t positive. Some singled out Stonebraker as out of touch or as just trying to sell a product. Some pointed to the popularity of MySQL as evidence of its continued relevance. Many questioned how Stonebraker dare question the wisdom of Facebook’s top-of-the-line database engineers. -
The Lesser Depression - NYTimes.com
These are interesting times — and I mean that in the worst way. Right now we’re looking at not one but two looming crises, either of which could produce a global disaster. In the United States, right-wing fanatics in Congress may block a necessary rise in the debt ceiling, potentially wreaking havoc in world financial markets. Meanwhile, if the plan just agreed to by European heads of state fails to calm markets, we could see falling dominoes all across southern Europe — which would also wreak havoc in world financial markets.
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The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress - NYTimes.com
Tarn Adams was in the carpeted spare bedroom that serves as his work space, trying to avert an apocalyptic outbreak of vampire dwarves. “If they just run wild biting people, half the dwarves in the colony will be infected in no time,” he said, shaking his head. “That would be no fun.” He was silent for a moment. “Maybe they have to bite you three times before you’re infected?”
Saturday, July 23, 2011
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How One Man Hacked His Way Into the Slot-Machine Industry | Magazine
Rodolfo Rodriguez Cabrera didn’t set out to mastermind a global counterfeiting ring. All he wanted was to earn a decent living doing what he loves most: tinkering with electronics. That’s why he started his own slot-machine repair company in Riga, Latvia. Just to make a little cash while playing with circuit boards.
Friday, July 22, 2011
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A pound of flesh: how Cisco's "unmitigated gall" derailed one man's life
High-tech entrepreneur Peter Adekeye's yearlong nightmare began after he dropped his wife off at the Vancouver International airport and headed downtown to The Wedgewood, a posh boutique hotel. Inside a tasteful boardroom adorned with gilt-framed mirrors, the US District Court for Northern California, San Jose division, had convened a special sitting to hear Adekeye's deposition as part of a massive antitrust action he had launched against his former employer, the computer giant Cisco Systems. An official court video camera recorded the proceedings on May 20, 2010—Adekeye affably answering questions in an elegant black suit accented with a pale blue shirt and a coral tie.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
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Counting Calories? Your Weight-Loss Plan May Be Outdated - NYTimes.com
It’s no secret that Americans are fatter today than ever before, and not just those unlucky people who are genetically inclined to gain weight or have been overweight all their lives. Many who were lean as young adults have put on lots of unhealthy pounds as they pass into middle age and beyond.
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It’s also no secret that the long-recommended advice to eat less and exercise more has done little to curb the inexorable rise in weight. No one likes to feel deprived or leave the table hungry, and the notion that one generally must eat less to control body weight really doesn’t cut it for the typical American. -
E:60 The Grandy Man - ESPN Video - ESPN
The Grandy Man: the story of Yankees All-Star Curtis Granderson's bond with the family of Brian Bluhm, a Detroit Tigers fan and blogger, gunned down in the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007. [more inside]posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:44 PM - 5 comments
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Australia (i.imgur.com)submitted 18 hours ago by HKutz350 commentssharesavehidereport
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Oceanside open carry - YouTube
We need more cops that are as calm as this officer. (youtube.com)submitted 19 hours ago by rpg3197 commentssharesavehidereport
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Crossbrowser » Things you should know when interviewing for a programming job
I was browsing through the Programmers stack exchange Q&A website yesterday and I stumbled upon a question about the fairness or unfairness of some interview questions that the candidate was asked to answer. Basically, the candidate was asked to answer questions out of his field of competence and felt cheated by the interview. In all fairness, he was a recent graduate and probably didn’t have that much experience interviewing.
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The previous developer in my office left this. I thought I would share. - Imgur
The previous developer in my office left this. I thought I would share. (imgur.com)submitted 5 hours ago by JimmyHalls771 commentssharesavehidereport
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
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Cool Open Source Games you should contribute to | Shinnok's Rants
While the popular conception when it comes to games for Linux is that they are almost non-existent, this is only true when it comes to big and popular commercial franchises that are backed up by giant video game studios and publishers like EA Games, Blizzard and Konami. On the other hand, Linux(and other platforms like *BSD) benefits from a myriad of open source and free games, some smaller for casual gaming and others more impressive like MMORPG’s and FPS’s that could compete with some of the commercial games out there in their branch either in the current state or given some fresh amount of contribution. Open source games are a convoluted topic and are somewhat special and unlike a traditional Open Source project because they require much more then code contribution, which foss minded hackers and geeks are eager to contribute anytime during the day. The three major issues with open source games that are apart from a traditional open source project are:
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
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The Clash of Generations - NYTimes.com
I REALIZE that I should be in Washington watching the debt drama there, but I’ve opted instead to be in Greece to observe the off-Broadway version. There are a lot of things about this global debt tragedy that you can see better from here, in miniature, starting with the raw plot, which no one has described better than the Carnegie Endowment scholar David Rothkopf: “When the cold war ended, we thought we were going to have a clash of civilizations. It turns out we’re having a clash of generations.”
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Our Broken Escalator - NYTimes.com
THE United States supports schools in Afghanistan because we know that education is one of the cheapest and most effective ways to build a country.
Alas, we’ve forgotten that lesson at home. All across America, school budgets are being cut, teachers laid off and education programs dismantled.
Monday, July 18, 2011
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Some Start-Ups Pique Interest by Invitation Only - NYTimes.com
Demand for Google’s new social networking service, Google+, has been intense since its debut last month in a limited test mode. To get in, you must be invited by someone who is already a member, so Facebook and Twitter are peppered with requests for invitations to the service, and they have even been sold on eBay.
Google’s secret? Knowing that people usually want what they can’t have. -
Mute all randomly getting checked when using voice and video chat in Gmail - Google Chat Help
Had a similar problem start late April 2011 and found a working but unstable solution.
My problem: While using Google Voice with Logitech headset on XP, mic would set itself to “mute” and I had a one-way conversation. I could not hear the other party, but they could hear me. It was definitely a Google Voice issue as I had no problems when using Skype.
Found a solution posted by personguy 12/5/09 (thank you!) which is to turn off google talk plugin's audio auto-adjustment. Personguy warns that solution “requires editing the windows registry, which involves changing settings in a sensitive area of the system. if you're not familiar/comfortable with that, seek further help before following this advice.” http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=774a8ba90f9cf729&hl=en
Solution steps:
Close your web browser and webcam software.
Open regedit. Double click “My Computer” icon, then “C drive”, then “Windows”, then “regedit”
Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Talk Plugin
Change the value of "audio-flags" to 1.
Close regedit.
In using Google Voice over the past month, I’ve found the audio flags setting will reset itself from 1 back to my original 3. It seems to happen every few days. So not perfect, but so much better than un-muting the volume button every 15 seconds!
Sunday, July 17, 2011
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In Silicon Valley, it's boom time again - latimes.com
Investors pile into Internet IPOs and start-ups, making overnight millionaires. House prices and salaries soar. Another dot-com bubble? Maybe, but with differences.
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By Jessica Guynn, Los Angeles Times
July 17, 2011
Reporting from Palo Alto— As she unloaded groceries in the driveway of her Palo Alto home, Lisen Stromberg was approached by a real estate broker who asked whether she'd be willing to sell her five-bedroom house to a senior Facebook executive.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
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Swamp Ass PSA starring Nathan Fillion - YouTube
Published on Jul 6, 2011 by BreakOriginals
In this new Nerd PSA, actor Nathan Fillion addresses an important issue affecting gamers worldwide: Swamp Ass. With these helpful tips gamers' can dry their undersides out and end swamp ass today! #endswampass -
Tom Vander Ark’s New York-Area Charter Schools Falter - NYTimes.com
After years spent directing the distribution of more than $1 billion from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation into hundreds of schools across the nation, Tom Vander Ark set his sights on the New York area, with a plan to create a network of charter schools of his own.
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For a Web developer, creating a new application always involves an annoying hurdle: how do users sign in? An email address with a confirmation step is the classic method, but it demands a user’s time and requires the user to take an extra step and remember another password. Outsourcing login and identity management to large providers like Facebook, Twitter, or Google is an option, but these products also come with lock-in, reliability issues, and data privacy concerns.
With BrowserID, there is a better way to sign in. BrowserID implements the /verified email protocol/, which offers a streamlined user experience. A user can prove their ownership of an email address with fewer confirmation messages and without site-specific passwords. -
Canary in a phosphate mine - CNN.com
(CNN) -- Endless hours of travel have left me more than a little raw.
The 12-hour layover in Australia's Brisbane International Airport is a whiz-bang. I find myself shopping for crystal unicorns and staring at duty-free liquor. Two entire shifts of employees come and go while I down 14 shots of espresso.
It's 14 hours from California to Australia, then one more flight to Nauru.
Where? Exactly. It's a tiny island nation about 1,800 miles from eastern Australia. It's in the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean, beyond Papua New Guinea, beyond the Solomon Islands. If the world were flat, this might be the last stop before you fell off.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
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Despite Zostavax, Drive Against Shingles Meets Few Goals - NYTimes.com
Five years have passed since the Food and Drug Administration approved a vaccine against shingles. By now, experts had expected a substantial proportion of people older than 60, the most vulnerable population, to be protected from outbreaks of this nasty viral disease and the persistent, debilitating pain it can leave behind.
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Hitler’s Talking Dogs - NYTimes.com
At this late date, when we believe we know absolutely everything about Adolf Hitler, could it be that he was even crazier than we thought?
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Google+ Gets a Leg Up on Facebook - NYTimes.com
Google, the most popular Web site on earth, is worried about the second-most popular site. That, of course, would be Facebook.
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Stuart Goldenberg
Pogue's Posts
The latest in technology from the Times’s David Pogue, with a new look.
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Hangouts on Google+, which lets up to 10 people take part in a chat using their Web cams or laptop cameras.
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Why else would Google keep trying, over and over again, to create a social network of the same type? Orkut, Jaiku, Wave, Buzz — Google has lobbed forth one fizzled flop after another.
And now there’s Google+. It’s the latest Google “we wanna be Facebook” project. The difference is, this one’s got a real shot. -
The Start-Up of You - NYTimes.com
The rise in the unemployment rate last month to 9.2 percent has Democrats and Republicans reliably falling back on their respective cure-alls. It is evidence for liberals that we need more stimulus and for conservatives that we need more tax cuts to increase demand. I am sure there is truth in both, but I do not believe they are the whole story. I think something else, something new — something that will require our kids not so much to find their next job as to invent their next job — is also influencing today’s job market more than people realize.
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Liao Yiwu, Dissident Chinese Writer, ‘Ecstatic’ After Fleeing to Germany - NYTimes.com
BEIJING — After being denied an exit visa 17 times, yanked off planes and trains by the police and threatened with yet more prison time, one of China’s most persecuted writers, Liao Yiwu, slipped across the border into Vietnam last week and then made his way, via Poland, to Germany, where he promptly declared himself an exile.
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Gordon Welters for the International Herald Tribune
Liao Yiwu, one of the most persecuted writers in China, fled into self exile in Germany this week. While still in China, his writings on the plight of the country's downtrodden had earned him travel restrictions and threats from the police.
“I’m ecstatic, I’m finally free,” he said in a telephone interview from Berlin on Monday morning before plunging into a day of interviews and photo shoots. “I feel like I’m walking through a dream.”
Monday, July 11, 2011
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The Good Short Life With A.L.S. - NYTimes.com
I HAVE wonderful friends. In this last year, one took me to Istanbul. One gave me a box of hand-crafted chocolates. Fifteen of them held two rousing, pre-posthumous wakes for me. Several wrote large checks. Two sent me a boxed set of all the Bach sacred cantatas. And one, from Texas, put a hand on my thinning shoulder, and appeared to study the ground where we were standing. He had flown in to see me.
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Action! Romance! Social Justice! - NYTimes.com
SUMMER reading often consists of mindless page-turners, equally riveting and vacuous. So as a public service I’m delighted to offer a list of mindful page-turners — so full of chase scenes, romance and cliffhangers that you don’t mind the redeeming social value.
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof
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From the Magazine
The 6th Floor Blog: As if You Don't Have Enough to Read, Fiction Edition (July 7, 2011)
These are 10 triumphs of fiction, both fun to read and significant for literary or historical reasons. I guarantee pleasure and also bragging rights at your next cocktail party. And if your kids read these, I bet they’ll ace the SAT. -
In Defense of Antidepressants - NYTimes.com
IN terms of perception, these are hard times for antidepressants. A number of articles have suggested that the drugs are no more effective than placebos.
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Why Google + social networking = electric wok | Technology | The Observer
A spectre is haunting the technology industry. It is called "electric wok syndrome" and it mainly afflicts engineers and those who invest in their fantasies. The condition takes its name from the fact that nobody in his or her right mind would want an electric wok. But because it is possible to make such things, they are manufactured, regardless of whether or not there is a need for them. The syndrome is thus characterised by the mantra: "Technology is the answer; now what was that question again?"
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America's 'detainee 001' – the persecution of John Walker Lindh | World news | The Observer
America's 'detainee 001' – the persecution of John Walker Lindh
Frank Lindh, father of 'American Taliban' John Walker Lindh, explains why his son is an innocent victim of America's 'war on terror'
Sunday, July 10, 2011
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Sheila Bair’s Exit Interview - NYTimes.com
‘They should have let Bear Stearns fail,” Sheila Bair said.
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Sheila Bair
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Sheila Bair in March with Ben Bernanke, left, and Timothy Geithner.
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Bair, in April 2009, with Lawrence Summers and President Obama.
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It was midmorning on a crisp June day, and Bair, the 57-year-old outgoing chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation — the federal agency that insures bank deposits and winds down failing banks — was sitting on a couch, sipping a Starbucks latte. We were in the first hour of several lengthy on-the-record interviews. She seemed ever-so-slightly nervous. -
How a New Hope in Cancer Fell Apart - NYTimes.com
When Juliet Jacobs found out she had lung cancer, she was terrified, but realized that her hope lay in getting the best treatment medicine could offer. So she got a second opinion, then a third. In February of 2010, she ended up at Duke University, where she entered a research study whose promise seemed stunning.
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Death Penalty, Still Racist and Arbitrary - NYTimes.com
LAST week was the 35th anniversary of the return of the American death penalty. It remains as racist and as random as ever.
Several years after the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, a University of Iowa law professor, David C. Baldus (who died last month), along with two colleagues, published a study examining more than 2,000 homicides that took place in Georgia beginning in 1972. They found that black defendants were 1.7 times more likely to receive the death penalty than white defendants and that murderers of white victims were 4.3 times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who killed blacks.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
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Speed Bumps on the Road to Virtual Cash - NYTimes.com
MONEY is accumulated, traded and transferred online every day, but can there be a form of currency that exists only online and yet has real-world value?
That is the premise of Bitcoin, an open-source virtual currency system that since 2009 has grown to a market worth more than $100 million.
Monday, July 4, 2011
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Hundreds of free, open-source fonts optimized for the web
Just 3 quick steps between you and a good lookin’ website
Sunday, July 3, 2011
load01 07/03/2011
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Can Google+ Survive the Hype? | Lance Ulanoff | PCMag.com
Google+, the presumptive Facebook killer, shows tremendous potential. As someone who warms up to any social network with the alacrity of a Galápagos tortoise, this, for me, is saying something.
Yes, I'm one of the lucky ones who got a pre-over-capacity invite. I've tried to share a couple, but new Google+ users are only gaining entrance at a halting pace.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
load01 07/02/2011
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Land of Smiles may not be for too much longer
Thailand is precariously poised between forces of democracy, militarism, monarchy and corruption. Lindsay Murdoch reports from Bangkok.
DEEPLY polarised Thais will vote tomorrow in an election where the losing side is unlikely to accept the result, prolonging a six-year political crisis in the ''Land of Smiles''. -
Practicing Medicine Can Be Grimm Work - NYTimes.com
TODAY, after four arduous years of examinations, graduating medical doctors will report to their residency programs. Armed with stethoscopes and scalpels, they’re preparing to lead the charge against disease in its ravaging, chimerical forms. They carry with them the classic tomes: Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine and Gray’s Anatomy. But I have an unlikely addition for their mental rucksacks: “Grimm’s Fairy Tales.”
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Engineers Fear Rare Earth Refinery in Malaysia Is Dangerous - NYTimes.com
KUANTAN, Malaysia — A $230 million refinery being built here in an effort to break China’s global chokehold on rare earth metals is plagued by environmentally hazardous construction and design problems, according to internal memos and current and former engineers on the project.
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To Celebrate Communism in China, a Party as Disciplined as the Party - NYTimes.com
BEIJING — The party for the Party turned out to be a doctrinaire affair, as President Hu Jintao expounded Friday on the benefits of 90 years of communism with Chinese characteristics while workplaces around the country held Red-song singalongs.
The 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party — done in secret in the leafy French Concession of Shanghai in 1921 — unfolded Friday with more propaganda hype surrounding it than any party birthday in recent memory. The previous weeks were packed with spectacles reminding Chinese of the party’s revolutionary roots. Officials seemed especially eager to emphasize the party’s history as a populist movement at a time when mass protests have swept authoritarian leaders from power in the Middle East. -
Why Yo Momma Won’t Use Google+ (And Why That Thrills Me To No End)
OK, I’ve been putting many hours into Google+. In just the few days that it’s been released I’ve followed 2,723 people, written many dozens of posts there, and have thoroughly used the product. I’ve also tried to get some normal users into the product, starting with my wife (we argued for 45 minutes about it) and I’ve come to some conclusions. Here’s the biggie:
Your mom won’t use Google+.
Friday, July 1, 2011
load01 07/01/2011
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Victory would leave abortion foes speechless - KansasCity.com
It must be frustrating when you win big but can’t take your victory lap.
That’s the position anti-abortion activists in Kansas find themselves in. Here they are on the cusp of what may be a major victory.
No more abortions in Kansas? Not quite, but new licensing laws might well force two of the state’s three remaining abortion clinics out of the abortion business, depending on the outcome of today’s federal court hearing. -
Behind Affluent Image, Connecticut Faces Economic Pain - NYTimes.com
Think of Connecticut, and what comes to mind are the swells of Greenwich, the exurban good life of Litchfield County, the land of New England steady habits. By some measures America’s richest state, it still evokes images of Yankee stability and enterprise relatively immune to the nation’s economic and political tumult.
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BBC News - MySpace sale offers tough lessons in social networking
The sale of MySpace is a sobering reminder that even in bubble times, social networking is not always the road to riches.
The site, bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp for an eye watering $580 million in 2005, looked like a bargain a couple of years later as it became the favoured web hangout of what was briefly the MySpace generation. Then they and many millions of new networkers moved to Facebook.