Planet 無 Web Logs

Holiday Traveling with Personal Internet-Enabled Devices

February 06, 2012 05:44 AM

Understanding Hidden Threats: Rootkits and Botnets

February 06, 2012 05:44 AM

Understanding ISPs

February 06, 2012 05:44 AM

Dealing with Cyberbullies

February 06, 2012 05:44 AM

Keeping Children Safe Online

February 06, 2012 05:44 AM

Using Caution with USB Drives

February 06, 2012 05:44 AM

Avoiding the Pitfalls of Online Trading

February 06, 2012 05:44 AM

Understanding Hidden Threats: Corrupted Software Files

February 06, 2012 05:44 AM

Debunking Some Common Myths

February 06, 2012 05:44 AM

Staying Safe on Social Network Sites

February 06, 2012 05:44 AM

Suit: New York is the shit. I would never live anywhere else.
Female friend: There's nothing to do here. Go smoke in a bar, smoke in a parking lot...
Suit: There's hookah bars.

--Staten Island Ferry Terminal

Overheard by: Emma

February 06, 2012 05:00 AM

First, let me note that taunting your blogmistress when she’s in emotional extremis is both ungentlemanly and unladylike and a quick ticket to outer darkness. But, congratulations to the Giants, who just played a superior game of football tonight, and consistently outplayed us this season. And to Chris Ashley, who wins our pool, and gets to make me write about the piece of culture of his choice.

Off the field of play, which was tense and exciting, and I think missed being a truly great game because of some sloppiness on each side, this seemed like a rather slack event to me. There was no standout ad (though I thought Budweiser’s shoutout to rescue dogs was cute). GoDaddy has reached (or, really, reached several years ago) the same point as Lady Gaga where doing something demure would be more shocking than any way they could find to comment on the female performance. I do, however, appreciate anything that lets me see Det. John Munch dance:

and Clint Eastwood’s Obama ad. But overall, I thought it was a lackluster year.

Madonna’s performance was, I thought, both a canny display of showmanship and a reasonably canny nod to the straight dude demographic once it shifted from chariot bearers to cheerleaders. And how great is it to get to see a woman do the greatest hits show that white dude rockers are regularly entitled to without comment on their age or creakiness? Nary a crotch-slam into the camera for the Queen of Pop:

I also think of all the judges from The Voice NBC could have brought out for the show, Cee Lo Green was the best and most gratifying choice. He’s a great fit for the gospel riff, and it’s so much fun to get him to see him dust off and re-sequin his “Closet Freak” robes:

Sometimes, the right people get to make the big money and stand under the bright lights.

by Alyssa Rosenberg at February 06, 2012 03:55 AM

Teen girl #1 to friend, about a guy who walked past: Ewww, he's so ugly! Look at him! He's so tall... And fat!
Teen girl #2: You're fat too!
Teen girl #1: You're fat!
Teen girl #2: You're fat and short! How about that?!
Teen girl #1: You are too!
Teen girl #2: I'm not fat... I'm chubby.

--Broadway & 145th St

February 06, 2012 03:00 AM

In the course of building a large framed mirror last month—a process which cemented my belief that doing pro-quality wood staining is a black art best left to necromancers—I visited the website for hardware giant Lowe's. While exploring the site, I came across something peculiar: a short Lowe's "customer care" statement on how other website operators can link to Lowe's.

I know what you're thinking: “there are instructions for this?” Indeed there are; Lowe's has actually drafted three separate legal agreements to cover the practice. Two cover situations in which the linking site might use Lowe's images and marks, and for which some kind of license deal makes more sense. The third says only, "If you're linking to Lowes.com, but not using our mark(s)/logo(s) on your site, download the Version A link agreement."

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February 06, 2012 02:00 AM

Some good things about the movie “A Separation”… It is dramatic even though nothing extraordinary happens, a tribute to the filmmakers (I think it is much more challenging to make a movie that is realistic than one in which amazing stuff occurs). The characters spend the entire movie enmeshed in the Iranian legal system, which seems to a lot more efficient than ours and perhaps just about as effective and fair. The judge, parties, and witnesses interact in a cramped office, not in an august courtroom. Generally speaking, there are no lawyers. The judge asks questions himself and tries to figure out who is most credible.

Given the extent to which Iran is demonized here in the U.S., it is helpful to see a movie in which Iranians live more or less as we do. Husbands and wives argue. Aging parents need to be cared for. Children study. People get stuck in traffic or wait for buses.

There are some big issues explored in the movie, but they are presented in the context of fairly small events.

Wikipedia says that the movie was made for $500,000 in Iran. If so, that’s a pretty damning comment on Hollywood.

by philg at February 06, 2012 01:48 AM

Facebook is still working on deleting photos from its servers in a timely manner nearly three years after Ars first brought attention to the topic. The company admitted on Friday that its older systems for storing uploaded content "did not always delete images from content delivery networks in a reasonable period of time even though they were immediately removed from the site," but said it's currently finishing up a newer system that makes the process much quicker. In the meantime, photos that users thought they "deleted" from the social network months or even years ago remain accessible via direct link.

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February 06, 2012 01:44 AM

Guy: I'm a one-woman man.
Female friend, astonished: You have a woman?!
Guy: No, I'm just saying...

--Columbia University

February 06, 2012 01:00 AM

nelson : Map overlays for Google Earth - Load Google street maps, Bing terrain maps, etc on Google Earth. Some render bugs in GE.

Tags : googleearth maps mapping render osm openstreetmap

February 06, 2012 12:00 AM

Lady: I never participated in Halloween. My mom wouldn't let us.
Man: You grew in the projects, how can you not have participated in Halloween? It's the project kids favorite holiday... especially throwing rotten eggs.
Lady: My mom kept us home a lot. She would have parties at our house every Friday night so we wouldn't roam the streets.
Man: Oh, that's cool.
Lady: Not really, cuz she's a semi-junkie.
Man: A semi-junkie?
Lady: Yeah, she only did weed and heroin, so she could keep an eye on us. But my brother did crack.
Man: Oh... Well, I guess her eyes weren't that good.
Lady: Yeah... I guess not.
(awkward silence ensues)

--Uptown B Train

Overheard by: Azrael

February 05, 2012 11:00 PM

Microsoft has published the specification for C++ AMP (Accelerated Massive Parallelism), its new system for heterogeneous parallel processing in C++. When Microsoft first announced C++ AMP in June last year, it said that it wanted to make the AMP specification open to all.

AMP has been developed by Microsoft with input from AMD and NVIDIA. Microsoft's implementation allows AMP programs to use both the main CPU and Direct3D video cards (via the company's DirectCompute API), though the specification should also permit OpenGL/OpenCL-based implementations.

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February 05, 2012 10:00 PM

Earth’s Energy Budget Remained Out of Balance Despite Unusually Low Solar Activity

Adam Voiland, NASA’s Earth Science News Team, in a repost.  The research brief by Hansen et al is here.

A new NASA study underscores the fact that greenhouse gases generated by human activity — not changes in solar activity — are the primary force driving global warming.

The study offers an updated calculation of the Earth’s energy imbalance, the difference between the amount of solar energy absorbed by Earth’s surface and the amount returned to space as heat. The researchers’ calculations show that, despite unusually low solar activity between 2005 and 2010, the planet continued to absorb more energy than it returned to space.

A graph of the sun’s total solar irradiance shows that in recent years irradiance dipped to the lowest levels recorded during the satellite era. The resulting reduction in the amount of solar energy available to affect Earth’s climate was about .25 Watts per square meter, less than half of Earth’s total energy imbalance. (Credit: NASA/James Hansen)

Total solar irradiance, the amount of energy produced by the sun that reaches the top of each square meter of the Earth’s atmosphere, typically declines by about a tenth of a percent during cyclical lulls in solar activity caused by shifts in the sun’s magnetic field. Usually solar minimums occur about every eleven years and last a year or so, but the most recent minimum persisted more than two years longer than normal, making it the longest minimum recorded during the satellite era.

Pinpointing the magnitude of Earth’s energy imbalance is fundamental to climate science because it offers a direct measure of the state of the climate. Energy imbalance calculations also serve as the foundation for projections of future climate change. If the imbalance is positive and more energy enters the system than exits, Earth grows warmer. If the imbalance is negative, the planet grows cooler.

James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, led the research. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics published the study last December.

Hansen’s team concluded that Earth has absorbed more than half a Watt more solar energy per square meter than it let off throughout the six year study period. The calculated value of the imbalance (0.58 Watts of excess energy per square meter) is more than twice as much as the reduction in the amount of solar energy supplied to the planet between maximum and minimum solar activity (0.25 Watts per square meter).

“The fact that we still see a positive imbalance despite the prolonged solar minimum isn’t a surprise given what we’ve learned about the climate system, but it’s worth noting because this provides unequivocal evidence that the sun is not the dominant driver of global warming,” Hansen said.

According to calculations conducted by Hansen and his colleagues, the 0.58 Watts per square meter imbalance implies that carbon dioxide levels need to be reduced to about 350 parts per million to restore the energy budget to equilibrium. The most recent measurements show that carbon dioxide levels are currently 392 parts per million and scientists expect that concentration to continue to rise in the future.

A prolonged solar minimum left the sun’s surface nearly free of sunspots and accompanying bright areas called faculae between 2005 and 2010. Total solar irradiance declined slightly as a result, but the Earth continued to absorb more energy than it emit throughout the minimum. An animation of a full solar cycle is available here. (Credit: NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio)

Climate scientists have been refining calculations of the Earth’s energy imbalance for many years, but this newest estimate is an improvement over previous attempts because the scientists had access to better measurements of ocean temperature than researchers have had in the past.

The improved measurements came from free-floating instruments that directly monitor the temperature, pressure and salinity of the upper ocean to a depth of 2,000 meters (6,560 feet). The network of instruments, known collectively as Argo, has grown dramatically in recent years since researchers first began deploying the floats a decade ago. Today, more than 3,400 Argo floats actively take measurements and provide data to the public, mostly within 24 hours.

The updated energy imbalance calculation has important implications for climate modeling. Its value, which is slightly lower than previous estimates, suggests that most climate models overestimate how readily heat mixes deeply into the ocean and significantly underestimates the cooling effect of small airborne particles called aerosols, which along with greenhouse gases and solar irradiance are critical factors in energy imbalance calculations.

“Climate models simulate observed changes in global temperatures quite accurately, so if the models mix heat into the deep ocean too aggressively, it follows that they underestimate the magnitude of the aerosol cooling effect,” Hansen said.

Aerosols, which can either warm or cool the atmosphere depending on their composition and how they interact with clouds, are thought to have a net cooling effect. But estimates of their overall impact on climate are quite uncertain given how difficult it is to measure the distribution of the particles on a broad scale. The new study suggests that the overall cooling effect from aerosols could be about twice as strong as current climate models suggest, largely because few models account for how the particles affect clouds.

A chart shows the global reach of the network of Argo floats. (Credit: Argo Project Office)

Reference

Hansen, J., Mki. Sato, P. Kharecha, and K. von Schuckmann, 2011: Earth’s energy imbalance and implications. Atmos. Chem. Phys., 11, 13421-13449, doi:10.5194/acp-11-13421-2011.

Related Links

+ Science Brief: Earth’s Energy Imbalance

+ James Hansen Biography

+ Argo Project Office

+ NASA-led Study Solves Case of Earth’s ‘Missing Energy’

+ World of Change: Solar Activity

by Joe Romm at February 05, 2012 09:54 PM

Guy #1, listening to music: You can stand under my umbrella... Ella... Ella... A... A...
Guy #2: Hey look, its Chris Brown! (smacks guy #1)

--Chinatown

February 05, 2012 09:00 PM

Football’s heartland will become dangerously hot

Back in November, GE’s TXCHNOLOGIST blog pointed out that climate change “could ruin Texas football,” indeed all southern U.S. football:

The effects of climate change, so far, have been most noticeable in Texas, where a terrible drought has dried up football fields in small towns that used to look forward to Friday nights above all. But climate change will have a terrible effect on communities throughout the cradle of football in the Southern and plains states.

Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas. The home states of the last five college football champions? Yes. But these are also states that are projected to experience 150-180 days a year with peak temperatures over 90 degrees Fahrenheit by the final decades of the 21st Century. That’s almost six months of the year. In parts of Florida and Texas the number is likely to exceed 180 days a year. Not only will the high temperatures be hotter, the lows will also be higher, so there will be less relief from the sultry conditions. This warming effect will have devastating effects on the ecology and economies of these area and make watching and playing football outdoors almost unbearable.

This isn’t news to Climate Progress readers (see NASA’s Hansen: “If We Stay on With Business as Usual, the Southern U.S. Will Become Almost Uninhabitable.”  But it is going to come as a big shock to the football fans throughout the region, many of whom have been heavily disinformed by their politicians and favorite media outlets.

Indeed, it is the conservative southern U.S., especially the South central and South east, who have led the way in blocking serious climate action, as it were, making yesterday’s worst-case scenario into today’s likely outcome (see “Our hellish future: Definitive NOAA-led report on U.S. climate impacts warns of scorching 9 to 11°F warming over most of inland U.S. by 2090 — and that isn’t the worst case, it’s business as usual! — the source of the figure above).

I’m a football fan, born and raised in New York State, and I will be rooting today for Manning to beat Brady — once again.  Ironically, it looks like warming is going to make football more of a northern U.S. game — though that will be among the least consequential of the myriad impacts our greed and myopia is thrusting on our children and grandchildren and billions around the world

GE’s blog points out a key danger of the ever-worsening heat and heat waves:  “Players will run increasing risk of hyperthermia.“  Andrew Grundstein, of the Climatology Research Laboratory at the University of Georgia, has analyzed heat-related deaths of football players since 1980.  In August, he explained his findings in a press call and pointed out some of his remarkable findings, including the fact that “the conventional wisdom that coaches can reduce the risk by practicing in the morning is inaccurate“:

• The death rate has increased since the mid-1990s
• Most of the deaths occurred early in the August practice period, with nearly 25 percent happening during the first three days of practice
• The overwhelming majority—86 percent—of those who died were linemen
• Most of the deaths occurred in the eastern half of the United States

“Many coaches assume that morning practices are safer because they are cooler,” [said Grundstein]. “But almost 60 percent of the deaths came after exposure during morning practices. The mornings may be cooler, but they also may be more humid which can increase the heat stress.”

Deke Arndt, chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, said that based on climate change projections, record temperatures and intense heat waves are likely to occur more frequently in the future. He also pointed out that many U.S. cities have set records for overnight temperatures this summer, which often is associated with higher humidity.

“Overnight temperatures don’t get as much attention as record highs,” Arndt said, “but in recent summers, we’ve been seeing that extremes in warmer low temperatures have been outpacing those for afternoon temperatures in terms of setting records.”

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control reported that an average of 6,000 people go to emergency rooms every year for heat-related illnesses during sports or recreational activities. The highest percentage of them are males between the ages of 15 and 19.

The good news is many of the deaths are preventable:

“This is not just about making sure players drink a lot of liquids,” said Michael Bergeron, director of the National Institute for Athletic Health and Performance at Sanford Health, and one of the country’s leading authorities on how young athletes are affected by exercising in hot weather. “It’s also about making sure they have the time to get acclimated to practicing under these conditions and adjusting the work-to-rest ratio appropriately.

“Even when athletes are well-hydrated, if it’s hot enough and you go hard enough, people can die,” added Bergeron, who has written guidelines for what coaches can do to reduce the risks to their players. “The bottom line is, heat-related deaths on the athletic field are preventable “

The bad news is, the climate is just going to get much, much worse if we keep listening to the disinformers.  Indeed, the GE blog points out:

Grass fields will turn to dust, synthetic fields will be too hot to touch

The near-Biblical drought that has gripped Texas in recent years has parched dozens, maybe even hundreds, of grass football fields. This is a preview of things to come. Drought and water scarcity will likely become more commonplace throughout football’s heartland, meaning more natural turf fields will turn to dust. And while artificial turf presents a plausible alternative to natural turf, synthetic fields are expensive and can cook to 50-100 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the air temperature on hot days (natural turf fields rarely exceed 100 degrees). Artificial turf can be irrigated to bring temperatures down but surface temperatures rebound quickly, according to studies. And irrigating does not address water scarcity problems.

Ouch, literally.

The link goes to a June 2011 in SportsTurfOnline (!), “Is there any way to cool synthetic turf?” which concludes:

What do these results tell us? As of right now, it is obvious that there is no “magic bullet” available to dramatically lower the surface temperature of synthetic turf.  Reductions of five or even ten degrees offer little comfort when temperatures can still exceed 150° F. Until temperatures can be reduced by at least 20-30 degrees for an extended period of time, surface temperature will remain a major issue on synthetic turf fields.

It’s worth noting that the chart at the top of days per year above 90F is the A2 scenario (about 850 ppm atmospheric concentrations of CO2 in 2100).  On our current emissions path, we are headed toward  A1FI, 1000 ppm (see here).  In a March 2010 presentation, Climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe has a figure of what the A1FI would mean:

Are you ready for some 100F football, southern states?

It is, of course, unclear whether people will still want to play football when the land has turned to dust (see “USGS on Dust-Bowlification and “Nature Publishes My Piece on Dust-Bowlification“) and the nation and the world are suffering through multiple horrific impacts.

“Bread and circuses” — panem et circenses — goes the old saying.  Hmm.  Maybe the future of sports is The Hunger Games.

by Joe Romm at February 05, 2012 08:00 PM

Digital forms of Solitaire have been included with Windows since it reached version 3.0, and they may well represent the most widely played video game series this side of Angry Birds, enjoyed by bored cubicle workers and bored, procrastinating students alike. While most serious gamers probably wouldn't put these games top ten picks of all time, you'd be hard-pressed to find a single PC owner that hasn't put in at least a few hours on a machine that has nothing else available.

Plants vs. Zombies and Peggle maker Popcap is targeting this familiar genre with its latest Facebook time-waster, Solitaire Blitz, a supremely addictive and well-crafted offering that adds just the right amount of tension to the zen autonomy of mindlessly clicking cards.

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February 05, 2012 08:00 PM

There was another caucus, apparently! The reason nobody noticed is because it was in Nevada, which is actually home to lots of Republican-voting Mormons. (Take out the corporate prostitution resort of Las Vegas in the southern corner of the state, and Nevada is just a sparsely populated length of mountains and desert right next to Utah.) But Romney is programmed to treat all wins the same, no matter how expected and no matter how few delegates are at stake, so the beaming Mittens will be transported out of Nevada by personal corporate jet with at least 10 delegates but certainly nothing like the 50 he picked up in Florida. The only pressing question is whether a cheap Huffington Post gimmick like putting “Super Bowl” in the headline will increase the page views for this post.

The picture you see above is a real “Mitt Romney campaign sign” photograph, from a Nevada stucco ghetto in 2008! It was the only political sign your editor saw after miles and miles of driving slowly through the decimated housing tracts, many already abandoned by their underwater mortgage holders early in 2008. (Las Vegas and Clark County lean heavily to the Democratic side, which also holds a 50,000-voter registration lead statewide.)

There was no Democratic contest this time around, so we were spared the dumb chaos of another “Casino Caucus.” So, there was no real contest at all. Mitt Romney, because he worships a space alien also worshiped by many people in the neighboring state of Utah, easily won Nevada’s GOP caucus. These are the important issues that will decide everything, maybe, until the real space aliens arrive, later this year.

Now that there’s no “plausible” way for the Newt or anyone but Romney to win the GOP nomination, Gingrich is (of course) predicting he will seal it up by Texas, when Mittens will withdraw in a rare display of personal shame. [Washington Post]

by Ken Layne at February 05, 2012 07:20 PM

Street vendor: Yes, please, thank you. Next!
Girl: Uh, mister do you have anything for a dollar?
(vendor looks blankly at her)
Street vendor: Next please... Yes!

--Broadway & 34th

Overheard by: Camille

February 05, 2012 07:00 PM

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI)

Rogers, commenting on Washington Post columnist David Ignatius’ report that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta believes “there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June,” told Crowley:

MIKE ROGERS: [...] My argument is this is too important for us not to get this right. If Israel does a unilateral strike this could be a real problem for the national security interests of the United States.

CANDY CROWLEY: Well it lights the Middle East on fire basically.

ROGERS: Absolutely.

Rogers defended diplomatic and economic efforts to persuade Iran to cooperate fully with U.N. nuclear inspectors:

ROGERS: [The sanctions] seem to be working. The financial pressure right now on Iran is devastating. [...] It’s effecting every sector of their economy. [...] Our argument is can we work with the Israelis on this and other programs to try to delay or stop this program by bringing Iran to the table. That to me is a better outcome than inflaming the Middle East.

Watch it:

Rogers is not alone in voicing misgivings about an Israeli unilateral attack. In January, George W. Bush’s CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden disclosed that the Bush administration concluded that attacking Iran “would guarantee that which we are trying to prevent — an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon.” Speaking last June, retired Israeli spy chief Meir Dagan warned that an Israeli attack on Iran was “the stupidest thing I have ever heard” and the fallout from such an attack would pose an “unbearable” security challenge. A recent Council on Foreign Relations report highlighted one of the immediate consequences of a military escalation with Iran: a sudden oil price shock (about $23 per barrel in the first days) following an Israeli strike.

Last week, retired Israeli Lt. Gen. Amnon Lipkin-Shahak told The Independent that the IDF leadership doesn’t support military action at this point and Panetta told reporters, “Israel has indicated they are considering this, and we have indicated our concerns.”

Rogers’ worries about blowback from an Israeli strike may also be shared by Israel’s new air force chief, Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel. The Associated Press reports that Eshel is “less enthusiastic about a possible attack on Iran” than outgoing air force chief Maj. Gen. Ido Nehushtan.

by Eli Clifton at February 05, 2012 06:00 PM

&lt;p&gt;First of all, it's not Puppybowl. It's two words: Puppy Bowl. And it starts at 3pm ET. &lt;a href="http://animal.discovery.com/tv/puppy-bowl/"&gt;More information here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;p.s. The Super Bowl starts at 6:30pm ET, more or less.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Bieber Bowl"&gt;Bieber Bowl&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/cuddly"&gt;cuddly&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/HuffPo ruined the Web"&gt;HuffPo ruined the Web&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/I love dogs"&gt;I love dogs&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/is there football today"&gt;is there football today&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Justin "Puppy Bowl" Bieber"&gt;Justin "Puppy Bowl" Bieber&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Justin Bieber VIII"&gt;Justin Bieber VIII&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Justin Puppy Bieber Bowl"&gt;Justin Puppy Bieber Bowl&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Puppies"&gt;Puppies&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Puppy Bieber"&gt;Puppy Bieber&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Puppy Bowl"&gt;Puppy Bowl&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Puppy Bowl 2012"&gt;Puppy Bowl 2012&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Puppy Bowl start time"&gt;Puppy Bowl start time&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Puppy Bowl VIII"&gt;Puppy Bowl VIII&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Puppybowl"&gt;Puppybowl&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Puppybowl 2012"&gt;Puppybowl 2012&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Puppybowl start time"&gt;Puppybowl start time&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Puppybowl VIII"&gt;Puppybowl VIII&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/SEOSEOSEO"&gt;SEOSEOSEO&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Super Bowl"&gt;Super Bowl&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Superbowl"&gt;Superbowl&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/tagsplosion"&gt;tagsplosion&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/what time does the Puppy Bowl start"&gt;what time does the Puppy Bowl start&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/what time does the Puppybowl start"&gt;what time does the Puppybowl start&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 05, 2012 05:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;First of all, it's not Puppybowl. It's two words: Puppy Bowl. And it starts at 3pm ET. &lt;a href="http://animal.discovery.com/tv/puppy-bowl/"&gt;More information here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;p.s. The Super Bowl starts at 6:30pm ET, more or less.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Bieber Bowl"&gt;Bieber Bowl&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/cuddly"&gt;cuddly&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/HuffPo ruined the Web"&gt;HuffPo ruined the Web&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/I love dogs"&gt;I love dogs&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/is there football today"&gt;is there football today&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Justin "Puppy Bowl" Bieber"&gt;Justin "Puppy Bowl" Bieber&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Justin Bieber VIII"&gt;Justin Bieber VIII&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Justin Puppy Bieber Bowl"&gt;Justin Puppy Bieber Bowl&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Puppies"&gt;Puppies&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Puppy Bieber"&gt;Puppy Bieber&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Puppy Bowl"&gt;Puppy Bowl&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Puppy Bowl 2012"&gt;Puppy Bowl 2012&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Puppy Bowl start time"&gt;Puppy Bowl start time&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Puppy Bowl VIII"&gt;Puppy Bowl VIII&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Puppybowl"&gt;Puppybowl&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Puppybowl 2012"&gt;Puppybowl 2012&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Puppybowl start time"&gt;Puppybowl start time&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Puppybowl VIII"&gt;Puppybowl VIII&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/SEOSEOSEO"&gt;SEOSEOSEO&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Super Bowl"&gt;Super Bowl&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Superbowl"&gt;Superbowl&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/tagsplosion"&gt;tagsplosion&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/what time does the Puppy Bowl start"&gt;what time does the Puppy Bowl start&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/what time does the Puppybowl start"&gt;what time does the Puppybowl start&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 05, 2012 05:44 PM

Appearing on Meet the Press this morning, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg expressed bewilderment at the many lawmakers in Washington who continue sabotage existing gun laws:

BLOOMBERG: You’d think that if a congresswoman got shot in the head, that would have changed Congress’ views. I can tell you how to change it, just get Congress to come with me to the hospital when I’ve got tell tell somebody that their son or daughter, their spouse, their parent is not going to come home again. This past, this week, even though the murder rate in New York is so much lower than almost every big city, we still had a cop shot last week with a gun that somebody had even though the federal laws prohibited that person from having a gun.

You know, the federal laws say you can’t get a gun if you have a drug problem, psychiatric problems, criminal record or [if you are] a minor. And yet Congress doesn’t give moneys to make sure we can have a background check. They have too many loopholes. The background databases aren’t up to date. Private sector sales of guns are something like 40 percent and they don’t do background checks, I don’t know who has to get killed for people to start saying ‘wait a second, this is enough.’

Watch it:

If anything, the picture in Congress is even bleaker than Bloomberg suggests. In 2006, the NRA successfully lobbied Congress to make the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) a Senate-confirmed position. Since then, the Senate has been unable to confirm anyone to serve as the chief enforcer of firearms laws due to the combination of gun lobbying and the nearly-unbreakable filibuster. President Obama’s nominee was blocked because he opposes allowing civilians to purchase a weapon capable of punching a baseball-sized hole in 2.5 inches of bulletproof glass.

Not content simply to erect barriers to enforcing federal firearms laws, much of Congress also wants to strip states of their power to enforce reasonable gun regulations. The House recently passed the “National Right To Carry Reciprocity Act,” which forces nearly every state to honor concealed carry licenses issued by the states with the laxest licensing rules. Half of North Carolina concealed carry permit holders with felony convictions have been allowed to keep their permits, and Florida issued 1,700 concealed carry permits to people with “criminal histories, arrest warrants, domestic violence injunctions and misdemeanor convictions for gun-related crimes.” Under this NRA-sponsored bill, all of these permit holders who be allowed to carry concealed firearms in 49 of the 50 states.

Nor are federal lawmakers the only ones looking for new and more creative ways to arm the nation. Several states are pushing efforts to force colleges to allow concealed firearms on campus — because clearly what America needs are rooms full of fraternity members packing heat right after they each consumed a case of Milwaukee’s Best. Not to be outdone, Colorado lawmakers are pushing a bill to allow firearms in elementary schools.

As conservative Justice Antonin Scalia explained in D.C. v. Heller, respecting the Second Amendment does not mean filling every building with firearms, or eliminating concealed carry rules, or placing guns in the hands of convicted felons or the mentally ill. Sadly, far too many lawmakers have let the NRA convince them that the myth of the Second Amendment far exceeds the reality.

by Ian Millhiser at February 05, 2012 05:35 PM

The Super Bowl is pure American Red, White and Blue. And organizers are trying to throw in a shade of green as well.

This year, the National Football league is undertaking a variety of initiatives — from an urban forestry program to donation of a small solar array — to “green” its operations. The most highly publicized initiative is the purchase of renewable energy credits (RECs) to offset all energy use during the game and the month-long set up.

Kara Scharwath of Triple Pundit had a piece on the NFL’s plan to be “super green.”

To help reduce the impact of that energy consumption, the National Football League and the Indianapolis Super Bowl XLVI Host Committee are partnering with Green Mountain Energy to purchase 15,000 megawatt hours of renewable energy certificates (RECs) generated at wind farms in North Dakota to offset the power associated with the event.

It’s encouraging to see a prominent organization like the NFL making an effort to clean up its operations. But the devil is in the details.

At a second glance, one has to wonder if this REC purchase really makes an impact at all.

RECs are not physical electricity, but the market value of the “environmental attribute” of that clean electricity. As readers of Climate Progress may know, we often write about our skepticism of RECs. (See: Clean Energy Trainwreck: Why Most RECs are Bad, and How to Find the Good Ones.)

By purchasing RECs, organizations like the NFL can claim that they are “powered” by renewable energy, when in fact they are not. Here’s the problem: The RECs bought for the Super Bowl are from existing projects in North Dakota. They are not helping build new projects, and are therefore providing a marginal incentive that does very little to expand the industry.

In an email exchange with Auden Schendler, vice president of sustainability at the Aspen Skiing Company (and periodic Climate Progress blogger), he expressed his underwhelming response to the announcement:

“Okay, so the farm is up, and the RECs are therefore not doing anything at all. And in my past work I’ve shown that the marginal income from these credits have virtually no influence on new wind farms. What would have influence? Getting congress to re-approve the tax incentives for wind. That would require an ad during the Super Bowl, not buying RECs.

There are a heck of a lot of things the NFL could be doing to actually try to move the needle in the public consciousness, argues Schendler:

“If the NFL really cared about climate change, they’d use the Jumbotron to have James Hansen speak about the urgency of action on climate. They would use the REC money to buy an ad on TV during the Super Bowl to talk to that audience about the need to pressure elected officials on climate action. But that’s the problem right there: the ad costs a ton of money (way more than the REC purchase) and it’s risky, and actually drives change. So it won’t happen.”

I will say, however, that I don’t think it’s an entirely lost cause. Even though the NFL might not be helping new generation come online, this promotion helps show Americans that the organization “votes” for renewable energy. That’s a story still worth telling.

Unfortunately, telling a good story isn’t enough.

If you want to see how the NFL and REC supplier Green Mountain Energy are marketing the purchase, see the infographic below. It’s got some catchy football analogies that may help the numbers stick in people’s minds.

by Stephen Lacey at February 05, 2012 05:30 PM

Crazy woman in fishnet stockings, lime green sweats, and house slippers in the snow: Do you smoke? Can I have a cigarette?
Passenger #1: Sorry, I don't have any.
Crazy woman: Do you smoke?
Passenger #2: No.
Crazy woman: You should learn to... it's the shit!

--M96 Bus

Overheard by: Nonsmoker

February 05, 2012 05:00 PM

Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow opened the door to a future in politics during an interview with the Golf Channel’s Dave Feherty. “It could be something in my future,” Tebow said.

Feherty began the conversation by lobbying Tebow to run. “I have an idea — would you ever think of running for office, please?” Feherty asked. “We’ve got Romney and Gingrich out there at the minute, and I don’t know what anyone else thinks, but they got the sort of faces that you’d never get tired of punching.”

The deeply-religious Tebow said that politics is “something I’ll have to think about, and if I pray about, and you know, I have no idea right now, but possibly.” Watch it:

Conservative politicians have been politicizing Tebow, seizing on his popularity for their own political benefit.

In one of Tebow’s rare instances of engaging in politics, he appeared in a 2007 Super Bowl ad for the anti-gay group Focus on the Family. The ad, featuring he and his mother, was intended to communicate an anti-abortion message. Watch it here.

by Faiz Shakir at February 05, 2012 04:45 PM

Every year in late January or early February, two teams take to the field to play a football game that's watched by tens of millions of Americans. And every year, businesses launch ad campaigns to sell a variety of products—televisions, pizzas, soda—in conjunction with the game. And the overwhelming majority of these businesses avoid calling it the "Super Bowl."

Why? They're afraid of getting sued by the National Football League, which holds the trademark for the term and polices it aggressively. The NFL takes the position that no one is allowed to use the phrase "Super Bowl" in an advertisement without writing the NFL a big check first. Every year, the league sends cease-and-desist letters to businesses that stray too close to the line.

Read the comments on this post

February 05, 2012 04:00 PM

9-year-old brother: And then you die, and you float around the whole earth, but you're invisible, and you look for a new baby to be. But you don't remember who you were before.
7-year-old brother: I remember, I remember! My name was... Michael.
9-year-old brother: No, your name was Teddy. And mine was Adolf. Adolf Hitler!
(they both laugh hysterically)

--M15 Bus

Overheard by: Fashion It So

February 05, 2012 03:00 PM

Pile of leaves, or power plant?

It’s chore day. You’ve raked the leaves, taken out the recycling, and emptied out the old junk in your garage. But wait — don’t toss it all out! You have all the ingredients for your very own homemade solar system.

If new advances in “biophotovoltaics” research are any indication, you may someday be able to create your own solar “goo” from plant matter and apply it to metal or glass.

A group of researchers has found a way to break down plant matter, isolate photosynthetic molecules, and then spread those molecules on a metal or glass substrate. So theoretically, you could take a bag full of leaves and grass, pour in a mixture of chemicals to break them down, and then finish your chores by painting the liquid on your windows to produce electricity. Not bad for a day’s work.

Researchers have been working on biophotovoltaics for many years, only to be hindered by low efficiencies, rapid degradation, and difficulties in spreading the photovoltaic “goo” onto a substrate. But nine scientists have just published research on new advances that boost performance and may allow for inexpensive substrates like recycled glass and metal to be used:

To improve photovoltaic performance we increased the light absorption cross-section without changing the footprint by departing from the traditional flat electrode geometry in favor of mesoscopic, high-surface area semiconducting electrodes (TiO₂ nanocrystals and ZnO nanowires). Finally, we showed how high affinity peptide motifs¹⁰ bioengineered to promote selective adsorption to specific substrates can enhance photovoltaic performance. These materials, geometries and design resulted in simple, robust biophotovoltaic devices of unprecedented performance.

In short, the researchers have created a method to stabilize the photosynthetic molecules. And by coating a substrate with titanium dioxide and zinc oxide nanowires, they can now turn any sort of glass or metal material into a working solar cell with efficiencies better than ever before.

It’s a fascinating discovery. But don’t get too excited yet. Efficiencies are still extraordinarily low — only at .01%. They’d need to be about 10 times that in order to power a light or charge a cell phone. So for the foreseeable future, don’t expect to be painting your house with a bag of grass clippings.

However, as research advances and performance continues to improve, MIT physicist Andreas Mershin says it could be perfect for remote applications in developing countries. In the video below, Mershin explains the significance of the findings:

by Stephen Lacey at February 05, 2012 02:01 PM

During an NBC GOP presidential debate last month, Mitt Romney drew laughter from some in the crowd when he revealed that his plan for immigration reform amounts to “self-deportation, which is people decide that they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here.”

That idea — which forms the basis of the radical anti-immigration laws in Arizona and Alabama — is inspired by the work of Kris Kobach, Kansas’ Secretary of State. Kobach, who advises Romney on immigration, explained the “self-deporation” concept in an interview with ThinkProgress recently, calling it “attrition through enforcement.”

In an interview with Univision’s Jorge Ramos, John McCain — who has endorsed Romney — distanced himself from the former Massachusetts governor’s rhetoric. “We have to present a humane approach to a very difficult issue of illegal immigration into this country,” McCain said, adding that he favors a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants. Ramos forced McCain to concede that he did not agree with the policy of self-deporation:

RAMOS: You’re talking about a humane way. Is self-deportation a humane way to treat 11 million undocumented immigrants?

McCAIN: No. I think there are some people who want to leave this country and return to the country they came from, but obviously it requires a broader solution than that, and we all know that.

Watch it:

Romney and Kobach’s radicalism is alienating allies in the Republican Party — even those who have endorsed Romney. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), who supports Romney, said self-deportation “was frankly a bad choice of words.” Alex Garza, the vice president of Hispanics in Politics — and a Republican — said “the Republican Party shouldn’t promote policies of family separation. Self-deportation isn’t possible.”

Newt Gingrich also assailed Romney, saying “I think he’s amazingly insensitive to the realities of the immigrant community — his whole concept of self-deportation. I’ve not met anyone who thinks it’s in touch with reality. People aren’t going to self-deport.”

by Faiz Shakir at February 05, 2012 02:00 PM

Kevan posted a photo:

February 05, 2012 01:42 PM

Kevan posted a photo:

February 05, 2012 01:42 PM

Kevan posted a photo:

February 05, 2012 01:42 PM

Kevan posted a photo:

February 05, 2012 01:40 PM

Kevan posted a photo:

February 05, 2012 01:39 PM

Kevan posted a photo:

February 05, 2012 01:39 PM

Kevan posted a photo:

February 05, 2012 01:38 PM

Kevan posted a photo:

February 05, 2012 01:38 PM

Kevan posted a photo:

February 05, 2012 01:37 PM

Diner: Can I also get the garden fresh salad?
Server: We don't have that anymore. Do you want the fresh garden salad?
Diner: Yes.

--122nd St & Amsterdam

February 05, 2012 01:00 PM

Cute girl: Umm... I just saw a bum playing the recorder.
Guy: Did he have talent?

--32nd & 5th Ave

Overheard by: Adam

February 05, 2012 11:00 AM

Italian kid #1: Dude, it's complicated...
Italian kid #2: Whoa, whoa whoa! Avril-Lavinge complicated or Facebook "it's-complicated"?
Italian kid #1: I don't even know why we are friends...

--8th Ave, Brooklyn

February 05, 2012 09:00 AM

Woman #1: Ma'am, you need to move. We're trying to get by here.
Woman #2, trying to squeeze into line of people to get out of the way: You'll have to wait a second...
Woman #1: You selfish, nasty witch! What are you, from the suburbs?

--Laura Pels Theatre

February 05, 2012 07:00 AM

Tourist mom after buying a Chinatown purse: See sweetie, now we've had a real New York experience!
Tourist teenage daughter: Yeah mom, about as real as these bags.

--Chinatown

Overheard by: Knock-off New Yorker

February 05, 2012 05:00 AM

Normal-looking guy: It's eating a baby.
Girl, after long awkward pause: Okay... (pauses again) Uh... Is that a good thing?
Normal-looking guy: Yeah, I mean, they give you a burrito, but it's a baby.
Girl: (looks very confused and starts to get alarmed)
Normal-looking guy: It's huge--it's as big as a baby--it's like eating a baby.
Girl: Ohhh, that's what you meant...
Normal-looking guy: Yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna go kill a baby and eat it.
Girl, after sigh of relief: Yeah. Good.

--8th Ave, Midtown

Overheard by: Aliza

February 05, 2012 03:00 AM

Yesterday, ThinkProgress exclusively reported Ari Fleischer’s involvement — dating back at least to December — with the Komen Foundation, including issues related to Planned Parenthood. Tonight, the Washington Post reports that Komen is now publicly confirming that Fleischer, a prominent right-wing pundit and former press secretary for George W. Bush, will help “on crisis communications” related to Planned Parenthood. Komen stressed that Fleischer, who is a long-time critic of Planned Parenthood, “had nothing to do with the funding decision.”

by Judd Legum at February 05, 2012 02:20 AM

Police officers at McPherson Square Park

Six protesters had been arrested as of about four o’clock this afternoon — two for crossing a police barricade and four for violating police orders — but the majority were “very cooperative” as police moved through the park, Schlosser said. Two more were arrested later, according to various reports. Park Police moved methodically through the park, closing sections at a time while the rest remained open, using riot shields and sticks to move protesters as Park Service employees in hazardous materials suits cleared and removed tents.

At different times, small groups of protesters collided with police, who pushed protesters back with riot shields. One police officer was struck by a brick in the face and taken to the hospital. At one point, multiple protesters were struck by riot sticks as they clashed with police moving through the park. Watch:

One protester said Police had offered a compromise, telling Occupy DC that if they removed the giant tarp covering the statue at the center of the park — known as the tent of dreams — police would not confiscate tents. Schlosser would not confirm or deny that such a deal had been proposed, saying only that notices had been provided to protesters telling them that noncompliant tents were subject to removal.

According to the notice, tents must be free of sleeping materials and remain open on one side at all times to stay in compliance with Park Police regulations.

by Travis Waldron at February 05, 2012 01:22 AM

Mom: How was your afternoon?
Little girl: We got wings and pixie dust all over ourselves! It was so fun!
Random hobo: I did that too!

--7th Ave & W 4th

February 05, 2012 01:00 AM

Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White (R)

Yesterday, a jury found Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White (R) guilty on six felony counts of voter fraud, theft, and perjury. The conviction cost White his job, though he plans to ask the judge to reduce the charges to misdemeanors and hopes to perhaps regain the position.

In a statement, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) announced White’s deputy will take over on an interim basis:

I have chosen not to make a permanent appointment today out of respect for the judge’s authority to lessen the verdict to a misdemeanor and reinstate the elected office holder… If the felony convictions are not altered, I anticipate making a permanent appointment quickly.

But a second court case could ultimately give the job to Democrat Vop Osili, who lost to White in November 2010. A judge’s December 2011 ruling — currently on hold, pending appeal — held that due to the voter fraud charges, White’s election was invalid. Should that ruling survive the appeals process, Osili would assume the office.

Ironically, White’s now-removed 2010 campaign website listed election integrity as among his top concerns, and promised he would “protect and defend Indiana’s Voter ID law to ensure our elections are fair and protect the most basic and precious right and responsibility of our democracy-voting.”

by Josh Israel at February 04, 2012 09:29 PM

By Andrew Freedman, in a Climate Central repost

Although recent rains have put a dent in the Texas drought, a day of reckoning looms for the state’s long-grain rice growers, who pump millions into the economy in Southeast Texas each year and account for about 5 percent of America’s rice production. Come March 1, if there is less than 850,000 acre-feet of water in reservoirs along the Lower Colorado River, water managers will be forced to take the unprecedented step of withholding water from agricultural users, which will mean severe cuts to Texas rice production this year.

According to Bob Rose, chief meteorologist with the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), it’s unlikely that enough rain will fall between now and March 1 to reach the 850,000 acre-feet threshold that was established by a recent agreement between the authority and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. An acre-foot is the amount of water required to cover one acre of land to a depth of one foot, and it amounts to about 326,000 gallons.

As of January 30, the highland lakes that serve as the area’s reservoirs held about 758,000 acre-feet.

“This is going to be a huge, huge deal,” Rose said during a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society in New Orleans. “What’s going to happen is that there will be no water for rice irrigation in the Lower Colorado River Basin this year.”

Driving the Lower Colorado River Authority’s decision-making is the need to ensure there is enough water to meet the demand from Austin, the rapidly growing state capital that is completely reliant on water from the Lower Colorado River, as well as other municipalities and users, such as electric utilities that need water to run power plants.

The agricultural water restrictions would hit three Southeast Texas counties the hardest: Colorado, Matagordo, and Wharton. According to a 2011 analysis by the Texas AgriLife Extension Service, the combined direct and indirect economic benefits of rice production and processing in these three counties alone amounts to $675 million, including the support of nearly 9,000 jobs.

“This will be a huge blow to the region’s economy,” Rose told Climate Central. “We have never had a year where we have curtailed their [rice growers’] water or cut them off” completely, he said.

The 2011-12 drought ranks as the state’s most intense one-year drought since records began in 1895. The drought has had major impacts on agriculture in the Lone Star State, particularly for cattle ranchers, causing at least $5.2 billion in agricultural losses during 2011. This includes $1.8 billion in cotton losses, $750 million in lost hay production, and $243 million in wheat losses.

Texas is the largest cattle ranching state in the country, and the dry weather, combined with record summer heat and shortage of affordable feed this year caused many ranchers to cull their herds early or move their cattle to ranches in other states. The Texas cattle herd dropped by 11 percent during 2011, which translates to more than a million head of cattle.

Scientists say the drought is a likely result of a La Nina event in the Pacific Ocean, which tends to depress rainfall totals in Texas, particularly during the winter. However, global warming has likely exacerbated the drought and led to more heat extremes last summer, according to Texas state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon.

Brent Batchelor, who works for Texas AgriLife Extension Service in Matagorda County, said rice growers there are “hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.”

“They’re very apprehensive because we’re a long ways from getting any water,” he said. He added that even if the reservoirs do rise above 850,000 acre-feet, rice growers would still receive less water than normal through a system of Lower Colorado River Authority-managed canals.

Although it boosted morale, an unusually heavy January rainstorm was not enough to significantly raise reservoir levels, which remain about 100,000 acre-feet shy of the threshold, according to Rose. “We still have about five weeks till March 1, so it’s possible we could see another storm like this. But the overall pattern still looks drier than normal. I’m not very optimistic at this point,” he said.

The Weather Service’s Murphy said the long-range weather outlook calls for a drier than average February, although he noted that dry weather was forecast for December and January, and both months turned out to be wetter than average.

– By Andrew Freedman, in a Climate Central repost

Related Posts:

• Catastrophic $5.3 Billion Texas Drought Hits Global Cotton, Beef, Peanut Butter and Even Pumpkin Market
• With No End in Sight for Texas Drought, ABC News Explains: “Every Farmer in the World Will Be Affected by Climate Change.

• Water. Coal. Fracking. Texas. Sanity. One of These Words Does Not Belong
• In Drought-Stricken Texas, Drillers Use Billions Of Gallons Of Water For Fracking:  The Texas Water Development Board estimates the total amount of water used for fracking statewide in 2010 was 13.5 billion gallons. That’s likely to more than double by 2020
• As Texas Withers, Gas Industry Guzzles:  … in the Upper Trinity Groundwater Conservation District (UTGCD) west of Fort Worth, the share of groundwater used by frackers was 40 percent in the first half of 2011, up from 25 percent in 2010.

“Obviously, that’s a pretty heavy draw on an aquifer when we’re in the midst of a drought,” says Bob Patterson, UTGCD’s general manager. In his water district, 40 to 50 wells have run dry and many municipalities have declared stage two or stage three drought conditions, which involve severe restrictions on residential outdoor water use. But natural gas drillers can still pump as much water from the district as they want….

Critics of fracking claim the industry actually uses far more water than it lets on. Because water used in the fracking process becomes contaminated with hydrocarbons and other toxins, frackers typically sequester it deep underground, removing that wastewater permanently from the hydrologic cycle. Unlike the water used for irrigation or daily living, it doesn’t reenter rivers, aquifers, or the atmosphere. “Fracking water is typically not recycled,” says Paul Hudak, a hydrologist with the University of North Texas. “It’s not really economical.”

by Joe Romm at February 04, 2012 09:05 PM

One of the changes from having a child in the house is that friends and relatives want to have video chats with me whereas previously they were content to talk by phone (or not to talk at all!). I’ve tried Skype and Facetime and Google Chat on computers ranging from a 6-core monster to an iPad 2. Whether hardwired to the 5/15 Mbps Verizon FiOS connection or connected via 802.11n, the quality is almost always terrible, with jerky video and unreliable audio.

I can’ t figure out why this is. A reasonable voice phone call can be had with a 12 kbit/second connection. The same computers and Internet connection are used very successfully to stream high quality videos down from YouTube and NetFlix. The same network was used very successfully with Vonage for smooth voice calls. It can’t be a server issue, I don’t think, because these services should be peer-to-peer. I don’t think it is a too-hard-to-compress issue. The 6-core machine can compress a 1080p AVCHD video into a 720p .mp4 file in about 50% of real-time (i.e., can process 2 minutes of video in 1 minute), so presumably even a single CPU core should be able to do compression on the low-resolution videos that are standard for these services.

Why is it that the golden age of video conferencing is not yet upon us?

by philg at February 04, 2012 09:05 PM

This week, we wrapped up our coverage of the 2012 Macworld|iWorld conference in San Francisco just as Apple issued an update to Final Cut Pro X and gave the AirPort Utility an iOS makeover. Additionally, Tim Cook offered some strong words in response to doubts about Apple's attitude toward worker conditions in China, Neil Young recounted stories about Steve Jobs working towards higher-quality music downloads, and more. Need a recap? You're in the right place.

Rethinking iPhone UI and getting things done with Clear to-do app: Realmac is set to launch an iPhone to-do list app in a few weeks that breaks list making and maintaining down to the barest essentials, eschewing some common iPhone UI elements to make the app as simple as humanly possible.

LandingZone to ease docking for MacBook Air: A new Cupertino startup is launching a clever, well-designed docking solution for Apple's MacBook Air. The first version is set to begin shipping by March, but a planned Thunderbolt-equipped version is on hold pending licensing approval from Intel.

Read the comments on this post

February 04, 2012 09:00 PM

One thing you can say about the Los Angeles Times, they are consistent in their miscoverage of global warming.

On January 27, they committed “journalistic malpractice,” as climatologist Michael Mann tweeted, for omitting any mention of global warming whatsoever in their article seeking to explain why the U.S. “seems to have largely escaped winter.”

On Groundhog day, coincidentally enough, they did it again.  Hmm.  Maybe this is like the movie and they are just going to keep making the same mistakes over and over and over again…..

As the L.A. Times “explains” in the article:

“It’s mild,” said Pastelok, a meteorologist from AccuWeather, in one of the bigger understatements of the season.

“The departures have been way above normal this season, maybe in a top five or top 10 category,” he said when asked to rank how unusual the winter from the Plains eastward had been in terms of temperatures and lack of snow.

The situation has stymied forecasters, who study previous years’ patterns to predict the future. This year has been unique because even when there have been cold snaps, they have been extremely brief and followed by long, mild stretches.

If only scientists had predicted years ago that spewing billions and billions of tons of heat trapping greenhouse gases into the air would cause more frequent extreme heat waves — ones that covered a bigger area and lasted far longer than before.

And no, confusionists and their enablers, those scientists didn’t say that global warming would be responsible for 100% of all heat waves.  But we are now pushing so far beyond the historical norm that we are seeing  unprecedented uber-extreme heat waves (see Hansen et al: “Extreme Heat Waves … in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 Were ‘Caused’ by Global Warming”).

The good news is that while the L.A. Times remains clueless, NBC news got the story just right — global warming piles the heat on top of whatever natural variability, like La Niña, we see.  Here’s their excellent story on the heat wave so unusual, people were “calling it JUNuary”:

Again, one can always tell the difference between good  journalism and not so good journalism by whether they quote real climate scientists who have actually studied the issue in question.

In this case, they went to the source, Dr. Gerald Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).  You can read about his work here:  “Record high temperatures far outpace record lows across U.S.”  NCAR explained their findings in a news release:

Spurred by a warming climate, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows over the last decade across the continental United States, new research shows. The ratio of record highs to lows is likely to increase dramatically in coming decades if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to climb.

“Climate change is making itself felt in terms of day-to-day weather in the United States,” says Gerald Meehl, the lead author and a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). “The ways these records are being broken show how our climate is already shifting.”

Of course, it’s not warm winters that cause the big problem, it’s the blistering summers.

Here’s a Stanford release for Climatic Change study (PDF here) I wrote about in June:

Stanford climate scientists forecast permanently hotter summers

The tropics and much of the Northern Hemisphere are likely to experience an irreversible rise in summer temperatures within the next 20 to 60 years if atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations continue to increase, according to a new climate study by Stanford University scientists….

“According to our projections, large areas of the globe are likely to warm up so quickly that, by the middle of this century, even the coolest summers will be hotter than the hottest summers of the past 50 years,” said the study’s lead author, Noah Diffenbaugh, The study, based on observations and models, finds that most major countries, including the United States, are “likely to face unprecedented climate stresses even with the relatively moderate warming expected over the next half-century.”

I interviewed Diffenbaugh for my book, Hell and High Water, and in 2008 wrote about his earlier work in a post titled, “When can we expect very high surface temperatures?”

Bottom line: By century’s end, extreme temperatures of up to 122°F would threaten most of the central, southern, and western U.S. Even worse, Houston and Washington, DC could experience temperatures exceeding 98°F for some 60 days a year.

The peak temperature analysis comes from a Geophysical Research Letters paper that focused on the annual-maximum “once-in-a-century” temperature. The key scientific point is that “the extremes rise faster than the means in a warming climate.”

The results, depicted above (in °C), are quite remarkable, especially when you consider that this is just the A1B scenario. In 2100, A1B hits about 700 ppm with average global temperatures “only” about 3°C (5 F) warmer than today.

In fact, on our current emissions path, a 3C temperature rise will happen much sooner (see Hadley Center: “Catastrophic” 5-7°C  warming by 2100 on current emissions path and M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10°F — with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20°F).   And remember, the worst-case scenario is that this happens by mid-century [see Royal Society special issue details ‘hellish vision’ of 7°F (4°C) world — which we may face in the 2060s!]

On our current emissions path, these record temperatures could be seen closer to 2060 than 2100:

… values in excess of 50°C [122°F] in Australia, India, the Middle East, North Africa, the Sahel and equatorial and subtropical South America.

As you can see from the map, extreme temperature peaks are only slightly lower over large parts of this country. The study notes:

Such temperatures, if lasting for some days, are life threatening and receive relatively little attention in the climate change debate.

On our current emissions path, we may well exceed the A2 scenario and hit A1FI, 1000 ppm (see here).  In a terrific March 2010 presentation, Climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe has a figure of what the A1FI would mean:

Mother Nature is just warming up.

The time to act is yesterday.

Related Post:

• Science stunner — On our current emissions path, CO2 levels in 2100 will hit levels last seen when the Earth was 29°F (16°C) hotter:  Paleoclimate data suggests CO2 “may have at least twice the effect on global temperatures than currently projected by computer models”

by Joe Romm at February 04, 2012 08:11 PM

From the Start Your Coding dept.:
This will be the 8th year for Google Summer of Code, an innovative program dedicated to introducing students from colleges and universities around the world to open source software development. The program offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source projects with the help of mentoring organizations from all around the globe. Over the past seven years Google Summer of Code has had 6,000 students from over 90 countries complete the program. Our goal is to help these students pursue academic challenges over the summer break while they create and release open source code for the benefit of all.

February 04, 2012 07:44 PM

Donald Trump endorsed Mitt Romney on Thursday in a high-profile ceremony in Las Vegas. And while they’ve had their differences in the past, in many ways, the two have a lot in common. In honor of the occasion, we produced this video documenting the values that Romney and Trump share:

by Jeff Spross at February 04, 2012 07:00 PM

This week, an animated trailer for an imaginary Zelda game got us wondering why exactly games often can't live up to the thrilling scenes we're shown in pre-release videos. We also looked at the slow redefinition of what an Online Pass can be used for, examined the legality of blocking used games sales, and spent a massively-multiplayer hour as a cat.

Madden NFL and Tecmo Bowl both agree that the Giants are going to win the Super Bowl this weekend. Personally, I'm rooting for stadium collapse.

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February 04, 2012 07:00 PM

Amid brutal violence in Syria, Russia and China vetoed a resolution before the 15-member body to support an Arab League plan to end the crisis. Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave dueling speeches in Munich, Germany. “As a tyrant in Damascus brutalizes his own people, the U.S. and Europe stand shoulder to shoulder…alongside the Arab League, in demanding an end to the bloodshed and a democratic future for Syria,” Clinton said. President Obama also threw his support behind the resolution and, going even farther, ended his statement by saying: “The suffering citizens of Syria must know: we are with you, and the Assad regime must come to an end.” But Russia and China blocked the resolution. U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, who tweeted that she was “disgusted” by the veto, said on the Council floor: “This intransigence is even more shameful when you consider that at least one of these members” — Russia — “is still delivering weapons to Syria.”

by Ali Gharib at February 04, 2012 06:27 PM

Leo en Público que Apple ha retirado de su tienda online un ejemplar de la revista Muy interesante en la que aparecía un hombre desnudo, cubriendo sus genitales con las manos. Como titular, anunciaba, en letras grandes, Verdades y mitos del pene. Según explica la compañía de la manzana, la portada vulnera la categoría de mayores de 12 años.

by Inconexo (posted by Mu) at February 04, 2012 05:01 PM

Kindle Fire dwarfs other Android tablets in market share after just three months: After three months, the Kindle Fire has an equal share of the Android tablet market with the Samsung Galaxy Tab, and has already outstripped the Motorola Xoom, Asus Transformer, and Acer Iconia Tab.

Firefox 10 arrives with new dev tools and full-screen API: Mozilla has released version 10 of the Firefox Web browser. The update includes improved development tools and a new API for displaying page elements in fullscreen mode.

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February 04, 2012 05:00 PM

Tens of thousands of Russian protesters defied sub-zero temperatures in Moscow to keep alive the blossoming protest movement against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s bid to reassert himself as president and allegedly fraudulent elections. The third such large-scale protest in Moscow — following a December 10 outing and a massive December 24 rally (amid other smaller actions) — made light of temperatures of minus 17 degrees Centigrade (minus 1 Fahrenheit) after the authorities waged a bizarre propaganda campaign to discourage people from going out in the cold. Organizers, though, waged a sometimes light-hearted counter-campaign, and claimed 120,000 people came out to demonstrate (police put the number at 35,000). Their signs read “Down with the cold, down with Putin,” “They froze our democracy” and “We are frozen in solidarity.” Here’s an AP picture of bundled-up protesters run by the New York Times:

by Ali Gharib at February 04, 2012 04:36 PM

It was a crazy week for science. Normally, when we say that, we mean there was a lot of important news going on; this week, some of the actual stories involved a fair degree of nuttiness. These included an overt attempt to inject religion into science classes and a theory that attempts to explain everything without even bothering to deal with most of the fundamental particles identified by physics. Still, there was some good science, including a very selective graphene membrane and some bacteria engineered to turn seaweed into biofuels.

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February 04, 2012 03:00 PM

Arizona’s unremitting campaign against its Hispanic communities has certainly reached an extreme, with the state GOP initiating a spate of radical anti-immigrant laws, banning Mexican-American and other ethnic studies, and ensuring that Spanish-speakers will never hold elected office. But one lawmaker is intent on turning the party’s xenophobic paranoia into a full-blown caricature.

Reacting to a Democratic colleagues apparently incendiary request to celebrate a Latino American day, State Rep. Cecil Ash (R) declared that he’d support the idea as long as there’s a holiday for white people too. “I’m supportive of this proposition. I just want them to assure me that when we do become in the minority you’ll have a day for us,” he said. Ash was “trying to lighten things up,” but when CBS 5 asked if he was serious about a Caucasian holiday, he offered an unequivocal “yes”:

ASH: Yes, I think it was appropriate. It was appropriate for the mood that was in the House and I think that if and when the Caucasian population becomes a minority, they may want to celebrate the accomplishments and the contributions of the Caucasian population the same way.

You can watch the report here. As CBS 5 notes, some Arizonans were supportive of the idea. “Good idea,” said one woman. “Like they have Cinco de Mayo for Mexicans. We need something for whites.”

by Tanya Somanader at February 04, 2012 01:15 PM

A cybernickel for your thoughts — yes, I want thoughts that are 5 times as valuable as usual!

To inspire you, this classic Toles cartoon:

by Joe Romm at February 04, 2012 12:49 PM

A spam botnet brought down four months ago, which was once capable of pumping out almost four billion spam messages a day, remains very much dead, two of the companies behind the takedown said.

That determination, announced late Friday by Microsoft and Kaspersky Lab representatives, contradicted published reports, including one from Ars, that claimed the network of infected computers had been resurrected. There's no evidence that control of Kelihos, which also went by the name Hlux, has returned to the control of its creators, the companies said.

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February 04, 2012 01:55 AM

A través de este blog llego a una tremenda reflexión de Marshall Kirkpatrick, co-editor del blog de tecnología de ReadWriteWeb, y probablemente una de las dos personas en el mundo que cree más que yo en el uso de RSS. My take on it is this, and I'll try to say this without getting too upset about it: the lack of uptake of RSS reading software by consumers and businesses is among the turns of events in recent technology history that's most disparaging of the state of humanity. That a personalized, centralized repository for updates from dynamic streams of information delivered by free trusted sources of democratic publishing all over the world has had its tech-lunch eaten by mind-rotting casual Flash games on Facebook is as depressing as the way that public education dreams were dashed when the promise of television became its reality. It's like the psychedelic dreams of Harvard's Dr. Timothy Leary becoming the wretched, heartbreaking narcotic drama of the TV show The Wire. It's terrible. It's reason to pack it all up and go home.

by amieiro (posted by nettizen) at February 04, 2012 01:30 AM

The Document Foundation (TDF), which launched in 2010 to develop LibreOffice, has published statistics that illustrate the project's rapid growth. Approximately 400 total developers have contributed code to the project. The number of contributors who are active each month generally ranges from 50 to over 100.

LibreOffice is a community-driven fork of the OpenOffice.org (OOo) office suite. The project started after Oracle's acquisition of Sun with the aim of offering a better governance model and a more inclusive environment than OOo. LibreOffice quickly attracted the support of the major Linux distributors and a large number of independent developers.

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February 04, 2012 12:40 AM

Samer nos cuenta: «El colectivo Comunes ha hecho público el documento "Hack for your Rights - Hackea por tus derechos". Siguiendo las reflexiones de Eric S. Raymond, el texto generaliza y amplia el concepto de ética hacker, planteándolo como una partida simultánea y global en la búsqueda de cambios estructurales en cualquier ámbito de la sociedad. La conclusión del documento es que todos podemos ser "hackers", sin restringir su significado al ámbito informático. El texto utiliza el Software Libre como ejemplo vertebrador y anima a los lectores, siguiendo este caso, a conseguir sus propios "hacks".»

by nettizen at February 04, 2012 12:16 AM

&lt;p&gt;I love &lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bizweekdesign/6806776681/"&gt;the cover&lt;/a&gt; of the most recent Bloomberg Businessweek:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/airplane-sex.jpg" width="480" height="640" alt="Airplane Sex" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Here's a peek at &lt;a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2012/02/peek-inside-design-process-bloomberg-businessweek/48208/"&gt;how the design process works at the magazine&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Bloomberg Businessweek"&gt;Bloomberg Businessweek&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/design"&gt;design&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/magazines"&gt;magazines&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 03, 2012 11:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;I love these cauliflower explosions done by Brock Davis...you can find them in &lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/laserbread/sets/72157626812709336/detail/"&gt;his Food Stuff set&lt;/a&gt; on Flickr. Here's the Challenger explosion in cauliflower:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/cauliflower-shuttle.jpg" width="500" height="381" alt="Cauliflower Space Shuttle" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;(via &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/#!/josephholmes"&gt;@josephholmes&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Brock Davis"&gt;Brock Davis&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/food"&gt;food&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/photography"&gt;photography&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Space Shuttle"&gt;Space Shuttle&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 03, 2012 11:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;I love &lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bizweekdesign/6806776681/"&gt;the cover&lt;/a&gt; of the most recent Bloomberg Businessweek:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/airplane-sex.jpg" width="480" height="640" alt="Airplane Sex" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Here's a peek at &lt;a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2012/02/peek-inside-design-process-bloomberg-businessweek/48208/"&gt;how the design process works at the magazine&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Bloomberg Businessweek"&gt;Bloomberg Businessweek&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/design"&gt;design&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/magazines"&gt;magazines&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 03, 2012 11:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;I love these cauliflower explosions done by Brock Davis...you can find them in &lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/laserbread/sets/72157626812709336/detail/"&gt;his Food Stuff set&lt;/a&gt; on Flickr. Here's the Challenger explosion in cauliflower:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/cauliflower-shuttle.jpg" width="500" height="381" alt="Cauliflower Space Shuttle" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;(via &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/#!/josephholmes"&gt;@josephholmes&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Brock Davis"&gt;Brock Davis&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/food"&gt;food&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/photography"&gt;photography&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Space Shuttle"&gt;Space Shuttle&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 03, 2012 11:44 PM

Oh noes, National Review Online editors are feeling a touch put out that they went to all the “trouble” of holding a group fap session righteously congratulating the Susan G. Komen foundation for cutting off grants to Planned Parenthood and then posted the account of it online only for the charity to admit shortly thereafter that it had decided to restore the funding because of UGH, LIBERALS. “Does anyone on the Left even ask the basic question of whether a private charitable organization has the right to dispose of its money as it sees fit?” demands to know NRO Corner blogger Daniel Foster, sassily. Yeah, why can’t charities just do what they want with their money in PEACE? It is THEIR MONEY, after all, that they collected off the money-growing trees, probably.

God those liberals, always trying to interfere in everyone’s private affairs, always trying to tell everyone else how to live their lives, pretty much that’s all they do is go around yelling about things that are none of their business like who they are supposed to marry or how they are supposed to have sex or what they do with their uteri like how the charity that they are giving a portion of their earnings to then goes and spends those funds:

In the NROHQ kitchen just now, Charlie Cooke wondered aloud, and here I paraphrase: “Does anyone on the Left even ask the basic question of whether a private charitable organization has the right to dispose of its money as it sees fit?” But in fact, that anyone thinks there is a question here is a sign we’ve already lost.

Yes. What idiot would care about how the organization he or she donates to uses those funds. This type of idiot is a bully, as illustrated by the following analogy that helpfully compares breast cancer treatment and prevention access for low-income women to …child’s play:

Imagine I volunteered to run a cub scout troop, and for years, when the annual soapbox derby came near, I knew I could count on Joe’s Deli as good for a hundred dollar donation. If one year Old Man Joe decided he didn’t want to donate any more — because he didn’t like the design of our racer, or because he thought his hundred bucks was better spent on a little league team, or because he disapproved of the scouts’ stance on gays — what on earth would justify me going on public access TV to grill Old Man Joe on why he hates kids? What would justify me hacking the Joe’s Deli web site or maliciously editing Old Man Joe’s Wikipedia page? What would justify me goading a handful of my city councilman into standing up at the next town meeting and publicly calling on Old Man Joe to reinstate his donation?

Ha ha it’s the entire “Susan G. Komen bails on Planned Parenthood” debacle retold as an episode of the Andy Griffith Show. That makes sense. [The Corner]

by Kirsten Boyd Johnson at February 03, 2012 11:43 PM

This feminist football fan will be hoping for a Patriots win, not least to honor the memory of Myra Kraft, who vetoed the team’s draft of a serial abuser of women, made her husband promise that buying a football team wouldn’t mean they’d cut down on their charitable work (they increased it, giving to causes that included closing the gap on health disparities and women’s health), and awesomely, proposed to Bob herself—on their first date.

That said, I remain anxious about Rob Gronkowski, and about history repeating. What are your predictions? Whoever’s closest on final score and throwing yards for the winning Super Bowl quarterback gets to make me write a post on a question or work of their choice.

by Alyssa Rosenberg at February 03, 2012 11:36 PM

pendejo sin nombre nos cuenta: «Hace unos pocos días (24 de enero de 2012) Luis Fernando Pardo anunció en Kriptopolis su biblioteca Java para el DNIe sin necesidad de drivers nativos. Esta noticia por si misma ya tiene un enorme interés, especialmente para los entusiastas del software libre (la biblioteca lo es) y para aquellos que desarrollan applets y programas basados en Java que emplean el DNIe. Pero este acontecimiento también tiene un matiz indignante. El Instituto Nacional de Tecnologías de la Comunicación (INTECO), con fecha 2 de enero de 2012 convocaba un procedimiento por un coste máximo de 60.000 euros para desarrollar exactamente el mismo driver Java para el DNIe. La conclusión a la que nos puede llevar esta circunstancia es que, o bien por desconocimiento, o bien por el ninguneo que del software libre llevan a cabo muchos gestores públicos, estas decisiones nos cuestan dinero a todos los españoles.

by nettizen at February 03, 2012 11:03 PM

Today is the due date for Dr. Cockburn's third attempt at a damages report on behalf of Oracle, and just to make sure Oracle knows what needs to be submitted, Judge Alsup has issue a reminder order. (709 [PDF; Text]) The judge wants to see not only the report but also all of the related reports and studies that support it.

To recap what this third report is to address if Oracle wants to argue these points on damages:

February 03, 2012 11:00 PM

Earlier this week, we reported on efforts by an Indiana state legislator who was interested in getting creationism inserted into the state's science classrooms. He managed to get a modified bill, one that was less sectarian but still overtly promoted religion, passed by the state's Senate. Yesterday, however, the leader of the Indiana House voiced unease about having the state wade into an area that the Supreme Court has declared an unconstitutional promotion of religion. 

Many similar bills are introduced in state legislatures each year and, in cases where their sponsors speak to the press, they tend to reveal a great deal of ignorance regarding both science and the law. In terms of science, they tend to misunderstand the meaning of the term "theory," think that there are multiple scientific explanations for life's diversity, or suggest evolution is a theory for life's origin. The Indiana bill's sponsor, Dennis Kruse, appears to get all of these wrong.

When it comes to the legal issues, many of the sponsors of these bills seem to be blissfully unaware of precedents, including Supreme Court decisions, that have determined that teaching creationism is an unconstitutional promotion of religion. Here, Kruse is an exception: he is aware of the precedents, but is hoping his bill will prompt a lawsuit that will get the Supreme Court to turn its back on its own precedents. The House Speaker, however, has now said challenging Supreme Court decisions is "someplace we don't need to go," suggesting he will not bring the bill up for a vote.

ScienceInsider, in covering this decision, suggested national media attention to the bill had made it politically toxic. That, in turn, suggests that continued coverage of similar bills can play a vital role in promoting accurate science education.

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February 03, 2012 10:20 PM

It's called Squid.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.

by schneier at February 03, 2012 10:18 PM

A group of former FDA scientists who spoke out against the agency's allegedly flawed device-approval process are suing the feds for intercepting Gmail and Yahoo Mail messages by installing spy programs on their work computers. Although the computers were owned by the government, the plaintiffs say they were explicitly granted the right to use them for personal purposes.

Back in January 2009, nine scientists known as the "FDA Nine" anonymously wrote to the leader of then President-elect Barack Obama's transition team "pleading with him to restructure the agency," the Wall Street Journal reported at the time. Among other things, the Food and Drug Administration scientists complained that the agency approved devices in a flawed process that ignored science, and was driven by political lobbying.

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February 03, 2012 09:46 PM

&lt;p&gt;Did you know that &lt;a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000W6SOK/ref=nosim/0sil8"&gt;the Charlotte's Web audiobook&lt;/a&gt; is read by E.B. White himself? He died in 1985 and must have recorded it before then. My wife and son listened to it on a long car trip this weekend and was declared "soooo good".&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/books"&gt;books&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Charlotte's Web"&gt;Charlotte's Web&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/E.B. White"&gt;E.B. White&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 03, 2012 09:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;The NY Times has &lt;a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/opinion/el-wingador.html"&gt;a short documentary film by Errol Morris&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href="http://elwingador.net/"&gt;El Wingador&lt;/a&gt;, a five-time winner of &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Bowl"&gt;the Wing Bowl&lt;/a&gt;. My favorite line from the film, uttered by an off-camera Morris:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wait a second. That's cannibalism!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Though his several wins came early on in the competition's history, El Wingador is still competing in the Wing Bowl. In the 2012 competition, held today, El Wingador came in third while Takeru Kobayashi completely demolished the competition in his first attempt, eating 337 wings in the process.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/El Wingador"&gt;El Wingador&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Errol Morris"&gt;Errol Morris&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/food"&gt;food&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/video"&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 03, 2012 09:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;Did you know that &lt;a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000W6SOK/ref=nosim/0sil8"&gt;the Charlotte's Web audiobook&lt;/a&gt; is read by E.B. White himself? He died in 1985 and must have recorded it before then. My wife and son listened to it on a long car trip this weekend and was declared "soooo good".&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/books"&gt;books&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Charlotte's Web"&gt;Charlotte's Web&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/E.B. White"&gt;E.B. White&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 03, 2012 09:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;The NY Times has &lt;a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/opinion/el-wingador.html"&gt;a short documentary film by Errol Morris&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href="http://elwingador.net/"&gt;El Wingador&lt;/a&gt;, a five-time winner of &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Bowl"&gt;the Wing Bowl&lt;/a&gt;. My favorite line from the film, uttered by an off-camera Morris:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wait a second. That's cannibalism!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Though his several wins came early on in the competition's history, El Wingador is still competing in the Wing Bowl. In the 2012 competition, held today, El Wingador came in third while Takeru Kobayashi completely demolished the competition in his first attempt, eating 337 wings in the process.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/El Wingador"&gt;El Wingador&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Errol Morris"&gt;Errol Morris&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/food"&gt;food&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/video"&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 03, 2012 09:44 PM

Apple updated iBooks Author to version 1.0.1 on Friday afternoon, the only change being an update to the software's controversial end user license agreement. The updated EULA now specifically only applies distribution restrictions to the interactive .ibooks format files generated by the app.

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February 03, 2012 09:35 PM

Attention, President Obama! Mousy Mormon Senator Orrin Hatch would like to have a word with you in the undersea Holocaust-victim baptizing chamber. Hatch will be doing that thing he always does, that raisin-mouthed, monotonous, mild-mannered smug thing he uses to cloak all manner of backwards beliefs and statements. The decrepit senator from Utah is currently offended because Barack Obama had the absolute gall to directly quote a famous Biblical character like Jesus Christ at the National Prayer Breakfast and thereby make this annual networking event/affront to the Constitution tawdry and, what’s worse, political!

OUR STARS INDEED! Did Obama even, like, CONSIDER the feelings of the Breakfast’s long-time sponsors, “a secretive evangelical Christian network called The Fellowship, also known as The Family,” which is alleged to have backed “legislation in Uganda that calls for the imprisonment and execution of homosexuals”?

The Hill covers Hatch’s indignation:

Hatch skewered the president for a remark he made at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday morning, during which he suggested Jesus might support his plan to raise taxes on wealthy Americans.

“For me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that ‘for unto to [sic] whom much is given, much shall be required,’” Obama said at the breakfast.

Hatch, who is a devout Mormon, suggested Obama was trying to “assume the role of theologian in chief” and said he ought to stick to public policy.

DANG! How exactly did Obama manage to inject that bit of radical free expression into the proceedings?

And when I talk about shared responsibility, it’s because I genuinely believe that in a time when many folks are struggling, at a time when we have enormous deficits, it’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income, or young people with student loans, or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone. And I think to myself, if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that’s going to make economic sense.

But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that “for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.” It mirrors the Islamic belief that those who’ve been blessed have an obligation to use those blessings to help others, or the Jewish doctrine of moderation and consideration for others.

Well. How very, very uppity of our president, to drag Moses and Mahomet into this as well, of all people. Orrin, look, just take a deep breath and tell us how we can help:

Someone needs to remind the president that there was only one person who walked on water and he did not occupy the Oval Office.

Dude. You do know Jesus actually stole that line from Spiderman? [The Hill]

by Kaia Mursi at February 03, 2012 09:25 PM

Funny. Fake, but funny.

Edited to add (2/3): The rest of the story.

by schneier at February 03, 2012 08:49 PM

The Internet is chock full of dumb two-day fads, but there might be some real staying power in the concept of “Tea Party Jesus,” a Tumblr site that combines images of the Loving Jesus with cartoon speech bubbles full of 100% real quotes from leading right-wing Republicans who self-identify as “family values Christians.”

You click the picture to find out what sociopathic amoral “GOP thought leader” pooped that particular hate blob from their mouth. In the example above, that was how dull crone Ann Coulter suggested peaceful citizens protesting economic distress be treated by the federal authorities: She happily suggested they be murdered by the National Guard, for peaceful assembly. So much lulz, or weeping, if you start to actually think about it all. [Tea Party Jesus]

by Wonkette Jr. at February 03, 2012 08:16 PM

The 2009 flu pandemic, although not especially deadly, revealed just how quickly a new influenza virus could elude surveillance and spread internationally. It also left health experts eying the disease that many fear could cause the next pandemic: H5N1, the avian flu. According to World Health Organization standards, that virus is phenomenally deadly, killing about half the people that contract it. So far, however, almost all the known cases came from people who were in direct contact with poultry; the flu doesn't seem to spread among mammals.  

The great unanswered question was whether we could continue to rely on H5N1's limited transmission. Recently, some researchers set out to answer that question, and came up with a disturbing answer: it was relatively easy to evolve a form of H5N1 that spread in ferrets, another mammalian species, without it losing any of its virulence. Two labs identified the exact mutations that enabled this new host range, and were preparing to publish their results in Science and/or Nature. At that point, the US government's National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) responded by requesting that the journals delay publication and limit the content released. That, in turn, prompted the viral research community to put a two-month hold on further research.

That's where things stood on February 2, when the New York Academy of Sciences hosted a panel discussion on H5N1 and other dual-use research (research that has both public benefit and weapons applications). The panel included two members of the NSABB, representatives from both Science and Nature, a number of virus researchers, a public health expert, and a member of the Defense Department, and they spent two hours in a lively and sometimes contentious discussion of how to handle our current situation.

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February 03, 2012 08:12 PM

Megaupload boss Kim Dotcom (read our in-depth profile) was denied bail on Thursday by a New Zealand court. Dotcom insisted that he had no desire to flee the country and merely wanted to be with his pregnant wife and their three young children. But US attorneys argued the Dotcom posed a severe flight risk, and the court rejected Dotcom's bail request.

In court testimony, Dotcom described the dramatic raid on his home by law enforcement. Dotcom told the court that he didn't know the people invading his home were police officers, so he fled to a secure "panic room." Once he realized they were police officers, he decided to stay where he was rather than risk surprising officers and getting shot.

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February 03, 2012 07:35 PM

Motorola facilitated the sale of a bunch of refurbished Xoom tablets with former owners' data still on them, the company announced in a press release Friday. The Xooms were part of a deal on flash sale site woot.com last fall, and of the thousands sold, 100 were shipped out to new owners with information the previous owners had left on them, including passwords, account information, photos, and documents.

The Motorola Xoom captured a narrow share of the market following its launch in February 2011, ending with about 9 percent as of November 2011. A number of the tablets appear to have been returned, as Woot.com held sales of refurbished Xoom units.

Of the 6,200 tablets sold, Motorola announced, 100 were not fully scrubbed of data left on them by previous owners. By way of apology, Motorola is offering any customers who bought and returned the tablet from a number of retailers (Amazon.com, Best Buy, BJ’s Wholesale, eBay, Office Max, Radio Shack, Sam’s Club, or Staples) between March and October 2011 two years of membership to Experian's Protect My ID credit monitoring service.

Though the company is trying to make good, it can't be blamed entirely—we shudder at the thought of sending a device into the depths of customer service returns without wiping it via the easily accessible "factory reset" option in Android settings. Might any of our dear readers have been affected by this event, either by returning a Xoom or buying one from Woot?

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February 03, 2012 07:26 PM

Anger at last month's decision by the European Union and 22 of its member states to sign the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has led to widespread protests, hacked Web sites, and legislators backing away from the treaty.

The anti-ACTA protests that saw Polish politicians don Guy Fawkes masks in parliament have borne fruit. After experiencing a considerable backlash in Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk has suspended ratification of the controversial agreement, acknowledging that the consultation surrounding it was inadequate and that he approached it from a "20th century perspective."

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February 03, 2012 07:20 PM

Back in the long-ago days of the 2010 holiday season, it looked like THQ had a hit on its hands with its out-of-left-field uDraw Game Tablet, a slate-like controller that used a stylus to let players draw on the TV. The company sold 1.7 million of them to Wii owners by early 2011, beating expectations and leading some to speculate that the uDraw might be the biggest game control revolution this side of the Kinect.

Buoyed by the initial success, THQ quickly cranked out uDraw tablets for the Xbox 360 and PS3, and got to work licensing new compatible software from big, family-friendly brands like Kung Fu Panda, Spongebob Squarepants, and Disney Princesses. But that expansion now looks like a colossal mistake, as excess uDraw inventory was a major factor in the huge financial loss reported for the company's recent 2011 holiday quarter.

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February 03, 2012 06:55 PM

Have you heard about the strangest new craze in breast cancer charities, the kind that doesn’t actually want to fight breast cancer? This for a brief period was the Susan G. Komen Foundation, the behemoth breast cancer research charity always running around madly putting pink ribbon stickers on everything from yogurt cups to professional football players, after they inexplicably hired rabidly anti-choice wingnut Karen Handel to the Senior VP of Public Policy spot last year (following Handel’s failed run for Georgia governor despite/because of Sarah Palin’s endorsement, hahahah). The foundation then decided they didn’t want to pay Planned Parenthood to help low-income lady people get free breast cancer screenings anymore, in case the ladies might accidentally get an abortion on the way down the hall to the mammography machine. And THEN they lied to everyone about the reason for the decision and said it was because some wingnut Congressman in Florida is “investigating” Planned Parenthood and they can’t give money to organizations being fake investigated by nutjobs. BUT NOW that is all over with, HOORAY, because as soon as the Internet found out about all this a few days ago, it also made a decision, to stop giving money to a pro-breast cancer charity and give all their monies directly to Planned Parenthood instead. So Komen has come back to say NO WAIT DIDN’T MEAN IT WE LURV PLANNED PARENTHOOD.

Here’s the official “shit, sorry” statement from their website, via the AP:

Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.

Our only goal for our granting process is to support women and families in the fight against breast cancer. Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process. We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.

Moral of the story: do not hire Sarah Palin’s friends to run any kind of organization that is meant to help people, children! [AP]

by Kirsten Boyd Johnson at February 03, 2012 06:24 PM

Apple will be able to sell its iPad 2 with 3G, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 4 via its online store in Germany after all, thanks to a temporary extension courtesy of a German court. As noted by the BBC, an appeals court lifted the ban on certain iOS devices just after Apple was forced to remove them from its German online store earlier on Friday. Still, not all is going Apple's way, as a Mannheim Regional Court also ruled on Friday that Apple had infringed upon a patent owned by Motorola that allows devices to sync e-mail across devices wirelessly, which may spell out changes for iCloud users in Germany.

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February 03, 2012 05:05 PM

Mittens-hating muffin is noooot too psyched about what happened in Florida on Tuesday. HE LOST. GOODBYE. Oh, you’re still here. Instead of accepting that no one south of the very Southern north of Florida likes him at all, Gingrich has suddenly decided that the winner-takes-all ruling on the Florida primary is about as fair as Mitt Romney being liked by even so much as one person in this world, let alone a couple million. So, following a Hispanic roundtable in Las Vegas on Thursday, Gingrich spokesperson R.C. Hammond told a group of reporters that the Gingrich campaign will be petitioning the Republican Party of Florida to try to get the state’s 50 delegates awarded proportionally. Responded the state’s Republican Party chairman, Lenny Curry, “It is a shame when the loser of a contest agrees to the rules before, then cries foul after losing.” ISN’T IT THOUGH?

Hammond thinks Gingrich might have a case only because very slightly technically, Florida moved its primary ahead of April 1, and any primary moved ahead of that date is supposed to award delegates proportionally. But the Republican Party of Florida “unanimously” ruled that the primary would be winner-takes-all last September, Curry told the Washington Post. “All campaigns and the RNC have known since then that Florida was winner-take-all,” he said. “RNC’s legal counsel has, on numerous occasions, noted their understanding and acceptance of Florida’s rule.”

AND ANYWAY, even though anyone is entitled to dispute this rule, it’s pretty irrelevant if the second-place person was a very large 14 points behind the equally gross and terrible winner! Nevertheless, it’s likely Gingrich’s petition could get some airtime, but not until right before the convention this summer.

Finally, in a truly beautiful moment, when asked by reporters if the Gingrich camp would have contested the rule had Gingrich won Florida, Hammond responded, “Probably not.” [Washington Post]

by Liz Colville at February 03, 2012 05:00 PM

Reuters discovered the information:

The VeriSign attacks were revealed in a quarterly U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing in October that followed new guidelines on reporting security breaches to investors. It was the most striking disclosure to emerge in a review by Reuters of more than 2,000 documents mentioning breach risks since the SEC guidance was published.

The company, unsurprisingly, is saying nothing.

VeriSign declined multiple interview requests, and senior employees said privately that they had not been given any more details than were in the filing. One said it was impossible to tell if the breach was the result of a concerted effort by a national power, though that was a possibility. "It's an ugly, slim sliver of facts. It's not enough," he said.

The problem for all of us, naturally, is if the certificate system was hacked, allowing the bad guys to forge certificates. (This has, of course, happened before.)

Are we finally ready to accept that the certificate system is completely broken?

by schneier at February 03, 2012 04:49 PM

Anonymous has begun taunting its police pursuers in ever-more aggressive ways, upping the ante today by releasing an internal FBI conference call in which agents from across the country and police in the UK share status updates on their investigations of the group—and reveal that major new action is coming soon.

Much of the call is taken up by a UK investigator from the Metropolitan Police who comes across as eager to curry favor with the FBI. The biggest way this is being done? UK investigators are intentionally trying to delay the court cases against Ryan Cleary and Jake "Topiary" Davis, two UK Anons arrested last year, for up to eight weeks as a favor to the FBI's New York field office.

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February 03, 2012 04:36 PM

12) That time Michele Bachmann compared herself to a serial killer.

11) Stress-eating at the mere sight of Chuck Todd’s facial hair.

10) Donald Trump’s very good relationship with “the blacks.”

9) Jon Huntsman speaking Mandarin.

8) “The Original, Famous Ron Paul Survival Kit.”

7) Tim Pawlenty. (He was so benign!)

6) “Life can be a challenge. Life can seem impossible. It’s never easy when so much is on the line. I believe these words came from the Pokemon movie.”

5) Newt Gingrich lecturing black people.

4) Newt Gingrich lecturing journalists.

3) Newt Gingrich lecturing unemployed inner city elementary school students.

2) “I’m proud of my gun. And I pooed in space.”

1) But mostly I will miss you guys! Because I’m sad to say this is my last day at Wonkette: I’ve decided to shutter The Gifzette, which means my days as a daily syndicated Wonketeer must come to an end. Do know that I loved doing it so very much, it’s just that my friends have asked that I kindly figure out a way to be able to stay out at night past 8 p.m.

But! Ken has very graciously extended me the chance to moonlight here in the future, so you guys haven’t heard the last from me just yet (at least, that is, until I emerge from the corner of my apartment where I will be curled up in the fetal position for the next nine months until November 6 has come and gone). Until then, you can always find me ranting about politics on Twitter and even sometimes on that Tumblr thing. Thanks guys!!

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is Sad, but should also teach young people about starting their own daily news service that requires them to get up at 5 a.m. before going to their *real job*. Also, look for that other famous slacker, Jim Newell, in the morning slot as of Monday!

by Matt Langer at February 03, 2012 04:15 PM

For the first time, the NFL is providing live streaming video of the Super Bowl, both on Web browsers and through a smartphone application. Now you'll have any number of viewing options and combinations: sit in front of an HDTV with a laptop or tablet to gain DVR controls and extra camera angles not available on the main NBC feed. If you can't get to a TV or browser (or if someone is blocking your view at the local watering hole) just whip out your smartphone and watch the game in miniature—assuming you're a Verizon customer and have a network connection that's fast enough.

As a Massachusetts resident and Patriots fan, I will likely be too nervous and anxiety-ridden to operate any type of technology once the Super Bowl starts around 6:30 PM ET Sunday. But if you're a huuuugggeeee fan who can't get enough coverage, your best bet is probably sitting on the couch with a laptop or tablet, as the NFL says the live stream will be available in tablet browsers, which likely means both the iPad and Android tablets.

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February 03, 2012 04:05 PM

For nearly a year now, Ars has worked with nature.com to organize a monthly panel discussion called Science Online NYC. We're pleased to announce that, in February, we'll also be working with the American Museum of Natural History to organize a special program entitled "Beyond a Trend: Enhancing Science Communication with Social Media," which will be part of the global Social Media Week.

The panel will discuss how people who have communicated science in traditional outlets—from journalists to the museum staff—have adopted social media to reach the public more effectively. It will feature author Carl Zimmer, journalist Matt Danzico, the Story Collider's Ben Lillie, and the education staff of the AMNH. All of them have used new forms of media to reach audience that otherwise might not have paid attention to what's happening in the world of science. (The contents of Zimmer's latest book were actually crowdsourced through various forms of social media.)

The panel will be moderated by Jennifer Kingston, science editor from The New York Times, and past Science Online NYC events have featured a very active discussion with the audience. The event will take place at the AMNH at 6pm on Thursday, February 16th, and will be followed by a reception at its Hall of Minerals and Gems. You can sign up at the announcement page linked above. If you’re not in NYC, the event will also be live-streamed via the Social Media Week website and you can follow tweets and join in the discussion online via the hashtags #SoNYC and #SMWScience.

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February 03, 2012 03:48 PM

ActiveState has released a major new version of the Komodo integrated development environment (IDE). The update, which is called Komodo 7, introduces several useful new features and support for additional programming languages.

Komodo is a high-end commercial development tool for programmers who work with scripting languages such as Python and Ruby. It's especially well-suited for developing large-scale Web applications. It supports code completion and breakpoint debugging for a relatively broad number of programming languages.

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February 03, 2012 02:33 PM

Mozilla is developing a push notification system for the Firefox Web browser. It will allow users to receive notifications from websites without having to keep those sites open in their browser. The system will also be able to relay push notifications to mobile devices.

The project is part of Mozilla's broader effort to ensure that the Web is a competitive platform that can match the capabilities of native applications. Introducing support for push notifications will help to close the gap, because the feature is one of the major advantages that native mobile clients have historically offered over the browser for accessing Web services.

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February 03, 2012 02:14 PM

"I saw this on my way home from work," Daniel Moore writes, "thank goodness CVS is doing something about Maryland's crippling shortage of whooping cough!"

"While trying to learn Open Bravo," writes Otmane Malih, "I learned that there are countries I've never heard of."

"My university has a site license of Mathematica for all Mathematics and Physics students," Simon Hollingshead wrote, "when trying to view some information about the license key, I got this message. Not to worry, it can go in my binder named 'Error messages from various websites'."

"Woah, bad password," wrote Micah, "that's cool man."

"Now that's a lot of readme," writes Frank de Weger.

"I was filling out a satisfaction survey after buying a new car," writes Jeremy Hutchinson, "even the optional questions required an answer."

"This is from a well-known vendor of libraries," writes Adrian Edmonds, "what to do next is a bit of a puzzle."

"This Mongolian ATM had a rather unique way to notify that it could not print a receipt," writes Matthew Asquith.

February 03, 2012 02:00 PM

From the Release Early dept.:
Pre-releases of Precise Pangolin are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs.

Alpha 2 is the second in a series of milestone images that will be released throughout the Precise development cycle.

This is the first Ubuntu milestone release to include images for the armhf architecture, for the ARM CPUs using the hard-float ABI.

New packages showing up for the first time include:
* Linux Kernel 3.2.2 (3.2.0-12.21)
* Upstart 1.4
* Unity 5.0
* LibreOffice 3.5 beta 2

February 03, 2012 01:44 PM

From the Whoah dept.:
In a letter to Google’s chief executive Larry Page, Europe’s ‘Data Protection Working Party’ wrote that “we call for a pause in the interests of ensuring that there can be no misunderstanding about Google's commitments to information rights of their users and EU citizens, until we have completed our analysis”.

The committee gave no indication of how long it would like the pause to be.

A senior source at Google expressed surprise at the move, but noted that there was a month for the committee to examine its concerns. The source also said that while the committee had no legal authority to require any delay, the tone of its letter was significantly less aggressive than those Google has received in the past.

February 03, 2012 01:44 PM

ListasdeLibros nos envía algunos chistes sobre: «el libro electrónico visto por algunos de los mejores humoristas gráficos de aquí y de allá...» Esto me sirve para una pregunta: ¿qué "funcionalidades" de los libros tradicionales no han podido superar los libros electrónicos? Y aquellos que habéis adquirido uno cacharro de estos, ¿habéis abandonado del todo el papel o seguís comprando libros físicos?

by Mu at February 03, 2012 01:14 PM

Daniel nos envía un enlace que habla sobre Bouncer, un servicio de Google cuyo nombre podría traducirse como "gorila de discoteca". Se trata de un proceso que rebusca en entre las aplicaciones recientemente subidas al Market en busca de troyanos, spyware o cualquier tipo de software malicioso. ¿Logrará este matón acabar con el talón de Aquiles de Android, la fuerte presencia de malware y estafas en el Market?

by Mu at February 03, 2012 11:12 AM

Kevan posted a photo:

February 03, 2012 09:39 AM

Kevan posted a photo:

February 03, 2012 09:38 AM

La Ventana Muerta comenta el gráfico de la evolución de las distribuciones de GNU/Linux. El gráfico es una especie de mezcla entre cronología y árbol genealógico donde se puede ver cuándo nace y muere cada distro y de dónde proviene. El gráfico se va actualizando y publicando en GNU/Linux distribution timeline, en formato PNG y SVG, e incluso proporcionan un programa y los datos para generar los gráficos (bajo el apartado "tar.bz2"). Esto o algo parecido ya salió en Barrapunto hace años, pero es interesante repasar qué cambios se han producido desde entonces.

by Mu at February 03, 2012 09:10 AM

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://kottke.org/12/02/what-happened-to-the-former-slave-that-wrote-his-old-master"&gt;What happened to the former slave that wrote his old master?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em class="dimsmaller"&gt;orig. from Feb 02, 2012&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/12/02/the-view-from-an-old-time-burger-joint"&gt;The view from an old time burger joint&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em class="dimsmaller"&gt;orig. from Feb 02, 2012&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="smaller"&gt;* Q: Wha? A: These previously published entries have been updated with new information in the last 24 hours. &lt;a href="http://www.kottke.org/tag/post%20updates"&gt;You can find past updates here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/post updates"&gt;post updates&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 03, 2012 07:44 AM

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://kottke.org/12/02/what-happened-to-the-former-slave-that-wrote-his-old-master"&gt;What happened to the former slave that wrote his old master?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em class="dimsmaller"&gt;orig. from Feb 02, 2012&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/12/02/the-view-from-an-old-time-burger-joint"&gt;The view from an old time burger joint&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em class="dimsmaller"&gt;orig. from Feb 02, 2012&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="smaller"&gt;* Q: Wha? A: These previously published entries have been updated with new information in the last 24 hours. &lt;a href="http://www.kottke.org/tag/post%20updates"&gt;You can find past updates here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/post updates"&gt;post updates&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 03, 2012 07:44 AM

terminatorcero nos cuenta: «Una empresa noruega ha implantado entre sus trabajadores un sistema de control para las visitas al baño. A los 8 minutos de entrar, comienza a sonar una alarma que indica debemos de volver al trabajo. Se trata sólo una de las tecnologías propias del Gran Hermano que ya están en funcionamiento hoy en día.»

by Mu at February 03, 2012 07:08 AM

From the Taking it Seriously dept.:
Today we’re revealing a service we’ve developed, codenamed Bouncer, which provides automated scanning of Android Market for potentially malicious software without disrupting the user experience of Android Market or requiring developers to go through an application approval process.

The service performs a set of analyses on new applications, applications already in Android Market, and developer accounts. Here’s how it works: once an application is uploaded, the service immediately starts analyzing it for known malware, spyware and trojans. It also looks for behaviors that indicate an application might be misbehaving, and compares it against previously analyzed apps to detect possible red flags. We actually run every application on Google’s cloud infrastructure and simulate how it will run on an Android device to look for hidden, malicious behavior. We also analyze new developer accounts to help prevent malicious and repeat-offending developers from coming back.

February 03, 2012 01:45 AM

We finished our three-day RDBMS/SQL programming course yesterday at MIT. It was a very satisfying experience for me and a great one for many students due to the heavy teacher-student ratio (this weblog was very helpful in attracting volunteers, another triumph for the Web!). I was pretty wiped out after three days of 10:00 am to 7:00 pm. It is easy to understand why lab courses aren’t more popular among computer science teachers. Consider how painful it is to debug your own code and then imagine a room full of 50 newbies pointing to 15 lines of rather bizarre SQL and asking “Why doesn’t it work?”

One funny moment was the student who showed up to the lab course without a laptop computer. In the old days, of course, it was not uncommon to show up and ask another student to borrow a pen. But a whole computer? Yet sure enough, another student pulled out a spare laptop, freshly installed with Ubuntu, and said “You can use this one.”

Michael Stonebraker gave an amazing 2-hour talk and question/answer session. Afterwards, my friend Avni gushed “That was fantastic. It made volunteering for all three days worth it.” When I complained about the implication that my own mini-lectures and solutions discussions were less than inspiring, she tried to make me feel better. Somehow this included saying “Wow, John [Morgan], you’re exactly half Philip’s age.”

Considering that students flew in from as far away as Indiana and San Francisco and almost unanimously said that it was worth the trip, I will check off the class as a pedagogical success. Fortunately we won’t be teaching this again for another year, so my ego will have a chance to heal…

by philg at February 03, 2012 01:14 AM

KDE (que desde hace no demasiado es el nombre preferible para la comunidad de desarrolladores, no para lo creado por los mismos) publicó la semana pasada la versión 4.8 de distintos paquetes de software. Del anuncio oficial de 4.8 tenemos las novedades de los distintos componentes. De los espacios de trabajo Plasma hay cambios importantes en la gestión de energía, mejoras en el cambiador de ventanas sin usar efectos, una alternativa a la barra de tareas tradicional, y almacenamiento de contraseñas compartido con otras implementaciones. En las aplicaciones hay mejoras destacadas en Dolphin, Okular, Kate, y Gwenview. Y finalmente, la plataforma en la que se basan estas aplicaciones ha incluído KDE Telepathy (para comunicación en tiempo real), así como componentes para usar Qt Quick en Plasma, una tecnología para crear interfaces fluídas y dinámicas en un lenguaje declarativo. Y para aderezarlo, aunque de un ámbito algo diferente, también miembros de KDE han publicado ownCloud 3, un software para gestionar tu propia nube con software libre.

by suy at February 02, 2012 10:04 PM

&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href="http://thismustbetheplace.tv"&gt;This Must Be the Place series&lt;/a&gt;, a lovely short film about the Prime Burger Restaurant in midtown Manhattan. The restaurant opened in 1938 and one of the servers, Artie, has been there since 1952.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/35965635?title=0&amp;amp;byline=0&amp;amp;portrait=0" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;For many of the guys that work here, the restaurant is like a second home -- some of them have been slinging burgers, making shakes, and waiting on customers at this location for decades. Opened in 1938, the place hasn't been altered since the early '60s, and it looks all the better for it. Here the waiters and workers of Prime Burger discuss their views on their chosen profession, and the unique nature of the place itself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;(via &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/#!/daveg"&gt;@daveg&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Over at Serious Eats, &lt;a href="http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2009/10/how-to-order-at-prime-burger-review-midtown-east-nyc.html"&gt;Ed Levine gives some advice on how to order properly at Prime Burger&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;So why the need to order right? Because to keep up with the fast food chains, the DiMicelis started par-broiling their burgers. Par-broiling produces a less juicy burger. So when you order at Prime Burger specify you want your burger ($5.25 for a hamburger, $5.95 for a cheeseburger) made from scratch, and that you're willing to wait the extra few minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/food"&gt;food&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/NYC"&gt;NYC&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/restaurants"&gt;restaurants&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/video"&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 02, 2012 09:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href="http://thismustbetheplace.tv"&gt;This Must Be the Place series&lt;/a&gt;, a lovely short film about the Prime Burger Restaurant in midtown Manhattan. The restaurant opened in 1938 and one of the servers, Artie, has been there since 1952.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/35965635?title=0&amp;amp;byline=0&amp;amp;portrait=0" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;For many of the guys that work here, the restaurant is like a second home -- some of them have been slinging burgers, making shakes, and waiting on customers at this location for decades. Opened in 1938, the place hasn't been altered since the early '60s, and it looks all the better for it. Here the waiters and workers of Prime Burger discuss their views on their chosen profession, and the unique nature of the place itself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;(via &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/#!/daveg"&gt;@daveg&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Over at Serious Eats, &lt;a href="http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2009/10/how-to-order-at-prime-burger-review-midtown-east-nyc.html"&gt;Ed Levine gives some advice on how to order properly at Prime Burger&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;So why the need to order right? Because to keep up with the fast food chains, the DiMicelis started par-broiling their burgers. Par-broiling produces a less juicy burger. So when you order at Prime Burger specify you want your burger ($5.25 for a hamburger, $5.95 for a cheeseburger) made from scratch, and that you're willing to wait the extra few minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/food"&gt;food&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/NYC"&gt;NYC&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/restaurants"&gt;restaurants&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/video"&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 02, 2012 09:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;You know &lt;a href="http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/to-my-old-master.html"&gt;that letter from former slave Jourdon Anderson to his old master&lt;/a&gt; that's been going around? First of all, it's good and you should read it.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://twitter.com/#!/daveg/status/165105562655272960"&gt;David Galbraith&lt;/a&gt; poked around a bit and &lt;a href="https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/MM6W-GXC"&gt;found a record of Anderson still living in Ohio at the time of the 1900 census&lt;/a&gt; as "Jordan Anderson". Here's the relevant bit of the census form:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/jordan-anderson.jpg" width="500" height="213" alt="Jordan Anderson" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;At the time, Anderson and his wife Mandy were in their 70s and had been married for 52 years. Mandy had borne 11 children, six of whom were still living (Anderson's letter, written in 1865, references five children, two of whom were "brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters"...not sure if they had died or not). The three children living with them in 1900 were all in their 20s, born several years after the letter was written.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;There's also &lt;a href="https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/M8S3-2D8"&gt;a record of Anderson from the 1880 census&lt;/a&gt;, this time as "Jordon Anderson". The birth year listed is different (1830 vs 1825) but the family relations are the same. This census lists two older children, William and Andrew, the eldest of whom was born right around the time of Jordan and Mandy's emancipation. Anderson's occupation is listed as "coachman".&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I also &lt;a href="http://www.daytonmetrolibrary.org/research-a-databases/history-a-genealogy/resources/hobits"&gt;found&lt;/a&gt; a record in the April 19, 1905 issue of the Dayton Daily Journal of Anderson's death. He was 79 years old.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Ok, a bit more digging, with the help of an &lt;a href="http://ancestry.com"&gt;ancestry.com&lt;/a&gt; trial membership.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The 1870 census shows Anderson living in Ohio with Mandy, four children (Jane, Felix, William, and Andrew).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/jordan-anderson-02.jpg" width="500" height="158" alt="Jordan Anderson" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Jane is mentioned in the letter...is Felix the "Grundy" mentioned? There was &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Grundy"&gt;a Felix Grundy&lt;/a&gt; who served as a US Senator from Anderson's home state of Tennessee in the 1830s who has a Tennessee county named after him...perhaps that's where the nickname came from? Also listed in the household is Percella Mcgregor, Mandy's mother.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;And ho, what's this? From the 1920 Census, here's a record of who was living at 60 Burns Ave in Montgomery County, Ohio, the former address of Jordan Anderson:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/jordan-anderson-03.jpg" width="500" height="152" alt="Jordan Anderson" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Three families lived together at that address: Valentine and Abagail Anderson, who were both listed on &lt;a href="https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/MM6W-GXC"&gt;the 1900 census form&lt;/a&gt;; Charles Johnson and his wife Eva, the same Eva listed as Jordan's daughter on the 1900 census form; and Samuel Stewart and his wife Scharlet, who is the same age as the Lottie listed on the 1900 census form. Everyone in the household is listed as being able to read and write, just as Jordan wished for them in his letter:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Amazing. Ancestry.com provides a lot more information about the family...here's a peek at the family tree:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/jordan-anderson-04.jpg" width="488" height="580" alt="Jordan Anderson family tree" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Looks like Lottie lived until 1944, Eva died in 1937, and Jane in 1939. Oh and it looks like Felix is the Grundy mentioned in the letter. I'm sure there's lots more. For now, I'm going to try to alert the "owner" of the Jordan Anderson family tree to the existence of the letter...we'll see if they are related!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; The letter has already been added to the ancestry.com database by the tree's owner.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 02, 2012 05:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/mona-lisa-twins.jpg" width="500" height="330" alt="Mona Lisa" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Restorers at the Prado Museum in Madrid, working on what they thought was a 16th or 17th century replica of the Mona Lisa, &lt;a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/e6a4e1a6-4cd5-11e1-8741-00144feabdc0.html"&gt;have discovered that the painting was actually done by a student of Leonardo's at the same time as the original&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Museum experts are in the process of stripping away a cover of black over-paint which, when fully removed, will reveal the youthfulness of the subject they say. The final area of over-paint will come off in the next few days.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The original "Mona Lisa" hangs in the Louvre but the sitter looks older than her years as the varnish is cracked. The painting is so fragile that restoration or cleaning is deemed too risky. The Prado version, however, will show the sitter as she was: a young woman in her early 20s.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/art"&gt;art&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Leonardo da Vinci"&gt;Leonardo da Vinci&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Mona Lisa"&gt;Mona Lisa&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 02, 2012 05:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;You know &lt;a href="http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/to-my-old-master.html"&gt;that letter from former slave Jourdon Anderson to his old master&lt;/a&gt; that's been going around? First of all, it's good and you should read it.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://twitter.com/#!/daveg/status/165105562655272960"&gt;David Galbraith&lt;/a&gt; poked around a bit and &lt;a href="https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/MM6W-GXC"&gt;found a record of Anderson still living in Ohio at the time of the 1900 census&lt;/a&gt; as "Jordan Anderson". Here's the relevant bit of the census form:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/jordan-anderson.jpg" width="500" height="213" alt="Jordan Anderson" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;At the time, Anderson and his wife Mandy were in their 70s and had been married for 52 years. Mandy had borne 11 children, six of whom were still living (Anderson's letter, written in 1865, references five children, two of whom were "brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters"...not sure if they had died or not). The three children living with them in 1900 were all in their 20s, born several years after the letter was written.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;There's also &lt;a href="https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/M8S3-2D8"&gt;a record of Anderson from the 1880 census&lt;/a&gt;, this time as "Jordon Anderson". The birth year listed is different (1830 vs 1825) but the family relations are the same. This census lists two older children, William and Andrew, the eldest of whom was born right around the time of Jordan and Mandy's emancipation. Anderson's occupation is listed as "coachman".&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I also &lt;a href="http://www.daytonmetrolibrary.org/research-a-databases/history-a-genealogy/resources/hobits"&gt;found&lt;/a&gt; a record in the April 19, 1905 issue of the Dayton Daily Journal of Anderson's death. He was 79 years old.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Ok, a bit more digging, with the help of an &lt;a href="http://ancestry.com"&gt;ancestry.com&lt;/a&gt; trial membership.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The 1870 census shows Anderson living in Ohio with Mandy, four children (Jane, Felix, William, and Andrew).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/jordan-anderson-02.jpg" width="500" height="158" alt="Jordan Anderson" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Jane is mentioned in the letter...is Felix the "Grundy" mentioned? There was &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Grundy"&gt;a Felix Grundy&lt;/a&gt; who served as a US Senator from Anderson's home state of Tennessee in the 1830s who has a Tennessee county named after him...perhaps that's where the nickname came from? Also listed in the household is Percella Mcgregor, Mandy's mother.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;And ho, what's this? From the 1920 Census, here's a record of who was living at 60 Burns Ave in Montgomery County, Ohio, the former address of Jordan Anderson:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/jordan-anderson-03.jpg" width="500" height="152" alt="Jordan Anderson" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Three families lived together at that address: Valentine and Abagail Anderson, who were both listed on &lt;a href="https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/MM6W-GXC"&gt;the 1900 census form&lt;/a&gt;; Charles Johnson and his wife Eva, the same Eva listed as Jordan's daughter on the 1900 census form; and Samuel Stewart and his wife Scharlet, who is the same age as the Lottie listed on the 1900 census form. Everyone in the household is listed as being able to read and write, just as Jordan wished for them in his letter:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Amazing. Ancestry.com provides a lot more information about the family...here's a peek at the family tree:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/jordan-anderson-04.jpg" width="488" height="580" alt="Jordan Anderson family tree" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Looks like Lottie lived until 1944, Eva died in 1937, and Jane in 1939. Oh and it looks like Felix is the Grundy mentioned in the letter. I'm sure there's lots more. For now, I'm going to try to alert the "owner" of the Jordan Anderson family tree to the existence of the letter...we'll see if they are related!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; The letter has already been added to the ancestry.com database by the tree's owner.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 02, 2012 05:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/mona-lisa-twins.jpg" width="500" height="330" alt="Mona Lisa" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Restorers at the Prado Museum in Madrid, working on what they thought was a 16th or 17th century replica of the Mona Lisa, &lt;a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/e6a4e1a6-4cd5-11e1-8741-00144feabdc0.html"&gt;have discovered that the painting was actually done by a student of Leonardo's at the same time as the original&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Museum experts are in the process of stripping away a cover of black over-paint which, when fully removed, will reveal the youthfulness of the subject they say. The final area of over-paint will come off in the next few days.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The original "Mona Lisa" hangs in the Louvre but the sitter looks older than her years as the varnish is cracked. The painting is so fragile that restoration or cleaning is deemed too risky. The Prado version, however, will show the sitter as she was: a young woman in her early 20s.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/art"&gt;art&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Leonardo da Vinci"&gt;Leonardo da Vinci&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Mona Lisa"&gt;Mona Lisa&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 02, 2012 05:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;Just like they did &lt;a href="http://therumpus.net/2011/02/a-super-bowl-preview-for-people-who-dont-know-football/"&gt;last year&lt;/a&gt;, The Rumpus &lt;a href="http://therumpus.net/2012/02/a-super-bowl-preview-for-people-who-don%E2%80%99t-watch-football/"&gt;shares some of the stories of the players participating in the Super Bowl&lt;/a&gt; in a way that isn't as syrupy as Bob Costas.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;For instance, there's Mark Herzlich, a former top NFL prospect who was diagnosed with bone cancer while in college, took a year off to beat the disease, returned to the game, and then went undrafted by every NFL team. As a last-ditch, he auditioned for training camp. By November, about two years after undergoing chemotherapy, Mark was a starting linebacker for the Giants.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;There's five-foot-seven Danny Woodhead of the Patriots, a player considered too small even for Division I college football, who went to the only place that wanted him, a little school in Nebraska called Chadron State, where he worked his ass off, and by the time he graduated, he was college football's all-time leading rusher. He's still so anonymous that he worked at a sporting goods store on a day off last year and pretty much no one recognized him. Now he's a running back for a team in the goddamned Super Bowl.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/football"&gt;football&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/sports"&gt;sports&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Super Bowl"&gt;Super Bowl&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 02, 2012 03:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;Just like they did &lt;a href="http://therumpus.net/2011/02/a-super-bowl-preview-for-people-who-dont-know-football/"&gt;last year&lt;/a&gt;, The Rumpus &lt;a href="http://therumpus.net/2012/02/a-super-bowl-preview-for-people-who-don%E2%80%99t-watch-football/"&gt;shares some of the stories of the players participating in the Super Bowl&lt;/a&gt; in a way that isn't as syrupy as Bob Costas.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;For instance, there's Mark Herzlich, a former top NFL prospect who was diagnosed with bone cancer while in college, took a year off to beat the disease, returned to the game, and then went undrafted by every NFL team. As a last-ditch, he auditioned for training camp. By November, about two years after undergoing chemotherapy, Mark was a starting linebacker for the Giants.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;There's five-foot-seven Danny Woodhead of the Patriots, a player considered too small even for Division I college football, who went to the only place that wanted him, a little school in Nebraska called Chadron State, where he worked his ass off, and by the time he graduated, he was college football's all-time leading rusher. He's still so anonymous that he worked at a sporting goods store on a day off last year and pretty much no one recognized him. Now he's a running back for a team in the goddamned Super Bowl.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/football"&gt;football&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/sports"&gt;sports&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Super Bowl"&gt;Super Bowl&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 02, 2012 03:44 PM

Really good article on the huge incarceration rate in the U.S., its causes, its effects, and its value:

Over all, there are now more people under "correctional supervision" in America -- more than six million -- than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height. That city of the confined and the controlled, Lockuptown, is now the second largest in the United States.

The accelerating rate of incarceration over the past few decades is just as startling as the number of people jailed: in 1980, there were about two hundred and twenty people incarcerated for every hundred thousand Americans; by 2010, the number had more than tripled, to seven hundred and thirty-one. No other country even approaches that. In the past two decades, the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education.

[...]

The trouble with the Bill of Rights, he argues, is that it emphasizes process and procedure rather than principles. The Declaration of the Rights of Man says, Be just! The Bill of Rights says, Be fair! Instead of announcing general principles­ -- no one should be accused of something that wasn't a crime when he did it; cruel punishments are always wrong; the goal of justice is, above all, that justice be done­ -- it talks procedurally. You can't search someone without a reason; you can't accuse him without allowing him to see the evidence; and so on. This emphasis, Stuntz thinks, has led to the current mess, where accused criminals get laboriously articulated protection against procedural errors and no protection at all against outrageous and obvious violations of simple justice. You can get off if the cops looked in the wrong car with the wrong warrant when they found your joint, but you have no recourse if owning the joint gets you locked up for life. You may be spared the death penalty if you can show a problem with your appointed defender, but it is much harder if there is merely enormous accumulated evidence that you weren't guilty in the first place and the jury got it wrong. Even clauses that Americans are taught to revere are, Stuntz maintains, unworthy of reverence: the ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" was designed to protect cruel punishments -- flogging and branding -- that were not at that time unusual.

The author mentions the rise of for-profit businesses increasingly running prisons in the U.S., but I don't think he makes the point strongly enough. There is now a corporate interest in the U.S. lobbying for such things as mandatory minimum sentencing.

by schneier at February 02, 2012 03:04 PM

pobrecito hablador nos cuenta: «Tras el notorio paso a aplicación de pago de Spotify y la dichosa claúsula de Grooveshark que descarga en sus usuarios la responsabilidad sobre cualquier fichero mp3 que estos suban, estaba pensando en montarme mi propio servicio de música con mis ficheros mp3 para utilizarlo en cualquier lugar y cicunstancia. Como opciones estaba barajando Ampache o Subsonic, aunque no descarto otros servicios como Audiogalaxy (si bien requiere tener encendido el ordenador personal en el que tengamos nuestros ficheros musicales) o de pago como Mecanto (15$ anuales, pero "pura nube" con los problemas que esto puede suponer). Y vosotros, ¿qué solución estáis empleando? O ¿cuál recomendaríais?»

by nettizen at February 02, 2012 02:06 PM

"Lucky me," writes Joe from the Submit-To-WTF Visual Studio Add-In, "I just inherited a home-grown system information application."

"Judging from the code the previous programmer wrote, this is sadly one of the better pieces."

Public ReadOnly Property BatteryPercent()
    ' This code will retrieve the BatteryLifePercent property and convert it to a percent.
    Get
        If SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "1" Then
            Return "100%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.99" Then
            Return "99%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.98" Then
            Return "98%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.97" Then
            Return "97%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.96" Then
            Return "96%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.95" Then
            Return "95%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.94" Then
            Return "94%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.93" Then
            Return "93%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.92" Then
            Return "92%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.91" Then
            Return "91%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.9" Then
            Return "90%"
        '...
        'snip
        '...
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.2" Then
            Return "20%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.19" Then
            Return "19%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.18" Then
            Return "18%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.17" Then
            Return "17%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.16" Then
            Return "16%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.15" Then
            Return "15%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.14" Then
            Return "14%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.13" Then
            Return "13%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.12" Then
            Return "12%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.11" Then
            Return "11%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.1" Then
            Return "10%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.09" Then
            Return "9%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.08" Then
            Return "8%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.07" Then
            Return "7%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.06" Then
            Return "6%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.05" Then
            Return "5%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.04" Then
            Return "4%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.03" Then
            Return "3%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.02" Then
            Return "2%"
        ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString = "0.01" Then
            Return "1%"
        Else
            Return "NA"
        End If
    End Get
End Property

February 02, 2012 02:00 PM

Just because the Oracle v. Google case has not been set for trial (and won't be until at least the time at which Oracle provides its third attempt at a damages report) does not mean the court can't move the case along, and that is what Judge Alsup has done with his latest order. In an attempt to narrow the issues to be argued at trial, Judge Alsup's latest order (708 [PDF; Text]) focuses on the copyright issues and directs the parties to provide opening briefs in which they identify each remaining claim of copyright liability and the affirmative defenses to each such claim. In addition, the parties are to identify those issues that should be resolved by the court and those underlying facts that first need to be decided by the jury.

This order adds to a somewhat lengthy litany of filings due from each party under various orders in effect at this time. The timeline for those responses is:

February 02, 2012 01:50 PM

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://kottke.org/11/08/washing-machine-self-destructs"&gt;Washing machine self-destructs&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em class="dimsmaller"&gt;orig. from Aug 31, 2011&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="smaller"&gt;* Q: Wha? A: These previously published entries have been updated with new information in the last 24 hours. &lt;a href="http://www.kottke.org/tag/post%20updates"&gt;You can find past updates here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/post updates"&gt;post updates&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 02, 2012 07:44 AM

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://kottke.org/11/08/washing-machine-self-destructs"&gt;Washing machine self-destructs&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em class="dimsmaller"&gt;orig. from Aug 31, 2011&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="smaller"&gt;* Q: Wha? A: These previously published entries have been updated with new information in the last 24 hours. &lt;a href="http://www.kottke.org/tag/post%20updates"&gt;You can find past updates here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/post updates"&gt;post updates&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 02, 2012 07:44 AM

&lt;p&gt;This is a 1930 short film from avant-garde filmmaker Ralph Steiner that shows dozens of gears and other machinery at work.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="369" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Y5pen3QMgzQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;(thx, &lt;a href="http://teagues.com/"&gt;matthew&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Ralph Steiner"&gt;Ralph Steiner&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/video"&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 01, 2012 05:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;You've seen one washing machine self-destruction video, you've seen them all, right? Maybe not. Back in August, &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/11/08/washing-machine-self-destructs"&gt;I posted this short video&lt;/a&gt; of a washer destroying itself (with some help from a brick) but this longer video is mesmerizing and almost poignant at times.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6_PLnInsh7E?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;At times, it seems as though the washer is attempting to turn into the Picasso version of itself, a Cubist sculpture manifesting itself over time. (via &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/#!/aaroncoleman0"&gt;@aaroncoleman0&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/video"&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 01, 2012 05:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;This is a 1930 short film from avant-garde filmmaker Ralph Steiner that shows dozens of gears and other machinery at work.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="369" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Y5pen3QMgzQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;(thx, &lt;a href="http://teagues.com/"&gt;matthew&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Ralph Steiner"&gt;Ralph Steiner&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/video"&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 01, 2012 05:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;You've seen one washing machine self-destruction video, you've seen them all, right? Maybe not. Back in August, &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/11/08/washing-machine-self-destructs"&gt;I posted this short video&lt;/a&gt; of a washer destroying itself (with some help from a brick) but this longer video is mesmerizing and almost poignant at times.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6_PLnInsh7E?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;At times, it seems as though the washer is attempting to turn into the Picasso version of itself, a Cubist sculpture manifesting itself over time. (via &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/#!/aaroncoleman0"&gt;@aaroncoleman0&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/video"&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 01, 2012 05:44 PM

I'm seeing a couple of articles about an initial determination by the ITC against Barnes & Noble on its patent misuse defense, and there's quite a lot of spin on the ball, thanks to the usual suspects. They are reading a lot into a title of a sealed document. I see many misstatements.

So I'll explain a little about the process, so you can understand it. For one thing, the title of the sealed ITC initial determination is called an *initial* determination for a reason. It means it isn't final. The final one comes later. Initial determinations can be reviewed by the full ITC if the defendant petitions for review and even one Commissioner says yes.

Litigation isn't like football. It is rarely suddenly over.

Most importantly, the materials and depositions Barnes & Noble is seeking in discovery from Nokia and MOSAID have not yet arrived, although the ITC did grant Barnes & Noble's motion to ask Finland and Canada to provide them, and that's still ongoing, so there is likely more to go, even at the ITC. So with those materials not yet in hand, Microsoft's statement today that this means the defense is meritless is... well... to put it kindly premature. I mean, if a determination is made without the complete record being available, what does it mean?

February 01, 2012 05:33 PM

From the Makes Sense On a Server dept.:
...Red Hat. The company has just announced that it is extending the production lifecycle of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 and 6 from seven to 10 years in response to enterprise customer demand and Red Hat’s hardware original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners.

For any company, upgrading to a new version of an operating system requires detailed advance planning. Red Hat has extended the Red Hat Enterprise Linux lifecycle so customers can remain on their current version longer. With the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux lifecycle, customers will benefit from continued feature enhancements while Red Hat’s application binary interface (ABI) and application programming interface (API) compatibility for their existing application.

February 01, 2012 01:45 PM

Brian C. Kalt (2005), "The Perfect Crime," Georgetown Law Journal, Vol. 93, No. 2.

Abstract: This article argues that there is a 50-square-mile swath of Idaho in which one can commit felonies with impunity. This is because of the intersection of a poorly drafted statute with a clear but neglected constitutional provision: the Sixth Amendment's Vicinage Clause. Although lesser criminal charges and civil liability still loom, the remaining possibility of criminals going free over a needless technical failure by Congress is difficult to stomach. No criminal defendant has ever broached the subject, let alone faced the numerous (though unconvincing) counterarguments. This shows that vicinage is not taken seriously by lawyers or judges. Still, Congress should close the Idaho loophole, not pretend it does not exist.

by schneier at February 01, 2012 12:05 PM

Judge Alsup has considered the joint submission by the parties on the subject of patent marking as well as their supplemental filings (706 [PDF; Text]), and he has come out firing at Google. In a strongly worded order (707 [PDF; Text]) the court has strongly criticized Google for failing to live up to its obligations under the joint stipulation entered by the parties with respect to evidence of patent marking, declaring it:

[I]t is manifestly clear that Google failed to comply with its own stipulated procedure.

February 01, 2012 12:00 PM

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://kottke.org/12/01/ice-cubes-good-day-located"&gt;Ice Cube's "Good Day" located&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em class="dimsmaller"&gt;orig. from Jan 30, 2012&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="smaller"&gt;* Q: Wha? A: These previously published entries have been updated with new information in the last 24 hours. &lt;a href="http://www.kottke.org/tag/post%20updates"&gt;You can find past updates here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/post updates"&gt;post updates&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 01, 2012 07:44 AM

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://kottke.org/12/01/ice-cubes-good-day-located"&gt;Ice Cube's "Good Day" located&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em class="dimsmaller"&gt;orig. from Jan 30, 2012&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="smaller"&gt;* Q: Wha? A: These previously published entries have been updated with new information in the last 24 hours. &lt;a href="http://www.kottke.org/tag/post%20updates"&gt;You can find past updates here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/post updates"&gt;post updates&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at February 01, 2012 07:44 AM

Michael David Crawford CFN: 205307 Clark County Jail PO Box 1147 Vancouver, WA 98666-1147 law@softwareproblem.net (###) ###-#### Mobile After My Release: PO Box 6888 Portland, OR 97228 January 18, 2012 Your Honor, Before you proceed with this letter please read the following quite short essay on my company's website: "Every Engineer's Solemn Duty" http://www.dulcineatech.com/ethics/whistle-blower.html. That page is not yet linked from the rest of my website so you'll need to enter the complete URL. Because an aerospace engineer by the name of Roger Boisjoly failed to fulfill his solemn duty by bringing to NASA Mission Control's attention that Cape Canaveral's temperature had fallen well below the rated specification of the O-Rings that sealed the gaps between the sections of the Challenger's solid rocket boosters, seven incredibly brave and completely innocent astronauts were killed in the most horrifyingly gruesome way - they are thought to have been still fully conscious when they struck the ocean - and America lost one-fifth of her shuttle fleet at a cost to the taxpayer of several billion dollars.

February 01, 2012 01:44 AM

&lt;p&gt;Designer Adam Ladd asked his five-year-old daughter for her impressions of several well-known logos. This is great:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/N4t3-__3MA0?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;(via &lt;a href="http://stellar.io"&gt;stellar&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/design"&gt;design&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/logos"&gt;logos&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/video"&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 31, 2012 11:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;Over at Sew Weekly, &lt;a href="http://www.sewweekly.com/2012/01/mad-men-season-5-fashions/"&gt;Mena Trott predicts&lt;/a&gt; what some of the characters will be wearing in the coming season of Mad Men.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Oh, Betty. For years, she has been immaculately dressed and presented as the facade of the perfect 1950s/1960s wife. With her cinched waists and billowing skirts, she's held onto late 1950s and early 1960s fashion the longest. In season four, she's married to the anti-Don, the boring Henry Francis and is getting a little too familiar with the bottle. When you're married to Henry Francis, you just don't care any more. That should be embroidered on a pillow.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/fashion"&gt;fashion&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Mad Men"&gt;Mad Men&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Mena Trott"&gt;Mena Trott&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/TV"&gt;TV&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 31, 2012 11:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;Designer Adam Ladd asked his five-year-old daughter for her impressions of several well-known logos. This is great:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/N4t3-__3MA0?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;(via &lt;a href="http://stellar.io"&gt;stellar&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/design"&gt;design&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/logos"&gt;logos&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/video"&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 31, 2012 11:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;Over at Sew Weekly, &lt;a href="http://www.sewweekly.com/2012/01/mad-men-season-5-fashions/"&gt;Mena Trott predicts&lt;/a&gt; what some of the characters will be wearing in the coming season of Mad Men.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Oh, Betty. For years, she has been immaculately dressed and presented as the facade of the perfect 1950s/1960s wife. With her cinched waists and billowing skirts, she's held onto late 1950s and early 1960s fashion the longest. In season four, she's married to the anti-Don, the boring Henry Francis and is getting a little too familiar with the bottle. When you're married to Henry Francis, you just don't care any more. That should be embroidered on a pillow.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/fashion"&gt;fashion&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Mad Men"&gt;Mad Men&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Mena Trott"&gt;Mena Trott&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/TV"&gt;TV&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 31, 2012 11:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://thewirecutter.com/2012/01/happiness-takes-a-little-magic/"&gt;Over at The Wirecutter&lt;/a&gt;, Brian Lam writes about technology, journalism, happiness, and why "clicking the like button 1 billion times will never give you an orgasm or a hug or a high five".&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first thing I did was to take back my time. I quit all the online content that was id-provoking and knee jerk. I stopped reading the stupid hyped up news stories that are press releases or rants about things that will get fixed in a week. I stopped reading the junk and about the junk that was new, but not good. I stopped reading blogs that write stories like "top 17 photos of awesome clouds by iphone" and "EXCLUSIVE ANGRY BIRDS COMING TO FACEBOOK ON VALENTINES DAY." And corporate news that only affects the 1%. Most days, I feel like most internet writers and editors are engaging in the kind of vapid conversation you find at parties that is neither enlightening or entertaining, and where everyone is shouting and no one is saying anything. I don't have time for this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Brian Lam"&gt;Brian Lam&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 31, 2012 09:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://thewirecutter.com/2012/01/happiness-takes-a-little-magic/"&gt;Over at The Wirecutter&lt;/a&gt;, Brian Lam writes about technology, journalism, happiness, and why "clicking the like button 1 billion times will never give you an orgasm or a hug or a high five".&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first thing I did was to take back my time. I quit all the online content that was id-provoking and knee jerk. I stopped reading the stupid hyped up news stories that are press releases or rants about things that will get fixed in a week. I stopped reading the junk and about the junk that was new, but not good. I stopped reading blogs that write stories like "top 17 photos of awesome clouds by iphone" and "EXCLUSIVE ANGRY BIRDS COMING TO FACEBOOK ON VALENTINES DAY." And corporate news that only affects the 1%. Most days, I feel like most internet writers and editors are engaging in the kind of vapid conversation you find at parties that is neither enlightening or entertaining, and where everyone is shouting and no one is saying anything. I don't have time for this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Brian Lam"&gt;Brian Lam&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 31, 2012 09:44 PM

Last year's Code PaLOUsa (held in downtown Louisville) was a blast, and it was great to meet up with some of you guys who were able make it out. I'm definitely excited about Code PaLOUsa 2012; there's a lot of great speakers, and it's right in the heart of bourbon country.

My Talk — Ugly Code: Beauty is in The Eye of the Beholder

It's said that without evil there can be no good and that without darkness, there can be no light. Is the same true of ugly and beautiful code? Maybe... but that's certainly not a question I'll be answering in this talk. Instead, we'll talk about ugly code, where it comes from, how to avoid it, and how to rid your codebase of it. And of course, I'll share some of my favorite anti-examples from The Daily WTF.

The TDWTF Discount + Bonus!

How about a $50 discount? If you register before Febuary 21st, it will only cost you $200 (instead of $250) using discount code TDWTF at checkout. Not only that, but you'll also get one of the elusive The Daily WTF mugs.

About Code PaLOUsa

Code PaLOUsa is a three-day software development conference that covers all aspects of software development regardless of technology stack. The first day consists of hands-on workshops, followed by two-days of ten different development tracks:

• Cloud - All things about the cloud, including the who, what, where, when, why, and how about cloud computing
• Mobile - All things mobile - platforms, devices, content distribution, social networking, community building, and anything else used in conjunction with those devices which have small screens
• Web Development - Web services, Ajax frameworks, and all things related to the browser
• Methodologies - Anything pertinent to how modern development methodologies help build software faster, cheaper , and better
• Languages - Discussions on what's new and cool in software development languages such as C#, Java, PHP, Python, Ruby, Visual Basic, etc.
• Entrepreneur - Envision MDM Strategy as Part of Broader Information Strategy to Treat Information as Corporate Asset
• Desktop Development - Standard applications, fat/smart client, client/server, and all things running local on Windows, Mac, or Linux
• Architecture - SOA, W3C standards, WS* implementations, interoperability, and all things 30,000 feet or higher

There will be 62 technical presentations and panel discussions from well-known professionals in the software development community and two keynote talks from Billy Hollis and Jim Benson.

January 31, 2012 08:00 PM

&lt;p&gt;The Eames' &lt;a href="http://www.powersof10.com/film"&gt;Powers of Ten&lt;/a&gt; and Eva Szasz's &lt;a href="http://www.nfb.ca/film/cosmic_zoom/"&gt;Cosmic Zoom&lt;/a&gt; both came out in 1968 and were based on Kees Boeke's 1957 essay called &lt;a href="http://www.vendian.org/mncharity/cosmicview/"&gt;Cosmic View&lt;/a&gt;. This seems like an incredible coincidence. I couldn't find anything online about which film came first or if there was any influence one way or the other, so I thought I'd ask if anyone knows anything about which came out first. Hit me at &lt;a href="mailto:jason@kottke.org?subject=kottke.org feedback"&gt;jason@kottke.org&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Charles and Ray Eames"&gt;Charles and Ray Eames&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Eva Szasz"&gt;Eva Szasz&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Kees Boeke"&gt;Kees Boeke&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/long zoom"&gt;long zoom&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Powers of Ten"&gt;Powers of Ten&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/video"&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 31, 2012 07:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;The Eames' &lt;a href="http://www.powersof10.com/film"&gt;Powers of Ten&lt;/a&gt; and Eva Szasz's &lt;a href="http://www.nfb.ca/film/cosmic_zoom/"&gt;Cosmic Zoom&lt;/a&gt; both came out in 1968 and were based on Kees Boeke's 1957 essay called &lt;a href="http://www.vendian.org/mncharity/cosmicview/"&gt;Cosmic View&lt;/a&gt;. This seems like an incredible coincidence. I couldn't find anything online about which film came first or if there was any influence one way or the other, so I thought I'd ask if anyone knows anything about which came out first. Hit me at &lt;a href="mailto:jason@kottke.org?subject=kottke.org feedback"&gt;jason@kottke.org&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Charles and Ray Eames"&gt;Charles and Ray Eames&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Eva Szasz"&gt;Eva Szasz&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Kees Boeke"&gt;Kees Boeke&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/long zoom"&gt;long zoom&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Powers of Ten"&gt;Powers of Ten&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/video"&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 31, 2012 07:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/pronunciationbook"&gt;Pronunciation Book&lt;/a&gt; channel on YouTube shows you how to say various words in American English in a straightforward fashion. Here's how to say Zegna, the men's clothing brand:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Oqv0K_3G85M?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;This is not to be confused with the &lt;a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/PronunciationManual"&gt;Pronunciation Manual&lt;/a&gt; channel, which does the same thing in the same format but much funnier and more incorrect.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3DSgsON3u8E?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Mj1M36kdxH0?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/lhODj5t7J_I?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3ADu3tHanP8?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/v-3RZl3YyJw?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I could have embedded a dozen more...I have no idea why I think these are so funny but I just cannot stop laughing at them. Ok, one more:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/N_1hOy4BkGc?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-n1vGeVIXo"&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;! Make it stop!!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/language"&gt;language&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/video"&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 31, 2012 05:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/pronunciationbook"&gt;Pronunciation Book&lt;/a&gt; channel on YouTube shows you how to say various words in American English in a straightforward fashion. Here's how to say Zegna, the men's clothing brand:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Oqv0K_3G85M?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;This is not to be confused with the &lt;a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/PronunciationManual"&gt;Pronunciation Manual&lt;/a&gt; channel, which does the same thing in the same format but much funnier and more incorrect.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3DSgsON3u8E?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Mj1M36kdxH0?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/lhODj5t7J_I?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3ADu3tHanP8?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/v-3RZl3YyJw?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I could have embedded a dozen more...I have no idea why I think these are so funny but I just cannot stop laughing at them. Ok, one more:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/N_1hOy4BkGc?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-n1vGeVIXo"&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;! Make it stop!!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/language"&gt;language&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/video"&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 31, 2012 05:44 PM

If it takes two contract developers six months to drive a project to failure, then four developers should be able to fail in half the time! Josh assumed that was why he and Sam were carted out to the client site and tossed into the oubliette of the PowerPac project. They were armed with nothing but a rusty spoon and a requirements document so old it needed to be stored in an oxygen-free environment.

The original development pair was Sally "I can code but I'm more of a designer" Jorgensen (the CEO's daughter) and Billy "I taught myself HTML in a week and am now a programmer" Jorgensen (the CEO's brother). They ran the project exactly like you'd expect such a dynamic duo to run it- directly into the ground. By the time Josh and Sam joined, it was already well past deadline and over budget.

To make a good impression on the client, Billy and Sally didn't work out of the consulting firm's office, but instead moved to the client site. The pair had improvised a server room to work out of. It could be easily distingushed from a broom closet by the piece of duct tape with "SEVER ROOM" sharpied onto it. Inside, an overheating rackmount server balanced on a crate of toilet paper. On a sagging plastic card table sat the developer workstation running VS2005, which doubled as their source control box, since it ran Visual Source Safe.

Josh thought their physical environment was bad, and then he looked at their application. Billy, it seemed, had read one website on database design and walked away with the idea, "if normalizing data across tables is good, normalizing it across databases bust be even better!" Their wheezing Sql Server instance hosted a dozen databases, one for each entity and an extra DB to hold tblIncrementingIDs(strCurrentID VARCHAR(50)), so that unique IDs could be consistent across all of these databases.

The first and last thing Josh noticed about the web code was the fact that each page had a multi-megabyte ViewState. Coupled with terrible coding practices, Josh and Sam junked the VSS repo and then started laying out a plan to rescue the application. They moved the dev team back to the consulting firm's main office, where they had a true development environment, complete with modern dev tools and a well administered TFS2010 instance, along with labs for automated testing. They rounded up people from the client and pinned them down on requierments. They beat Billy and Sally about the head and shoulders with three-tiered architecture until the two of them got it, and proceeded to wrench the project back onto course.

Four months later, Josh and Sam had accomplished the impossible- twice. They had gotten Billy and Sally to turn out code that wouldn't flunk a 100-level college course. The slighly less impossible achievement was that they had turned the project around. It went from "this is never going to be finished" to "it's late, overbudget, but we're within striking distance of an actual deliverable product." They were on track to deliver in two more months.

This kind of success on a project draws accolades and back-pats and lunches paid for by the consulting company for a job well done. It also draws something far more sinister: project managers who want to steal that glory for themselves. Doug, from the client-site, was exactly that kind of project manager. In the closing months of the project, he swooped in with the promise to manage the hell out of this project and keep it on track.

Doug did everyone the favor of standardizing the process. The QA Officer (Doug) had to approve any code before it could be checked into source control. The Compliance Officer (Doug) needed a report of every file modified before any build could be run, down to the specific line numbers changed. He couldn't just extract this information from TFS because, "It's part of the developer's job!"

Only the Build Officer (Doug) could kick off a new build, and not using TFS (a developer tool). Doug would run builds from his own computer, and if he forgot to perform a Get Latest to ensure he had all of the changes, well, that was the developer's problem. They should have followed the communication plan.

Josh protested and escalated and did all of the things you're supposed to do when someone's tanking your project, but to no avail. He couldn't understand how Doug was getting away with this until he sat in on Doug's status meeting. Doug had compiled a PowerPoint full of pretty graphs and dashboards showing nothing but green boxes. He used words like synergy, Agile, "code coverage", "core principles" and "industry standard best practices". It was entirely fabricated nonesense, but management swallowed every drop.

When they didn't hit Josh's original target dates, the money officially ran out. The project was cancelled, and the client informed the consulting company that Josh and his team should never be assigned to one of their projects again. Doug got transferred to another "at risk" project for the client, so that he could "save" it.

January 31, 2012 03:30 PM

All in the Mind started with Zombies back in 2002...not of the Day of the Living Dead kind, but the philosophical variety! Celebrate All in the Mind's 10th birthday with us. This week, Natasha revisits the great conundrum of human consciousness with leading thinkers - it's a problem that continues to stump the brightest minds.

January 31, 2012 11:32 AM

The Clark County, Washington Superior Court has been made award of this website, http://www.kuro5hin.org, in the State v. Michael David Crawford case. Since the FAQ is woefully outdated, I thought I would take it upon myself to introduce any visitors from the court(s) of Clark County to the website. Below are some facts you should know.

January 31, 2012 07:44 AM

Folks:

Back in November, I published http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2011/11/03/where-does-google-actually-say-that-they-wont-read-gmail-messages-or-google-docs/ wondering if Google ever promises not to go curiously through one’s Google Docs (or elaborates beyond a single FAQ on the question of whether Google employees are allowed to read Gmail messages). Lately I’ve been getting a variety of notifications from Google about the new improved privacy policies but I still can’t find anything on the subject of “Can Google read my word processing docs and spreadsheets?”

Thanks in advance if you have figured this out…

by philg at January 31, 2012 03:11 AM

&lt;p&gt;Well some of them are. The plain old American Oreo didn't sell so well in China, &lt;a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/27/145918343/rethinking-the-oreo-for-chinese-consumers"&gt;so Kraft had to rethink everything about the cookie&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;It turns out that if you didn't grow up with Oreos and develop an emotional attachment to the cookie, it can be a weird-tasting little thing. And this started a whole process in the Chinese division of Kraft of rethinking what the essence of an Oreo really is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Key terms in this article include "the essence of Oreoness" and "Twist, Lick, Dunk".&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/business"&gt;business&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/China"&gt;China&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/food"&gt;food&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Oreo"&gt;Oreo&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 30, 2012 11:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;Well some of them are. The plain old American Oreo didn't sell so well in China, &lt;a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/27/145918343/rethinking-the-oreo-for-chinese-consumers"&gt;so Kraft had to rethink everything about the cookie&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;It turns out that if you didn't grow up with Oreos and develop an emotional attachment to the cookie, it can be a weird-tasting little thing. And this started a whole process in the Chinese division of Kraft of rethinking what the essence of an Oreo really is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Key terms in this article include "the essence of Oreoness" and "Twist, Lick, Dunk".&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/business"&gt;business&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/China"&gt;China&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/food"&gt;food&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Oreo"&gt;Oreo&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 30, 2012 11:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;At the end of &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/12/01/president-john-tylers-grandsons-are-still-alive"&gt;last week's post&lt;/a&gt; about John Tyler's grandsons still being alive (and indeed, &lt;a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/01/president-tyler-grandson-alive.html"&gt;NY Mag did an interview with one of them&lt;/a&gt;), I provided a couple of other examples of living personals bridging distant historical periods and asked:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Someone needs to come up with a term for this sort of thing (history bridges? no.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;On Twitter, David Galbraith &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/#!/daveg/status/162520603071492097"&gt;suggested&lt;/a&gt; "timebenders". After more thought, I came up with "human wormholes" but that's not quite right either. Tony Hiss, in a book about his father Alger (&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alger_Hiss"&gt;the accused Soviet spy&lt;/a&gt;), said that Alger had a term for stories kind of like these: &lt;a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=olFCrmcZ-C4C&amp;amp;lpg=PT12&amp;amp;ots=XD4WDJ_8KZ&amp;amp;dq=the%20view%20from%20alger%27s%20window%20holmes&amp;amp;pg=PT12#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=the%20view%20from%20alger%27s%20window%20holmes&amp;amp;f=false"&gt;the Great Span&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;My father himself even had a name for a kind of ongoing closeness between people in which death is sometimes only an irrelevance. He called it "the Great Span," a sort of bucket brigade or relay race across time, a way for adjacent generations to let ideas and goals move intact from one mind to another across a couple of hundred years or more.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Hiss cites a pair of stories involving Alger (who died in 1996) and Oliver Wendell Holmes, who Alger clerked for and also figured in one of my earlier examples. In one story, Holmes told Alger about his experience fighting in the Civil War. The other story reaches back even further:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the Holmes story Alger treasured above all others, the Justice told him that when he had been very young, his grandmother, a woman he revered, had shared her memories of the day at the beginning of the American Revolution when she was five and had stood in her father's front window on Beacon Hill in Boston and watched rank after rank of Redcoats marching through town.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Another instance of the Great Span are the three Civil War widows (&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maudie_Hopkins"&gt;Maudie Hopkins&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_Martin"&gt;Alberta Martin&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Janeway"&gt;Gertrude Janeway&lt;/a&gt;) who lived into the 2000s, two of them collecting their husbands' pensions until their deaths. (thx, mike &amp;amp; &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/#!/ithinkihaveacat/status/162622500725985280"&gt;@ithinkihaveacat&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Alger Hiss"&gt;Alger Hiss&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/history"&gt;history&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/John Tyler"&gt;John Tyler&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 30, 2012 09:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;At the end of &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/12/01/president-john-tylers-grandsons-are-still-alive"&gt;last week's post&lt;/a&gt; about John Tyler's grandsons still being alive (and indeed, &lt;a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/01/president-tyler-grandson-alive.html"&gt;NY Mag did an interview with one of them&lt;/a&gt;), I provided a couple of other examples of living personals bridging distant historical periods and asked:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Someone needs to come up with a term for this sort of thing (history bridges? no.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;On Twitter, David Galbraith &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/#!/daveg/status/162520603071492097"&gt;suggested&lt;/a&gt; "timebenders". After more thought, I came up with "human wormholes" but that's not quite right either. Tony Hiss, in a book about his father Alger (&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alger_Hiss"&gt;the accused Soviet spy&lt;/a&gt;), said that Alger had a term for stories kind of like these: &lt;a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=olFCrmcZ-C4C&amp;amp;lpg=PT12&amp;amp;ots=XD4WDJ_8KZ&amp;amp;dq=the%20view%20from%20alger%27s%20window%20holmes&amp;amp;pg=PT12#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=the%20view%20from%20alger%27s%20window%20holmes&amp;amp;f=false"&gt;the Great Span&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;My father himself even had a name for a kind of ongoing closeness between people in which death is sometimes only an irrelevance. He called it "the Great Span," a sort of bucket brigade or relay race across time, a way for adjacent generations to let ideas and goals move intact from one mind to another across a couple of hundred years or more.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Hiss cites a pair of stories involving Alger (who died in 1996) and Oliver Wendell Holmes, who Alger clerked for and also figured in one of my earlier examples. In one story, Holmes told Alger about his experience fighting in the Civil War. The other story reaches back even further:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the Holmes story Alger treasured above all others, the Justice told him that when he had been very young, his grandmother, a woman he revered, had shared her memories of the day at the beginning of the American Revolution when she was five and had stood in her father's front window on Beacon Hill in Boston and watched rank after rank of Redcoats marching through town.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Another instance of the Great Span are the three Civil War widows (&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maudie_Hopkins"&gt;Maudie Hopkins&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_Martin"&gt;Alberta Martin&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Janeway"&gt;Gertrude Janeway&lt;/a&gt;) who lived into the 2000s, two of them collecting their husbands' pensions until their deaths. (thx, mike &amp;amp; &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/#!/ithinkihaveacat/status/162622500725985280"&gt;@ithinkihaveacat&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Alger Hiss"&gt;Alger Hiss&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/history"&gt;history&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/John Tyler"&gt;John Tyler&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 30, 2012 09:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;If you divide 1 by the number 998,001, you get a list of all the three digit numbers in order except 998. Like so:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/998001.jpg" width="500" height="180" alt="998001" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Math! (via &lt;a href="https://mlkshk.com/p/BZLV"&gt;mlkshk&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/mathematics"&gt;mathematics&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 30, 2012 07:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;If you divide 1 by the number 998,001, you get a list of all the three digit numbers in order except 998. Like so:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/998001.jpg" width="500" height="180" alt="998001" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Math! (via &lt;a href="https://mlkshk.com/p/BZLV"&gt;mlkshk&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/mathematics"&gt;mathematics&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 30, 2012 07:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;BLDGBLOG is running a distributed film festival called &lt;a href="http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/breaking-out-and-breaking-in.html"&gt;Breaking Out and Breaking In&lt;/a&gt; that will explore the architecture of escapes and break-ins in movies.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Breaking Out and Breaking In is an exploration of the use and misuse of space in escapes and heists, where architecture is the obstacle between you and what you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Watch the films at home-or anywhere you may be-and then come back to discuss the films here on BLDGBLOG. It's a "distributed" film fest; there is no central venue, just a curated list of films and a list of days on which to watch them. There's no set time, no geographic exclusion, and no limit to the food breaks or repeated scenes you might require. And it all leads up to a public discussion at Studio-X NYC on Tuesday, April 24.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The overall idea is to discuss breaking out and breaking in as spatial scenarios that operate as mirror images of one another, each process with its own tools, techniques, and unique forms of unexpected architectural expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;It started on Friday, but there's still plenty of time and opportunity to join in.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/architecture"&gt;architecture&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/movies"&gt;movies&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 30, 2012 05:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;BLDGBLOG is running a distributed film festival called &lt;a href="http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/breaking-out-and-breaking-in.html"&gt;Breaking Out and Breaking In&lt;/a&gt; that will explore the architecture of escapes and break-ins in movies.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Breaking Out and Breaking In is an exploration of the use and misuse of space in escapes and heists, where architecture is the obstacle between you and what you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Watch the films at home-or anywhere you may be-and then come back to discuss the films here on BLDGBLOG. It's a "distributed" film fest; there is no central venue, just a curated list of films and a list of days on which to watch them. There's no set time, no geographic exclusion, and no limit to the food breaks or repeated scenes you might require. And it all leads up to a public discussion at Studio-X NYC on Tuesday, April 24.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The overall idea is to discuss breaking out and breaking in as spatial scenarios that operate as mirror images of one another, each process with its own tools, techniques, and unique forms of unexpected architectural expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;It started on Friday, but there's still plenty of time and opportunity to join in.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/architecture"&gt;architecture&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/movies"&gt;movies&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 30, 2012 05:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://murkavenue.tumblr.com/post/16553509655/i-found-ice-cubes-good-day"&gt;An internet sleuth&lt;/a&gt; used the lyrics of Ice Cube's It Was a Good Day to figure out when his exceptional day occurred.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;CLUE 3: "The Lakers beat the Super Sonics"&lt;br /&gt;Dates between Yo MTV Raps air date AUGUST 6 1988 and the release of the single FEBRUARY 23 1993 where the Lakers beat the Super Sonics...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Someone fact-checked the original calculation and &lt;a href="http://lahatiel.tumblr.com/post/16698555997/ice-cubes-good-day-really-november-30-1988"&gt;found it wanting&lt;/a&gt;. (thx, trevor)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Ice Cube"&gt;Ice Cube&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/music"&gt;music&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 30, 2012 03:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://murkavenue.tumblr.com/post/16553509655/i-found-ice-cubes-good-day"&gt;An internet sleuth&lt;/a&gt; used the lyrics of Ice Cube's It Was a Good Day to figure out when his exceptional day occurred.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;CLUE 3: "The Lakers beat the Super Sonics"&lt;br /&gt;Dates between Yo MTV Raps air date AUGUST 6 1988 and the release of the single FEBRUARY 23 1993 where the Lakers beat the Super Sonics...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Someone fact-checked the original calculation and &lt;a href="http://lahatiel.tumblr.com/post/16698555997/ice-cubes-good-day-really-november-30-1988"&gt;found it wanting&lt;/a&gt;. (thx, trevor)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Ice Cube"&gt;Ice Cube&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/music"&gt;music&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 30, 2012 03:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/25/2721249/5-minutes-on-the-verge-jason-kottke"&gt;Five Minutes on The Verge: Jason Kottke&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then it's eight more-or-less solid hours of ass-in-chair because surprisingly, that's the way stuff gets done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://jason.kottke.usesthis.com/"&gt;The Setup: An interview with Jason Kottke&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;My white desk doesn't work so well with the optical mouse, so for some dumb reason I'm using a 242-page book called Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer as a mousepad.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/interviews"&gt;interviews&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Jason Kottke"&gt;Jason Kottke&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 30, 2012 03:44 PM

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/25/2721249/5-minutes-on-the-verge-jason-kottke"&gt;Five Minutes on The Verge: Jason Kottke&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then it's eight more-or-less solid hours of ass-in-chair because surprisingly, that's the way stuff gets done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://jason.kottke.usesthis.com/"&gt;The Setup: An interview with Jason Kottke&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;My white desk doesn't work so well with the optical mouse, so for some dumb reason I'm using a 242-page book called Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer as a mousepad.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/interviews"&gt;interviews&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/Jason Kottke"&gt;Jason Kottke&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 30, 2012 03:44 PM

Oracle and Google have now filed their joint statement on patent marking (706 [PDF; Text]) as required by the court's supplemental order of December 6 (641 [PDF; Text]) Although reading the joint statement may give one the impression that the parties' positions are far apart (and they are), that doesn't mean that the joint statement hasn't closed the gap on the marking issue. In fact, it appears to have closed the gap significantly and in Google's favor.

You will recall that after the Judge Alsup issued his December 6 supplemental order the parties filed a joint stipulation on what they were to do. That stipulation provided:

January 30, 2012 02:30 PM

Terry had spent the better part of the past decade digging through the trenches of QuidCorp's flagship application QuidFlow -- a program used to flowchart business processes. Though QuidFlow performed well and, overall, customers were happy with the product, whenever it came time to address a bug or investigate just how the filename validation worked; the source code was beginning to show its age.

Terry raised his concerns to management. Much to his surprise, management approved a plan to transition their C++ developers into the world of .NET through a little on-the-job experience.

Homemade with Love

Paired up with a senior programmer who had been working on QuidDoc, an ASP.NET document control app written in VB.NET, Terry was handed some completed quality assurance (QA) test plans.

"Don't stress yourself out trying to figure out how to solve every problem just yet," the senior programmer advised, "really just get yourself versed in how to check the code out, compile it and poke around a bit."

The application refused to start and when Terry eventually managed to get it going, exceptions were thrown all over the place by the runtime environment when he tried to run the application on his local machine.

Throughout the codebase, there was one section of code common to all the pages. Sharing common code is a great thing -- Terry had employed a similar method in C++. However, in this one module, above all others, there was something funny about how it all worked.

Not in Kansas Anymore

First of all, in his old role functions returned a meaningful value. However, littered through QuidFlow were functions, which always returned the same value of False, whether they were completed successfully or not:

Function UnLockRecord(strTableName) As boolean
  if strTableName = "" then
    strSQLText = "DELETE FROM LOCKINFO 
    WHERE PERSNO=" & SQLQuote(session("LOGGEDUSER"))
  Else
    strSQLText = "DELETE FROM LOCKINFO 
    WHERE TABLENAME = " & SQLQuote(strTableName) & " AND PERSNO=" & SQLQuote(session("LOGGEDUSER"))
  End If
  ExecSQL(strSQLText)
  Unlockrecord = false
End Function

Function SystemInfoClear() As boolean
  ExecSQL("DELETE FROM SYSTEMINFO")
  SystemInfoClear = False
End Function

It was widely known that QuidFlow would kick back strange and frightening messages when things went horribly wrong. As such, Terry could appreciate why a developer would want to shield a division by zero error or a similar condition from a user. However, this feeling of appreciation was reversed somewhat after seeing two similarly named functions immediately thereafter.

Though he wasn't even remotely close to being able to call himself a Web developer, Terry felt that there had to be an easier way of rendering the HTML at the top of each page:

if cSYS_NONAVFRAME<>"1" Then 
   response.write("<script language=Javascript>" & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
   response.write("if (top.location == self.location) {" & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
   if Session("NAV_TOP") Then 
      response.write("document.write('<html><head><title>" 
	     & session("WINDOWTITLE") & "</title></head>')" 
		 & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
      response.write("document.write('<frameset ID=QUIDPROFRAME 
	     rows=" & Chr(34) & "0,25,*" & Chr(34) & " cols=" & Chr(34) 
		 & "*" & Chr(34) & ">');" & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
      response.write("document.write('<frame id=USERDEFINEDFRAME 
	     framespacing=0  frameborder=0 border=0  name=USERDEFINEDFRAME>');" 
		 & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
      response.write("document.write('<frame id=NAVFRAME          
	     framespacing=0  frameborder=O border=0  name=NAVFRAME	>');" 
		 & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
      response.write("document.write('<frame id=MAINFRAME         
	     framespacing=0  frameborder=O border=0  name=MAINFRAME>');" 
		 & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
      response.write("document.write('</frameset>');" 
	     & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
      response.write("document.write('</html>');" 
	     & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
      response.write("parent.USERDEFINEDFRAME.location='" 
	     & application("SYS.QUIDPROROOT") & "basetable/general/userframe.aspx';" 
		 & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
      response.write("parent.NAVFRAME.location='" & application("SYS.QUIDPROROOT") 
	     & "navigator/top/topnavigation.aspx';" & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
      response.write("parent.MAINFRAME.location='" & strRealPage 
	     & "';" & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
    Else 
      response.write("document.write('<html><head><title>" 
	     & session("WINDOWTITLE") & "</title></head>');" & Chr(13) 
		 & Chr(10))
      response.write("document.write('<frameset ID=QUIDPROFRAME rows=" 
	     & Chr(34) & "0,*,25" & Chr(34) & " cols=" & Chr(34) & "*" & Chr(34) 
		 & ">');" & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
      response.write("document.write('<frame id=USERDEFINEDFRAME  
	     framespacing=0  frameborder=0 border=0  name=USERDEFINEDFRAME >');" 
		 & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
      response.write("document.write('<frame id=MAINFRAME	      
	     framespacing=0  frameborder=O border=0  name=MAINFRAME >');" 
		 & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
      response.write("document.write('<frame id=NAVFRAME          
	     framespacing=0  frameborder=O border=0  name=NAVFRAME >');" 
		 & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
      response.write("document.write('</frameset>');" 
	     & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
      response.write("document.write('</html>');" 
	     & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
      response.write("parent.USERDEFINEDFRAME.location='" 
	     & application("SYS.QUIDPROROOT") & "basetable/general/userframe.aspx';" 
		 & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
      response.write("parent.NAVFRAME.location='" & application("SYS.QUIDPROROOT") 
	     & "navigator/bottom/bottomnavigation.aspx';" & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
      response.write("parent.MAINFRAME.location='" & strRealPage & "';" & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
   End If 
   response.write("}" & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
   response.write("</script>" & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
End If

Whistleblow

Concerned that QuidCorp might actually ship something so fetid and maligned, Terry decided he had to pay a visit to QuidFlow's project manager.

"You're right, Terry, this is in no way a solid application, but unfortunately, it is what it is," the project manager explained. "However, that's why we're assigning all you C++ guys with your awesome track record to look into these bugs so we'll be able to ship QuidFlow!"

Somehow, the compliment didn't feel right. At the end of the week, Terry and his fellow QuidFlow developers were pulled from their on-the-job .NET training. QuidCorp had just sold a motherload of QuidFlow licenses to a corporate client and they were asking for some big-time enhancements, which would of course mean they needed all C++ developers on hand immediately.

While the move of QuidFlow to .NET was on hold until some time freed up, their hands-on .NET training wasn't all for nothing. When the time came, at least they would know how not to develop a .NET app.

The .NET Whistleblower was originally published in the December 2010 edition of Visual Studio Magazine. VSM is the leading site for enterprise .NET developers, and offers a free magazine subscription for influential readers.

January 30, 2012 02:00 PM

Politicians anxious to keep feeding the government are talking about new tax ideas, e.g., a special tax that would kick in when a person earned over $1 million per year. One problem with this approach is that it represents a further discouragement to investors and entrepreneurs in a country that is already looking like a bad place for most kinds of investment.

Employees and managers have done a lot better than U.S. investors over the past 10-20 years. A mid-level employee might earn $400,000 per year. An investor or entrepreneur, by contrast, might earn very little for 5-10 years and then finally cash out with $1-2 million. For that one good year, the investor looks like a rich guy, ripe for high taxation, but in reality the employee has done far better, especially on a risk-adjusted basis.

This is not an argument against a special tax, by the way, merely a reminder that it will further push the U.S. toward a culture in which young people want to be employees and managers at established companies.

by philg at January 29, 2012 08:52 PM

B&N and Microsoft have come to an agreement about Steve Ballmer's participation in the Microsoft v. Barnes & Noble action at the ITC. They were arguing about it, and they've now agreed that Ballmer will not have to testify live at the ITC hearing, currently scheduled for February. Instead, B&N will present designated portions of his deposition, and Microsoft's lawyers have sent a letter [PDF] to the ITC stating officially that it withdraws its motion for a protective order, attaching to the letter a proposed schedule on the parties' next steps in figuring out exactly what each side wants in the way of details. This means there will be no further motion practice on the live testimony issue. But it does mean that Microsoft's effort to have Ballmer avoid being deposed ended with him being deposed.

Meanwhile, I took some time to try to understand why Barnes & Noble is fighting with such vigor, when a patent misuse defense is so hard to win. What do they know that I didn't? I will share with you what I've learned.

January 29, 2012 04:30 PM

&lt;p&gt;The Bay of Fundy in Eastern Canada has some of the world's greatest tides...at times, high tide is 50+ feet higher than low tide. Here's a time lapse video of those tides in action.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/hbzwzrZXUKA?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/time lapse"&gt;time lapse&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/video"&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 28, 2012 03:44 AM

&lt;p&gt;The Bay of Fundy in Eastern Canada has some of the world's greatest tides...at times, high tide is 50+ feet higher than low tide. Here's a time lapse video of those tides in action.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width="500" height="284" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/hbzwzrZXUKA?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Tags:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/time lapse"&gt;time lapse&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://kottke.org/tag/video"&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; </content>

by Jason Kottke at January 28, 2012 03:44 AM