Saturday, April 17, 2004
More candy from Lisa Rein
Movie downloads from Lisa Rein:
- Condoleeza Rice appearance on 60 Minutes (25MB)
- Daily Show clips:
- On Iraq transition strategy (13MB)
- On Condoleeza Rice's testimony before Congress (18MB)
- On spam (10MB)
- On Diebold voting systems (5MB)
- On Diebold voting systems, followup (9MB)
- Richard Clarke: Part 1 (15MB), Part 2 (9MB)
- On Republican response to Richard Clarke (16MB)
- On Tyco birthday party write-off (8MB)
- On Richard Clarke 9/11 testimony: Part 1 (13MB), Part 2 (10MB)
Friday, April 16, 2004
VoodooPad: Wiki for the desktop
Many people are leery of switching to Linux because they believe there's a lack of usable software. However, as a Linux user, I actually seldom feel envy for the software available on other platforms. In fact, I'm quite hooked on KDE, and definitely feel its absence when I'm in some other environment.
Well, the other day I actually felt envy for OS X users. In my copious free time I could hack up a large subset of this functionality myself, of course, but right now, OS X is the only place this software exists.
Women look best once a month
So says a recent article in Nature. So, ladies, if you want to impress a guy, wait till you're ovulating, I guess.
What I found most intriguing in this article, however, was the last paragraph, which talks about earlier studies:
Earlier studies have indicated that men might use other clues, such as female body odour, to help them pinpoint their partner's fertility. Others have shown that a woman's ears and breasts actually become more symmetrical in the days leading up to ovulation.
Women's ears become more symmetrical. How does that even work? The world is filled with wonders.
2000 election: How did people vote?
Big statistical breakdown of 2000 election. One interesting part, and the reason M. Yglesias (which is where I found this link, long ago) originally linked to it: If you break the population down into sextiles, the bottom three sextiles went for Gore and the top three went for Bush. Which, of course, totally destroys the conservative myth that Democrats are mostly effete upper-middle-class liberals, out of touch with "real America".
Feeding your voyeur
Parasitic ants that don't ruin the neighborhood
Darwin's law spawning more of its infinite game-theoretic variations...
L. minutissimus is a unique social parasite in that it lives entirely within the colonies of other ant species. But unlike parasitic slave-maker ants, which raid and virtually destroy the colonies of unsuspecting hosts, L. minutissimus appears to move in and live amiably with its host. Such organisms are called inquilines.
Mellifluous and cool vocabulary word of the day: inquiline.
Microsoft vindicates my Mozilla-pushing ways
I tell all my Windows-using friends, acquaintances, and family members not to use Internet Explorer. I usually foist some variation of Netscape/Mozilla on them. Some of them grudgingly comply, whereas others simply can't be bothered (due to IE's omnipresence, faster startup times, and compatibility with the plethora of poorly designed websites that only work with IE). Either way, they usually think of my insistence as the inexplicable eccentricity of a left-wing geek.
Well, Microsoft is now telling users that if they use IE, they should not click on hyperlinks:
The most effective step that you can take to help protect yourself from malicious hyperlinks is not to click them. Rather, type the URL of your intended destination in the address bar yourself.
Welcome to the Stone Ages, folks. In other news, Toyota is now telling everybody that, rather than providing air bags and seat belts, customers should just avoid driving across intersections. Instead, get out of the car and push!
Or you could switch to a different brand.
Labels: microsoft, mozilla, software, web-browsers
Thursday, April 15, 2004
B. Sterling turns 50
Clay Shirky ♥ NYC
Labels: clay-shirky, new-york-city
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
CAFEBABE, DEADBEEF, and other oddments
Strictly for programmers: Why CAFEBABE?
