links.lmorchard.com

September 2008

158 bookmarks saved in September 2008

The scariest thing about Sarah Palin isn't how unqualified she is - it's what her candidacy says about America | The Smirking Chimp

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/17504
"The great insight of the Palin VP choice is that huge chunks of American voters no longer even demand that their candidates actually have policy positions; they simply consume them as media entertainment, rooting for or against them according to the reflexive prejudices of their demographic, as they would for reality-show contestants or sitcom characters. Hicks root for hicks, moms for moms, born-agains for born-agains."
#america #election #funny #palin #politics #sad
archive.org #11465

Wal*Mart shutting down DRM server, nuking your music collection -- only people who pay for music risk losing it to DRM shenanigans - Boing Boing

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/26/walmart-shutting-dow.html
"Hey suckers! Did you buy DRM music from Wal*Mart instead of downloading MP3s for free from the P2P networks? Well, they're repaying your honesty by taking away your music. Unless you go through a bunch of hoops (that you may never find out about, if you've changed email addresses or if you're not a very technical person), your music will no longer be playable after October 9th. "
#copyfight #drm #mp3 #music #walmart
archive.org #11464

tech ramblings » Blog Archive » A Year at Mozilla

http://www.laurathomson.com/2008/09/a-year-at-mozilla
Thinking I'd have sentiments similar to this after a year working for the lizard. "The Mozilla firehose takes a while to absorb, but finally it dawns on you that this place is really really different from other companies, and in a very good way. John Lilly was calling it “chaord” which is an excellent description - pushing control and responsibility out to the edges. In some ways it reminds me of academia, with regard to both the autonomy we have and the rigor in the way we do things, in other ways the organic anarchy of many other Open Source projects."
#@lxt #mozilla #work
archive.org #11459

Roadside Picnic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Picnic
"The name of the novel derives from a metaphor proposed by the character Dr. Valentine Pilman, who compares the visit to a roadside picnic. After the picnickers depart, nervous animals venture forth from the adjacent forest and discover the picnic garbage: spilled motor oil, faded unknown flowers, a box of matches, a clockwork teddy bear, balloons, candy wrappers, etc. He concludes that humankind finds itself in a situation similar to that of the curious forest animals."
#aliens #books #picnics #russian #scifi
archive.org #11457

Code: Flickr Developer Blog » Flickr Engineers Do It Offline

http://code.flickr.com/blog/2008/09/26/flickr-engineers-do-it-offline
"It seems that using queuing systems in web apps is the new hottness . While the basic idea itself certainly isn’t new, its application to modern, large, scalable sites seems to be. At the very least, it’s something that deserves talking about — so here’s how Flickr does it, to the tune of 11 million tasks a day."
#flickr #queues #scalability #scaling #webdev
archive.org #11456

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/horseshit.html
I still like the idea of him saying horseshit. "I've removed the original post of a little time ago because after listening to the clip about two dozen times, what sounded like McCain saying "horseshit" actually comes through as having a hard "c" at the front of it. My husband insists that McCain said "Course not." I think now my hubby's right, although it's very muffled. You can hear the moment at around the 4:30 mark in this video. I'm sorry for mis-hearing this. I've heard McCain say worse in my presence (and thought none the less of him for it) so it wasn't exactly bizarre."
#debates #election #horseshit #mccain #politics
archive.org #11454

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Fact Check: Does McCain almost always agree with Bush? « - Blogs from CNN.com

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/26/fact-check-does-mccain-almost-always-agree-with-bush
"In the 100-member Senate, 14 current members — all Republicans — voted with Bush more than 90 percent of the time, according to the report. Six others have a 90 percent rating like McCain's. The report shows Obama voting with Bush 40 percent of the time and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, voting with Bush 52 percent of the time during the course of his presidency."
#bush #debate #election #mccain #politics
archive.org #11453

Mythic's Awful Mac Gaming Mistake - Opinions by ExtremeTech

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2331142,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532
Oh for crying out loud, put on your big girl panties on and use Boot Camp to play your Windows games. It's like a 20 second reboot these days, plus another 2-3 minutes before I'm connecting to a server in Team Fortress 2 (for example). "There's just one problem with Warhammer Online though...there's no Mac version! Yep, that's right. Somewhere along the way in its development Mythic Entertainment—the company who makes WAR—decided that they simply couldn't be bothered doing a Mac version. Unlike Blizzard or Maxis who both released Mac versions of World of Warcraft and Spore—Mythic stupidly did not. "
#gaming #mythic #online #war #warhammer #wow
archive.org #11452

Sam Harris on Sarah Palin and Elitism | Newsweek Politics: Campaign 2008 | Newsweek.com

http://www.newsweek.com/id/160080
"Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated."
#atheism #elitism #mccain #palin #politics #religion
archive.org #11451

Yammering with Tinderbox — Jack Baty

http://jackbaty.com/2008/09/yammering-with-tinderbox
"We’ve been trying Yammer at the office for short notes and intra-office updates. Yammer asks “What are you working on?” Fair question, but I already log my daily activity in a Daybook using Tinderbox so I thought it would save time if I could post those entries as updates directly to Yammer. "
#nifty #tinderbox #yammer
archive.org #11450

All Night Diner : Committing to SVN securely from a web application

http://micropipes.com/blog/2008/09/19/committing-to-svn-securely-from-a-web-application
"On the SVN server the first thing we did was to create a special Verbatim user that can commit to SVN via SSH using a generated key. We copied this key to the Verbatim host which allowed us to commit as the verbatim user without typing a username or password.The only thing that was added to the Verbatim code was a patch that Dan Schafer cooked up that sets an SVN revision property, translate:author, to the name of the current user. When the user clicks “commit” this property is set and sent along with the commit.Next we added a post-commit script that looks for the translate:author property. If it’s found it will take that value, replace svn:author, and remove translate:author; effectively making whatever was in translate:author the real author. This is a non-versioned change which means there is no commit that needs to happen - the new author is set immediately."
#development #howto #i18n #svn #webdev
archive.org #11449

Rush Blog - Rush is a Band Blog: Rush makes-a-wish come true for one special fan

http://www.rushisaband.com/display.php?id=1596
"Samantha is a 16-year-old Rush fan from Summerville, Georgia who was diagnosed with cancer back in August of 2007. 3 months into her treatment she was approached by the Make-A-Wish Foundation and asked how they could help to make her wish come true. The Make-A-Wish Foundation is a nonprofit organization that grants wishes to children with life-threatening medical conditions. They've granted wishes to 1000s of children since their inception in 1980 and are run entirely on donations. Samantha's wish was to meet her favorite band - Rush. This marked the first time Rush had ever been approached for a Make-A-Wish request. Here is Samantha's amazing story in her own words. "
#bands #makeawish #music #nifty #rush
archive.org #11447

Paver: Build, Distribute and Deploy Python Projects — Paver v0.8 documentation

http://www.blueskyonmars.com/projects/paver
"Paver is a Python-based build/distribution/deployment scripting tool along the lines of Make or Rake. What makes Paver unique is its integration with commonly used Python libraries. Common tasks that were easy before remain easy. More importantly, dealing with your applications specific needs and requirements is now much easier."
#development #packaging #paver #programming #python #software #tools
archive.org #11446

Really Simple Goal Setting | Zen Habits

http://zenhabits.net/2008/09/really-simple-goal-setting
"You can still do the other goals, but put them off for a month or two. Focus on one goal for at least a month … and turn it into a habit. So if you want to run a marathon, create the habit of running each day. If you want to write a novel, create the habit of writing each morning. If you want to create a successful blog, create the habit of writing insanely useful posts each day. Once your first goal becomes a habit and is on autopilot, turn to the next goal — you don’t have to worry as much about the first goal because it has become automatic."
#creativity #goals #gtd #habits #inspiration #lifehacks #productivity
archive.org #11444

Amazon.com: Concise Guide to Dojo: Leslie M. Orchard: Books

http://www.amazon.com/Concise-Guide-Dojo-Leslie-Orchard/dp/0470452021/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1222352476&s=books&sr=8-1
"Packed with useful information and lots' of insightful examples The Concise Guide to Dojo, taken from the forthcoming Professional JavaScript Frameworks book, provides experienced web developers a quick path to understanding and utilizing Dojo: a JavaScript based meta-framework for creating highly dynamic, visually appealing web sites. Logically organized, this guide quickly introduces the reader to Dojo and then quickly moves on to cover topics ranging from Manipulating DOM object, Event Handling, Utilizing AJAX, and working with additional Dojo add-on such as Dijit and DojoX."
#books #buymybooks #dojo #frameworks #js #link:rel=me #webdev #wrox
archive.org #11443

Obama: "This is exactly the time" for a debate - War Room - Salon.com

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/09/24/obama_conference/index.html?source=rss
"With respect to the debates, it's my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who, in approximately 40 days, will be responsible for dealing with this mess. And I think that it is going to be part of the president's job to deal with more than one thing at once"
#debates #economy #election #obama #president
archive.org #11436

Redo The Web » Designing a CMS Architecture

http://redotheweb.com/2008/09/19/designing-a-cms-architecture
"Start changing one single line of code in an application build on top of Drupal or ezPublish, to name only the two major ones, and you are in trouble. The moment you need something that is not natively supported, you enter the Dark Zone of CMS hell. You are going to spend a lot of money on development. You will never see the end of the tunnel. That is, until someone says, a few years from now, “Do we need all that crap? Let’s build something that fits our needs and that actually works”.Given number of available open-source CMS solutions, building one on your own sounds like a stupid idea. But if your website is 50% content management and 50% something else, you probably need to start with a web application framework like symfony or Django, rather than a CMS. These frameworks provide plugins that do part of the Content Management job already, so creating a CMS today is like assembling Lego bricks to build something that exactly fits your needs."
#architecture #cms #contentmanagement #django #drupal #ezpublish #metablogging #php #symfony #webdev
archive.org #11433

csrf_protect.php

http://simonwillison.net/static/2008/csrf_protect.php.txt
"This class adds CSRF protection to existing PHP applications that make use of PHP's session support for authentication. If you are writing an application from scratch you shouldn't use this; it's designed to protect legacy apps that were not built with CSRF in mind."
#csrf #php #security #webdev
archive.org #11432

Kickstarter - Waxy.org

http://waxy.org/2008/09/kickstarter
"Kickstarter aims to let creative people of all kinds — journalists, artists, musicians, game developers, entrepreneurs, bloggers — raise money for their projects by connecting directly with fans, who receive exclusive access and rewards in exchange for their patronage. More than just a fundraising app, Kickstarter's a publishing platform where project creators can communicate with the people that are supporting them. "
#creative #fundraising #kickstart #startups #via:waxy
archive.org #11430

Foo Hack » YUI’s “Module Pattern” vs. Prototype’s Class Function

http://foohack.com/2007/08/yui-crockford-module-pattern-vs-prototypes-class-function
Interesting perspective, with which I agree somewhat. Though, there's certainly something to be said for building a domain-specific language of convenience for DOM manipulation. "The more time someone spends building applications with a library like Prototype, the further they get from Javascript, and the more dependent they become on the library. By contrast, time spent using YUI tends to breed developers who are experts in Javascript, and that skill is far more useful than being an expert in a particular library."
#dojo #frameworks #javascript #jquery #js #prototype #webdev #yui
archive.org #11425

Bejeweled add-on coming to World of Warcraft - Joystiq

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/09/20/bejeweled-add-on-coming-to-world-of-warcraft
Seems somewhat sad when the game needs a game within the game to keep things fun, but kudos to PopCap for not firing the lawyer guns. "Fromwiller developed the add-on as a method of killing time during long raids and farming sessions, but it wasn't too long before PopCap caught wind of the MMO mini-game. Instead of issuing a timely cease and desist, the casual gaming colossus hired Fromwiller to create a more polished version of the application."
#addons #bejeweled #gaming #popcap #wow
archive.org #11424

What Mozilla Means to Me at Toolness

http://www.toolness.com/wp?p=207
Among other things, here's why I'm not too stressed about Google Chrome. Also, why Mozilla is unlike any other company I've ever worked for. "Over 180 million users worldwide, Over 5000 community-contributed extensions Over 50 localizations. Over 200 knowledge base articles on support.mozilla.com, Over 1,600 total contributors to the code base. Over 20,000 volunteers who download the latest nightly build of FirefoxOver 2,000,000 beta testers, "
#community #firefox #mozilla
archive.org #11420

[0808.3569] Offloading Cognition onto Cognitive Technology

http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.3569
""Cognizing" (e.g., thinking, understanding, and knowing) is a mental state. Systems without mental states, such as cognitive technology, can sometimes contribute to human cognition, but that does not make them cognizers. Cognizers can offload some of their cognitive functions onto cognitive technology, thereby extending their performance capacity beyond the limits of their own brain power."
#cognizers #cogsci #papers #psychology #research #via:boingboing
archive.org #11418

Video: What LASIK Really Feels Like

http://gizmodo.com/5051492/video-what-lasik-really-feels-like
Still somewhat freaked out by the whole concept of Lasik surgery, yet intrigued by the opportunity for enhancement. "Once my corneas were cut open and I experienced that initial pain, I was definitely frightened, and escaped to a corner of my mind where I would not think too much about all the things they were doing to my eyes and what my life would be like if I happened to be the "less than 1%" of patients with vision-reducing complications.None of this bothers me much, save the fact that newer, better, safer technology will come around sooner or later, and my eyes may end up as out-of-date as back-to-school iPods. And I do not know if my eyes will be forward-compatible, having already been sliced. Still, for now I remain top-of-the-line, and I would gladly endure 10 times the (mostly imaginary) pain of LASIK to gain the quality of eyesight found in elite Major League Baseball pitchers."
#health #lasik #medicine #sight #vision
archive.org #11417

Easier Theme Development with Sample WordPress Content — WPCandy — WordPress Themes, Plugins, Tips, and Tricks

http://wpcandy.com/articles/easier-theme-development-with-the-sample-post-collection.html
"Developing a theme for public release isn’t an easy task. When you’re the only one using your theme you don’t have to worry about expanding it, but put it into the hands of other users and it better be ready for any content they throw at it. Blockquotes, lists, and floating images - there are plenty of elements that are common to blogs that need to be supported in every theme you release. Cue our new sample WordPress content. "
#ipsum #lorem #metablogging #webdev #wordpress
archive.org #11415

TheBBPS.com (Bits, Bytes, Pixels & Sprites) » Review: Multiwinia (PC/Mac/Linux)

http://www.thebbps.com/blog/2008/09/18/review-multiwinia-pcmaclinux
"If you’re like me and have always had trouble getting in to RTS games but you like the genre anyway (is that specific enough?) then I think Multiwinia is a great place to start. The game mechanics are very easy to understand, there’s not a lot of rules and commands to memorize and there’s not an overbearing amount of micromanagement. RTS vets might scoff at some of what Multiwinia is “missing” but if they were to give the game a shot they’d find that it’s as complex and deep as any game out there. Whether you’re on a PC, Mac or Linux machine Multiwinia is worth your time even in this crowded fall season."
#darwinia #gaming #nifty #rts #want
archive.org #11413

Danny O’Brien’s Oblomovka » Blog Archive » reload fever

http://www.oblomovka.com/wp/2008/09/17/reload-fever
"I felt kind of dirty when I came up with that, because I felt like I was feeding the monster that was eating everyone's brain. But it also felt inevitable that sites would head this way. I'm surprised that digg.com doesn't do it now to be honest. Feed the reload beast, and the world's foolish advertisers and journalists will come baying at your door for your precious hitrates."
#funny #infooverload #infovores #reload
archive.org #11410

Nihilogic: Sandbag text wrapping with Canvas

http://blog.nihilogic.dk/2008/09/sandbag-text-wrapping-with-canvas.html
"With CSS you can make text wrap around an image using the float property and for most purposes this is quite adequate. However, it doesn't take into account the actual image and treats it as one big block, even if you'd prefer the text to wrap around the actual content in the picture, magazine style.Since we now have pixel access (in cool browsers, anyway) via the Canvas element, this technique can now be implemented dynamically with a bit of JavaScript."
#canvas #css #js #layout #nifty #webdev
archive.org #11408

Atari 2700 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2700
"The Atari 2700 (also referred to as the Atari Remote Control VCS) was an unreleased console by Atari. Intended for release in 1981, its main standout features were wireless controllers that featured a combination of a joystick and paddle. The fire button was touch-sensitive, as were the buttons on the console. The Reset and Select buttons were relocated to the controllers themselves. The 2700 also featured a storage bin at the top of the console to store the controllers. Focus groups used to test the system noted that the controllers were comfortable, sleek, responsive, and very easy to use."
#atari #atari2700 #gaming #oldschool #retro
archive.org #11406

The Stupid Gamer » Extremely rare Atari 2700 prototype sells on eBay

http://stupidgamer.com/2008/09/11/extremely-rare-atari-2700-prototype-sells-on-ebay
"It’s pretty awesome seeing ultra rare and collectable stuff show up for sale, and this one is a true gem. Earlier today, an Atari 2700 prototype sold on eBay for over $5,000. It sounds crazy that someone would bid that much, but the winning bidder is definitely going to be in possession of something they don’t have to worry about finding over at their buddy’s house any time soon. The seller apparently was a game developer from Atari and was given the 2700 as a gift from Leonard Tramiel himself. "
#atari #atari2700 #ebay #gaming #oldschool #retro
archive.org #11405

Daily Kos: McCain Advisor Thinks You're a Bunch of Exaggerators

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/15/93252/0601
"I remember a time when the nation was at peace, its economy driven by technical innovation and stable markets allowing the accumulation of investment capital. Interest rates and unemployment were near historical lows, wages and productivity rose almost as steeply the stock market. Talk of investment banks going broke or market meltdowns was rare to non existent. And no one had to write columns begging people not to compare the economy to the Great Depression. It sounds like a conservative wet dream, but it was actually called the Clinton Years."
#economy #election #mccain #politics
archive.org #11401

Get Continuum-wine

http://wine.getcontinuum.com
"The objective of this website is to provide SubSpace/ Continuum players with recommended options for getting Continuum to run smoothly on Linux without having to download, patch, and compile wine source, in as small of a package as possible, with as little setup as possible."
#continuum #gaming #linux #shmups #subspace #wine
archive.org #11397

James Fallows (September 12, 2008) - The Palin interview (Politics)

http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/09/the_palin_interview.php
"What Sarah Palin revealed is that she has not been interested enough in world affairs to become minimally conversant with the issues. Many people in our great land might have difficulty defining the "Bush Doctrine" exactly. But not to recognize the name, as obviously was the case for Palin, indicates not a failure of last-minute cramming but a lack of attention to any foreign-policy discussion whatsoever in the last seven years."
#bushdoctrine #election #palin #politics
archive.org #11390

Stevey's Blog Rants: Programming's Dirtiest Little Secret

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/09/programmings-dirtiest-little-secret.html
"Next dead-giveaway: non-typist code is... minimalist. They don't go the extra mile to comment things. If their typing skills are really bad, they may opt to comment the code in a second, optional pass. And the ones who essentially type with their elbows? They even sacrifice formatting, which is truly the most horrible sin a programmer can commit. Well, actually, no, scratch that. It's the second worst. The worst is misspelling an identifier, and then not fixing it because it's too much typing. But shotgun formatting is Right Up There."
#literacy #programming #typing
archive.org #11389

Jonathan Freedland: The world's verdict will be harsh if the US rejects the man it yearns for | Comment is free | The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/10/uselections2008.barackobama
"Of course I know that even to mention Obama's support around the world is to hurt him. Incredibly, that large Berlin crowd damaged Obama at home, branding him the "candidate of Europe" and making him seem less of a patriotic American. But what does that say about today's America, that the world's esteem is now unwanted? If Americans reject Obama, they will be sending the clearest possible message to the rest of us - and, make no mistake, we shall hear it. "
#elections #mccain #obama #palin #politics #president #world
archive.org #11387

Obama to Palin: 'Don't Mock the Constitution' | The Trail | washingtonpost.com

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/09/08/obama_to_palin_dont_mock_the_c.html
"The reason that you have this principle is not to be soft on terrorism. It's because that's who we are. That's what we're protecting," Obama said, his voice growing louder and the crowd rising to its feet to cheer. "Don't mock the Constitution. Don't make fun of it. Don't suggest that it's not American to abide by what the founding fathers set up. It's worked pretty well for over 200 years."
#election #obama #palin #politics
archive.org #11376

Pistachio - HOME

http://pistachioconsulting.com
"Pistachio Consulting delivers microsharing and social media strategies to improve both your company’s operations and customer engagement. We provide the insight and know-how into the latest tools and technologies that are applicable to your business and your message, along with soup-to-nuts program development and advisement. Drop us a line and let us help you ratchet up your business."
#consulting #metablogging #microblogging #twitter #ublogging
archive.org #11372

Adam McKay: We're Gonna Frickin' Lose this Thing

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-mckay/were-gonna-frickin-lose-t_b_124772.html
"This is it folks. If McCain takes power we fade and become Australia in the seventies: a backwoods country with occasional flashes of relevance. Except we've got a way bigger military and we're angrier. People will get hurt and we'll pay the bill for the bullets. I'm telling you, unless we wake up, we're gonna lose this frickin' thing."
#america #election #mccain #media #politics #press
archive.org #11369

Palin Makes Her First Gaffe

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/08/palin-makes-her-first-gaf_n_124792.html
"You would like to think that someone who is going to be vice president and conceivable president would know what Fannie and Freddie do," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "These are huge institutions and they are absolutely central to our country's mortgage debt. To not have a clue what they do doesn't speak well for her, I'd say."
#economy #election #fannymae #freddiemac #palin #politics
archive.org #11368

Legend of the Red Dragon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Green_Dragon
"Legend of the Red Dragon (LORD) is a text-based role-playing game written in Pascal and run on Bulletin board systems as a third party door game. It was created by Seth Robinson of Robinson Technologies and is currently maintained by Michael Preslar. The player's goal is to improve his or her skills in order to defeat the Red Dragon which has been attacking the village"
#bbs #gaming #oldschool
archive.org #11360

Shred Nebula Review (Xbox 360)

http://reviews.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/1561/Shred-Nebula/p1
"At first glance, Shred Nebula looks like a quick cash-in on the current Geometry Wars craze. However, its unique control scheme—more akin to classic Asteroids—proves it has little in common with the popular dual-stick-controlled series. In fact, despite resembling an arcade shooter you would’ve controlled with a joystick and single button back in the day, its mechanics are fairly complex. Direction is steered with the left stick, but forward and reverse thrusters are powered with the left trigger and bumper, respectively. Toss in a variety of weapons, shields, and other spacecraft-enhancing abilities mapped to the rest of the gamepad’s bevy of buttons and triggers, and you’ve got a cockpit full of controls that’d make Buck Roger’s head spin. "
#gaming #shmups #shrednebula #xbla #xbox360
archive.org #11358

rephrase § E4X

http://rephrase.net/days/07/06/e4x
"E4X, short for “ECMASCript for XML”, is an extension to ECMAScript (i.e. JavaScript, JScript, ActionScript…) with new syntax and built-in objects for more convenient handling of XML fragments. It seems to be used most frequently with ActionScript 3 (Flash), but is also available in recent Mozilla/Firefox releases."
#e4x #firefox #javascript #js #xml
archive.org #11355

On Commands, Designers and The Magic Editor « chimney

http://abcdefu.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/on-commands-designers-and-the-magic-editor
"Ubiquity is a graphical keyboard user interface. But a lot of people are missing the graphical aspect of it. And that is precisely what makes Ubiquity different from a command line. Command icons help but previews have to be more visual, not just the plain text that you would normally expect from the terminal. I can’t emphasize enough the fact that previews must be graphical because after all, Ubiquity is a GUI."
#commands #design #firefox #mozilla #ubiquity #ui
archive.org #11350

Core77.com :: View topic - corrugate iPhone document scanner - free template!

http://boards.core77.com/viewtopic.php?t=16370
"When I got my iPhone last year I loved having everything important in one place, and the ability to get rid of unneccesary devices, documents and information i kept with me. I would frequently snap photos of class assignments printed on copy paper so I wouldn’t have to worry about losing them. The documents normally came out pretty clear, but it was tough to keep still while taking the pictures. I set out to make something that would ensure clean, consistent pictures of documents taken with the iPhone that would be free and easy to make on your own. And so, here you will find pictures of and a link to a template to make your own iPhone document scanner. "
#documents #hacks #iphone #nifty #papercraft
archive.org #11349

B3TA : INTERVIEWS : WES CHERRY

http://b3ta.com/interview/solitaire
"Wes Cherry. Never heard of him? Well, he's only the creator of possibly the most played computer game ever written. Nope, it's not Space Invaders, but humble Solitaire for Windows, installed on hundreds of millions of machines World wide. Sadly, a compensation or royalty package was never discussed, so he's never benefited financially."
#gaming #solitaire #windows
archive.org #11348

Google Chrome-Induced Déjà Vu - GigaOM

http://gigaom.com/2008/09/03/chrome-induced-deja-vu
"Reading the Google Chrome comic strip made clear the parallel to the emergence of QEMM and DESQview: All today’s browsers are effectively single tasking, in that only one tab can be actively processing, say, a JavaScript application at any given time (”inherently single threaded”), yet the tabs are interactive to the point where the misbehavior of an “application” in one tab can impact — and sometimes crash — the operation of the entire browser. Web 2.0 has brought about an array of browser-based applications and activities that require a more robust, stable, multiprocessing browser with each process assigned to its own memory space and associated data structures — which is basically how DESQview operated. Indeed, when I pointed this out during yesterday’s SquawkBox, someone labeled Google Chrome as “DESQview for the cloud.” Talk about “Back to the Future“!"
#chrome #desqview #google #qemm #web20 #webdev #webos
archive.org #11345

FriendFeed Blog: Last.fm Loved Songs

http://blog.friendfeed.com/2007/10/lastfm-loved-songs.html
I guess this explains why I don't see Last.fm events on FriendFeed. Funny how it happened almost a year ago: "A number of FriendFeeders complained that Last.fm was showing up too often in their feeds because we tracked every song you listened to. We updated our service so that we will only publish the songs you explicitly marked as "loved" in Last.fm. We hope this will make the Last.fm entries more useful and a bit less frequent."
#friendfeed #lastfm #lifestreaming #web20
archive.org #11343

Attacks, praise stretch truth at GOP convention - Yahoo! News

http://news.yahoo.com/story/ap/20080904/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_fact_check
You know what? I really wish the media would just say "these are lies" rather than dance around euphemisms like "stretched truth" or whatnot. "Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her Republican supporters held back little Wednesday as they issued dismissive attacks on Barack Obama and flattering praise on her credentials to be vice president. In some cases, the reproach and the praise stretched the truth."
#palin #politics #republicans #rnc
archive.org #11333

Mayor: 'I lied under oath' | Freep.com | Detroit Free Press

http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080904/NEWS01/309050001
"His plea deal: 120 days in jail, $1M restitution ... Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who will lose his job because he lied while under oath at a police whistle-blower trial, has just pledged to tell the truth as he prepares to admit his guilt as part of a plea deal he just struck with the Wayne County Prosecutor."
#crime #detroit #kilpatrick #mayor #michigan
archive.org #11332

Raptr Blog » Raptr Public Beta Launch!

http://blog.raptr.com/2008/09/03/raptr-public-beta-launch
"No more secret handshakes, no more private invites; we’re proud to open the doors to Raptr and share the service in an open public beta! ... Raptr was born out of a stellar team of people who are passionate about playing and discovering games. ... In every case, each game or system seemed to require a separate login before we could even begin to see whether our friends were playing. There was no single place to go to see what your friends were playing - until now. ... Know when your friends are playing ... See how your friends are doing in their games ... Discover new games you might like ... One thing we think is pretty cool about Raptr is that we intelligently recommend games to you that you didn’t even know existed or that you didn’t even know were out yet."
#gaming #launches #raptr #social #web20
archive.org #11329

madhava.com/egotism/: Mirror-like finish

http://madhava.com/egotism/archive/005025.html
"Of course, the huge design choice that isn't explained, the giant in the room, if you will, shows up in this illustration from the comic: ... I can't help but think that people will encounter some difficulties in using a browser that's taller than a man. The Fitts' Law hit alone seems worth a bit of rethinking on Google's part, at least without a lot of stretching."
#chrome #design #funny #google
archive.org #11328

Publishers should all have a /covers directory - Boing Boing

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/01/publishers-should-al.html
"Here's a lazyweb idea for publishers: I often blog books here and when I do, I like to put up a picture of the cover. ... So here's the idea: publishers should create default directories called "covers" at their server-root (e.g., tor.com/covers, harpercollins.co.uk/covers, etc) filled with high-rez PNGs or JPGs (or both) named after the book's ISBN -- for Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book, it would be http://harpercollins.co.uk/0060530928.png. Tweak your robots.txt file to make sure the search-engines all crawl these directories, so when you search on images.google.com or images.yahoo.com for an ISBN, the publisher's high-rez would be right there at the top."
#books #covers #images #publishers
archive.org #11325

Why Google Chrome Will Dominate | HaveMacWillBlog (aka Robin Bloor’s Blog)

http://havemacwillblog.com/2008/09/03/why-google-chrome-will-dominate
"Chrome is the end of the browser and the beginning of the Cloud Client. These are quite different things. A Cloud Client is a flexible and configurable Interface in which an application can run. Whether the rest of the application is local or lives in the cloud is an option - and switchable. The user may not even know nor care. It doesn’t sound much like a browser does it?"
#browsers #chrome #cloud #google #web #webdev
archive.org #11322

Movie Voice Guy Don LaFontaine Has Died « FirstShowing.net

http://www.firstshowing.net/2008/09/01/movie-voice-guy-don-lafontaine-has-died
"The legendary movie voice guy known as Don LaFontaine passed away on Monday at the age of 68. Entertainment Tonight is reporting that LaFontaine passed away of complications from Pneumothorax, a condition that is the result of a collapsed lung. Why am I writing this tribute to Don? Because even though you might not know it, Don is the voice that you recognize from nearly every last movie trailer and every last movie voiceover. He's got that deep, thrilling voice that you'll instantly recognize the moment you hear it. He may never have been seen in any actual movies, but to me, he has been and always will be the voice of movies and movie trailers. Don and his voice will most certainly never be forgotten."
#don #lafontaine #movies #sad
archive.org #11319

We'll never run out

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=760789&p=1
"Are we running out of oil? The question seems silly. "Yes" is the obvious answer. Or is it? That there is less oil in the ground today than there was yesterday is true. That there was less oil in the ground yesterday than there was in 1870 is also true. But "running out of oil" is not as much a question of physics as it is one of economics. And economics assures us that we will never run out of oil." So I guess this guy is saying oil will get horrendously expensive before it physically runs out. Isn't that, umm, pretty f'ing horrible too?
#economics #energy #peak #poil #uhh #what
archive.org #11318

DOOM for Intellivision

http://spatula-city.org/~im14u2c/intv/doom
"I finally got around to porting the freely available DOOM source code to the Intellivision. I will be posting the source code for the Intellivision version soon. The ROM image, weighing in at 32K words, is probably the largest cartridge ROM image out there. So for now, enjoy these screen shots and the game binary below! "
#doom #gaming #hacks #intellivision #nifty
archive.org #11317