I found this explanation the most readable I’ve seen yet. She has slides too. The settlement itself has been recently delayed, which seems like a good idea for something of this magnitude. -m
Month: April 2009
Don’t panic. Panic == not thinking clearly. Avoid Twitter until symptoms subside. Probably HuffPost and Drudge too. Think ahead. If you don’t already have an Emergency Preparedness Kit assembled, well, that was kind of dumb. Over your next few trips to the grocery store, gradually get stuff for one. Don’t believe everything you read on…
Thanks to those who wrote in with bug reports about the XForms Validator: something changed recently and made the inserted Google Ads script confuse browsers, resulting in a blank page where you’d expect results. I’ve turned off the response-page ads, which were only getting in the way, and the problem seems to have vanished. Carry…
Lots of news reports about Geocities claim it was purchaed for “4 billion” dollars. But not really–that’s a pretty hefty rounding from 3.57 B. Also, that wasn’t cash, but magic boom time inflated stock. Yahoo was at $335.875 on announcement, so the deal amounted to about 10.6 million shares. Or at today’s values, a little…
I’ve always thought that the EXSLT model of developing community specifications worked well. Now a critical mass of folks has come together on a similar effort, aimed at providing extensions usable in XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, XQuery, and other XPath-based languages like XProc. Maybe even XForms. Check it out, subscribe to the mailing list, and…
Hey readers, all seven of you, can you help me out? I’m perhaps finally switching to a Mac-native text editor, TextWrangler, or if I really like it, BBEdit. Within that app, what’s the easiest way to enter unusual characters not found on a keyboard, say Å¡ (Latin s with háÄek) or ḫ (h-breve below)? In…
The following is from an actual Midwestern newspaper clipping (you know, the things printed on flattened trees) from circa 1992. Monday, July 19, 7 p.m. — Overeaters Anonymous at the Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, use south door (kitchen). On a serious note, researchers at Cornell University found that people who pass through an entryway near…
60 Minutes covers it. Disclaminer: haven’t seen it, the video doesn’t even play in my browser. Let me know if you have better success in viewing. -m
Google for RIAA, get this first result: RIAA – Recording Industry Association of America – April 12, 2009 Trade group that claims to represent the US recording industry. Details on services, members, executives profiles, statistics, and contact information. “Claims to” represent the US recording industry? The word “claims”, accurate as it may be, appears nowhere…
Whoa. Check out this brutal takedown of the beloved The Elements of Style. Even though I generally have little patience for grammar nazis, I couldn’t stop reading things like The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous esteem in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges from limp platitudes to…
I enjoyed this post, from Jeremy Allison as it turns out. It talks about how GPL software is “the new BSD” when it comes to cloud computing, since redistribuion of the software doesn’t happen, and thus doesn’t trigger the relevant clauses of the GPL. Any old company can use, re-use, and modify the software without…
This article states: The analysts determined YouTube’s bandwidth costs by assuming that 375 million unique visitors would visit the site in 2009, with 20 percent of those users consuming 400 kilobits per second of video at any given time. That works out to 30 million megabits being served up per second. That’s a heck of…