F9/11 (on its way to breaking $100 DBO) has been getting most of the press, but there are other documentaries a-hopping:

• Control Room – decent distribution around town
• The Corporation – a documentary on the growth and repercussions of corporate power (playing in LA for a week at the Nuart
• OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism – on DVD
• Orwell Rolls In His Grave – premiering at Laemmle’s Fairfax 3 July 30

• LINUX:
  Rute User’s Tutorial and Exposition – a very comprehensive tutorial to LINUX (compare to other guides, see also my tip sheet)

Probably not a lot on the blog while I try to wrap up/do some coding before going to HOPE 5.

If you have a chance, check out In My Place (via), a journal of a person who discovers he’s HIV positive.

• A Living Document – NPR’s Annual Reading of the Declaration of Independence. Worth hearing out loud.
• vvvv is a toolkit for real-time video synthesis and controlling physical devices. It’s a novel approach to creating media applications.

  vvvv was designed to facilitate large media environments with multiple computers, physical interfaces, audio, and real-time graphics that can simultaneously interact with many users. But that does not mean that you can’t develop more modest applications with it.

• Rhizome – new k nowledge management experiment exploring interesting issues

Justice rejects data request – now this is reaching new levels of ridiculousness:

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Bush administration is offering a novel reason for denying a request seeking the Department of Justice’s database on foreign lobbyists: Copying the information would bring down the computer system.

“Implementing such a request risks a crash that cannot be fixed and could result in a major loss of data, which would be devastating,” wrote Thomas McIntyre, chief in the justice department.s office for information requests.

Advocates for open government said the government’s assertion that it could not copy data was unprecedented but representative of generally negative responses to Freedom of Information Act requests.

“This was a new one on us. We weren’t aware there were databases that could be destroyed just by copying them,” Bob Williams of the Center for Public Integrity, or CPI, said yesterday. The watchdog group in Washington made the request in January. He said the group expects to appeal the justice department.s decision.

So, if this data can’t be copied out without risking destruction, how do they access their own information? And shouldn’t these people (Ashcroft down) in the Justice Department be dismissed or arrested already? I don’t get how we can claim to be a nation of law when it seems like those in power are able to repeatedly break them with impunity.

(Well, this accurately reflects what our country is, I suppose.)

Meghan Newell’s Flash Portfolio – a couple notes on Flash design/usability:

• Because of resizing, navigation (tiny numbers) moves by itself making linear nav, which should be incredibly simple, very difficult
• Fitt’s Law
• Launch area on all the rest of the area including right above the numbers
• Confusion of status, navigation, text

Most of this can happen in HTML… Flash just makes it easier/more egrarious. Also the general Flash problems (no bookmarking/URIs, visited link history, status bar, browser navigation).

• New Walkman announced – the supposed “iPod killer” still converts everything into ATRAC3. $400 for this (20GB) POS? Give up Sony Consumer Products. Sony Music has you completely whipped.
• Motorola A630 announced – interesting form factor (mini Nokia Communicator style)
• Waxied! – yes, yes, permalinks coming soon