• ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ Wins Palme D’Or Award at Cannes – I wonder how close to the election this will end up going wide?
  

  I have this great hope that things are going to change. I want to make sure if I do nothing else for the rest of this year that those who died in Iraq have not died in vain.

• SimpleQuiz > Part XVI: Launching Windows
• Video streaming over HTTP
• Design Eye for the Usability Guy
• Goodbye, Movable Type – comparison chart of various PHP blogging solutions
• Google’s Blogger Boss Focuses on the User – long interesting interview w/ ev
• On the Road – description of using wireless technology to help traffic congestion. My friend Eric and I thought up a way of using distributed RFID to very cheaply (and w/o need of central planning, way less involved than most of the stuff listed) to create a system to track traffic flow. Now that I have some downtime, I should write some of this up (similar but simpler to Mobile Mesh)

Atrocities in Iraq: ‘I killed innocent people for our government’

Q: Did the revelations that the government fabricated the evidence for war affect the troops?

A: Yes. I killed innocent people for our government. For what?
What did I do? Where is the good coming out of it? I feel like I’ve had
a hand in some sort of evil lie at the hands of our government. I just
feel embarrassed, ashamed about it.

Bush ‘disgust’ over new photos

I use CitySearch a fair bit when I’m looking for restaurants (new and old), but it’s always struck me as sort of weird (not not weird exactly as too bad) that you can’t say get a map of restaurants and ratings based on distance from your location. That would be a killer app for a mobile device one would think.

John Adams:

It would be an absurdity for jurors to be required to accept
the judge’s view of the law, against their own opinion, judgment, and conscience.

California Supreme Court, People v. Williams (2001) (noreg: PDF):

We reaffirm, therefore, the basic rule that jurors are required to determine the facts and render a verdict in accordance with the court’s instructions on the law. A juror who is unable or unwilling to do so is ‘unable to perform his [or her] duty’ as a juror and may be discharged.

Obviously some things has changed in the intervening 300 years. (I guess the slide can be marked w/ Sparf v US (SCOTUS 1895) — more later)

• The Joy Luck Fight Club
• Three Proposed Ways to Stem the Email Influx – high level comparison of SPF, DomainKeys, and Caller ID; see also Who Will Win the SMTP Authentication Wars? – an old topic, but worth bringing up since I’ve noticed a lot of talk about Domain Keys. I originally saw DK as being useless, but now think that it’d go well w/ SPF. The latter would do a huge chunk of the (very fast) first pass filteirng, and Domain Keys would then be able to authoritatively confirm (protecting against phishing). Whose knows? Maybe the decreased volume will make up for the huge processing cost (unlikely, as until the economics changes, spammers will have every motivation to work around stopgaps)
• EditThisPagePHP – EditThisPagePHP is a PHP script that let’s you edit the HTML content of a page by following a link on that page. Only two files are required: the core PHP script (editthispage.php) and a data file for your page. The core file can support as many pages as desired.
• phpGACL – Generic Access Control Lists; A PHP class offering Web developers a simple, yet immensely powerful “drop in” permission system to their current Web based applications.
• yes, my GMail is at now at 1000000MB, and my 23MB current usage drops me back to 0%.
• Jon Stewart’s (’84) Commencement Address
  

  I am honored to be here and to receive this honorary doctorate. When I think back to the people that have been in this position before me from Benjamin Franklin to Queen Noor of Jordan, I can.t help but wonder what has happened to this place. Seriously, it saddens me. As a person, I am honored to get it; as an alumnus, I have to say I believe we can do better. And I believe we should. But it has always been a dream of mine to receive a doctorate and to know that today, without putting in any effort, I will. It.s incredibly gratifying. Thank you. That.s very nice of you, I appreciate it.

• Daily Reason to Dispatch Bush – McSweeney’s counts from Day 1 – 37

Sick, just totally sick (new revelations from Seymour Hersh on the Pentagon’s role at Abu Ghraib)

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

I’m currently installing a fresh copy of Windows XP on my work workstation (the old W2K install was dying despite not having been used for several months). Even w/ a “dynamic” install, I’m currently downloading 18 “Critical Updates and Service Packs.” Hopefully my machine won’t be compromised while this gets set up.

• Black Viper’s Windows XP Home and Professional Configuration 411 Pages
• Kerio Personal Firewall
• Spybot Search and Destroy

A bunch of really useful OS X file sharing utilities from HornWare:

• SharePoints – application + preference pane for setting arbitrary share points in AFS and SMB
• SharePoints Automounter – auto mount points w/o digging through NetInfo
• AFS Monitor – monitor AFS usage (who’s connected, etc)

Techdirt: How Not to Price (I’ve seen this quote before in a “things I’ve learned” type interview — very good advice)

However, it seems that they’ve screwed up one of the most basic rules in pricing: never take away features and charge for them. You can charge for new features – but taking away features that were included for free before always pisses off your most loyal customers. They feel suckered. They feel like you’ve pulled a bait and switch on them.