[Quote:]

In the town of Wilson, North Carolina, an ISP battle is underway that could have implications across the entire United States. When Greenlight began offering cheaper and faster internet service to the town’s residents, Embarq and Time Warner couldn’t compete. So they responded by sponsoring legislation that “would effectively either cripple or ban the service all together“, and backing this up by phoning local residents to urge their support. The city of Wilson has responded: “[Embarq and Time Warner] don’t want to level the playing field. They want to be the only team on the field.” Time Warner defends the legislation, saying in part that, “Cities can cross-subsidize their service, using income from water or electric service fees to pay for the system. We can’t solict door to door. They can.”

[..]

So corporations are angry that they can’t monopolize a public good because the government is handling it better? Is that what this has come to?

[Source:]

So, in 2010, how many people will still recognize that icon as a “floppy disk” and know what that means?

[Quote:]

“Eighty-one dead in Mexico; U.S. declares emergency,” read one of the headlines Sunday. Yes, 81 dead in Mexico is something to grieve and is cause for public concern. Each one of those dead represents the anguish of a family. Yet, as the aphorism goes, one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. It’s confusing the statistic for the tragedy that exaggerates fear.

We seldom hear daily updates on the numbers of those infected who have recovered, for example. Yet consider the much-cited Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918. It’s common for commentary to cite infection rates and total associated fatalities.

It’s estimated that about 28 per cent of Canadians and Americans contracted the Spanish flu. Worldwide, an estimated 2.5 per cent of the sick died of complications, which made the pandemic one of the most lethal flu outbreaks in recorded history. Certainly it was one that imprinted itself upon human consciousness for several generations.

But there’s another way to look at those statistics. You might observe, for example, that they mean that even during the worst ravages of the 1918 flu, 97.5 per cent of those infected survived and recovered. Or that 72 per cent of the population — even in the absence of the sophisticated public health planning and infrastructure that Canada and the U.S. have since built — was not infected during the pandemic.

So, even if we had a repeat of the 1918 flu, the chances were seven out of 10 that you wouldn’t catch it and if you did, the odds were better than nine out of 10 that you’d survive.

And the Onion, of course, was already on top of it back in 1999

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If there were anyone out there to whom you would not want to send a random takedown notice for an online video, it would probably be Larry Lessig. Given that Lessig has become the public face for those who feel that copyright has been stretched too far, as well as being a founder of Stanford’s Fair Use Project, and who’s written multiple books on these issues, you would think (just maybe) that any copyright holder would at least think twice before sending a DMCA takedown on a Larry Lessig presentation.

Apparently, you’d be wrong.

Lessig has announced that Warner Music issued a DMCA takedown on one of Lessig’s own presentations, in which his use is almost certainly fair use. Lessig, of course, is a lawyer, and a big supporter of fair use, so it’s no surprise that he’s also said he’s going to be fighting this.

[Quote:]

What strikes me, however, is the extent to which this is a self-inflicted wound. If Pat Toomey of the Club for Growth weren’t so diligent about enforcing supply-side purity; if Republicans hadn’t made Rush Limbaugh the effective head of the party; Specter might still be GOP, and the Obama agenda much more limited.

Instead, though, we have a party that seems to be in a death spiral: the smaller it gets, the more it’s dominated by the hard right, which makes it even smaller. In the long run, this is not good for American democracy– we really do need two major parties in competition. But I’ll settle for getting that back after we get universal health care and cap-and-trade.

[Quote:]

Introduction Intelligent design sort is a sorting algorithm based on the theory of intelligent design.

Algorithm Description The probability of the original input list being in the exact order it’s in is 1/(n!). There is such a small likelihood of this that it’s clearly absurd to say that this happened by chance, so it must have been consciously put in that order by an intelligent Sorter. Therefore it’s safe to assume that it’s already optimally Sorted in some way that transcends our naïve mortal understanding of “ascending order”. Any attempt to change that order to conform to our own preconceptions would actually make it less sorted.

Analysis

This algorithm is constant in time, and sorts the list in-place, requiring no additional memory at all. In fact, it doesn’t even require any of that suspicious technological computer stuff. Praise the Sorter!

[Quote:]

You dare say you know more about evolution & DNA that mainstream scientists?

Let’s see what you can find.

Can you tell me based on the sequences (yes, I saved you the trouble and aligned them)

1. Which ones are common designer, which ones are common ancestor?

2. Where is there any “new information” that mutation could not have given?

3. Which one of these is a “meaningless word” by mis-shuffling useful information into useless information?

4. Can you tell which one I “designed” (forged) to test you?

I wanna know, if you’re so good at telling us evolution and common descent is myth, lie, religion or anything less than scientifically based. Scientific tests should tell you right away if you know what you’re talking about.

The comments in that thread are priceless..

[Quote:]

A federal appeals court rebuffed the Obama administration’s assertion of secrecy today and reinstated a lawsuit by five men who say a Bay Area subsidiary of Boeing Co. helped the CIA fly them to foreign countries to be tortured.

A lawyer from President Obama’s Justice Department argued to the court in February that the issues surrounding the “extraordinary rendition,” program, including government-sanctioned interrogation methods and the company’s alleged connection to the CIA, were so sensitive that the very existence of the suit threatened national security.

The Bush administration had taken the same position and persuaded a federal judge in San Jose to dismiss the suit.

In today’s ruling, however, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the government and the company could take steps to protect national secrets as the case proceeded. The suit should be dismissed only if secret information is essential for the plaintiffs to prove their case or for the Bay Area company to defend itself, the court said.

[..]

The court did not address the plaintiffs’ claims that they were kidnapped and tortured, but said judges have an important role to play in reviewing allegations of secret government conduct that violates individual liberties.

“As the founders of this nation knew well, arbitrary imprisonment and torture under any circumstances is a ‘gross and notorious … act of despotism,’ ” Hawkins said, citing language from a 2004 Supreme Court decision.

[Quote:]

Using new and improved statistical models, CDC scientists estimate that an average of 36,000 people (up from 20,000 in previous estimates) die from influenza-related complications each year in the United States. In addition, about 11,000 people die per year from respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a virus that causes upper and lower respiratory tract infections primarily in young children and older adults.

so, how many swine-flu infections are there at the moment?

[Quote:]

It’s now just about May and there’s still been no official word from Palm when it comes to an official launch date or pricing for the Pre. All we know is what we’ve known for a long time — it’ll launch the first half of 2009; a window that is quickly closing. But a few pieces of new evidence today point to an actual specific date. And it’s a very intriguing one — June 7: The day before a likely Apple keynote address at its WWDC conference.

That is of course interesting because Apple could very well use that keynote to unveil the next version of the iPhone, just as it did last year for the iPhone 3G. A public launch of the Pre the day before could suck some of the wind out of Apple’s sails. But it’s also pretty risky, as it means Palm only has one day to convince everyone that its product is better then the latest version of the iPhone which is likely to have some substantial improvements. And no one knows for sure what all those improvements are — it could very well blow the Pre right out of the water, one day into its young life.

[Quote:]

After one hundred days, the wait is over: Pete Souza’s Gargantuan Presidential High-Definition Executive Flickrdump is here. Warning: If you put it on fullscreen you won’t get anything else done for a while.

[Quote:]

We aren’t here to make money, we’re here for a mission: to distribute wonderful video around the world in a system that’s more open and decentralized than ever before. To do that, we need you to help us care for a little tiny piece of Miro.

We have thousands of lines of code that are waiting for you to adopt them. Not only will you get an adorable line of code with a cute name and face, we’ll also put your name in the source code and in the about box on every copy of Miro

[Quote:]

I just adopted this little gem:

}

I hope they won’t port it to Python any day soon, though…

translation: “Have you been in contact with a pig recently?”