Yostivanich

“A slap­stick Web video describ­ing “Infor­ma­tion Over­load Syn­drome,” or IOS, is aimed at get­ting view­ers to think of Xerox as a com­pany that can help them man­age and direct infor­ma­tion rather than sim­ply print or copy paper­work.” Pretty good ad.

“The new iPhone 3G S sounds great. It’s not a huge update to the iPhone, but it packs a few very impor­tant things: More speed, more stor­age, more bat­tery and a bet­ter cam­era that can do video. It’s a no-brainer to upgrade to it, just as many did from the orig­i­nal iPhone to the iPhone 3G last year, right? Wrong.” Seems a very bone-headed move from AT&T on top of non-immediate sup­port for MMS and tethering.

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The head of the US Cen­tral Com­mand, Gen­eral David Petraeus, said Fri­day that the US had vio­lated the Geneva Con­ven­tions in a stun­ning admis­sion from Pres­i­dent Bush’s one­time top gen­eral in Iraq that the US may have vio­lated inter­na­tional law.” You know it may have happened.

“As the basis for the suit, the ACLU invoked both a fed­eral statute enabling the direct federal-court enforce­ment of con­sti­tu­tional rights – here, First Amend­ment rights – and the Equal Access Act, which grants pub­lic high school stu­dent groups a right to equal access to school resources. The Equal Access Act was ini­tially backed by groups seek­ing to give public-school stu­dents the right to con­vene Bible study groups on cam­pus dur­ing lunch breaks and through on-campus after­school clubs. Now, the Act is also being invoked by stu­dent LGBT and Gay-Straight Alliance clubs that face hos­til­ity from public-school admin­is­tra­tions to their own wishes to meet on-campus.” Yet another exam­ple of stu­pid and ridicu­lous fil­ters that don’t work and aren’t con­trolled properly.

“We are sucker for cre­ative adver­tise­ments, par­tic­u­larly those that con­vey mes­sages with sense of humor, or deliver ideas in ways we have never expected. Here’s some­thing light to digest for the week­end surfers — 60+ cre­ative and smart adver­tise­ments we’ve col­lected around the web.” Some of these ads are also just plain offensive.

“Secu­rity com­pa­nies and IT peo­ple con­stantly tells us that we should use com­plex and dif­fi­cult pass­words. This is bad advice, because you can actu­ally make usable, easy to remem­ber and highly secure pass­words. In fact, usable pass­words are often far bet­ter than com­plex ones. Remem­ber this the next time you are mak­ing web appli­ca­tions or dis­cussing pass­word poli­cies. Pass­words can be made both highly secure and user-friendly.” How should pass­words actu­ally be designed, it’s an inter­est­ing and some­what throw­ing most logic out the window.

“While doing some research for a blog post last night I came upon sev­eral flash web­sites that set off my usabil­ity radar. When I’m look­ing at a port­fo­lio web­site (or any web­site really) I want to be able to find the infor­ma­tion im look­ing for quickly and eas­ily. I have con­densed this rant down to 7 rea­sons why flash web­sites tend to suck.” What makes Flash such a bad tech­nol­ogy to build your entire web­site around?

“Their spa­tial mem­ory is so pre­cise that they can find a sin­gle tree among more than 12,000 oth­ers within a patch of for­est, pri­ma­tol­o­gists have found. More than that, the chimps also recall how pro­duc­tive each tree is, and decide to travel fur­ther to eat from those they know will yield the most fruit.” Wow, I’m totally impressed.

“The Depart­ment of Jus­tice (DOJ) opened an inves­ti­ga­tion of pos­si­ble fed­eral crimes asso­ci­ated with the mur­der of George Tiller, MD, Fri­day. The DOJ will inves­ti­gate pos­si­ble vio­la­tions of the Free­dom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act or other fed­eral laws in con­nec­tion with the case. The fed­eral gov­ern­ment has also con­vened a meet­ing of the National Task Force on Vio­lence Against Repro­duc­tive Health Care Providers in the days fol­low­ing the mur­der and Attor­ney Gen­eral Eric Holder has deployed US Mar­shals to pro­tect highly threat­ened clin­ics and staff.” Espe­cially after the sus­pect pro­nounc­ing that there were sim­i­lar attacks planned.

“The Supreme Court announced today that they will not hear a case that chal­lenges the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity of the fed­eral government’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” pol­icy. The suit alleged that the pol­icy vio­lates the rights to equal pro­tec­tion and due process as well pro­tec­tion under the first amend­ment, accord­ing to the ABA Jour­nal. For­mer Army Cap­tain James Pietrangelo II, who was dis­missed from duty as a result of don’t ask, don’t tell, is the only plain­tiff of 12 who appealed the case to the Supreme Court, reported the Asso­ci­ated Press.”

“Three major movie stu­dios are about to try an inter­est­ing exper­i­ment. They are launch­ing a new TV net­work called Epix that will show their own recent films in HD, but they’re going a step beyond by bundling it with an online, on-demand ser­vice that offers HD stream­ing of the same films over the Inter­net. Think of it like Hulu for movies that aren’t yet out on DVD. Oh—and did we men­tion that the ser­vice will have no adver­tis­ing and won’t appear on your cable bill? Epixhd.com will only be avail­able to peo­ple who sub­scribe to one provider’s TV offer­ing and also sub­scribe to that same provider’s Inter­net offer­ing. That is, if Com­cast were to offer Epix, users would need to pay for both Com­cast cable and Com­cast Inter­net in order to access the stream­ing, on-demand ser­vice.” Inter­est­ing idea only real point of con­tention is pay­ing for a ser­vice I may not use and the desire to make this ser­vice avail­able to more peo­ple than just those who pay for inter­net and tv service.

What’s it like when ven­dors deal with clients?

What would hap­pen if obama actu­ally met mid­dle america?

“A Sen­ate vote Mon­day put Con­gress in sight of ful­fill­ing a decade-old quest to put the con­tent and mar­ket­ing of tobacco prod­ucts under the con­trol of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment. The leg­is­la­tion would for the first time give the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion legal author­ity to reg­u­late cig­a­rettes and other tobacco prod­ucts. The 61–30 Sen­ate vote to move for­ward on the bill sets up pos­si­ble pas­sage of the mea­sure this week. Sixty votes were needed to keep the bill on track. The House has already passed a sim­i­lar bill and res­o­lu­tion of minor dif­fer­ences would send it to Pres­i­dent Obama, who sup­ports it. The Sen­ate action was crit­i­cal because, under Sen­ate rules, it ended the pos­si­bil­ity of sen­a­tors offer­ing amend­ments, some highly con­tro­ver­sial, that are not rel­e­vant to the F.D.A. reg­u­la­tion issue.”

“Ear­lier this year the exec­u­tive, Dr. Andrew G. Bod­nar, a for­mer senior vice pres­i­dent at Bristol-Myers Squibb, had pleaded guilty to mak­ing a false state­ment to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment about the company’s efforts to resolve a patent dis­pute over the blood thin­ner Plavix. The judge sen­tenced Dr. Bod­nar to two years of pro­ba­tion dur­ing which he is to write a book about his expe­ri­ence con­nected to the case. Dr. Bod­nar must also pay a $5,000 fine. Elkan Abramowitz, Dr. Bodnar’s lawyer, said he had never before heard of a case in which a judge sen­tenced a defen­dant to write a book. But this is not the first time Judge Urbina has demanded writ­ten penance. In 1998, he sen­tenced a promi­nent Wash­ing­ton lob­by­ist to write and dis­trib­ute a mono­graph to 2,000 lob­by­ists at the defendant’s own expense.” Okay that’s an odd punishment.

“Sci­en­tists have shown a rogue pro­tein thought to cause Alzheimer’s can spread through the brain, turn­ing healthy tis­sue bad.”

What hap­pens you choose con­ve­nience over security?

“A court in North Korea has sen­tenced two US jour­nal­ists to 12 years’ hard labour, state media say. Euna Lee and Laura Ling were found guilty of “hos­tile acts” and ille­gal entry into the com­mu­nist state.” Not good news.

“US Pres­i­dent Barack Obama has said he is “deeply con­cerned” by North Korea’s reported sen­tenc­ing of two US jour­nal­ists to 12 years’ hard labour. The US was work­ing through all chan­nels to secure their release, a spokesman for Mr Obama said.” So what’s work­ing through all channels?

“Repub­li­cans appar­ently seized con­trol of the New York State Sen­ate on Mon­day, in a stun­ning and sud­den rever­sal of for­tunes for the Demo­c­ra­tic Party, which con­trolled the cham­ber for barely five months.” Wow.

“Peo­ple with age-related mac­u­lar degen­er­a­tion (AMD) should eat oily fish at least twice a week to keep their eye dis­ease at bay, say sci­en­tists. Omega-3 fatty acids found in abun­dance in fish like mack­erel and salmon appear to slow or even halt the progress of both early and late stage disease.”

“What’s the most absurdly detailed dis­cus­sion you’ve ever been forced to sit through for no good rea­son?” Mine: “Spend­ing 3.5 hours of my 4 hour work day dis­cussing what we should call sec­tions of an online sys­tem that was sup­posed to edu­cate stu­dents, lessons or projects, oh and the sys­tem wasn’t built and wasn’t about to be built for sev­eral months if not more than a year or more. On top of it, only two peo­ple in the room of 6 had any say in the mat­ter, the rest of us were there to look pretty or something.”

“On June 8, 1995, Ras­mus Ler­dorf issued the first pub­lic release of PHP. It’s a lan­guage that became the key devel­op­ment lan­guage of the Web 1.0 world pow­er­ing mil­lions of sites (includ­ing InternetNews.com).”

“The US Supreme Court has granted a request to delay the sale of car­maker Chrysler to a group led by Ital­ian car­maker Fiat. Three Indi­ana state pen­sion and con­struc­tion funds filed papers at the court on Sun­day call­ing for the sale to be halted so they can pur­sue an appeal. They (the peti­tion­ers) say it inverts usual bank­ruptcy prac­tice and unlaw­fully rewards unse­cured cred­i­tors, such as the union, ahead of secured lenders.”

What all did WWDC reveal this year?

“A promi­nent African-American pas­tor says South­ern Bap­tist lead­ers should pub­licly repu­di­ate com­ments by a for­mer South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion offi­cer that he is pray­ing for Pres­i­dent Obama to die.”

“Royal Dutch Shell has agreed to pay $15.5m to set­tle a law­suit which accused the oil firm of com­plic­ity in rights abuses in Nige­ria. The case, due for trial in the US next week, was brought by rel­a­tives of a group of anti-Shell activists exe­cuted in 1995 by Nigeria’s mil­i­tary rulers. The fam­i­lies say Shell helped the gov­ern­ment to pun­ish the cam­paign­ers.” The ques­tion for me did Shell think they have a case or was it to avoid the pub­lic­ity, prob­a­bly the latter.

“Firstly, the big com­pa­nies that have been hit by the reces­sion are nei­ther hir­ing staff them­selves nor giv­ing much busi­ness to the IT com­pa­nies that might have hired for­eign pro­fes­sion­als them­selves. But also, the US Con­gress has for­bid­den com­pa­nies and banks that receive funds from the Trou­bled Asset Relief Pro­gram (Tarp) from hir­ing for­eign work­ers.” Not as many work visas being handed out this year.

“The fam­i­lies of two US jour­nal­ists held in North Korea have pleaded with the author­i­ties there to set the pair free.”

What’s the new iphone come with. Faster, bet­ter cam­era, bet­ter bat­tery, bet­ter graph­ics sup­port, com­pass, and voice control.

Essen­tially AT&T has to remove a bit of code man­u­ally on each account.

“Today at Apple’s WWDC event in San Fran­cisco, Apple had a bunch of Cin­ema Dis­play mon­i­tors mounted together on a wall show­ing what looked to be some sort of pul­sat­ing can­vas. But a closer look revealed that it was actu­ally a huge col­lec­tion of icons for many of the apps avail­able in the App Store, arranged by color. Appar­ently, when some­one pur­chased one, that app’s icon would pul­sate, cre­at­ing the effect.” Okay that’s cool.

“British sci­en­tists have devel­oped a portable microwave scan­ner to help police iden­tify indi­vid­u­als car­ry­ing con­cealed guns and knives.” Could be use­ful when deal­ing with large crowds of pro­test­ers to find out if any­one in the crowd is pos­si­bly car­ry­ing a weapon.

“Cal­i­for­nia Gov­er­nor Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger has unveiled a plan to save money by scrap­ping school text­books in favour of inter­net aids. From the begin­ning of the next school year in August, maths and sci­ence stu­dents in California’s high schools will have access to online texts that have passed an aca­d­e­mic stan­dards review.” This could be a real step for­ward in edu­ca­tion, if it works correctly.

“Now the gov­er­nor has taken action on two bills that show where his pri­or­i­ties really lie: He vetoed a bill reign­ing in preda­tory pay­day lend­ing, and signed a bill allow­ing loaded guns on school grounds.” Good job South Car­olina, rather that tak­ing money for schools, lets have guns in school.

And you won­der why the Jus­tice Dept said to be wor­ried about right wing extremists?

Good for Palm, about 50,000 phones sold on the first two days.