Yostivanich

“Two eth­nic Uighurs have been shot dead by police in Urumqi, cap­i­tal of China’s Xin­jiang province, offi­cials have said. A gov­ern­ment state­ment announced that a third “law­breaker” had been injured in the inci­dent. The police were try­ing to pre­vent the three men attack­ing another Uighur, the gov­ern­ment offi­cials said.” Of course they were, I trust the Chinese.

“That’s the plan of the Inter­net Cor­po­ra­tion for Assigned Names and Num­bers, the orga­ni­za­tion that admin­is­ters the domain name sys­tem. Icann already allowed some expan­sion like .travel and .mobi. Now it is throw­ing the space after the period wide open. Already there are pro­pos­als like .nyc and .eco.” No.

“Burma is prepar­ing to release polit­i­cal pris­on­ers to allow them to take part in national elec­tions next year. The move comes at the request of UN Sec­re­tary Gen­eral Ban Ki-moon, who vis­ited the coun­try last week. It was announced at the Secu­rity Coun­cil by Burma’s UN envoy Than Swe. He did not say how many of the esti­mated 2,100 inmates would go free.” I won­der why?

“The US bud­get deficit has moved above $1 tril­lion (£616bn) for the first time — with three months of the finan­cial year remain­ing, offi­cial data show. The fig­ure com­pares with $455bn for the whole 2007/8 finan­cial year, but the 2008/9 deficit was expected to soar.”

“The US 1^st Cir­cuit Court of Appeals upheld a Mass­a­chu­setts law on Fri­day, allow­ing a 35-foot safety buffer zone between pro­tes­tors and abor­tion clinic entrances. The law, estab­lished in 2007, pro­tects clinic patients and staff from harass­ment. Five anti-choice pro­test­ers orig­i­nally filed the law­suit on the grounds that the safety zones vio­late their right to free speech. In 2008, US Dis­trict Judge Joseph Tauro rejected their request and they filed the most recent appeal.”

“The gap between Face­book and MySpace is grow­ing wider in the U.S. In May, Face­book finally caught up to MySpace in unique U.S. vis­i­tors and sur­passed its rival social net­work by a smidgeon. Last month, Face­book left MySpace in the dust, accord­ing to June data from com­Score. Face­book reached 77 mil­lion unique vis­i­tors for the month of June, ris­ing from 70.28 mil­lion unique vis­i­tors in May. MySpace had 68.4 mil­lion unique vis­i­tors in June, drop­ping from 70.25 mil­lion unique vis­i­tors in May.” Good rid­dance Facebook.

“HBO and Cin­e­max will join Comcast’s OnDe­mand Online trial this sum­mer, giv­ing the cable company’s authen­ti­ca­tion scheme a high-profile part­ner. As part of the agree­ment, 750 hours of con­tent from the two net­works will be made avail­able through Comcast.net and Fancast.com.” If you have HBO and/or Cin­e­max through Com­cast know get it online.

“Call­ing renew­able energy a strate­gic indus­try, China is try­ing hard to make sure that its com­pa­nies dom­i­nate glob­ally. Just as Japan and South Korea made it hard for Detroit automak­ers to com­pete in those coun­tries — giv­ing their own automak­ers time to amass economies of scale in shel­tered domes­tic mar­kets — China is shield­ing its clean energy sec­tor while it grows to a point where it can take on the world.”

Lan­guage in North Korea, very Brave New World.

“Microsoft has launched its lat­est salvo at Google with a free web-based ver­sion of its dom­i­nant Office soft­ware. Office 2010 will include light­weight ver­sions of Word, Excel, Pow­er­Point and OneNote when it ships next year.” Took you long enough Microsoft.

“With two ocean crashes in one month and no recorders found, Air­bus is under con­sid­er­able pres­sure. Thomas O. Enders, the company’s chief exec­u­tive, said two depart­ment heads would be assigned to inves­ti­gate live data trans­mis­sion, exter­nal black boxes and one low-tech but highly rel­e­vant response to the loss of Flight 447 — extend­ing the life of the black box pinger.”

“The Feds have been exam­in­ing exclu­sive wire­less car­rier deals with hand­set makers—think AT&T and Apple—but the effort is a bit of a farce. Bern­stein ana­lyst Craig Mof­fett says it’s laugh­able that the wire­less indus­try is anti­com­pet­i­tive and the Feds don’t have to worry about wreck­ing the wire­less industry—Apple already has. The biggest one comes when Mof­fett argues that the Fed­eral Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion and the Depart­ment of Jus­tice are wast­ing its time review­ing the wire­less market—especially AT&T. Why? Apple has taken any power that AT&T has. Sure, AT&T has an exclu­sive deal with Apple, but the iPhone maker owns the cus­tomer rela­tion­ship and holds all the cards.”

Some­one got bitch slapped.

“As a U.S. Attor­ney in Alabama, Ses­sions’ most notable effort was pros­e­cut­ing three civil rights work­ers, includ­ing a for­mer aide to Mar­tin Luther King Jr., on trumped up charges of voter fraud.” Oh call­ing peo­ple prej­u­diced when you your­self are or were.

“We are close, but have not yet signed off on Win­dows 7. When we RTM you will most cer­tainly hear it here. As we’ve said all along, we will RTM Win­dows 7 when it’s ready. As pre­vi­ously stated, we expect Win­dows 7 to RTM in the 2^nd half of July.” Not quite RTM’ed.

Over­all Bing had a good first month.

“Stephen Fry, a highly respected actor, come­dian, writer, pre­sen­ter and author yes­ter­day admit­ted to down­load­ing TV shows for free using Bit­Tor­rent. Speak­ing at the iTunes Fes­ti­val in Lon­don last night, Fry told the audi­ence that he’s grabbed episodes of 24 and the series finale of House, star­ring his for­mer com­edy part­ner Hugh Laurie.”

Love in your older years.

“Ear­lier today, con­ser­v­a­tive pun­dit Pat Buchanan sug­gested that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s hus­band should mur­der his daughter’s ex-fiance, Levi John­ston, for say­ing Palin’s deci­sion to resign came down to “money.”” WTF???

“Most mem­bers of the com­mit­tee fol­lowed pat­tern. Democ­rats were sup­port­ive, while most Repub­li­cans — led by Alabama Sen­a­tor Jeff Ses­sions — repeated anti-Sotomayor talk­ing points. Gra­ham broke the pat­tern. His com­ments were the most sig­nif­i­cant of the open­ing ses­sion of the con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing, as they seemed to lay the ground­work for main­stream Repub­li­cans to vote to make Sotomayor the first Latina jus­tice to sit on the Supreme Court.”

Good news.