Real-Time Forecast of Earthquake Hazard in the Next 24 Hours

USGS now provides Real-Time Forecast of Earthquake Hazards in the Next 24 Hours

Sharepoint blogging geeks

"100,000 lines of SharePoint configuration (lists, sitedefs, etc.) and 100,000 lines of C# code...I'm just full of stupid little SharePoint giblets that I'll be sharing over the next few weeks"

crap...I may not be able to escape needing resources like this.

Victory for Censorship Tech

RED HERRING | Victory for Censorship Tech

Hmmm...Censorship, eh? That's the boogeyman here. I kinda agree it's creepy in the artistic sense that ClearPlay (and others) will make a living "sanitizing" content for people who want to keep taking the blue pill.

The industry's response seems to be that of Copyright infringement. Arguing that ClearPlay has no right to alter the content from what the creator/copyright holder intended. Seems reasonable...if I produce something I expect it to get seen intact, not redacted the way someone else deems appropriate.

The Bill presumably comes from the spirit that the consumer has a right to protect him/herself from indecent content. That smacks of the moral majority and feels like Censorship.

But maybe thats not a bad thing. I wonder..are the rights it's extending to media consumers limited to indecency? How do we agree on exactly what parts of the content are indecent? The content producers dont label each scene with an MPAA rating...so the choice of exactly what to edit ultimately would have to be up to the consumer's preference and ClearPlay gives them the best decision points it can. But this Bill ought to mean the consumer can use whatever technology available to chop up Copyrighted content and view/play it how ever it wants to.

I might give Baywatch another chance, sans Hasselhoff.

Could this bill possibly only apply to Film? To DVD? I doubt it.

What does this mean to Copyright in other mediums?

Can I get this on my Tivo so I never have to watch another Republican campaign ad?

What else could we do with this? What about software copyright? Can I use some parts of the executable, bypassing others according to my preference?

Hmmm...

Celestia: Home

I think Celestia will soon be installed on my HTPC!
... The free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Celestia runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy.

HTTPeep - an HTTP response inspector

HTTPeep - an HTTP inspector

Ummm....this is a slick tool....seems to even work with HttpSoap requests for web services.

Single-Screen Checkout addresses shopping cart abandonment

Single-Screen Checkout addresses shopping cart abandonment using xmlHttpRequest.

FlightView Product Family -- FlightView Access

In Knoxville, the smallest airport I passed through this weekend I noticed a well done and very useful system called FlightView running in the public terminal on a large LCD. It showed realtime status of incoming flights to the McGhee Tyson Airport (TYS).

Burbank, Atlanta, and Dayton had nothing like this. It seemed to be up to each individual carrier to list their status in their respective areas, or where there were public ones, they were nothing more than block letters on bulbous CRTs.



Nitfy business. Doesnt seem like there's a publicly accessible view, but it was neat to see a smallish airport buying this service rather than installing and maintaining their own. Nice bit of outsourcing content.

1,360 experts in 95 nations Report: Human Damage to Earth Worsening Fast

Yahoo! News: "More land was changed to cropland since 1945, for instance, than in the 18th and 19th centuries combined"

Stunning.

"A wetland in Canada was worth $6,000 a hectare (2.47 acres), as a habitat for animals and plants, a filter for pollution, a store for water and a site for human recreation, against $2,000 if converted to farmland, it said. A Thai mangrove was worth $1,000 a hectare against $200 as a shrimp farm."

Penny wise...

Film Article | Reuters.com

" it will be the first 'Star Wars' that's a PG-13"

....maturing with the audience that grew up with it? Seems more credible than pimping jar jar and ewoks.

AlterNet: War on Iraq: "Going to War with the Army You Have"

AlterNet: War on Iraq: "Going to War with the Army You Have": "If a product is not selling well, for example, an engineering organization might conclude that better engineering of the product was in order; a manufacturing firm, that more efficient production technology was needed; and a marketing company, that better advertising would do the trick. This sort of organizational idee fixe has led to some truly horrendous failures in business and military history."

Ummm....this is bleak

US urges Opec not to cut oil production in face of $60/barrel prices.

Energy Secretary Bodman has "...a lot of things on my plate".

Our Energy Secretary sounds like and utter buffoon here. Slanted? Perhaps. Though it is from a Reuters feed.
The Reuters article is not quite so stinging, but still embarassing.

IT Conversations

IT Conversations

Techinal talks & interviews

DigiBarn Screen Shots: Screenshots Funstuff

DigiBarn Screen Shots: Screenshots Funstuff

OMG...some of these are priceless. MS Offcie with EVERY toolbar showing is one of my favs.

DigiBarn Screen Shots: Screenshots Funstuff

DigiBarn Screen Shots: Screenshots Funstuff

deseretnews.com | Anti-U.S. feelings growing

deseretnews.com | Anti-U.S. feelings growing: "...Most people fear anarchy more than they crave freedom."

That about sums it up. We havent exactly been the best of stewards in Iraq, despite our heroics and sacrifice. We broke it...we bought it.

Personal space / local environment

Recently working on a death march project where I'm having to do much more coding than has been the norm lately.
That by itself is a treat and is making me forget my normal outrage at these kinds of projects and the organizations that are prone to them.

With about a week into what smells like another 4, I'm realizing/remembering how much the local environment matters to focus and productivity.

In fact, I havent really curled up to bang out an implementation once in this new cube yet. It needs some optimizing.

This is the essence of what Bob is chiming about with observations about how noisy EP can be.

I realize there's a lot you have to do for yourself to make your cube comfy. Headphones are a first line of defense. Mgrs usually hate them, arguing that they get in the way of communication. I've succombed to some good noise cancelling ones.

Hmmm...this noise / distraction issue isnt just a nit from Bob. I didnt think it was when he raised it. Hmmm.

How to promte a relatively distraction free working environment without being hypocritical or militant?

I think there's some wisdom in a) advertising the value of quiet and focus to those in the dept. and b) enforcing respect of quiet from people outside the department.

That is, we dont scold or even point out noise and outburts from within the dept. but we will not shrink from consistiently asking staff from other depts. to respect focus and quiet.

AgileManagement

AgileManagement: "and 'perfectionists"

Mitsubishi blues?

Kansas City Star | 11/29/2004 | MIDDAY BUSINESS REPORT: Fed looking for signs: "Mitsubishi Motors Credit of America Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mitsubishi Motors North America Inc.
Mitsubishi Motors has been plagued by a series of defect-coverup scandals in Japan that have badly tarnished its image and sent sales plunging here.
But its sales and profits have also suffered in the United States, partly because it had sold too many cars to people with bad credit.
Mitsubishi Motors has previously said it would scrap the risky financing deals, cut jobs, trim production and reduce sales to rental and other fleets to make its U.S. business profitable."

Safari 1.2 now supports XMLHttpRequest!

Foisted by MS in IE 5, a variant picked up by Mozilla 1.0, and now finanlly I find its supported Safari 1.2!
Dynamic HTML and XML: The XMLHttpRequest Object

I notice that Google is also using it in their auto-complete/Google Request beta.

We'll make some good use of this, knowing it's supported widely now.

"the 'how-the-hell-do-I-roll-back-the-changes-i've-made-to-the-db' problem" vs. mock objects.

I changed my mind - Mock objects are wrong for database unit testing

Heh...we went lazy too and ended up putting together a nice ADO transaction layer around our DAO...turns out to be also useful in the large.