links for 2009-05-16

Some sample demonstrations of Wolfram Alpha.

Cory Doctorow's reasoned response to sexting.

"And so it begins: Random House has switched off Kindle Text-to-speech by default, angering educators and advocates for the blind in the process." Stupid, stupid, stupid.

"One of the algorithmic changes is aimed at making sure the home page clusters reward the freshest and most authoritative blog content. Within any cluster, Google wants to find the posts that people are talking about the most."

It looks like it could become impressive, but today it isn't. Lots of outdated data and the search engine is still relatively incomplete.

"Early Tuesday morning, the 19-year-old Dubuque woman gave birth behind bars.Keil claims guards ignored her pleas for help and left her to deliver her son alone. Jail officials say the mother never showed signs she was in labor." Pretty much completely messed up.

"Houston-based DJ Shu Latif registered Crackho.com ages ago (according to a Whois search, 1998), but decided to give the site a fresh face in 2008 after Governor Palin was chosen as the Republican Vice President nominee. She changed the DNS settings so that all traffic to Crackho.com would go directly to Sarah Palin's official website. The change apparently flew under the radar until earlier this month, when Alaska's Attorney General Michael Barnhill sent a letter (PDF) to Latif demanding that she knock it off. Clearly, Barnhill and gang have no real understanding of DNS and URL redirects in general, because the letter asserts that Crackho.com made illegal use of the official seal of the State of Alaska without permission, and that Latif was in violation of the federal Copyright Act. Nevermind that the seal was on Palin's own site." Not illegal, kinda mean, but not illegal.

"Zappos.com appears to have constructed what it likes to call a Zeta site – and is preparing to move into electronics."

"The swine flu virus did not result from a laboratory accident, the World Health Organization said Thursday, working to debunk rumors started by an Australian virologist and circulated by news outlets all over the world." Oh rumors.

Should people be allowed to hide work that they aren't proud of from Google?

"Google had $209,624 in profit per employee in 2008, which beats all the other large tech companies we looked at, including big hitters like Microsoft, Apple, Intel and IBM." Good going Google.

"General Motors (GM) has announced plans to close up to 1,100 of its dealerships in the US as it desperately tries to cut costs and stave off bankruptcy. It also plans to cut ties with another 470 Saturn, Hummer and Saab dealers." More cuts will be coming.

"The Oklahoma state House approved a bill known as the Statistical Reporting of Abortion Act on Wednesday in an 88 to 6 vote that bans sex-selective abortions and increases reporting requirements by doctors who perform the procedure. According to Tulsa World, the questionnaires would personally identify patients, list the source of funds for the procedure, and the reason for the procedure." Because you know those crazy women getting abortions left and right.

"An Algerian man held for seven years by the US has arrived in France after being set free from Guantanamo Bay." Held for another year after he was declared safe to be released.

"The next iPod refresh is set for September and will see the addition of a camera to the iPod Touch, according to a recent report from Hardmac. Recent reports suggest that the next iPhone will sport a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus and we can only assume that the iPod Touch will get the same treatment. Interestingly, the report also notes that the iPod Nano will include a camera as well. Lastly, the report notes that all upcoming iPhone models will sport the exact same dimensions and screen size as the current iPhone 3G." See me being extremely skeptical.

"Being a good developer is like being any other good professional, it’s all it’s about doing as much quality work as possible. There is a popular sentence that summarises it: “Do it. Do it right. Do it right now”."

Sometimes the Internet is wrong.

Could we see background apps, potentially just one running in the background.

A school with just CS students.

Proactive customer service really works.

Kari Byron get's a short interview discussing her pregnancy and some pregnancy related myths.

"Microsoft plans to formally banish the popular programming function that's been responsible for an untold number of security vulnerabilities over the years, not just in Windows but in countless other applications based on the C language. Effective later this year, Microsoft will add memcpy(), CopyMemory(), and RtlCopyMemory() to its list of function calls banned under its secure development lifecycle."

Twitter's possibly final post regarding the reply situation.

"US industrial production fell in April for the sixth month in a row, but at the slowest rate seen in that time."

"Leading US retailers have been hit as consumers continue to tighten their belts, sending quarterly profits lower."

John Scalzi talks with a stick of butter, why? Because he can.