links for 2009-07-28

"Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon and Vodafone Group PLC, asked a U.S. court for a judgment that its advertising claims to be "America's Most Reliable 3G Network" were truthful, which rival AT&T called "misleading" on Monday." Oh fun.

"A human rights charity has begun a legal fight to force the UK government to reveal what it knew about an alleged CIA "rendition flight" in 2002."

"One reason programmers dislike meetings so much is that they're on a different type of schedule from other people. Meetings cost them more." I agree with this whole heartily.

"What I truly don't understand is how anyone could possibly think that joking about rape is being edgy or somehow fighting against the mainstream – which seems to be what the comics in this Guardian article are arguing. They say they're taking taboos head-on. But the thing is, rape jokes and mocking violence against women are mainstream. They're not a taboo at all – they're the norm, sadly. So all of these comedians giving themselves a pat on the back for being sooo controversial – when all they're doing is upholding the status quo – really fucking irk me."

You know morality without religion is such a controversial thing.

"Seven US men have been charged with conspiring to provide support to Islamic militants and conspiring to murder and kidnap people abroad."

"Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, Calif., are creating what is in effect a vast digital petri dish able to hold one million operating systems at once in an effort to study the behavior of rogue programs known as botnets."

"If there’s ever been a time to be furious with Apple, now is it." Pretty much.

"The head of Iran's judiciary has ordered a decision within a week on the fate of prisoners arrested after disputed elections, Iranian media say. A spokesman for the judiciary chief, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi, also said some prisoners should be freed, the Mehr news agency reported. The spokesman, Ali Reza Jamshidi, said about 300 people remained behind bars."

"Instead, I wanted to mention an essay by Ellen E. Fairchild which discusses “Christian privilege” — benefits that Christians get in our society that are denied to the rest of us — despite our nation’s separation of church and state. Those benefits all contribute to this false belief that we are a Christian nation. With all that in mind, it takes a lot of work for an administrator to make non-Christians feel included. The rest of the paper explains how we can challenge this “Christian nation” idea and instead celebrate our nation’s diversity."

"US stock market regulators have made permanent a rule aimed at reducing abusive short-selling. The emergency rule on "naked short-selling" was introduced at the height of last year's market turmoil, and was due to expire on Friday. Short-sellers usually borrow shares, sell them, then buy them back when the stock falls and return them to the lender keeping the difference in price. "Naked" short selling is when sellers do not even borrow the shares. The US the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) acknowledges that short selling can help limit market bubbles in individual shares. But it has been concerned that the practice can also be used to manipulate the market."

"Luckily, it seems that Apple has been listening: over the past few days, we have received word from a number of developers stating that they are now able to request promo codes for their 17+ apps. While Apple has not made any official comment on the issue, it appears that they have quietly conceded this battle to the developers, once again enabling them to distribute promo codes as needed for all of their apps." One good move.

"Nevertheless, in wave elections, things have a way of just happening. We don't know whether 2010 will resemble 1994 or 2006. But if health care falls apart and the economy remains sour, I wouldn't put too much limitation on the Republicans' upside."

"The Department of Homeland Security relied on a rushed, flawed study to justify its decision to locate a $700 million research facility for highly infectious pathogens in a tornado-prone section of Kansas, according to a government report. " Because that's a smart place place to study?

"Limiting what's on the shelves — or accessible on a public computer — is not censorship. It's discretion. And pornography and other materials blocked by some filtering programs are still widely available for personal use and purchase elsewhere." Renaming something doesn't make it different. Censorship is still censorship, the point at which we allow filtering to become mainstream, means what was once "widely available" will no longer be available.

"The 911 caller who reported two men possibly breaking into the home of black Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. did not describe their race, acknowledged they might just be having a hard time with the door and said she saw two suitcases on the porch."

"The hard truth is that Officer Crowley's defense that he was just doing his job just doesn't wash. Having verified the facts, he had every opportunity to apologize to Professor Gates for the misunderstanding and leave. The hard truth that America needs to hear is that incidents of racial profiling and unfair treatment by the police and judiciary are oppressive facts of life for African American men even today. The hard truth that Professor Gates needs to hear is that he is the one who handed over his power to Officer Crowley. Letting his agitation get the better of him, Gates lost the ability to shape the outcome of the encounter and set up his own victimization by a poorly trained police officer." Pretty even handed treatment of the Gates-Crowley affair.

"The Afghan government has agreed a truce with Taliban insurgents in the north-western province of Badghis ahead of elections next month, officials say. The Taliban have pledged not to attack voting centres and to hand key areas to government forces, officials say. There has been no word from the militants."

"The annual rate of US new home sales jumped 11% in June, government figures have shown, a further indication that the housing sector is over the worst."

"Yahoo is close to making Microsoft's Bing its search provider. The deal, which would make Microsoft a more credible competitor to Google, is likely to be announced this week, and seems likely to be based on a revenue share, not on a big fat check upfront, as some at Yahoo had hoped." Yahoooo, I mean Binggg?

"Traditionalists, of course, find nothing wrong with using he to refer to an anybody or an everybody, male or female. After all, hasn’t he been used for both sexes since time immemorial? Well, no, as a matter of fact, it hasn’t. It’s a relatively recent usage, as these things go. But how, you might ask, did people refer to an anybody before then? This will surprise a few purists, but for centuries the universal pronoun was they. Writers as far back as Chaucer used it for singular and plural, masculine and feminine. Nobody seemed to mind that they, them and their were officially plural. As Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage explains, writers were comfortable using they with an indefinite pronoun like everybody because it suggested a sexless plural." I agree "they" is the proper form.

"Rather than waiting for big projects to be planned and awarded to construction companies, or for tax cuts to trickle through the economy, state officials hit upon a New Deal model of trying to put people directly to work as quickly as possible. They are using welfare money from the stimulus package to subsidize 300 new jobs across Perry County, with employers ranging from the state Transportation Department to the milkshake place near the high school."

"Fortunately, Google has recently come out with a number of smartphone apps for BlackBerry and Android that obviate the need for any extra steps, making Google Voice a natural replacement for your phone’s native dialer. The iPhone still lacks an official client, but that hasn’t stopped a handful of third party developers from releasing their own apps, which have been available on the App Store for the last few months. Today, however, it sounds like Apple has made the decision to crack down on these: Sean Kovacs, the developer behind the popular app GV Mobile, has written on his blog that Apple is going to be removing his application, citing the fact that it “duplicates features that come with the iPhone”." Stupid Apple.

"Meanwhile, Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, has introduced a bill called the Say No to Drug Ads Act. It would amend the federal tax code to prevent pharmaceutical companies from deducting the cost of direct-to-consumer drug advertisements as a business expense." That one makes the most sense to me. "The United States is one of only two countries that permit direct-to-consumer drug advertisements. The other is New Zealand, where several years ago some health officials and politicians tried and failed to ban drug ads."

"Walt Mossberg lets you know what the REAL, TERRIFYING dangers of Windows 7, and exactly what you need to do to survive it. This is perhaps the most important video you will ever see."

"Well, mystery solved — thanks to White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton, who very kindly responded to our barrage of questions on this important matter of national security yesterday. In so doing, he laid to rest some of the extrapolated conclusions drawn from the 22-second clip of Gibbs on C-SPAN, notably that White House staffers were banned from Twitter (they’re not), that the same people are responsible for both @WhiteHouse and @BarackObama (they’re not) and that nobody tweets from the White House (they do!). It’s true, children: It’s coming from inside the house."

"The Blueline’s grim numbers stem entirely from two perverse economic incentives: the driver’s salary is wholly dependant on how many fares he picks up, and each bus is in direct competition with every other bus on the route." This is insane and shows how extreme capitalism can and does cause problems.

"By releasing your chart, instead of meaningfully educating the public, you willfully obfuscated an already complicated proposal. There is no simple proposal to solve this problem. You instead chose to shout "12! 16! 37! 9! 24!" while we were trying to count something. So, to try and do my duty both to the country and to information design (a profession and skill you have loudly shat upon), I have taken it upon myself to untangle your delightful chart." Awesome.