links for 2009-08-12

The Volt will run for 40 miles purely on battery and post that use a gasoline engine to charge the battery giving it 50 miles to the gallon at that point.

"Open source software is free if your time is worth nothing."

"Kuwaiti officials say they have arrested six members of a "terrorist network", linked to al-Qaeda, who were planning to attack a US military base."

"The scene would be unremarkable in Saudi Arabia or Iran, where a strict interpretation of Islam mandates hiding the feminine body. In Alexandria — a storied town of sensuality and openness — the veiled beachgoers, coupled with sectarian conflicts, underscore to some residents the loss of a valued sense of diversity in favor of religious uniformity."

"But perhaps there's a third option: Google acquiring On2 and promptly open sourcing its latest video codecs: VP6, VP7, and VP8. On2's VP3 codec is the actual basis for Ogg Theora. In 2001, On2 open sourced VP3 under an irrevocable free license through an agreement with The Xiph.org Foundation. According to Google open source guru Chris DiBona, the company continues to avoid Ogg Theora on YouTube because it can't match the performance of H.264. But if Google open sources a newer On2 codec and applies that to YouTube, this would ease Mozilla's objections. Google has already mocked up a Flash-free YouTube. And with Google controlling On2's patents, it would have that much more leverage in its efforts to convince Apple that it won't be sued." It would be awesome if they did.

"You have no idea what it’s like to be called into a sterile conference room with a hospital administrator you’ve never met before and be told that your mother’s insurance policy will only pay for 30 days in ICU. You can't imagine what it's like to be advised that you need to “make some decisions,” like whether your mother should be released “HTD” which is hospital parlance for “home to die,” or if you want to pay out of pocket to keep her in the ICU another week. And when you ask how much that would cost you are given a number so impossibly large that you realize there really are no decisions to make. The decision has been made for you. "Living will" or no, it doesn't matter. The bank account and the insurance policy have trumped any legal document. If this isn’t a “death panel” I don’t know what is."

"This is a very nicely done series of videos made at the Creation "Museum"…now you can see what it was like!"

"Describing an agreement that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Department of Justice helped broker that would require Westchester County, New York, to spend more than $50 million of its own funds to develop affordable housing, Fox News' Andrew Napolitano commented, "Big brother is here," and he also said that "the government is taking money from you by suppressing the value of your real estate." But Napolitano never mentioned that for years, Westchester County sought and received millions in federal housing aid and that the agreement, if ratified, would settle a lawsuit claiming Westchester misrepresented its fair housing efforts to federal officials."

"In this article, I’ll go over some of the issues surrounding complexity and techniques that can be used to manage it." Really good article dealing with complex user interfaces.

"Thousands of pages of once-secret grand jury testimony and e-mail messages released on Tuesday showed that Karl Rove and other senior aides in the Bush White House played an earlier and more active role than previously known in the 2006 firings of a number of federal prosecutors."

"A new study of Roman Catholic nuns and priests in the United States shows that an aging, predominantly white generation is being succeeded by a smaller group of more racially and ethnically diverse recruits who are attracted to the religious orders that practice traditional prayer rituals and wear habits."

"This is horrible news to have to release, but unfortunately Campaign Monitor has been attacked by one or more hackers, and some of your accounts have been compromised. This has been a deliberate, planned and complex intrusion and we are still in the process of handling the hacks and the impact."

"The bottom line is that the Catholic bishops have committed both themselves and their copious resources to becoming the political enemies of all child sex abuse victims and thus the political allies of all child predators (whether they be priests, teachers, or uncles)."

"This how-to guide is supposed to walk you through the steps to make your idea for an iPhone app a reality. This post presents various ideas, techniques, tips, and resources that may come in handy if you are planning on creating your first iPhone application." Just in case.

"A Nasa space telescope has found evidence of a high-speed collision between two burgeoning planets orbiting a young star. Astronomers say the cosmic smash-up is similar to the one that formed our Moon some four billion years ago, when a Mars-sized object crashed into Earth. In this case, two rocky bodies are thought to have slammed into one another in the last few thousand years." So cool.

"Adobe’s stupidity is compounded by the obnoxious attitude of the person who handled my call. Rather than propose a solution, he went on about how we got such a good deal, we should be happy with it. I ended the conversation by saying that we should have done like most of the other students here: just stolen the software." Awesome Adobe.

"Every time a bunch of academics show vulnerabilities in electronic voting machines, critics complain that the attacks aren't realistic, that attackers won't have access to source code, or design documents, or be able to manipulate the hardware, etc. So this time a bunch of computer scientists from UCSD, Michigan, and Princeton offered a rebuttal. They completely own the AVC Advantage using no access to source code or design documents (PDF), and deliver a complete working attack in a plug-in cartridge that could be used by anyone with a few private minutes with the machine. Moreover, they came up with some cool tricks to do this on a machine protected against traditional code injection attacks (the AVC processor will only execute instructions from ROM). The research was presented at this week's USENIX EVT."

"On August 10 and 11, numerous media figures, including Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck, mischaracterized a USA Today op-ed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer to falsely claim they called health reform opponents "un-American." In fact, in their op-ed, Pelosi and Hoyer wrote that "it is now evident that an ugly campaign is underway not merely to misrepresent the health insurance reform legislation, but to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting a civil dialogue" and that "[d]rowning out opposing views is simply un-American.""

"Authorities in Iran say 4,000 people were detained in protests that followed June's disputed presidential election – many more than previously stated. A spokesman for the judiciary, Ali Reza Jamshidi, said about 3,700 had been freed within a week, but that those involved in riots were in detention."

"Every opinion is equally valid. My arse."

"Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden have the lowest prices for mobile phone calls among OECD countries, according to the latest OECD Communications Outlook. The highest were found in Canada, Spain and the United States."

"As final editing was being done on a concert DVD of the tour, which included footage from the video projected on stage, Lego declined to grant permission to use its figures, which are protected by copyright. “We love that our fans are so passionate and so creative with our products,” said Julie Stern, a spokeswoman for Lego Systems, the United States division of the Lego Group, a Danish company founded in the 1930s. “But it had some inappropriate language, and the tone wasn’t appropriate for our target audience of kids 6 to 12.”" That bites.

"Blaming the slow nature of the global economic recovery, Opec now expects demand for its crude to average 27.97 million barrels per day in 2010."

"Ms. Palin had turned down the $28 million in financing this spring; it was the only portion of Alaska’s stimulus package allotment that she rejected. At the time, she cited concern that stipulations attached to the funds would obligate Alaska to enact more stringent building codes. A recent letter from the Department of Energy to an Alaskan legislative aide clarified that Alaska did not need to enact stricter statewide building codes. Rather, the state must offer assurances that it will “encourage, promote and assist” municipalities that adopt their own energy-efficiency codes. The legislative vote on Monday was 45-14 in favor of the override." Wrong and rejected.

"Just as users and the entire Twitter developer ecosystem was getting back on its feet after last week’s multi-day outage, Twitter goes down again."

WordPress flaw open in all versions, there is a fix however.