links for 2009-09-10

"Hugely popular conservative talker Glenn Beck has sicced his lawyers on a satirical website that's been up for a week, but the attorneys may have a point on this one. The site, called glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com, toes the line on defamation—and may have stepped across it." Personally I would go with no.

Obama zombified kids to go through school.

"Critical body language and murmurs of disapproval are typical at presidential addresses and part of the political theater. But members of both parties were trying to recollect such a pointed attack from an individual lawmaker during a presidential address and noted that a similar remark could be draw a formal reprimand if delivered during a routine session of the House."

That says it all.

"Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) shouts as U.S. President Barack Obama addresses a joint session of the U.S. Congress at the U.S. Capitol September 9, 2009 in Washington, DC. Obama addressed the joint session to urge passage of his national health care plan, the centerpiece of his domestic agenda." Seriously?

"Customers with individual Nation plans of $59.99 or higher can use A-List with Rollover to select up to five domestic phone numbers to call anytime –including landlines and wireless numbers on any network– without using any of the minutes in their plan. FamilyTalk customers with plans of $89.99 or more can select up to ten numbers which any person in the FamilyTalk plan can call as much as they want."

"As for that interview, incidentally, it was one of the more aggravating experiences that I've had in my brief "career" in politics. There was just no pretense of trying to do anything even vaguely resembling the news. I'm not reflexively anti-FOX; in fact, I'd had a couple of good experiences last year on Shepherd Smith and on their business channel. But as for their morning program: Wow. I've never met people more terrified of what might happen if they actually tried to engage in a rational discussion." Nate Silver on Fox News' morning program.

"On August 28 2009 Dries Buytaert, the original author of the great open source CMS Drupal (which powers this site among other things), announced on his blog a new trademark policy for the software. We believe this policy does not accord with the spirit of free software: it says we should have asked them for permission to create this site! The clause may or may not stand up in court, but it's clearly there in the text. Other large open source projects don't do this, e.g. see the Linux trademark policy."

"The media — by which I mean the cable news networks, primarily — will determine whether Palin's view on health care becomes influential. There are many Republican, conservative health care spokespeople who have earned the right to speak for their party's principals, and, truth be told, can recite the talking points (complete with Ronald Reagan quote) better than Palin and her writer can. They're the ones who should be offended if Palin's op-ed becomes the voice of the opposition tomorrow, because Palin isn't seen by most Americans as a particularly trenchent analyst of policy. Indeed, the reason why Palin's team wants to get her pieces in publications like the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal is that, in this next phase of her political career, Mrs. Palin has to burnish her policy skills. And the Journal is all too willing to lend some space to this project, because plenty of people will see the piece."

"Twitter Inc., the Web site that lets people post 140-character messages, plans to add services for businesses that will generate revenue in the fourth quarter, co-founder Biz Stone said. The products might include an “analytics dashboard” to help companies monitor Tweets about their business, or verified corporate Twitter accounts, Stone told reporters yesterday at an event in Mexico City."

"AT&T plans to begin deployment of HSPA 7.2 in six major U.S. cities, including Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and Miami, with initial service availability expected in these markets by the end of the year. All told, the company plans to deploy HSPA 7.2 in 25 of the nation’s 30 largest markets by the end of 2010, and to reach about 90 percent of its existing 3G network footprint with HSPA 7.2 by the end of 2011."

"The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against a Mississippi agency, claiming religious music and Bible teachings were part of a state-sponsored event discouraging premarital sex."

Dilbert on patents.

"Good news for extension developers: as of today, extensions are turned on by default on Google Chrome's dev channel."