links for 2009-10-11

"One way of significantly speeding up your website is by caching information you retrieve remotely from other websites or databases. Caching information is extremely simple and can save your users seconds of unnecessary waiting. Here’s how I cache my FeedBurner follower count on my site." Usefull.

The way to make money in the 21'st century: "provide them information".

"Lawyers working on a $1 billion copyright lawsuit filed by Viacom against Google's YouTube may have uncovered evidence that employees of the video site were among those who uploaded unauthorized content to YouTube. In addition, internal YouTube e-mails indicate that YouTube managers knew and discussed the existence of unauthorized content on the site with employees but chose not to remove the material, three sources with knowledge of the case told CNET." That was beyond dumb.

"I think that all homo sapiens can understand how the mere thought of an organization that receives government money through contract mechanisms being tangentially involved in setting up a fake tax shelter for a fake pimp and his fake prostitution ring of fake prostitutes can justifiably lead to lawmakers going absolutely cross-eyed with white-hot, impotent rage. But what happens when a similarly taxpayer-endowed contractor attempts to cover up employee-on-employee gang rape by locking up the victim in a shipping container without food and water and threatening her with reprisals if she report the incident? Somehow, it doesn't engender the same level of anger!"

"Don’t get me wrong; my wife is great. I bristle when I overhear someone say that my DVR is smarter than she is. Chloe went to SUNY-Binghamton. She’s plenty smart. My DVR knows French, but so what? It’s not like I go to French restaurants with my DVR. . . . O.K., one time I went to Le Pescadou with my DVR. Chloe and I were going through a weird time. I was hungry. There was nothing on TV. No, that last part about TV is a joke. Get it? Because I was with my DVR? Doesn’t matter. Point is— No, actually, it does matter. My DVR would have got it." Beyond funny.

"A recently published statement on current scientific knowledge on cosmic evolution and biological evolution from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences concludes: "The extraordinary progress in our understanding of evolution and the place of man in nature should be shared with everyone. … Furthermore, scientists have a clear responsibility to contribute to the quality of education, especially as regards the subject of evolution." The statement appears in the proceedings of "Scientific Insights into the Evolution of the Universe and of Life," a plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences held from October 31 to November 4, 2008." Why is that the Vatican can affirm evolution but the everyone else doesn't?

"I'm not going to name the biggest challenge, but I will say that a large challenge facing feminism today is the need to value all the different choices that women make. I'd like to see feminism focus a little bit more on motherhood and mothering, and not just work-family balance, but also valuing the choices associated with mothering and with being a mother. I think that it's a shift that will occur intergenerationally, because our mothers' generation was so determined to win the rights associated with equality feminism, the right to be equal to men rather than being seen as different than them. And I'm so glad that happened, and I think it's so important. But now, in my generation, I see all these women who want to be mothers and don't feel like they have the social or structural support to do that. So I think it's so important for feminism to work on that." I loved Odd Girl Out.

"US President Barack Obama has said he will end the ban on gay people serving openly in the US military. But he has faced criticism for what many in the gay community see as lack of action on his promises. "

"Even though my sex life is the best it has ever been, it’s more important to me that I’ve figured out how I define my feminism for myself. The thrills of a dom/sub relationship might not work for other women and men who use the same “feminist” label that I do, but I’m not worrying about them anymore. I know I can enjoy a bedroom dynamic which, outside the bedroom, wouldn’t be acceptable. And I can still call myself a feminist." How to both be a feminist outside the bedroom and a sub in the bedroom.

"The large asteroid Apophis poses less of a threat of walloping the Earth in the year 2036 than previously thought, new research finds. The asteroid would not cause a global catastrophe, but could likely spawn significant regional devastation if it were ever to strike the planet, scientists have said. The new data shows that the asteroid will make another close approach with Earth in 2068 with the chance of impact currently at approximately three-in-a-million. As with the other potential impacts, now ruled as mere close encounters, the probability of the 2069 impact is expected to go down as more information on the asteroid is gathered."

"Iranian officials have sentenced to death three protesters who participated in demonstrations following the nation’s disputed presidential election in June, according to ISNA, Iran’s semiofficial news agency."

"Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one." Too funny.

"Seventeen months out of Rutgers University, they live in an unwelcome continuum of mass rejection. Between them, Kristy and Katie Barry, identical twins who grew up in Ohio, have applied for some 150 jobs: a magazine for diabetics, a Web site about board games and a commercial for green tea-flavored gum; fact-checking at Scholastic Books, copy editing for the celebrity baby section of People.com, road-tripping for College Sports Television."

"BREIN has been accusing us for breaking dutch law with allowing people in The Netherlands to access TPB." The article makes it sound suspiciously like the organization (BREIN) made up evidence.

"I would refuse to let my child have the flu vaccine if he hadn't died of measles earlier this year." The Onion has the best response.

"In the end, all the heartache becomes a singular heartache, as the lieutenant’s relationship with Izzy stands in for the whole: the Iraqis, on one side, wanting peace, freedom and their country; and on the other side, the United States, rich, powerful, with multiple aims, seemingly incapable of making this happen. The book rides a line between the reality of the situation in Iraq — putting us thoroughly in the soldiers’ heads — and that at home, with cutaways to Congressional sessions about the apparent lack of progress on the ground. Finkel seems to suggest that if the politicians knew just how impossible and trying the circumstances were, they’d understand why more hadn’t been done."

"The three current big megatrends in the web/tech sector are mobile, social, and real-time. I like to think of this as the golden triangle. You can build interesting businesses in each of these three sectors. The iPhone is the poster child of mobile. Facebook is the poster child of social. Twitter is the poster child of real-time." The golden triangle of the internet.

"Complicating matters, there are few prescribed social norms on Twitter like those in more closed communities like Facebook. The service has attained mass popularity without much time to develop an organic users’ culture. On top of that, with tweets limited to 140 characters, users come right to the point without context or nuance. The same laws of libel and defamation that apply to traditional media and the Internet also apply to Twitter, according to free speech experts. (Defamation is when someone knowingly says something false that causes harm.) What is likely to shift, said Floyd Abrams, the well-known First Amendment lawyer, is what language is considered acceptable and whether it is deemed harmful. In the 1950s, he explained, it was libelous to call someone a Communist; today it is not."