links for 2009-11-17

"Highlighting exemplary examples of code written by fine programmers."

Twitter is being led by the "biggest social retards in the world".

"So Palin is suggesting that the AP's effort to fact-check her book — something a news organization has a journalistic duty to do if it's going to report on it — means that it is somehow ignoring the stories of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's trial and Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan's associations? Sorry, but… where's the link?"

"Most women should start regular breast cancer screening at age 50, not 40, according to new guidelines released Monday by an influential group that provides guidance to doctors, insurance companies and policy makers."

"Now a group of such companies, organized under the auspices of the Internet Archive, has formed a non-profit entity to hold URL-shortening databases in escrow, with the intent of continuing to resolve a member company's links should it get out of the business. At announcement, the 301Works organization has 21 URL-shortener members, including the largest, bit.ly. Many others are not (yet) on board. The members have agreed to cede control of their domain names to 301Works.org should they exit the field, and to back up their URL mappings regularly to the organization."

"A Zambian newspaper editor was acquitted Monday on charges of distributing obscene materials with the intent of corrupting public morals, a case filed against her after she sent photos of a woman in childbirth to government officials and other prominent figures. Many media advocates in Zambia and throughout the world considered the arrest of Chansa Kabwela, news editor of The Post, to be an assault on press freedom. The newspaper and the government of President Rupiah Banda have been at loggerheads about allegations of public corruption."

"The transcript of Mr. Bierfeldt’s recording shows that the officers, evidently unaware that Mr. Bierfeldt was recording the session, threatened Mr. Bierfeldt with federal arrest for declining to account for the cash. Mr. Bierfeldt kept asking politely whether he was legally required to answer. This intransigence irritated the officers. It is not illegal, by the way, to carry a large amount of cash while traveling. (The law does require cash amounts over $10,000 to be declared on international trips.) And as the American Civil Liberties Union argued in a lawsuit filed in June against the T.S.A. in the Bierfeldt case, screeners exceeded their authority in detaining him and demanding explanations once Mr. Bierfeldt had cleared standard checkpoint security inspection."

"Unlike WordPress 2.8, which Mark Jaquith describes as the Snow Leopard of WordPress since most of the basis of the WordPress 2.8 upgrade was complete rewrites and optimization of the infrastructure that ran WordPress instead of providing lots of new features in the same way Apple’s new OS X release is a focus on improved performance instead of features, WordPress 2.9 brings major new “bling” to the table. As a reminder of WordPress 2.8, you can see the writeup that Jonathan Dingman brought us last time around."

"You're surprised? I told you, I told you, I told you. So, to those who feel crushed at the moment, there could be an appeal, I suppose. And if you want freedom for your code, you certainly can find it on Planet Earth. Look in the right direction. You'll be happy you did, because you can hack away to your heart's content, and it's perfectly legal. The court's message is clear: EULAs mean what they say; if you don't want to abide by its license, leave Apple's stuff alone." Not surprised.

"Three prominent conservatives warned in a joint statement against Republican "scaremongering" on Guantanamo Bay detainees, saying the prison in Thomson, Illinois would be fine to handle them."

"call it the “Domain Game.” Now days it can be almost impossible to select a domain name for your business’s website. When I get a project, many times the client will give me a list of ten or more possible domain names, and I have to respectfully suggest that they make me another list of ten after I have explained to them my tips for selecting a good domain name. Many times they are too long, too hard to spell, or just too generic. Another big issue these days is the buying up of domain names. Many times you cannot even get your company’s name, because they have been bought up by people to sell the domain later at a higher price."

"172 final country flag icons which rendered at 256×256, 128×128, 64×64, 48×48, 32×32, 24×24, 16×16 pixels and formats are png, ico and icns."

"Besides Turn off the lights feature I explained earlier, YouTube has more great stuff. I believe that you noticed "change view" feature which allows you to switch between normal and wide mode and thus expand/shrink movie area. I like this feature because in different circumstances, I need a different view. But the thing I like the most is that, although layout changes, it is done seamingly and all the information remains easily accessible."

"In the hands of children and tweens, today’s cell phones are primarily used as text messaging devices, cameras, gaming consoles, video viewers, MP3 players, and incidentally, as mobile phones via the speaker capability so their friends can chime in on the call. Parents are getting dialed in to the social media phenomenon and beginning to understand—and limit—how children use new media."

TrojanHorse for real.

"In summary, Almon was 20 feet away, holding only a pocket knife, which he immediately gave up when he realized the two officers were police. Cattabriga was with another officer, both were carrying both handguns and tasers, and they were following Almon. But it was Officer Cattabriga who apparently feared for his safety."

A Star Editor takes on the memo firing editors at the paper, and kicks but.

What do you experiment with.

"Media Matters for America has documented numerous falsehoods in Sarah Palin's memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life. Below is a list of what we've found so far."

"The Supreme Court is staying out of a dispute in Miami between school officials and civil libertarians over a book about Cuba that depicts smiling children in communist uniforms but avoids mention of problems in the country. The justices on Monday rejected an appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida that sought to prevent Miami officials from removing the book "Vamos a Cuba" and its English-language version, "A Visit to Cuba," from library shelves."

"Profanity it offends me."

"Perhaps in a sign of how the plague of social media has numbed us all to the value of legitimate human connections, the New Oxford American Dictionary has picked the verb "unfriend," or "to remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site such as Facebook," as its 2009 Word of the Year."

"When you’re elbows-deep in applying visual tweaks to your HTML email design, it’s very easy to forget how important writing quality, punchy copy can be. Tailoring email copy to your audience is not a matter of ensuring your message is readable even with images turned off, but presenting it in a style that your readers will respond to. In this post we’ll highlight some considerations when writing effective email copy, including tone, personality, keeping it concise, offering value to the reader and testing."

"China has become one of a handful of nations to own one of the top five supercomputers in the world."

"World leaders at a food summit on Monday rallied around a new strategy to fight global hunger and help poor countries feed themselves, but failed to pledge funds sought by the U.N. The summit approved its final declaration during its first hours in a show of broad consensus. Countries pledged to substantially increase aid to agriculture in developing nations, so that the world's 1 billion hungry can become more self-sufficient. The summit did not commit to a specific figure of $44 billion a year for agricultural aid that the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says will be necessary in the coming decades."

"In an effort to cut condiment expenses and address the gluttony, waste, and utter lack of self-restraint exhibited by Americans, officials from the fast food industry announced Monday a new policy prohibiting all customers from dispensing their own ketchup. "We thought our patrons were responsible enough to handle a self-service ketchup pump," said McDonald's CEO James A. Skinner, who claimed that fast food industry leaders were partially to blame for overestimating the maturity of the American public."

"The court ruled that two articles in the city's civil code that say only people of different sexes can get married are illegal. The court decision applies only to Buenos Aires. Same-sex unions in most of the rest of Argentina remain illegal."

"Blueprint is a CSS framework, which aims to cut down on your development time. It gives you a solid foundation to build your project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, useful plugins, and even a stylesheet for printing."

"Rupert Murdoch has said he will try to block Google from using news content from his companies. The billionaire told Sky News Australia he will explore ways to remove stories from Google's search indexes, including Google News. Mr Murdoch's News Corp had previously said it would start charging online customers across all its websites."

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Internet Explorer – the bane of most web developers' existence. Up to 60% of your development can be wasted just trying to squash out IE specific bugs which isn't really a productive use of your time. In this tutorial, you are going to learn about the most common IE bugs and rendering disparities and how to easily squash them or deal with them."

"Although Lou Dobbs has been saying that his departure from CNN was an "amicable parting on the best of terms," the New York Post reports that CNN wanted him gone so badly that it gave him an $8 million severance package."