Letter Never Sent

NY Times: Push to Create Standards for Documents: “To cope with the problem, 30 companies, trade groups, academic institutions and professional organizations are announcing today the formation of the OpenDocument Format Alliance, which will promote the adoption of open technology standards by governments.” Necessary.

Jason Fried and Co. make $35,000 in 24 hours with their breezy PDF book, “Getting Real“. Great business move, but I’m drinking gallons of Haterade over this because I find 37 Signals products like “Basecamp” vastly overrated and expensive. Many of their products are marginally useful but way overhyped.

U.S. to boost arms sales to India: “”The essence of this strategic partnership is to provide a countervailing influence to China … to act as a restraint on the exercise of Chinese power,” security analyst Brahma Chellaney said.”

Why I love Slashdot, from a discussion on ” Was Thomas Edison Right about DC Power?”: “Taking this a bit further, why not have an entire rack power supply that can deliver a rail of 3.3V, 5V, and 12V to each server, thus eliminating the need for a high-current DC-DC converter on the target board? I am excluding things like the exotic voltages for CPU and RAM, but still it is the 12V and 5V rails that would have to be able to source significantly more current.” Where else would you find such electro-geekery?

slang watch: “ace” – Been seeing people say things like “f*cking ace”, which I guess is like “awesome”?

Unintelligent Design: “With Mimi, we’ve captured by chance a picture of an organism that was undergoing such a reduction, evolving toward fewer genes,” says Claverie. “This guy just retained more ancestral features than others.” Biologists, Claverie says, can no longer view viruses as random assemblages of genes. “We have to confer to these guys a nobility, a genealogy. Not only a genealogy. They are very ancestral, and their ancestors are at least contemporary with ours and those of all present-day life-forms. Mimi is like the missing link.”

Ben Goodger on the irritating Firefox memory leak: “What I think many people are talking about however with Firefox 1.5 is not really a memory leak at all. It is in fact a feature.” Bugs as design features. Sounds familiar.

Adaptive Foe Thwarts Counter-IED Efforts ““They’re deceiving our sensors. They’re fooling our analysis, and they’re challenging us in every front. Whether it’s IEDs, or tactics, techniques and procedures, we must be learners, and we must be adaptive,” he said.” via rw.

A Producer of Hip-Hop Gets Behind an Heiress Good article on Scott Storch, the producer behind the infectious “Run It”. “While Mr. Storch compared Ms. Hilton’s sound to Cyndi Lauper’s and Blondie’s, he tap-danced when asked if Ms. Hilton could actually hold a note. “If people are given the right circumstances and the right track and the right melody, it’s about the conviction,” he said. “It’s not necessarily about being a God-given virtuoso.”

Dog/Cat Fur Trade courtesy of Heather Mills aka Mrs. Paul McCartney. “It turned out to be a staggering 2 million cats and dogs raised under cruel conditions and then skinned alive, strangled or stabbed solely for their furs and skins. There is no cultural aspect of this – it is purely for money.”

The Last iPod Video Guide You’ll Ever Need

Student Life on the Facebook via waxy.org

Via metafilter, JT Leroy De-Masked. JT Leroy is actually two forty-something women.

Video from the point of view of an elusive Iraqi sniper. Warning: Depictions of violence, albeit from far away. Interesting inside view into war.

Carmakers widen seats for wider … seats “The 2006 Civic offers front seats that are three-quarters of an inch wider than those in the 2005 model. Purpose: “To meet the growing needs of our customers,” spokesman Sage Marie says.”

Do you work with office nazis? The kind of people who abhor slacking off and “unapproved” software like AIM, MSN Messenger, etc. If so, you need to check out Meebo. It’s a cool web front-end for AIM, YahooIM, Jabber, GoogleTalk, etc. Very cool.

The Book: “Love You Forever” by Robert Munsch, Illustrations by Sheila McGraw Read it online… it’s short. My mom bought this for me several years ago. Aww.