Nelson's Linkblog 2004-05

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OASIS Extensible Resource Identifier TC

2004-05-31 business • identifier • identity • oasis • protocol • reference • standards • tags • uri • xml • xri

Toolkit for building XML web services

2004-05-31 1060 • @todo • http • java • javascript • messaging • opensource • platform • python • rest • soap

dspam, spamassassin

Comparison of two open source spam filters

Joi Ito, web star

I hope this isn't all of your 15 minutes :-)

Get your Times on

Get your war on takes on the NYT retraction (via Metafilter)

2004-05-31 comic • comics • humor • mnftiu • politics • usa • war

Bush campaign lies

Washington Post on the vile stuff coming out of the Bush campaign

Nice interview with a guy who writes for computer games

Like Python's whitespace rules but you program in Perl? No problem! (via Daily Python URL)

2004-05-31 funny • perl • python

Pacific Crest Trail Map

via Matt Haughey

2004-05-31 backpacking • jmt • map • mapofpct • pct • thru-hiking • trails • trip_planning

Spam detectives

It's about time: someone realizes following the money trail is the way to bust spammers

4096 color wheel

Usable colour picker, although weirdly restricted to 12 bits

2004-05-30 color • colour • css • design • html • reference • tool • tools • web • webdesign • webdev

Proof of Perl insanity

Periodic table of Perl operators. Can it be any more complex? (via Slashdot)

2004-05-30 code • fun • funny • geek • humor • language • maps • perl • perl6 • programming • reference

Halliburton / Cheney

Army Corps of Engineer contract awarded to Halliburton in 2003 in coordination with Cheney

2004-05-30 people_cheney • politics

Simple search interface into Sun's online javadoc (via Tim Bray)

2004-05-30 api • code • development • docs • documentation • java • javadoc • javadocs • programming • reference • search

NYT Ombud on Iraq

Independent followup to the NYT massive retraction this week (via Gillmor)

Cruising diary blog

Man's adventures hunting for easy sex with truckers, etc (via MetaFilter)

New river gorge bridge

Another super-high bridge

Twin prime proof?

Amazing thing is the mathematician is in his 70s

Viaduc de Millau

Crazy French highway bridge, about 1000 feet high

2004-05-29 architecture • bridge • design • engineering • europa • france • millau • pont • reference • travel • viaduc

Ion Storm shakeup?

Wow - release Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3, then reorg the company (via Waxy)

Fun daily blog about anti-usability

2004-05-28 blog • blogs • broken • design • fun • funny • humor • interface • ui • usability • web

Cory finally reads Red Mars. I agree, it's a fantastic novel.

2004-05-28 arts • books • books/scifi • critique • literature • read • review • sf

Manhattan stonehenge

Today's the day the sunset is aligned with the Manhattan street grid

2004-05-28 apod • astronomy • fun • holidays • manhattan • newyork • nyc • photo • photos • science • travel

Telephone etiquette

scans of a 1940s booklet (via ?)

2004-05-27 book • howto • telephone

Times retraction fallout

How other newspapers are dealing with carrying the massive retraction

2000+ racial slurs, with etymology (via Metafilter)

2004-05-27 culture • dictionary • english • funny • humor • interesting • language • racism • reference • slur • words

Cat scratching post

Postmodern Pets - Scratching Swirl (via BoingBoing)

Congratulations! I really should switch to this, I hate Perl.

2004-05-27 blogs • blosxom • cms • python • tools • web

Shifts in web traffic

Alexa graphs reveal that there's more diversification in site readership (via Waxy)

2004-05-27 webstuff

Mini vs F150 crash

Giant Ford truck crumples more than tiny mini (via Anil Dash)

2004-05-27 automotive • car • cars • crash • design • engineering • fun • mini • news • safety • test

Low-carb donuts

What would that be - fried sawdust?

Ground Control 2 demo

The original was an excellent, if overlooked tactical combat game. Like an RTS without resource management. GC2 looks ambitious.

LuPy: Lucene ported

An alternative to the SWIG stuff

2004-05-26 api • aypwip • database • indexing • lucene • programming • proxyproject • python • search • software

SWIGged interfaces from Lucene to Python! via Daily Python URL

2004-05-26 indexing • lucene • proxyproject • python • search • web

Laugh away George, laugh away

Gish: innovative game

Slashdot | Gish Shows Odd Physics-Based Indie Platforming Flair

Olympus Mons caldera

APOD: 2004 May 26 - At the Summit of Olympus Mons

Bangkok traffic ballet

Amazing video of motorcycles threading traffic in Bangkok

Desktop background design art based on food

2004-05-26 art • design • desktop • desktops • foto • graphics • img • visualiseringer • visuals

bypass web site registrations

2004-05-26 free • internet • news • password • passwords • privacy • registration • security • tools • useful • web

E3 roundup roundup

Various game sites 'best of E3' pages

Futurama panoramas

This is pretty geeky. (via BoingBoing)

2004-05-24 animation • art • fotos • fun • futurama • humor • images • panorama • panoramas • television • tv

Slow Earthquake

Every 14 months there's a month-long earth movement

Atari homebrew scene

O'Reilly Network: Inside the Homebrew Atari 2600 Scene (via Slashdot)

2004-05-23 2600 • atari • entertainment • games • gaming • homebrew • import • programming • retrogaming • videogames • work

More on Powell minder

Remember when Powell's press aide knocked the camera away on TV? Some of the backstory.

120,000 terrorists

Flagging 120,000 people as potential terrorists is not helpful.

Naked rollercoaster

Finally, a photo

Impossible objects

Cool photos (via Waxy)

2004-05-22 art • cool • culture • design • history • impossible • interesting • photo • puzzles • toys • weird

goofy photo effect (via kottke)

2004-05-22 art • cool • coolstuff • design • flash • fun • hypnosis • misc • optical_illusions • wacky • weird

E3 XBox best-of

Only 2 of 14 of these games are original

2004-05-22 e3 • games • xbox

Gamer demographics

Interesting analyis about age and gender correlation to 1st person vs. 3rd person graphics

2004-05-22 games • gaming • graphic • immersiveness • virtual_environments • women

There retrenches

I never got There, it was like a boring bad MMORPG. Now it sounds like the company is doomed

Costikyan E3 notes

Greg's particularly grouchy today :-)

Fun worth1000 photoshop contest (via BoingBoing)

2004-05-22 fotos • graphics • humor • images • interestingwebsites • links • photo • photography

I normally hate movie web sites, but this one is pretty good. Plus, it's a great film. (via Slashdot)

2004-05-21 2 • art • design • entertainment • film • flash • george-lucas • movie • movies • technology

MIT notes, looking closely at JUnit's design. Turns out it's so bizarre for good reasons.

I didn't know these were real! A cargo cult in Vanuatu. (via MetaFilter)

2004-05-21 christian • faith • misc • news • odd • world

Tanenbaum on Linux

Andy Tanenbaum's take on the history of Unix and Linux, motivated by SCO nonsense

2004-05-20 fud • history • legal • linux • minix • os • people • programming • software • tanenbaum • unix

Blog by a game developer

2004-05-20 blog • design • dev • game • game.dev • gamedesign • gamedev • games • industry • programming/blogs • programming/gamedesign

Going back to the old slideshow technology

Foie gras CA ban

I'm so glad the California legislature has nothing better to do than destroy one family's business

This is one of the crueler things The Onion writes, but it's also the funniest. Read to the end.

Modesty is the new pride

Nick Denton: no, really, I don't want the attention

2004-05-19 blog • business • gawker

Reuters Iraq abuse

US soldiers abused reporters months ago

Vacuum tube agonizer

Cause pain to music (via Waxy)

2004-05-18 audio • effects • foo • guitar • insult • music • music/instruments • owmybrane • silly • technology • to-be-cleaned

Seattle library photos

New architecture (via Kottke)

2004-05-18 architecture • art • badassness • books • design • en • etc • images • libraries • photo • postmodernism

Malreported rectify

Boing Boing: Powell forces press aide to let him answer Meet the Press question

2004-05-18 politics

Katamaridamacy FAQ

Walkthrough, details of game

2004-05-17 damacy • games • katamari • playstation • ps2 • randomamusements

One of the oddball E3 games, looks really fun and innovative

Cameron does some research into press coverage of the beginnings of weblogs

2004-05-17 blog • blogosfæren • cyberstudier • friend

E3 oddball roundup

Waxy comes through with a fresh take on E3

Kerry with puppy

Maybe we'll be seeing some war photos of Bush soon. Oh, wait.

Iraq assassination

It's ok, this puppet government probably wasn't going to be the puppet government after June 30 anyway.

Boxing Squirrels

anthropomorphic - a case of curiosities

GTA3: SA details

New Grand Theft Auto game looking pretty interesting. Home come EuroGamer gets the scoop?

Gentoox blog (XBox)

Blog from the guy behind the XBox port of Gentoo Linux. Alas, right now it's drama.

2004-05-16 dsdev • gentoo • gentoox • gnu/linux • irc • kdehl • linux • os • software • software.distributions • xbox

Cartoon bunnies getting it on, on a watchface, on a billboard, in Times Square

Photo of a fireman on a wooden bike

Nick Berg conspiracy

Google Search: a lot of theories out there

Sad roundup of the man-flesh on display at E3 (via BoingBoing)

2004-05-15 e3 • funny • gaming • gender

Pitcairn Island

Fun Metafilter post

Opera/RSS integration

Looks like it's tied to their mail client

ScanSSH proxy scan

Useful little tool to hunt for open proxies, etc

2004-05-15 networking • opensource • programming • scan • security • software • ssh • tools

Cell phone / gas fire

I always thought this was a hoax

Firefox screenshots

nice alternative to khtml? (via Zawodny)

2004-05-15 design • development • firefox • interweb • mozilla • screenshot • screenshots • thumbnail • tools • web

I'm with Matt; I think having Internet at the ballpark is hideous

Red Cross abuse rpt.

The full thing, bless you Cryptome. (via Joi Ito)

annotations for Java code

2004-05-15 ant • development • framework • j2ee • java • opensource • programming • reference • software • tools • xdoclet

Basic computer games

Ah, my childhood (via Metafilter)

2004-05-15 basic • computing • game • games • gaming • geekery • history • oblink • oldschool • programming • retro

whois toblog.org

Someone is republishing my linkblog without my permission on nelson.toblog.org

Average IQ scores are going up 3% per decade

2004-05-13 ai/psychology • effect • flynneffect • intelligence • iq • psychology • sf • society • storyideas • wiki • wikipedia

It just gets worse and worse

Star Wars fraud

SDI doesn't work, why are we spending money on it?

links screenshots

Did you know that links, the text browser, also has a GUI mode?!

2004-05-13 browser • opensource • software • web

Classic Life in Hell quote

Simpson's paradox

Interesting statistics quirk

2004-05-12 averages • ebm • interesting • math • mathematics • metaanalysis • paradox • paradoxes • science • statistics • wikipedia

Rectangle nebula

Wacky space image

Suprnova interview

Slovenia is the secret (via Cameron)

2004-05-12 bittorrent • p2p • piracy • suprnova • torrent • ts

FF XI economics

Lack of information yields interesting arbitrage opportunities

2004-05-12 badassness • econ • economics • economy • ffxi • geeky • mmogs • research

slang from the past

An automatic form generator for Web Services

2004-05-12 dev • forms • generator • safari_export • web • wsdl • xml • xml/www

Network visualizations

cool collection of various tools, with screenshots (via muxway)

2004-05-11 design • graph • information • java • programming • reference • software • technology • tools • vis • visualization

Chrono Trigger remake

Really great old SNES RPG, now being remade in 3d without authorization

Python switch stmt

Clever use of anonymous dictionaries

2004-05-10 coding • comp.lang.python • idiom • php • prog • programming • python • snippets • switch • tips • программирование

Half Life 2 preview

IGN has a good hands-on look (via Waxy)

2004-05-10 pcgames

2004-05-10 ancient • cartography • classical • geek • geo • geography • gis • history • map • maps • sites

Turn images into giant posters

2004-05-10 art • cool • design • graphics • images • photo • photography • photos • poster • software • tools

Anil Dash with an amusing reflection

2004-05-10 about • blog • blogs • blogs-i-frequent • mp3 • music • nerdalert • songs

Everquest economics

The exchange rate for virtual to real money varies 2x on different EQ servers

Bad PayPal policy

PayPal's aggressive chargeback rules backfire when virtual goods are involved

2004-05-10 goods • ige • kate • payment • paypal • virtual

People sure do spend a lot of time figuring out drug slang

2004-05-09 420 • cool • culture • dope • drug • drugs • history • reference • wikipedia

Lovely little bit of Flash despair art

2004-05-09 animaţie • deviantart • flash • fun • godspeed • movies • smile

Rape rooms chronolog

Bush doublespeak about torture in Iraq (via Anil Dash)

2004-05-09 bush • fbush • foreignpolicy • heyurl • linklog • media • politics

Space station spotting

It's a sky blue sky, the satellites are out tonight

Iraq dissension

Folks talkin out of school. The war is going from bad to worse.

XBox freeze fixes

Things to try if an XBox game doesn't work right

XBox 1.6 now modded

Major redesign of XBox, mod community figured it out in about a week

Poker starting hand

Stats for how your starting hand is likely to go

2004-05-08 *toread • aypwip • card.games • entertainment • fun • games • howto • poker • poker_odds • strategy • texasholdem

Dictionary domains

Waxy has a list of english words available as DNS names. 18 months old, but still cool.

2004-05-08 blog • domain • domainname • domains • hosting • internet • internet/domains • reference • tech • useful • webservices

Easy Mac upgrade

Zawodny moves to a new Mac, finds it easy to move his application state.

new group acting as a watchdog on US conservative media

2004-05-07 activism • blog • blogs • daily • journalism • liberal • media • news • politics • progressive • watchdog

Floppy RAID striping

The wonders of MacOS make this easy (via Metafilter)

2004-05-07 apple • floppy • fun • funny • geek • hacks • hardware • humor • mac • osx • raid

Castronova is free

Funny rant from a professor who really just wants to study virtual worlds, not economics

2004-05-07 commonrefs • economics • games • ludology • mathematics

Mildly amusing music video made from classic video games

2004-05-07 flash

This pose looks like he's just about to grab someone's throat from behind

Persistent holes

Watch the movie in this page: a freaky fluid - make a hole in it and the hole persists, or even grows and writhes.

2004-05-06 art • chaos • cool • fluids • interesting • physics • research • science • video • videos • waves

Nice web form for detailed DNS queries

2004-05-06 admin • dns • internet • network • networking • security • sysadmin • tool • tools • utility • web

Kataba functions

Java library that replaces Method.invoke with dynamically compiled code. Easier API, faster execution.

2004-05-06 java • java.reflection • reflection

Redistricting the electoral college

Wacky proposal to treat presidential elections similar to House of Representatives. (via Waxy)

2004-05-06 electoral_college • gis • government • interesting • politics • voting

XOP, binary XML

Someone's invented a more binary-friendly XML serialization. Why not just switch to length delimited data and be done with it? Or define an escape sequence for the CDATA-close mark?

2004-05-06 23 • binary • mtom • service.orientation • services • soa • web.services • webservices • xop

SQLite embedded DB

SQLite: An Embeddable SQL Database Engine

2004-05-05 c • database • db • development • embedded • library • opensource • programming • software • sql • sqlite

Yahoo is just full of head puncture injury xrays

Did you know SCO employed over 2750 people?

Dirvish backups

Some sort of automated rsync backup system (via diveintomark)

2004-05-05 backup • from.omniweb • linux • neteng • redo.omniweb • rsync • software • sysadmin • tech • tools

Reality is Corrosive

Fine Sam Ruby rant about how various abstractions in Internet programming don't really work

2004-05-05 architecture • design • encoding • http • programming • protocol • soap • toread • web • webservices • xml

Eunuch beauties

Babi Darling and Lakshmi

Iraq prison murders

It's not just sexual humiliation, it's outright murder?!

Wachowski sex swap

Rumour that one of the Wachowski brothers is to become a woman

Finger must die

Cameron discusses the risks of an obsolete protocol

Photos of a boat caked in ice (via MetaFilter)

2004-05-04 photography

No vote oversight

The federal commission whose job it is to verify that voting machines work right is underfunded. Result? No oversight on voting machines.

An enhanced Interactive Python

2004-05-04 code • development • ide • ipython • linux • opensource • programming • python • shell • software • tools

Java VM tool interface

Java 1.5 has a new interface for doing profiling, debugging, etc. Looks powerful.

Tim's paean to Jython

Great essay on the power of dynamic languages mixed with Java. It's very welcome to think this sort of idea may influence Sun.

2004-05-04 1b • 1r • blogmarks • etang • groovy • java • jython • programming • python • scripting • tech

Great x-ray photo of a shiv in the skull of an unfortunate prison guard

Bush doesn't read the New Yorker, either, even when it has a report detailing abuses by his military

Paul Rand's old books

Blogger finds used books that used to belong to the famous designer (via Kottke)

Vintage Polish erotica

With an amazing page-turning Flash interface (via Zawodny)

Rollercoaster Tycoon 3

This is looking better and better, check out the screenshots

User friendly feeds

Mark plays with the info tag in Atom, unifies browsers and feed readers

2004-05-03 atom • blogs • css • design • feed • feeds • rss • web • webdesign • xml • xslt

NoWords sat. photos

Beautiful art from satellite photos (via Eric Case)

2004-05-03 aerial • art • cool • images • img • interesting-stuff • no • photography • photos • space • wallpaper

www.mnftiu.cc | get your war on | page thirty-three

2004-05-02 comics • gywo • humor • mnftiu • oblink

NK explosion image

This photo from SPOT, good overview of whole area

Iraq torture comments

Scathing criticism, both funny and painful (via BoingBoing)

How do you know when to use who or whom? Easy: never use whom. It's a dead word. (via Eric Case)

2004-05-02 english • grammar • journalism • language • reference • who • whom • writing

Xbox 1.6 new mobo

Looks like a radical change to the Xbox motherboard layout

Methodist gay panic

Methodists Rule Aganist Homosexuality

Botnets for rent

The illicit trade in compromised PCs (via Slashdot)

2004-05-01 security

Tim Bray and Mark both pick up on this inexplicable new project

2004-05-01 programming • stupid • webservices • wtf • xml