Six places you must use AJAX

Tips, pointers, and discussion on where and when AJAX should be employed.

Top Ten rules for Startups

It's on! You've got a really cool idea, a draft-version business plan, and a couple of interested angel investors. And what you don't know could fill a book. Solution: Evhead's got some tips that can lead you down the path of entrepeneurial enlightenment.

If Monday Night Football were covered like Iraq

If Monday Night Football were covered like Iraq:

INDIANAPOLIS — The Indianapolis Colts, seeking to silence critics who say they are overrated, fell short of that mark on Monday night by outscoring the Pittsburgh Steelers by a mere 3-point margin in the first quarter. Despite the unspectacular first-quarter margin, Colts head coach Tony Dungy insisted that his team was winning the battle. “Hey, we’re up three,” said Dungy. “In my book that’s a lead.” But critics pointed out that the Colts gained their lead only as a result of a desperation 80-yard pass by quarterback Peyton Manning to Marvin Harrison on their first play of the game...

Faux Outrage over Real News

The EIB network covers the hypocritical mainstream media who, if memory serves, had nothing to say after CNN admitted covering up Saddam's atrocities in order to keep the Baghdad bureau open.

PRESIDENT BUSH: I'll continue to push for pro-growth economic policies, all aimed at making sure every American can realize the American dream. Thank you very much. BILL PLANTE, CBS NEWS: What about the planting of paid propaganda in the Iraqi press, Mr. President? RUSH: (Laughing.) "What about the planting of paid propaganda in the Iraqi press, Mr. President?" Can we go back, does anybody remember the name Eason Jordan? ...Eason Jordan was the bureau chief, or some executive position at CNN, and he purposely did not report the [atrocities] of Saddam Hussein because they wanted to keep their presence there. They wanted to keep their bureau open, and they were afraid that if they reported bad news that Saddam would kick them out. What was the point of staying if you weren't going to tell people the truth about what went on in Iraq? So here's a CNN executive who wrote a piece in the New York Times admitting all this, that he had to cover up bad news and not report it in order to keep the bureau -- and went on TV to say, "I believe it was very virtuous and there were a lot of journalists who did the same thing." Well, those journalists are absolutely worthless, then. They're worthless. If they're not going to tell us the truth. This is why you end up having to plant good stories around because you can't count on the mainstream press to tell the whole story... Now, they have the guts, the audacity to be upset over what is the planting of true, good news in Iraq. The crime is, it has to be planted... This is Reuters reporter Nadim Ladki, October 14th, 2002, dispatched from Baghdad, "Defiant Iraqis lined up to show their support for Saddam Hussein Tuesday as western powers were deadlocked over how to deal with the veteran leader they say threatens world security. Iraqis were in a festive mood as they turned out to vote in a presidential referendum Saddam is sure to win." Yeah, got 99% of the vote, the 1% that didn't vote are probably in a prison and dead by now. Talk about propaganda. We get propaganda in the news every day, propaganda from the Democratic Party, the New York Times is the Democratic National Committee Times. AP, Washington Post, all these networks, they're simply slaves to the Democratic Party. They're simply a giant collective house organ, and the news in Iraq is propaganda. The news on the economy, propaganda. It's not factual.

Hold your ground

Hugh Hewitt reprises Lord of the Rings:

Witness Aragorn's speech outside the gates of Mordor: Hold your ground, hold your ground. Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West! This is what warriors do. They don't cut and they don't run or take flight when they have been bloodied. Without men and women like this, I would not be free.

The Mr. T Nav System: "Turn Left, Fool!"

I think we'll be okay, just so long as they don't resort to using the voice of the uber-shrill Karen from "Will and Grace".

Everything he tells you to do -- everything -- starts with "Hey, Fool!" That's true even when he's telling you to do something dumb, like drive onto the lower level of the Queensboro Bridge when the upper level is the one you need. California company NavTones has contracted with Mr. T and the actors Burt Reynolds and Dennis Hopper to record voices that can be loaded into navigation systems...

First watch to use e-Paper hits the stores

The Japanese company Seiko is set to release a limited edition of 500 units of their new Spectrum SVRD001. It will be the first watch to employ flexible e-paper, a technology called EPD (electrophoretic display). The form-factor is that of a bracelet made of stainless steel, which incorporates a unique, large e-paper display.

Word to the wise: wait a few months. Remember, Roger Moore's LED watch from the 1973 Bond film cost a couple of grand. Just 18 months later, I think the street price was about three bucks.

Digg: "Bellsouth wants to rig the Internet"

The CTO of BellSouth raised a s**tstorm blogstorm of controversy when Digg picked up his comments that, "an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc." In other words, the carrier could decide which content provider gets preferential treatment -- not based on consumer demand or technical need, but on back-room dealings. This would mean the end of "network neutrality" and perhaps incite a war between content providers and ISPs intent on taxing packets.

The Washington Post notes that some view "[p]rioritization [as] just another word for degrading your competitor... If we want to ruin the Internet, we'll turn it into a cable TV system [that carries programming from only those who pay the cable operators for transmission]."

Some of the more noteworthy remarks at Digg include the following:

BellSouth is a phone provider, and historically they have received special treatment (such as rights to string their phone lines everywhere) in exchange for not discriminating in their services provided and such. They have often gotten common carrier status, sort of thing. If they are going to start "improving" the quality of their other services, thus degrading their competitors services, then they don't deserve that common carrier status any more. They should be held liable for anything transmitted over their networks, since they are exercising their abilities to give priority to certain types of traffic and possibly to filter some traffic. I don't understand this. Am I not already paying for the pipe that i use to access Yahoo, Google, vonage, etc? I dunno, It sounds like the high tech equivalent of a protection racket. "Mr. Google, you should probably pay us more money. We wouldn't want anything to 'happen' to your packets now would we?" These moldy old copper barons are really delusional about their place in the world these days. People pay them to get access to content on the internet. If the net's big content providers have any brains at all they will respond to the first ISP to do this by blocking that ISP's customers with a polite message stating why they are doing so along with some handy links to that ISP's competitors who aren't selling damaged service. The network is a commodity now, it's the content that matters. These guys have it backwards.

EduCase picked up one of my earlier articles on network neutrality. If you feel strongly about network neutrality, contact the FCC commissioners and let them know (politely) what you think about telcos trying to tax packets.


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Geoff Fox
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SmartMobs

Uh oh

The "divinely inspired" leader of Iran has apparently raised the defcon-level in Israel:

"Israel, and not only Israel, cannot accept a situation in which Iran has nuclear weapons," Sharon told reporters, "We are also taking all the necessary preparations to be ready for this kind of situation."

Party of Defeat vs. Party of Victory

William Krystol, writing in the Standard:

Pelosi's endorsement today of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq makes the House Democrats the party of defeat, the party of surrender. Bush's strong speech today means the GOP is likely to be--if Republican Congressmen just keep their nerve--the party of victory.

Go ahead and say it. You know you want to. Go ahead. Indeed. Ahhhhhhh.

Doesn't that make you feel better? For more good times, visit GatewayPundit, whose maps illustrate various approval ratings. Go for the pictures, stay for the commentary. Then visit the virtual television commercial over at Blogmeister. He's showcasing a harsh rebuttal to the mediacrats over at "MovinOn.org" -- or whatever the hard-left, Soros-funded gasbags are calling themselves these days.

What would we do without Experts?

Headline in the New London, CT newspaper: Experts see frigid days ahead. Genius. Sheer genius.

How to write good

The mythical "Pete" over at DevelopingStorm has boiled down the writing process to an elegant, simple formula. Read it and be amazed.

Best of Bruce Schneier

There are two recent articles linked on Bruce Schneier's blog that are worthy of "special" attention: "Safecracking with thermal imaging" and "Hoofnagle's top ten privacy list". The latter is a set of recommendations for consumers to help combat identity theft. Check 'em both out. They're good. Real good.

Let that be a warning to you Flash web designers

I've been inundated with requests here at DR@J World Headquarters that usually go something like this: "Why doesn't Drudge Report link to me?" Well, let this be a lesson for you budding web designers. Matt Drudge likes spartan sites:

"For the wire stories, I've always looked for places with low graphics, without a lot of spinning Java tops on them," Drudge said, referring to the programming language that powers many animated banner ads that can sometimes slow the process of downloading a Web page. "When I send my readers someplace, I want it to be convenient for them to get there."

In the words of the immortal Frank Zappa, "Keep it texty so it go down easy," which I would take to mean keep your pages lightweight.

The "game" that makes people cry

From the research labs at Electronic Arts comes a weird, appealing new type of computer-based entertainment. I'm not sure it's even what we would traditionally call a "game":

Dragging clouds through the sky. That's the most exciting activity you can do in Cloud, a new computer game where you play a young boy who flies through the air above a small group of islands. Add in slow melodic piano music and beautiful water-colour graphics, and Cloud becomes the only relaxing game I can ever recall playing...

Implementing shadows with CSS

This lengthy -- but highly informative -- article describes in rich, lustrous, and fully illustrated detail how shadows can be implemented using style-sheets. Rock on, Shape of Days Blog. Rock on.

The scamera store

I don't think this rocket-scientist scamera store operator ever figured this story would spread like wildfire through the small network of computers we like to call "the Internet" (hat tip: T):

"I will make sure you will never be able to place an order on the internet again." "I'm an attorney, I will sue you." "I will call the CEO of your company and play him the tape of this phone call." "I'm going to call your local police and have two officers come over and arrest you." "You'd better get this through your thick skull." "You have no idea who you are dealing with." These are all direct threats that I received today from an individual who identified himself as Steve Phillips, the manager of PriceRitePhoto in Brooklyn, New York when I called to inquire about my order with them. My crime? Telling him that I planned to write an article about my unfortunate experience with his company regarding the camera order I had placed with him yesterday...

Don't paint your car... skin it

The AutoSkin is a custom-made, digitally colored "skin" for automobiles. High-res artwork can be drawn on the skin, which is then melded to the car. It is supposedly indistinguishable from a conventional paint job and is of photgraphic quality. Toyota's Scion line -- with its heavy emphasis on mass-customization -- ought to be all over this.

Byrd (Lorie, not Robert) let's 'em have it

L Lorie Byrd, operating over at Townhall, has a powerful message for the electorate.

...the actions of the Democrats over the past three years have exposed them as incapable of governing in today’s world of global Islamic terrorism... They have shown that not only will they endlessly debate until it is [impossibly] late but that after a military action has been initiated, in the face of difficulties and waning public support, many will back out and abandon the mission and the troops.

The opposition party, faced with exactly the same pre-war intelligence, failed to act. And, after voting to authorize the use of force, they have now decided to re-spin that vote for the purposes of political gain. They've not only withdrawn support, but advocated surrender and -- in turn -- demoralized the electorate and the troops. That's a lesson all of us must recall in '06 and '08 when we consider letting the mediacrats anywhere near the levers of power.

The $420 million key-logging scam

Early in 2005, Police foiled a $420 million key-logging scam:

...thieves attempted to transfer $420 million from a London branch of Japanese bank Sumitomo Mitsui. The thieves are believed to have hacked into the bank's computer systems using information gathered from keylogger programs, which allowed them access to sensitive passwords and other account information...