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Twitter: Leave my URLs Alone

August 14 at 8:19 pm - Link

Agreed. - Bob Lee

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BIND Still Susceptible To DNS Cache Poisoning

August 10 at 5:37 pm - Link

DNS should use TCP w/ SSL. - Bob Lee

Read Kaminsky's article on the load impact of switching to TCP and/or SSL: http://www.doxpara.com/?p=1215 - Adewale Oshineye

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McCain Campaign Offers Rewards For Turn-Key Comments

August 8 at 8:58 am - Link

Lame. - Bob Lee

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The Rise and Fall of Twitter

August 8 at 8:58 am - Link

James Williams liked this

Hillarious - Bob Lee

Total awesomeness. - James Williams

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Qi4j 0.3 released

August 7 at 9:13 pm - Link

Anyone up for integrating this with Guice? Looks interesting. I love mixins. - Bob Lee

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TuneWiki: Android’s iPhone-Like Media Player That May Become The Platform’s Standard

August 7 at 4:34 pm - Link

Christoph Studer, Mark Derricutt, Vadim Spivak, Dmitry Chechik and 4 other people liked this

And you can play music in the background! - Bob Lee

Well, the iPhone will play music in the background too. :) Really my problem with iPhone 2.0 is I can't play Last.fm streams in the background. - Robert Cooper via twhirl

@Robert 3rd party apps can't. :-) - Bob Lee

"Perhaps most exciting is TuneWiki’s integration with location services. Because the player can optionally tell TuneWiki’s servers what song you’re listening to, it can offer an interactive map that displays musical tastes across the world. This could be a huge hit on college campuses, where breakthrough artists tend to be discovered first. It’s also fun to find people in Dubai who listen to Kelly Clarkson (see the video below)." -- Wow, that's the least-compelling location-based service ever. - j1m

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HTC's Android Phone Might Be Delayed 'Til Next Year, and Other Signs Android Is Screwed [Rumor]

August 7 at 6:55 pm - Link

"Slow news day. Let's fabricate some more Android FUD!" - Bob Lee

$vendor's Android Phone [might||will] by delayed $timeperiod and other signs Android is [screwed||too late||unlucky||losing to iPhone]. There, I just created a linkbait generator! - Dion Almaer

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Google doesn't care about widget users, security analyst says [Your Privacy Is An Ilusion]

August 7 at 4:34 pm - Link

accesine liked this

Widgets are sandboxed in an iFrame. They can't access your cookies or anything. Not sure what this guy is whinging about. - Bob Lee

Or Caja'ed. I'm not sure either... - DeWitt Clinton

I've seen this talk before at OWASP and was thoroughly unimpressed. They don't demonstrate any actual exploits. Everything they demonstrated requires a user to click through warnings in order to install a gadget that is hosted on a cookieless domain. They conveniently ignore the fact that malicious gadgets are blacklisted and that Caja could make this moot. Oh well. Concern trolls gotta make a living somehow. - Steve Weis

Iframes don't stop activex controls -- one of the primary reasons to use Caja. - Sam Pullara

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DNS Flaw Hits More Than Just the Web

August 7 at 11:09 am - Link

This is actually incorrect. SSH and SSL are safe (sure, you can still 'attack' them, and the user can ignore warnings). It no more dangerous than I suspected. If you use SSL and check your certs, you'll be fine. - Bob Lee

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Paris Hilton Calls McCain, Obama 'Bitches' [Things We Actually Like]

August 5 at 9:53 pm - Link

Daniel Shaw liked this

Vote for Paris - Bob Lee

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Fabric gesture controller

August 5 at 8:26 pm - Link

Go ahead. Touch it. - Bob Lee

http://www.lessemf.com/fabric.... (I think) - ⓞnor

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Mike Ash: ‘Welcome to iPhone: Your Crappy Mac of Tomorrow, Today!’

August 4 at 12:55 pm - Link

Pico Seno liked this

Meh, I think he understates the challenges they faced in stuffing all that into one little package and in making it capable of lasting off the charger for 1+ days... (if you've turned off push email) - Jason Carreira

Battery life is a challenge, but Mike is right to call Apple on artificially limiting 3rd party apps and reserving certain functionality for themselves. - Bob Lee

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Critical Mass bicyclist knocked over by NYPD

July 28 at 1:19 pm - Link

Kelly Norton, Patrick Lightbody, Wes Hoogenboom and DeWitt Clinton liked this

Holy shit. - Bob Lee

The hell? - Cyndy

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The police officer has been stripped of his badge and gun (pending investigation): http://www.myfoxny.com/myfox/p... - Robert Konigsberg

Liked for "officer has been suspended." - DeWitt Clinton

I just want to know why it is always "officer has been suspended" and never "fired." - Robert Cooper via twhirl

Holy cow. - Mark Douglass

@Robert They can't be fired without an investigation. - Erica Baker

@Erica I understand the reality there. What I don't get is why cops are the exception. Especially living in a *cough* "Right to Work State," people get fired all the time. For lack of a better example, if this was a security guard on that tape, he would be picking up his last check. I don't understand why the police or maybe the police unions get such deals. Particularly with people entrusted to enforce the law, it seems that the standards should be exceptionally high on misconduct of any type while in uniform. - Robert Cooper via twhirl

Eh, wrong, thanks Erica: The NYPD "stripped a police officer of his badge and gun" - Robert Konigsberg

Robert: What, you *don't* want an investigation? Police officers have a difficult job that requires them to quickly make decisions of vital import in heated situations with limited information. If something goes wrong, not only does the officer deserve the benefit of a thorough investigation, so does the public. For the people we authorize to employ deadly force to protect us and enforce the law, an abundance of caution before making any decision about their employment seems completely warranted. - ⓞnor

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Cloned dog in canoe [Caption Contest]

July 18 at 4:45 pm - Link

Crap. Wish I had gotten a DNA sample from my dog. - Bob Lee

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Man makes cell-phone activated stun gun to punish bike thieves

July 16 at 10:42 am - Link

Robert Cooper liked this

What's with the shirtless demo, Abercrombie? - Bob Lee

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KTLA 'Reporter' Makes Fun of iPhone Line-Sitters, Gets Called a Jackass on Live TV [Adventures In Journalism]

July 13 at 11:09 am - Link

Robert Konigsberg liked this

What a douchebag. - Bob Lee

Isn't this the guy I didn't have to deal with after high school? I won't miss this amateur Los Angeles journalism. - Robert Konigsberg

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Sneaky Steve Wozniak (With Posse) Cuts In Line at San Jose iPhone 3G Launch [Steve Wozniak]

July 13 at 9:33 am - Link

He did the same thing last time. Does Apple not hook him up? Sad. - Bob Lee

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Let the microblogs bloom - RussellBeattie.com

July 4 at 11:04 am - Link

Wrong. It's both messaging and publishing, not just messaging. - Bob Lee

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Miles per Gallon vs. Gallons per Mile

July 4 at 10:17 am - Link

That's funny. I had the same realization last week, and I did this same calculation to determine if it would be better to drive one big 10MPG car or two smaller cars, one 42MPG and the other 17MPG. It turned that the latter uses slightly less gas. - Bob Lee

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Nat Pryce: Throw Defect

June 27 at 10:38 am - Link

I just throw AssertionError. - Bob Lee

Same here. It seems that is exactly what AssertionError is for. No point introducing another class - Neil Dunn

I like this — I have changed default templates for methods, e.g., to throw NotYetImplementedException rather than return null. It's good to be precise and explicit. - Paul Brown via twhirl

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Teen Sex Ad Not Actually From JC Penney [Videuhoh]

June 25 at 9:13 pm - Link

Karl Rosaen liked this

When I worked for an ad agency, we used to make spoof ads all the time, none of which you'd ever want to get out. They were hilarious though. - Bob Lee

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Simpsons map for Quake III Arena

June 23 at 11:29 am - Link

This is incredible. - Bob Lee

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The New Indiana Jones: A Blast from the Past

June 17 at 4:27 pm - Link

Bill Marriott liked Indiana Jones? Huh. - Bob Lee

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Do Women Write Better Code?

June 16 at 8:24 am - Link

ana liked this

I'm a woman trapped in a man's body. - Bob Lee

Nothing like some totally unsupported stereotypes to really contribute to the gender dialog. I'd like to test her out on that claim that she can tell a coder's gender. - ⓞnor

ⓞnor, you just say that because you are jealous. The woman is clearly a genius and a hero: she made her company institute docstrings and changelogs! - ana

Why should I be jealous of your touchy feely comments! Hmph. - ⓞnor

I think by the stereotype she probably could. I'm sure there are reverses, but I know I wrote a LOT of comments. ;) - Cyndy

Women write better birthday cards and letters. I don't think gender has influence on the ability to write better code. - Mo Jawhari

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Are Academic Journals Obsolete?

June 8 at 6:32 pm - Link

Roger Chen, Daniel Dulitz, Benedikt Koehler, Rob Schonberger and 7 other people liked this

It's fine to follow the same rigorous process, but put your paper on the net and make it freely available and searchable. Are you trying to make money off of it or spread your ideas as far and wide as possible? - Bob Lee

Most people aren't in it for the glory either, but to have other like-minded people review and evaluate their ideas for potential flaws and problems. If they want an idea spread out to the public for mass consumption, they issue a press release. The peer-review process is the academic equivalent of a spam filter. - Mark Trapp

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That is, you're in it to win it. The large cost involved in subscribing to a peer-reviewed journal is priced for people for whom the cost would be negligible given the commitment to the field of study. The cost is comparable to paying $1,000 for Adobe Creative Suite when you're a designer or a photographer or a Flash developer. No price, no vested interest, and the noise suddenly skyrockets. - Mark Trapp

On top of all that, if you are really interested in the journal's articles, you're probably involved in academia to begin with and can freely get the articles from your University's library. - Mark Trapp

Wait, why does noise skyrocket because more people can *subscribe*? I am very frequently interested in journal articles and pissed off by paywalls. Science is the core of humanity's endeavor to learn more, and that information needs to be available, and not just to the anointed few in universities. Willingness to pay money or membership in an institution are really bad heuristics. - ⓞnor

Nor, think of it this way: if you got to sit in on all of the strategy and staff meetings for Microsoft, Apple, Google, Dell, and every major technology companies, I'm sure you'd hear about a great many wonderous things that, when taken out of the context of a background in the technologies they are talking about (like, for example, all the meetings preceding them), paint a completely different picture of what's really going on. - Mark Trapp

The cost of entry (and it's really time, not money) is so high for academia to force you to go back and spend the time to make sure you have the proper context and background to participate meaningfully in the discussions being thrown around in peer-reviewed journals. - Mark Trapp

I think I lost my point on this trying to expand on examples: you have two options to show to a peer-reviewed journal you are committed to be responsible in your participation and viewing of the data; either be a part of an academic institution (where you can get the journals for free) or pony up. It's no different than any other field: you can either put in the hard work and build your credibility up, or you can pay to expedite the process. - Mark Trapp

It seems to me that peer reviewing and payment are distinct. Making the peer reviewed research freely available seems like a no-brainer; why should we restrict knowledge? A lot of professors in the CS dept at Stanford retained the right to put PDFs of their papers online independently of the journals, but many still do not, and it pisses me off. Journals are not interactive. Having more people read them does not contribute to "noise." - Bret Taylor

Until online sources are seen as potentially equal with anything in print, academics will have to stick to the printed page. Academia is largely about reputation. I should know, I'm wading through it now. - Zach Landes

I get really concerned about talk of restricting access to people who will be "responsible in viewing of the data". Information is far too valuable to be left in the hands of the experts! What exactly are we worried will happen when the great unwashed masses get their hands on scientific papers, that doesn't already happen when they get their hands on the bowdlerized misconstrued mishmash that gets out in the popular press? - ⓞnor

Bret, you're dealing with people's work: 90% of what appears in a peer-reviewed journal isn't intended for public or mainstream scrutiny. If everyone had to stop and explain away the wrong assumptions and conclusions because there's some public outcry about something someone read in a journal, they wouldn't get any work done. People don't have a right to all information: we as society seem to have no problem with companies holding invite-only conferences, or the fees you have to pay to attend, for e.g. WWDC - Mark Trapp

So why is there an outcry about academic work? It's no different. Zachary, most journals are published online as well, and the peer-review process happens largely over email and such. Nor, sure it does, and that's when you have the press supposedly vouching for their credentials on the fields they report. So why would you want to exacerbate that? - Mark Trapp

Dude, have you been to the Internet lately? It is basically one enormous steaming pile of wrong assumptions and bogus conclusions. Adding some scientific papers, which uneducated people probably won't even bother with (because the language is dense, the format unfamiliar and the conclusions subtle), isn't going to cause some great surge of public ignorance! Public access to information is of TREMENDOUS value, which for example is why we have public libraries. - ⓞnor

Except this isn't some right to public knowledge anymore than Google's product strategy is a right to public knowledge. More often than not, people are coming from privately-funded Universities who have no public obligation. So why are we all of the sudden forcing them to be under public scrutiny? You want to force all the people working for public Universities to make their work freely available? Go ahead, but you need their support. You won't see this great cornucopia of information rush forth. - Mark Trapp

Sure, not all information is free. But scientific knowledge is the cornerstone of human advancement; the Steve Jobs keynote at WWDC is not. Conferences cost money because conference centers are expensive to rent. Web sites are not expensive to run and the scientists aren't getting paid (much, if anything) for writing, reviewing or editing journal articles anyway. - ⓞnor

I don't want to force scientists to make their work public if they really don't want to (though I would like them to, if I am paying their salary with my tax money). But the vast majority of scientists do want open access, it's the journal publishers that erect the barriers. Freedom *does* have the support of the producers, what we lack is the cooperation of the middlemen. - ⓞnor

I argue that this is of NO value to the public good unless you are actively engaged in the field; if you are, you most likely already have access to the information, for free, searchable, online, indexable, whatever else you want. If what is published to a journal is in the public interest, it's a moral imperative that the researcher release a press release and talk about it publicly. Why isn't that enough? Why does every Tom, Dick, and Harry have to be involved in that personal decision? - Mark Trapp

Nor, I think we're mostly on the same wavelength here. I think that's an excuse that scientists make to sugar coat an air of arrogance (in much of the way I'm describing). If a scientist wants to make his research widely available (and it's sufficiently cleared to go through a peer-review process, that is, the scientist isn't under an NDA), there is nothing stopping him. Absolutely nothing. - Mark Trapp

Most academic research is paid for with tax-payer money (DARPA, NIH, NSF). Privately funded university or not, most research money doesn't come from the university itself. I do think professors have an obligation to make research public because that is the purpose of university research: to further human knowledge and understanding. There shouldn't be a bunch of elitists deciding who has the privilege of accessing that knowledge. - Bret Taylor

If the scientist wants to publish his or her research in the journals widely read in the field, they are often contractually prohibited from making their work accessible to the public. - ⓞnor

Bret, I'm hard pressed to name more than a handful of peer-reviewed journals that aren't freely (as in speech) available. You just need to pay a subscription to get them. If you don't want to pay, you need to be attached to a University that subscribes to them. It's not an insurmountable roadblock we're talking about here. - Mark Trapp

The problem is that journals are a big business that brings in a lot of money for publishers. They justify the cost as being a function of small print runs, specialized audiences, and high overhead. But the fact of the matter is that it is in their best interest to maintain a closed, proprietary system that gives them leverage to charge huge sums to universities and libraries rather than open them up to inquiry and knowledge sharing. The irony is that much of science is funded by the federal government, yet the data and information is not open to the public, copyright is given to the publishers and consequently enriches them. There is a movement now towards "open source" publishers such as the Public Library of Science www.plos.org, and the use of "creative commons" licenses: http://connect.educause.edu/Li.... - Nathan Young

Nor, if you can provide some background info on that, I'd love to see it. That's a misconception a lot of people have about the peer-review process, and if journals are actually doing that, they are violating a tremendous code of ethics. - Mark Trapp

I think we have all made our points, so this is my last comment here, but I think payment is a huge barrier. Some of the greatest minds are not at universities and may not have any resources available (people like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...). Any barrier to information is significant. Look at the usage of Wikipedia vs. Encyclopedia Britannica Online, which was available before IIRC and "just" required a subscription. Free vs. not is a huge, huge barrier. - Bret Taylor

There's another thing about the printed page: its more expensive than the digital page. As a result, there is a barrier to the creation and distribution of printed materials. Part of the validity of a scientific, peer-reviewed journal is in the fact that it is published at all. On the internet, there is nothing to stop someone creating a very official sounding "academic journal" filled with unchecked falsehood. Finally, almost all academic journals are available online, through a subscription database. - Zach Landes

Although technically you sign off all your rights to republish or widely disseminate your papers (and even figures!!) when you publish with most journals, I find that many people skirt this restriction by placing PDFs of their work on their personal or university websites (I know I do :). - Nathan Young

Bret, I see what you're saying. It's a complex issue with many parts, and I think we're all dissatistified with various parts of it. Zachary and Nor: it would be unviable and completely unsatisfactory to a researcher to not be able to discuss his or her work outside the confines of the journal. The journal isn't the only place a researcher gets their credibility. In a lot of cases, yes, they do transfer their copyright to the publisher, but the publisher in turn grants them irrevocable rights to discuss and - Mark Trapp

distribute their work with other parties. - Mark Trapp

Payment is an inconvenient barrier, especially to small businesses who need to access the data. However, sometimes I can get free articles from www.pnas.org and sometimes free articles from industry friends. - Sally Church

The NIH has a new mandate for publishing supported research. Principal investigators must ensure that electronic versions of any peer-reviewed manuscripts arising from NIH funding and accepted for publication after that date are deposited in PubMed Central (PMC), NIH's digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. Full text of the articles will then be made freely available to the public no later than 12 months after publication http://grants.nih.gov/grants/g... - Nathan Young

Mark, I'm pretty sure you're missing the point completely. Academic journals charge for only one reason, and it's the same reason as any other business: to make money. If they could make more money by putting their stuff up on the internet for free with ads on it, they'd start tomorrow. They also serve an important gatekeeper function, but it's entirely on the input end: they decide what articles to publish, and edit the articles, and if the journal is any good the people it has do this are.... - j1m

chosen from among the top few dozen people in the field. Once it's published in those journals, it gains the prestige of having been filtered by those top experts, and the journal has done its job. The only reason to charge for the work after that is so you can pay salary (etc). Most academics will tell you they'd rather have their work out from behind pay walls, and disseminated as widely as possible. If nothing else it would stop them from having to respond to the 100s of emails requesting PDFs... - j1m

that a good article gets from scientists at institutions (often in less-wealthy countries, often just not universities) that can't afford to pony up for subscriptions. - j1m

From Nathan's link: "Beginning May 25, 2008, anyone submitting an application, proposal or progress report to the NIH must include the PMC or NIH Manuscript Submission reference number when citing applicable articles that arise from their NIH funded research. This policy includes applications submitted to the NIH for the May 25, 2008 due date and subsequent due dates." - j1m

This is perhaps the most substantive response to Mark's claims: The NIH and agencies like it fund most academic research, typically in its entirely. They paid for the research, they own it, and they now insist that it be public, for all the reasons that ⓞnor and Bret raise, and more. - j1m

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My first 'Get A Clue' post for Obama

June 5 at 5:25 pm - Link

That's a shame. Dave really deserves to go. - Bob Lee

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Bill Gates hasn't always been Steve Ballmer's BFF [Geek Love]

June 5 at 11:42 am - Link

Did they coordinate outfits? - Bob Lee

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I Want It! I Want It! I Want It! [Toys]

June 1 at 2:06 pm - Link

We have one of these in our office. It goes well w/ the Android theme. - Bob Lee

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Death of the $100 Hamburger

May 29 at 10:46 pm - Link

I did this once at the Lambert's in Sikeston (http://www.throwedrolls.com/). They send a shuttle to pick you up at the airport, and you even get to skip the (usually very long) line! - Bob Lee

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Swing, RIA and JavaFX - interview with Mikael Grev

May 25 at 12:03 pm - Link

Interesting looking Base64 encoder. - Bob Lee

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