We all know that there's no fucking way in the world we should have microwave ovens and refrigerators and TV sets and everything else at the prices we're paying for them. There's no way we get all this stuff and everything is done fair and square and everyone gets treated right. No way. And don't be confused -- what we're talking about here is our way of life. Our standard of living. You want to "fix things in China," well, it's gonna cost you.

Second, we must simplify our terminology. The expression “graph database” is a single solid term. RDF, triple stores, and SPARQL are diffuse terms as well as being more abstract and harder to understand. When describing what this is all about and you need to use three terms to get your point across, people’s eyes glaze over.

Here's a great project that Mozilla has put together in conjunction with Idealist, Social Actions, and others. For one week in September, tech experts all around the world will donate their time to organizations and individuals who need help accessing and using the Internet. It makes sense for Mozilla to take the initiative to put together a project like this; after all, it's largely volunteer efforts that have put together Mozilla products, translated them into dozens of languages, and built plugins to extend functionality in every conceivable direction. Imagine the impact that those developers, designers, and translators could achieve by focusing all of that attention on their own communities for one week.

Last night at Ballard High School was the Design Review Board’s Early Design Guidance meeting. Originally scheduled to be held in the library, it ended up in a classroom and was so well attended that it spilled out into the hallway. The presentation, board Q&A, public Q&A, and lastly board deliberation lasted much longer than the planned 1 hour and 25 minutes.

Why Haskell is beyond ready for Prime Time

Wondering how you can get a head start on Mozilla Service Week (Sept. 7 - 21, 2009)? You can roll up your sleeves and help an organization in need of technology-related service now or help get the word out! This summer it will be critical to not only expose Mozilla Service Week to would-be volunteers worldwide, but help identify and approach non-profits or local organizations that can use our help.

Francis asks the drupal community to make their meeting a chance to do Mozilla Service Week volunteer work.

NCE Social Media's take on mozservice09.

• A consistent look for entries, no matter where they originated from, to help you focus on what your friends are sharing
  • A new and improved share box that can now post entries to multiple feeds
  • The ability to send and receive direct messages
  • Filters so you don’t miss a post from a certain friend or an entry about a specific topic
  • Keyboard shortcuts for the most common commands
  • And, one of the most defining features of our redesign — and what we believe will underlie everything about FriendFeed from now on: real-time. There’s no longer a need for refreshing — every view in FriendFeed now updates in real-time.

The CIA admitted earlier this week that it had destroyed 92 interrogation tapes. The destruction was ordered by then operations chief Jose Rodriguez.

In an earlier Freedom of Information Act request, the ACLU asked for information on the treatment and interrogation of detainees in U.S. custody. It filed a motion in December 2007 to hold the CIA in contempt for its destruction of the tapes, which it argued violated a court order requiring the agency to produce or identify all the records it was asking for.

Generate a World File for scanned or faxed paper maps - genius!

Whatever one's views are on the abstract 9/11-anthrax comparison, there is no question that the anthrax attacks were a major political crime. According to the FBI, the anthrax letters were directed at U.S. Senators (Leahy and Daschle) due to their political views (specifically their opposition to the Patriot Act, their allegedly "soft on terrorism" approach, and their pro-choice views). And perhaps most importantly, the anthrax attacks -- again, according to the FBI itself -- came from a U.S. Army laboratory, perpetrated by a U.S. Government scientist.

Most dramatically, one memo asserts that Bush can deploy the military within the United States -- all of the military if he so wishes -- overriding Posse Comitatus, which has kept us safe from military policing for over a century.

According to Per Sundin, CEO of Universal Music, the decline in music revenues in the past 8 years can be fully attributed to (read: blamed on) illegal file sharing. If this were actually true, many of us might even respect his decision to go after pirates as fiercely as the music industry is doing right now. However, the past 8 years have seen a lot more changes in the landscape of home entertainment than Per Sundin would like to admit, and some of those changes have had a massive impact on music profitability — much more so than any amount of piracy.

Kennedy was asked if IFPI has taken any action against the actual sharers of the music made available via TPB, as detailed in this case. He said he couldn’t say and didn’t know who these individuals are. He then admitted to not knowing how The Pirate Bay works so the defense lawyers put it to him - if you don’t understand how TPB works, how can you say they are to blame? Again he was pressed why he took no action against the actual sharers but he said he didn’t know and admitted “It’s probably unlikely we took action.”

20th century growth was dumb. The central, defining lesson of the macropocalypse is that 20th century growth wasn't built to last. Dumb growth is unsustainable - if the world grows the same way that developed countries did, well, there won't be a world. Dumb growth is unfair: it's growth that's an illusion for many; just ask the American middle class. And, ultimately, perhaps most dangerously, dumb growth is brittle: it falls too easily into collapse, reversing many of yesterday's gains; just ask Iceland.

Thanks to Mark and LIfestream blog for picking up my Sketch of OFace screencast.

President Obama's plans to expeditiously determine the fates of about 245 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and quickly close the military prison there were set back last week when incoming legal and national security officials -- barred until the inauguration from examining classi...

What I have been up to in Dec besides eating, visiting, and drinking

Grimmelmann is trying to do nothing less than re-shape our attitude towards privacy on social networks, building an erudite and extensively documented argument that our framing of privacy problems, and most of the solutions we have in mind, are bad fits for social networking services.