onfocus

"I figured I'd chime in with my own experiences as a woman, except I want to try and reconstruct as best I can exactly how this instinctual fear evolved for me and what it really means in practice..." Chilling comments that made me see the world in a different way.

"[Fighting takedown notices] increase the 'cost' of sending cease-and-desists, as they make potential claimants consider the publicity risks being made to look foolish, bullying, or worse." These stories are great, but rare.

"...there is one asset that is still quite significant and the value of it is growing, not shrinking. It is their large, well trained, and well connected salesforces." A nice contrast to Clary Shirky's recent article Rescuing The Reporters. [via anil]

Hey, these HTML 5 attributes actually work on the iPhone! I set this up on the forms at Fuelly Mobile.

"I think you’re safer dealing with people who can improve your site holistically." Rafe responds to Derek's SEO rant.

It's a good time to revisit this Lakoff article on framing taxes. Basically, taxes are an investment, our fair share, patriotic, and our dues for enjoying our high standard of living.

You deserve this!

This is spectacular. They're suggesting high speed rail between Eugene and the Canadian border.

"Joe Raiola, Senior Editor of MAD Magazine will present his one man show, The Joy of Censorship." Sounds fun. At the Corvallis library April 4th, 7pm.

A recording of The Decemberists in Austin. [via protherj]

This little plug computer that runs Linux looks like it'd be fun to play with.

"Stifling bullying online won't make bullying go away; it'll just send it back underground. The visibility gives us an advantage. If we see it, we can work with it to stop it."

A list of "Best City" lists that include Corvallis. [via UnderStory]

"That's the lesson. You spit in Congress's face, and they'll give you what you want." [via Schneier]

"This is going to sound a little weird at first considering what I do for a living, but I want you to stop using FTP." Agreed! [via 43Folders]

"This, no less than the defiling of the Constitution, is the legacy of an administration that not merely rationalized the immorality of torture but shackled our national security to the absurdity that torture could easily fix the terrorist threat."

This is a lot easier than whatever I've been doing.

"Differences between Republican and Democrats exist...but those differences are often dwarfed by the differences between those entrenched in and dependent upon the Washington Establishment and...American citizens -- who are not." [via rc3]

"The U.S. Senate this afternoon passed the FISA Amendments Act...granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in the president's illegal domestic wiretapping program." Discouraging.

This is going to change my life.

"Media reporting about other media's approach to producing media is pretty confusing business to begin with. Feelings...will be bruised. But that does not fully explain the scorched earth between Fox News and those who cover it." [via Fimoculous]

The Prius will go solar? [via Doc]

"While mindful of free speech and other rights, Yahoo and other companies say they must craft and enforce guidelines that go beyond legal requirements to protect their brands and foster safe, enjoyable communities -- ones where minors may be roaming."

the history of the "amen break", its impact on culture, and some thoughts about copyright in the sampling age.

A search engine/aggregator for blogs by lawyers covering legal issues. [via reasearchbuzz]

a quick, straightforward explanation of data portability and why companies like Google should support it. [via battelle]

Flickr applies for a patent on "interestingness" as a way of determining which media objects are getting the most attention from users. [via kottke]

John Battelle has a great idea about storing data in info-privacy friendly countries. But I'd go a step further and say that big data stores should also store data in an encrypted format, so only someone with a key can make the data useful.

put in some text, and see if this script can guess the author's gender based on word usage. (I was looking for a Perl module that does this, but no luck.)