Kerim's Lifelog

Former UN official suggests Pakistani arrests of top Taliban figures delibera...

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 01:45:23 GMT

Former UN official suggests Pakistani arrests of top Taliban figures deliberately sabatoged peace negotiations. http://nyti.ms/dArQxm

Glad to see some pushback against the crappy chart junk passing around the we...

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 01:40:17 GMT

Glad to see some pushback against the crappy chart junk passing around the web: lifehacker.com/...

Duke Univ. faculty voted unanimously to adopt an Open Access policy!http://sh...

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 23:05:36 GMT

Duke Univ. faculty voted unanimously to adopt an Open Access policy!http://shar.es/mWVx1 /via @CatinStack @negaratduke

Ban Distorting Chart Types, aka Why You Should Be Wary of Pyramid Charts [Data Visualization]

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:30:00 GMT

Three-dimensional charts may be a little more eye-catching and dynamic than their 2-D counterparts (it's an Avatar world, baby), but data visualization blogger Stubborn Mule explains why you should consider junking 3-D charts, or at least why you shouldn't trust pyramid charts.

The author points out how people (and publications, for that matter) often incorrectly employ pyramid charts to produce an inaccurate representation of the information, focusing in on this chart and why its use of the pyramid chart misses the mark:

The problem is that the data is represented by the height of each segment of the pyramid, but we tend to perceive the apparent volume of each layer. As a result, the layers near the top appear much smaller that they should relative to the lower layers.

The author goes even further, suggesting casual charters drop not just the pyramid chart, but 3-D charts altogether:

I would argue that everything below "2-D Column" [in Excel] should be banned from the arsenal of the thinking chart-user. These variants on three-dimensional graphics all represent the trap "chart junk": fancy extra details that, at best, add nothing to the information being conveyed and, at worst, result in distortion.

It's a good piece of advice to keep in mind next time you're putting together or consuming a chart. How about you, data visualizers and chart junkies? Let's hear whether or not you share the disdain for 3-D charting in the comments.

Pyramid Perversion – More Junk Charts [Stubborn Mule via Lifehacker AU]

Glad to see the SLA blog doing weekly Linguistic Anthropology Roundups! www.l...

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:21:06 GMT

Glad to see the SLA blog doing weekly Linguistic Anthropology Roundups! www.linguisticanthropology.org/...

So happy to see @bgzimmer taking on the illustrious NY Times "On Language" co...

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:06:42 GMT

So happy to see @bgzimmer taking on the illustrious NY Times "On Language" column! www.nytimes.com/...

"Assurant made $150 million in profits bet 2003 & 2007 by canceling coverage ...

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:13:42 GMT

"Assurant made $150 million in profits bet 2003 & 2007 by canceling coverage of people who thought they had insurance" http://nyti.ms/9bGJlB

pannier

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:51:14 GMT

http://www.overedge.com.tw/

7號公園自行車, 單車

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:48:06 GMT

http://7park.anow.com.tw/index.php

Indian Government clears bill to allow foreign universities to set up campuse...

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:10:52 GMT

Indian Government clears bill to allow foreign universities to set up campuses within India: www.dnaindia.com/... /via @globalhighered

The Ungooglable man via the NYer jontaplin.com/... /via @jranck

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:05:54 GMT

The Ungooglable man via the NYer jontaplin.com/... /via @jranck

IMF acknowledges that developing countries might benefit from controlling for...

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 23:39:32 GMT

IMF acknowledges that developing countries might benefit from controlling foreign capital. www.npr.org/...

.@BarackObama I support #hcreform, but the arguments against a public option ...

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 23:10:51 GMT

.@BarackObama I support #hcreform, but the arguments against a public option are bogus. Bill will pass with 51 votes, so why not include it?

.@BarackObama Then why don't you give us a public option instead of forcing u...

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 23:08:10 GMT

.@BarackObama Then why don't you give us a public option instead of forcing us to give $ to insurance companies?

"Bankers don't like budget deficits because they compete with bank loans as a...

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 23:07:15 GMT

"Bankers don't like budget deficits because they compete with bank loans as a source of growth." www.thenation.com/... /via @gruber

Viacom hired people to secretly upload content to YouTube while publicly comp...

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:51:36 GMT

Viacom hired people to secretly upload content to YouTube while publicly complaining of copyright violations. youtube-global.blogspot.com/...

[BBC] US man admits Mumbai attacks role

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:32:31 GMT

US citizen David Headley changes his plea and admits his role in the deadly Mumbai attacks in 2008.

★ Mozilla, Video, and Mobile Computing

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:15:26 GMT

With Microsoft’s announcement this week that IE9 will support H.264 HTML5 video, three of the big four browsers — IE, Safari, and Chrome — will soon support H.264. The only major browser holdout is Firefox.¹

Mozilla is couching their position in terms of ideals: H.264 is an open industry standard but patent-encumbered and has licensing fees; Ogg Theora is open, not patent-encumbered, and free of licensing fees.

Brian Crescimanno has written a fine argument that this is a situation where pragmatism should win out over idealism, and that Mozilla should include support for H.264 (in addition to Ogg Theora) in Firefox. As he points out, it’s not as though Mozilla has never before supported proprietary formats (e.g. GIF). But Crescimanno’s best point is that Mozilla’s support for Ogg Theora is doomed because it’s technically inferior to H.264:

People and businesses are willing to embrace free software when it provides an equal or better product than the proprietary alternatives (see the success of Linux on the server). However, when free software doesn’t keep up with the best non-free products, people stay away (see the lack of success of Linux on the desktop). Simply put, there just aren’t that many people who share the same moral imperative as the Free Software Foundation; most of just want it to work.

Put another way, “open and better” is a recipe for success; “open but worse” is a recipe for obscurity. Popular video publishing sites aren’t going to use Ogg Theora instead of H.264, and I think they’re very unlikely to support it in addition to H.264, either. Encoding and storage are expensive; supporting both would at least double those costs.

The practical effect of Mozilla’s current position will not be to drive adoption of Ogg Theora. What’s going to happen is that Safari, Chrome, and even IE9 users will be served HTML5 video, and Firefox users will get Flash. Publishers will support both HTML5 video (for Safari, Chrome, and IE9 users) alongside Flash (for browsers that don’t support HTML5 and H.264) because they already have the Flash video publishing infrastructure in place, and because Flash can be used to publish H.264-encoded video. Publishers don’t have to encode (and store) video twice; they can encode (and store) it once and serve it two different ways. The sites that are the most popular — YouTube being number one, obviously — would bear the most expense to support an additional encoding format. It isn’t going to happen.

So, even those using the latest version of Firefox will be treated like they’re using a legacy browser. Mozilla’s intransigence in the name of “openness” will result in Firefox users being served video using the closed Flash Player plugin, and behind the scenes the video is likely to be encoded using H.264 anyway.

There’s another factor that occurred to me recently: mobile computing. Apple, Google, and Microsoft all seem to view mobile computing as a top-level priority. H.264 video playback on mobile devices is aided by dedicated H.264 decoding hardware. That’s how the iPhone and iPods get such long battery life for video playback. I believe this is also true for Android devices, and will be true for Windows Phone 7 and Zunes. Relying on the CPU for video playback simply isn’t practical on mobile devices. There are no hardware decoding chips for Ogg Theora. If you want to send video to mobile devices, H.264 is the only practical encoding for the near future. (I think this explains why Microsoft is throwing its support behind H.264 rather than some proprietary video codec of its own — Microsoft knows a winning position when it sees one.) Ogg Theora may well be “good enough” for desktop computers, but it’s completely unacceptable for mobile devices.

Mozilla, as an organization, doesn’t seem to value mobile computing as a top priority. Yes, they have mobile initiatives. But the only platform they have a mobile browser for is Nokia Maemo. All of you using a Nokia Maemo, please raise your hands. Crickets. Compare and contrast with WebKit, which I suspect will soon have more mobile than desktop users.

The needs of mobile computing are driving the adoption of H.264 HTML5 video more than anything else, but Mozilla doesn’t feel that pressure because it isn’t a mobile company. And at this point, “not a mobile company” is getting hard to distinguish from “not a relevant company”.²

Opera is on Mozilla’s side, supporting Ogg Theora instead of H.264, but Opera isn’t a major browser in my book. Feel free to include it in your book, though. ↩
Opera, on the other hand, is a major player in the mobile market. I think it’s safe to say that Opera is far more relevant in mobile computing than on the desktop. So it strikes me as odd that they aren’t on board with H.264. Perhaps (unlike Mozilla) they truly can’t afford the licensing fees. ↩

Google Alleges That Viacom ‘Secretly Uploaded Its Content to YouTube, Even While Publicly Complaining About Its Presence There’

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:52:40 GMT

Zahavah Levine, chief counsel for YouTube in its litigation with Viacom:

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately “roughed up” the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko’s to upload clips from computers that couldn’t be traced to Viacom. […]

Viacom’s efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.

Astounding hypocrisy.

★

[GUK] Delhi plans ban on autorickshaws

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:46:00 GMT

Indian capital looks to phase out famous green and yellow motorised three-wheelers, citing pollution and rude drivers

The Indian capital's streets are notorious for the swarms of green and yellow autorickshaws – and for their surly, betel nut-chewing and overcharging drivers.

But their days may be numbered after Delhi's chief minister, Sheila Dikshit, said she wanted to see the three-wheelers phased out within five years.

Amid uproar in the state assembly, she said that no ban would be imposed "immediately". But Dikshit's comments signalled the likely start of a long campaign to prepare public opinion for the demise of one of the capital's best-known sights.

"Autorickshaws are not a good option. They are uncomfortable and pollute [the] environment. Autorickshaw drivers are unruly and harass passengers," she said.

The authorities in the congested city are struggling to find ways to handle increasing levels of traffic brought on by India's economic boom. Three times as many cars, buses and motorbikes clog the country's roads as 15 years ago. Laws intended to restrict the number of autorickshaws in Delhi are widely flouted. Though the city has 55,000 registered, at least another 25,000 operate illegally.

Most of their drivers are poor and live in the city's slums. "If they ban us what will we do for work? I've children to feed," said Mohammed Imran Khan, a driver from the southern Delhi neighbourhood of Nizamuddin.

Dikshit said that the city was looking at introducing electric cars or electric motorbikes to replace the autorickshaws.

"I was recently told that cycles are fitted with electric motors. This will be good for travelling short distances," she said.

Dikshit has repeatedly said that making Delhi a world-class city is a key aim. The city has already tried to limit the number of cycle rickshaws. But India's supreme court ruled last month that capping their numbers was illegal.

The defenders of the motorised versions point out that, as the vehicles run on compressed natural gas, their contribution to air pollution in the city is minimal compared with cars. Others argue that rickshaws fulfil an essential function in ferrying people short distances to metro stations or bus stops.

Dikshit has another Delhi icon in her sights: the famous brusqueness of the capital's inhabitants. She hopes to bring about a major "cultural change" before Delhi hosts the Commonwealth games this autumn.

"We have to do some things that are extremely basic like keeping the city clean, giving our citizens the culture of politeness and sharing and caring for each other, so that the world goes back with an impression that they have been to a truly civilized city," she said.

Khan said he was always polite and never overcharged.

"I don't even spit when people are in my rickshaw," he said. "That's how polite I am."

Jason Burke

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The Enemy Belligerent Act of 2010

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:13:31 GMT

Marc Ambinder wrote about John McCain and Joe Lieberman's "Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010" a couple of weeks ago, but I missed it. It's basically designed to allow us to detain enemy belligerents indefinitely if they meet certain criteria:

The bill asks the President to determine criteria for designating an individual as a "high-value detainee" if he/she: (1) poses a threat of an attack on civilians or civilian facilities within the U.S. or U.S. facilities abroad; (2) poses a threat to U.S. military personnel or U.S. military facilities; (3) potential intelligence value; (4) is a member of al Qaeda or a terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda or (5) such other matters as the President considers appropriate. The President must submit the regulations and guidance to the appropriate committees of Congress no later than 60 days after enactment.

The bill applies to U.S. citizens as well as foreign nationals, and the determination of whether someone is "high value" is made by the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Team and confirmed by the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General. Glenn Greenwald provides his usual mild-mannered commentary:

It's probably the single most extremist, tyrannical and dangerous bill introduced in the Senate in the last several decades, far beyond the horrific, habeas-abolishing Military Commissions Act. It literally empowers the President to imprison anyone he wants in his sole discretion by simply decreeing them a Terrorist suspect — including American citizens arrested on U.S. soil. The bill requires that all such individuals be placed in military custody, and explicitly says that they "may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners," which everyone expects to last decades, at least. It's basically a bill designed to formally authorize what the Bush administration did to American citizen Jose Padilla — arrest him on U.S. soil and imprison him for years in military custody with no charges.

Well, sometimes mild-mannered commentary is just what the doctor ordered. This sounds every bit as bad as Glenn says it is. Basically, it reminds me of the Alien and Sedition Acts, which we've long since decided was not exactly a shining bright spot in our nation's history.

My hope is that the reason this bill has gotten so little attention is that no one thinks it has any chance of passage. Unfortunately, given the current mood of the country and the obvious angst of centrist Democrats about attacks on their terrorism-fighting credentials, that hardly seems plausible. Of course it has a chance of passage. This is well worth keeping an eye on.

39 Comments | Post Comment

In Defense of Deficits

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:24:57 GMT

James K. Galbraith, writing in The Nation:

And this, in the simplest terms, explains the deficit phobia of Wall Street, the corporate media and the right-wing economists. Bankers don’t like budget deficits because they compete with bank loans as a source of growth.

(Via Aaron Swartz.)

★

RT @davidonformosa: Amnesty International - Open Letter on death penalty in T...

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:20:44 GMT

RT @davidonformosa: Amnesty International - Open Letter on death penalty in Taiwan http://j.mp/a0kYsk

.@ebertchicago on Formosa Betrayed: desire to make a point about history was…...

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:57:36 GMT

.@ebertchicago on Formosa Betrayed: desire to make a point about history was…more important…than making a taut thriller rogerebert.suntimes.com/...

小说阅读_起点中文小说网|免费小说,玄幻小说,武侠小说,言情小说,小说网各类小说下载

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:42:45 GMT

http://www.qidian.com/

First Look: Kindle for Mac

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:37:41 GMT

Amazon has at last released Kindle for Mac, which means you can now read your Kindle books on most any device. It joins the iPhone, PC Blackberry and of course the Kindle itself.

Like the PC version, Kindle for Mac is a bare-bones reader. You turn pages with either the scroll-wheel of your mouse or the arrow keys, and it stays in sync with any other device authorized for the same account. Notes and bookmarks made on other devices can be viewed, but you can’t create new ones (a limitation shared with the PC version).

It’s pretty bad. If you want to zoom the text, for example, the standard Mac shortcuts are Cmd + and Cmd -. They don’t work. Instead you have to open a special panel which can leave a blank “cut-out” in the text after it has been closed.

It is a beta, but you only know that if you open up the “about” box. We guess its nice to have a way to read on a computer, and even better to have a local archive of your books, but I can’t help but feel that a company the size of Amazon could do better than this. Especially as it bought the quite excellent Stanza almost a year ago, which has a great Mac app along with the iPhone version.

Amazon might be happy selling books, and not care about the device they are read on. But if you carry on like this, Amazon, then people will be pushed to buy their readers, and books, elsewhere.

Kindle for Mac [Amazon]

Press release [Business Wire]

See Also:

Kindle for Mac: Good➔It syncs my bookmarks and annotations. Bad➔Can't select ...

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:29:41 GMT

Kindle for Mac: Good➔It syncs my bookmarks and annotations. Bad➔Can't select or copy text of those annotations. #digitalhumanitiesfail

Here is the URL for the new Kindle desktop software for OS X (hard to find): ...

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:21:46 GMT

Here is the URL for the new Kindle desktop software for OS X (hard to find): http://bit.ly/957ikx

L'EFFET KULESHOV (THE KULESHOV EFFECT)

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:55:38 GMT

L'EFFET KULESHOV (THE KULESHOV EFFECT)
Featuring: Laura Grey, Tim Baltz, Brendan Jennings, Hans Holsen, Molly Erdman, Darcie Price-Wallace, & Sylvia Price-Wallace / Written, Directed, & Edited by: Joe Grazulis / Director of Photography: Chris Wallace

L'EFFET KULESHOV. Brilliant reinterpretation of Russian film experiment! www....

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 02:38:14 GMT

L'EFFET KULESHOV. Brilliant reinterpretation of Russian film experiment! www.youtube.com/...

How to write a polite post-interview followup letter - by Clint Eastwood. www...

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:07:29 GMT

How to write a polite post-interview followup letter - by Clint Eastwood. www.lettersofnote.com/...

Questioning Collapse http://instapaper.com/zWjdu2tR

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:10:12 GMT

Questioning Collapse http://instapaper.com/zWjdu2tR

FeralChildren.com | Feral children: isolated, confined, wild and wolf children

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:24:12 GMT

http://www.feralchildren.com/en/index.php

FeralChildren.com www.feralchildren.com/... /via @c_defamiliaris @samplereality

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:10:13 GMT

FeralChildren.com www.feralchildren.com/... /via @c_defamiliaris @samplereality

The future is looking more and more like it will be a B-movie than a great wo...

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:07:35 GMT

The future is looking more and more like it will be a B-movie than a great works of fiction. More Judge Dredd than 1984 or Brave New World…

Mechanic said I need to replace both my my 傳動"zuo" not sure what that is. Dri...

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:05:45 GMT

Mechanic said I need to replace both my my 傳動"zuo" not sure what that is. Drive shaft is 傳動軸 "zhou" but I need to replace 2 of them?

I really hope they fix the problem it would be great for Taiwan to develop an...

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:49:43 GMT

I really hope they fix the problem it would be great for Taiwan to develop an eBook market. Right now there is nothing (AFAIK).

HamiBook, the e-reader used by Chunghwa Telecom, rejected by Apple? www.hamib...

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:48:44 GMT

HamiBook, the e-reader used by Chunghwa Telecom, rejected by Apple? www.hamibook.com.tw/...

Very impressed with Flaschards Deluxe - finally a good flashcard program for ...

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 03:36:55 GMT

Very impressed with Flaschards Deluxe - finally a good flashcard program for the iPhone with spaced repetition. itunes.apple.com/...

So it @instapaper does now allow e-mail forwarding twitter.com/... but stil...

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 02:30:34 GMT

So it @instapaper does now allow e-mail forwarding twitter.com/... but still no easy way to convert DOC or PDF files?