Meebo for your website! - ajax im version 2

ajax im is a complete instant messaging system for your website; akin to Meebo without needing to pay for tons of expensive servers. This system uses Javascript/PHP/MySQL to allow users to communicate between users of the ajax im script on your site. No refreshing of the page is ever needed, as everything is updated in real-time via the JavaScript.

Looks cool, will check it out for Desicritics

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Pricing Cuts Hit Nascent Online Video Market

In a testament to just how quickly the online video market is evolving, Guba is already starting to cut pricing. With competition building, the novelty alone of being able to buy videos isn't enough to help establish a name in this space

The Internet is the fastest price leveler and competition de-differentiator in the history of, like, forever, on a macro scale, as opposed to local levelers.

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Pakistan forfeits Test, Mushy's for it

This says it all

It was the first time in 129 years, and 1,814 matches, that a Test had been conceded by forfeit.

Given that it's Darrell Hair, one wonders who's really at fault here. Also worth noting,

In an interview on Pakistani television, team captain Inzaman-ul-Haq said that he'd spoken to Mr Musharraf on the telephone and that the president had offered his full support for the actions the team had taken at the match.

Open Source AJAX ToDo List Ready To Go

* Javascript effect with script.aculo.us
* Drag&drop each element
* Almost full Ajax
* full Css layout
* Javascript calendar (dynarch.com)
* Optimized for firefox 1.5
* Drag&drop each element

- Needs work, but easy to add to one's website

I'm installing it tonight on my machine - will report back

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Snakes On A Blog - A Premiere Report From The Snake-Blogger

This guy blogged about the movie pre-release for nine months, you can imagine his report on the premiere is long, and detailed - and almost post-coital at the end.

Haven't seen the movie yet - will and then let's see...

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Nice Google Maps cum PHP Demo

A Good Google Maps tutorial using PHP and MySQL that breaks down the code involved quite well.

Prerequisites

• An Apache webserver running PHP and MySQL (other webserver with PHP and MySQL will probabely do as well).
• A table in your database with lat, lon and description fields.
• Some basic HTML and PHP knowledge.

We are going to use PHP to dynamically create an HTML document with the appropriate Google Maps javascript code.

It works.

The Kingdom of Nouns

A fine read on the dangers of program design relying too much on a single metaphor, like Object-Oriented Programming and Java

The residents of the Kingdom of Java aren't merely happy — they're bursting with pride!

StateManager.getConsiderationSetter("Noun Oriented Thinking", State.HARMFUL).run()

Or, as it is said outside the Kingdom of Java, "Noun Oriented Thinking Considered Harmful".

Object Oriented Programming puts the Nouns first and foremost. Why would you go to such lengths to put one part of speech on a pedestal? Why should one kind of concept take precedence over another? It's not as if OOP has suddenly made verbs less important in the way we actually think. It's a strangely skewed perspective. As my friend Jacob Gabrielson once put it, advocating Object-Oriented Programming is like advocating Pants-Oriented Clothing.

Java's static type system, like any other, has its share of problems. But the extreme emphasis on noun-oriented thought processes (and consequently, modeling processes) is more than a bit disturbing. Any type system will require you to re-shape your thoughts somewhat to fit the system, but eliminating standalone verbs seems a step beyond all rationale or reason.

Read the whole thing.

If you want tech-political-science fiction, your best bet is the writings of Neal Stephenson. Of course, this is not to discount many other fine writers, science fiction tends to coalesce around political themes often enough, but Neal blends an awareness of historical perspective with a keen sense of what may come, or might come.

Reason has a good review of his Baroque Trilogy, coupled with an interview

Stephenson has a substantial libertarian following as well, and not merely because the decentralized, post-statist social systems he describes in Snow Crash and The Diamond Age (1995) are so radically different from modern government. The Baroque Cycle is, among other things, a close look at the rise of science, the market, and the nation-state, themes close to any classical liberal’s heart. Reading it means reading three long, encyclopedic books and maybe spending half a year in an earlier century. It’s not the kind of thing the average reader takes on lightly. But once you find you have a taste for Stephenson’s broad range of obsessive interests, his fine ear for period and modern English prose and speech, and his gift for making the improbably comic seem eminently human, the question no longer is whether you’ll read his books—it’s when.

Also available today is a sort-of review of Snow Crash. advocating a 'forced disarmament' of Muslims to solve terrorism.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah uses a combination of military might, ruthlessness, ethnic solidarity, and religious fanaticism to form an entity more powerful than the state of Lebanon, and arguably more powerful than the state of Israel. What we are seeing unfold in the Middle East may be a step toward the sort of post-national environment envisioned by Neal Stephenson.

I believe that what we need going forward is a policy of disarming Muslims. I believe that we must keep devout Muslims away from weapons, and keep weapons away from devout Muslims. I can work with Muslims, send my children to school with Muslims, and be friends with Muslims. I do not have an issue with their religion, as long as they do not have weapons. However, the combination of weapons and Islam poses unacceptable danger to the rest of us.

And so it goes.

No Books, iPods on board - British Government bans hand luggage

if you weren't bored enough on flights, following the recent plot busted by Scotland Yard to blow up planes in mid-air, apparently through a bomb in hand luggage, the UK government has banned all hand-luggage on planes,

except for a transparent shopping bag carrying a few permitted items: a couple tampons, baby food (if another passenger is forced to taste it first), glasses without cases (deadly, deadly cases!), contact holders (but no cleaning fluid!), keys (but no electric fobs), and your wallet. You're not allowed to bring on magazines (deadly, deadly magazines!) or books, no laptops, no iPods, no oversized watches (!), and so forth.

The War within exceeds the war without - and we all pay the price of fear.

Firefox Buying IE, says bLaugh

Millenarianism and fatalism are perhaps economic reactions to change, but it's also innate in the human character to hope beyond hope, even when comes the deluge. Bryan Caplan asks, why worry?

There's not enough time in the day for me to know enough about all of these disasters to doubt them on their specific merits. But I do it anyway. How do I justify it?

The superficial reason is that people are trying to get attention, which leads to a "race to the scariest story." That's true, but it hardly seems strong enough to justify my blanket skepticism. The fact that people exaggerate hardly proves that the end is not nigh.

My deep reason is simpler: The fact that we've gotten as far as we have shows that true disaster must be extremely rare. Unless fears almost always failed to materialize, we'd already be back in the Stone Age, or plain extinct. It's overwhelmingly unlikely that we've gotten lucky a million times in a row. Thus, unlike my co-blogger, I think there is a good reason to expect global warming models to be milder than models predict. Namely: As a rule, disasters are milder than predicted.

In other words, we're still here, aren't we?

From In Sequence,

Born Marius Nintendus, Saint Nintendo was born approximately 284 A.D. to a noble Roman family. He is often depicted as a child, although his martyrdom is said to have occurred after he reached full manhood.

One day, Marius Nintendus was chosen to attend the Roman games as part of a festival in honor of the Emporer. But Marius Nintendus chose to bypass the games in order to indulge in the simple pleasures he so loved, such as collecting stray coins along the streets of Rome and, of course, hunting wild mushrooms.

Marius Nintendus was later called upon by the Prefect to account for his whereabouts during the games. The famous question posed to Nintendus translates roughly to, "Why were you not at the play station at the appointed hour?" Unsatisfied with Nintendus's response, the Prefect ordered that he be publicly tortured and put to death. Marius Nintendus last, inspiring words were said to have been,"But I shall always have the higher score."

Marius Nintendus is the patron saint of truffle pigs.

Hilarity ensues!

Quote Of The Day

"In democracy it's your vote that counts; In feudalism it's your count that votes."
  - Mogens Jallberg

CSS Galleries

A single RSS feed of all of the major CSS showcase and gallery sites (CSS Mania, CSS Drive, Unmatched Style etc.). Indexes all featured sites into one simple feed, with thumbnail.

I really need to study this collection

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Worth visiting Website: Gliffy

Gliffy allows you to create diagrams on the fly without the need to download any software. Another of those Web 2.0 wonders, it gives you a number of premade symbols and shapes which you can incorporate in your drawings. The Gliffy interface is extremely user-friendly and fast considering it is still in its beta.

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Taliban Kill Indian Hostage

The bad guys never go away, do they?

An Indian engineer working for a Bahrain based company, Mr
Suryanarayana, was kidnapped at gunpoint near Kandahar on Friday along
with his driver, by the Taliban while working on a project in
Afghanistan.

Quoting the Indian Ambassador to Afghanistan Rakesh Sood, CNN/IBN and other news sources
reported this morning that Mr Suryanarayana has been killed and his
body found in Kandhahar. News channels are also reporting that the
Taliban has claimed to have killed the hostage as he tried to escape
from captivity. The as-yet unidentified beheaded body was found by a
highway police patrol.

TV channels are also reporting that the Indian Prime Minister's Office has issued a condemnation of the killing.

The Ultimate WiFi Speed Boost

Guaranteed to work for all routers, the result of years of scientific research.

If you're not 100% satisfied, return the unopened bottle in the original packaging within eight hours, along with the original receipt, a color copy of your drivers license, and a check for $12.95 to cover handling, restocking, and legal fees. You'll receive a complete refund within 10-12 weeks.


X should not be used in the presence of pregnant women, women who have been pregnant, or women who may some day become pregnant.

Made in Malaysia, by Malaysians. Not intended for use by Malaysians.

The Goering Collection - The Consolidated Interrogation Reports

Reading these reports on the Goering interrogations, long kept secret, and prepared by the Art Looting Investigation Unit, or Project Orion, illustrates how much art was stolen in the war years, and how many dealers, museums, etc. benefited from the German occupation. The best collections in museums the world over consist of stolen goods. Adolf Hitler's grand project, the Sonderauftrag Linz, or Museum of World Art at Linz was but one example. The conflicts between Hitler's acquisitiveness and Goering's own, termed in the reports 'Finders Keepers' agreements are interesting, and indicative of reasons why Hitler imprisoned Goering in 1945.

Post the War, Stalin's own Palace of the Soviets, had a Museum of World Art, built up by re-retrieving stolen art, or perhaps re-stealing it, with the help of the Extraordinary Commision. Then there's the Elgin Marbles and all the treasures of the British, not least the Kohinoor.

Perhaps I'll expand this into a more detailed article sometime.

Paris Hilton to play Mother Teresa in a Movie

How hilarious? This is really happening. The next thing we see is Osama Bin Laden playing Jesus.

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Romantic Spot

romantic spot
Originally uploaded by red_hooded_wolf.

Let the lave go by me...