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NYTeims ed, “Rethinking Criminal Sentences” (2010 July 27): Sentencing for white-collar crimes — and for child pornography offenses — “has largely lost its moorings,” according to the Justice Department, which makes a strong case that the matter should be re-examined by the United States Sentencing Commission. This probably makes more sense when you’re wearing a [...]

Google shopping on USPS “forever stamps.”

Brad Brace of the 12hr isbn-jpeg project auctions off “2398 hi-res art file suitable for printing,” culled from 5000 Facebook friends. FB is not amused.

Nicholas Knouf’s official statement: I am very happy to announce the launching of the Journal of Journal Performance Studies. Journal of Journal Performance Studies (JJPS) is a series of three interrelated works that engage with academic publishing. The project consists of a Firefox extension, an online radio, and a journal. The JJPS Firefox Extension overlays [...]

Mary Jo Foley of Redmond Mag: Some enterprise users built internal line-of-business applications around IE6 — and are now stuck with it. Others are planning to run Windows XP into the ground — or at least until 2014, when Microsoft officially ends support for it. And because IE6 is what’s built into XP, that’s what [...]

The NYTeims reports on the United States of Bananas (Stour, “Coveted but Elusive Summer Internship,” 2010 July 2): As a result, the big-name internship has become coveted capital — a reality that was showcased in the extreme when the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights recently auctioned media internships to help raise [...]

Apple, on discovering that “bars” are not just ephemeral but illusory: “We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.” Bars of a prison, bars of a dissolute life, bars of gold — an awful metaphor given not just new life but, as they like [...]

Don’t be accidentally on purpose evil. gOfficialblog: Nine days ago the data protection authority (DPA) in Hamburg, Germany asked to audit the WiFi data that our Street View cars collect for use in location-based products like Google Maps for mobile, which enables people to find local restaurants or get directions. His request prompted us to [...]

Computerworld: Hackers behind the rootkit responsible for crippling Windows machines after users installed a Microsoft security patch have updated their malware so that it no longer crashes systems, researchers confirmed today. See also: “FIRE, Detroit, GOP, Microsoft.”

(irr)

“Baseline Scenario“: One Goldman Sachs derivatives trader, who asked to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak about company strategy, said that the firm is planning to create a market for derivatives that airlines can use to hedge against the risk of having to return planes to the terminal or having to pay [...]

Google Sandbox redirects to the page “unavailable.html,” which in turns gives a 404:

Courtesy of the early Clay Shirky. ( lloyd wood )

Paul Vixie: To underline our understanding of what DNS is, we must differentiate it from what it is not. The Internet economy rewards unlimited creativity in the monetization of human action, and fairly often this takes the form of some kind of intermediation. For DNS, monetized intermediation means lying. The innovators who bring us such [...]

WIN: Coverage: PC Mag, Ars Technica, CNET. See also: “Litigator as artist.”

Grimmelmann: Your avatar’s arms are never going to be long enough to box with a game god whose software controls arm length. Or, as we used to put it: he who would snack with the Devil must needs use a long spork… ( jotwell | froomkin )

(It’s tempting to ask why this lasts as long as it does, but to many that question would suggest that this is way too long; it may be so, but a better question is whyit lasts precisely as long as it does? Not a deep question — but this is a fine example of a [...]

Phil Patton: It showed the hand of whoever fed pages into the scanner — a hand with a latex sheath on its index finger, like a condom. The person’s nails were nothing to brag about. The condom and the nails, combined with the sudden, unexpected appearance, made the picture seem obscene and unhealthy. I thought [...]

An edifying history: The number of Geocities pages that archive.org actually archived in any given year tells a bare-bones story: 1996: 7 1997: 13 1998: 39 1999: 70 2000: 136 2001: 22366 2002: 0 A JPEG of the archive.org Geocities page puts it in perspective — the original image at 12 inches wide is over [...]

The Guardian reports on an NYC anarcho arrested for twittering whereabouts of police at Pittsburgh G20: Elliot Madison, 41, from Queens, had his home raided and was put on $30,000 (£19,000) bail after he and Michael Wallschlaeger, 46, were tracked to the Carefree Inn motel in Pittsburgh during the summit on 24 and 25 September. [...]

This would go over a lot better if the International Association of Imbeciles weren’t the main advocacy organization for washed-up county clerks who supplement their pensions with UDRP arbitration gigs: We are not here because the domain name could cause confusion. We do not have a declaration from the president of the international association of [...]

CRN (Macpherson, “Safety first for IT executives in China,” 16 Sep ’09) quotes Mark Bregman, Symantec’s CTO: “I don’t let my IT department near my laptop.” Also noteworthy: “I was advised by people in three-letter agencies in the US Government to weigh the machine before I left and when I got back [from China].” (Q: [...]

Senegalese spammer: From: jenifergoodluck (Your Big Fool) Reply-to: jenifer.dagba@yahoo.com Date: Mon, May 4, 2009 at 6:11 AM Subject: You Owe Me Since you haven’t fallen for my stupid scam letter let me go ahead and be up front with you. Because I am a Nigerian, you owe me something. The fact that my decadent forefathers [...]

Translated: this idea was dumb and on top of that didn’t work, but we had to cough up something, so we decided to be “ironic.” But even that sort of sucked, so we invite you to… Uncanny insights:

Sergey Aleynikov’s defense: ‘I wasn’t stealing software — Goldman Sachs incorporates GNU software into its high-frequency trading algorithsms…’ Where are all the Slashdottirs when you need them?