links for 2010-04-09

  • Yesterday was the White House's self-selected deadline to release some huge open government datasets, but it didn't happen. A bunch of data is going to be made available, which is great, but this is disappointing. I suspect that the White House is finding out that cleaning up data enough to make it available in a useful, standardized, secure way is actually pretty tough. Harder still is convincing individual agencies to do so.
  • This tool for selecting a domain name to register is a pleasure to use. It's good for coming up with short URLs or goofy (del.icio.us) domains.
    (tags: dns internet)
  • Another sign that "organic," in the legal sense, carries none of the baggage that people associate with it.
    (tags: food)
  • Shillings, pence, farthings, guineas, crowns…what *are* all of these British coins? (Or, rather, what were they?) It turns out that there have been a series of non-decimal coinages in England over the years, and it was just as confusing then as it seems now, in retrospect.
    (tags: england)
  • Cohen says that there's nothing wrong with illegally downloading an e-text of a book that you already own. I agree wholly. I have a a few albums on cassette and MiniDisc that I downloaded. I've got a license for them, and it's easier than ripping them myself.
    (tags: copyright drm)
  • Colin Powell's former top aide has testified that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld knew that hundreds of Guantanamo detainees were innocent, but figured it'd be bad PR to admit it. He also says that many of the detainees were kidnapped and sold to the U.S.—there was a bounty on the heads of ostensible terrorists—without any attempt to find out what they were supposedly guilty of.
  • We refer to aliases used in battle in French because members of the French Foreign Legion—a famous home for misfits and troublemakers from around the world—and the habit of new recruits to select a new name to make a complete break with their old life. But the use of a nom de guerre is by no means limited to members of the elite fighting force.

Published by Waldo Jaquith

Waldo Jaquith (JAKE-with) is an open government technologist who lives near Char­lottes­­ville, VA, USA. more »

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