Slashdot threads on both big happenings:
Is Groovy a lost cause? Things to watch for open source project managers
While I’m not a user of it yet in any real sense, I can say with confidence that I expect Groovy to grow and become a stable platform. The ideas and people behind it are terrific. However, there appears to be some problems with the project as it attempts to get over the hump. There are potential lessons here for open source project mangagers. I hope people share how they get past this point.
High schoolers on free speech
Our students aren’t being prepared for the future, and they aren’t being prepared to understand their rights.
Conservatives should join liberals in teaching the meaning and value of the Constitution – all of it.
Our rights seem to be going away slowly, piece by piece, while no one watches – or gives a damn.
More at Lower Merion Grassroots (Philly Future’s blogger of the week btw).
More Philly bloggers nominated for awards
Philadelphia bloggers rule the Koufax awards. Make sure you go vote.
A shameful request
Did you know there was a Firefox extension that shows you the Google PageRank of any page? It works great.
One thing I found out right away was that my home page has Google juice. Philly Future has none. Zilch. So I ask you, my fellow friendly bloggers, let the world know where to find our humble Philadelphia blogger online newspaper.
Google wants ‘dark fiber’
Google hires two prominent Firefox engineers, rumors of it launching a VOIP service emerge, it launches a TV show search service, and now this.
BTW – don’t you just love the term “dark fiber”?
Monkeys Pay to See Female Monkey Bottoms
…A new study found that male monkeys will give up their juice rewards in order to ogle pictures of female monkey’s bottoms. The way the experiment was set up, the act is akin to paying for the images, the researchers say.
…The scientists actually had to pay these guys, in the form of extra juice, to get them to look at images of lower-ranking monkeys.
Curiously, the monkeys in the test hadn’t had any direct physical contact with the monkeys in the photos, so they didn’t have personal experience with who was hot and who was not.
“So, somehow, they are getting this information by observation — by seeing other individuals interact,” said Michael Platt of the Duke University Medical Center.
Live Science: 1/28/05
Philly bloggers nominated for Bloggies
My thoughts and prayers Al
Let me join Dave and many others to send you my best wishes.
While the left and right want to argue about the significance of the Iraq vote…
I want to say to those in Iraq who decided to vote in an atmosphere of violence and cynicism – you’re heroes. I pray that whatever the final outcome, the people of Iraq will keep their spirits up, because I expect the next few weeks to be brutal as many will pile on to discredit the vote, to destroy the elected, to rip the heart out of those who braved violence today to cast their ballot. And to those righties who infer that to oppose Bush is to somehow be against freedom – shame on you. Shame on your divisive lying and hatred. Shame on you for using the Iraq people as a political football. Hopefully those elected will help to stabilize a terrible situation and they will need honest support to do so. Not blind obedience to any political party.