Apple Is Sneaky

Apple is being sneaky, sneaking applications onto people's computers without their consent.   They say they're installing only iTunes, but then lots of other applications find their way onto the computer.

On Why People Didn't Evacuate During Hurricane Ike

NPR had a good commentary by someone on why people did not evacuate during Hurricane Ike.  While I don't really agree with their reasoning on not evacuating, the essay is, nonetheless, very good (in particular the last paragraph).  I think it's more powerful listening to it than reading it. 

Update on Virginia Spammer

In March, I wrote how the Virginia Supreme Court upheld a criminal sentence of a spammer from North Carolina who used AOL's servers.  The Virginia Supreme Court issued a new opinion on Friday, vacating the convictions based on the First Amendment and the spammers right to free speech.  Here is a link to the summary (search for Jaynes within the page if you don't see it at the top).  Here is a link to the opinion (a PDF).

Switching Easily Between Desktops on Windows

I found a utility, aptly named Desktops, which allows you to easily switch between desktops on Windows.  So, if you wanted to switch between one Desktop where you had Word set up and another desktop where you had Excel set up, you could do so easily.  It's published by Microsoft, and it looks like it will run on most versions of Windows.

The Yellowstone National Park Fires -- Ten Years Later

There was a piece on NPR about the Yellowstone National Park Fires, ten years later. This is the first part of a five part series.
I also found more than you ever wanted to know about how the National Park Service manages fires.

Useful Plugins for Firefox

I discovered a few plugins for Firefox, two of which are from Mozilla Labs. A disclaimer: These are all non-final versions, and therefore might be buggy. However, I have not had any real difficulty with any of them.
Ubiquity allows you to use the keyboard to quickly Google something, select text and email it to someone, or insert a map into an email and email it to someone, and more. But hitting -, you call Ubiquity, which then will do your bidding.
Second, a program called Auto Dial, which, based on your web history, builds a custom web page that opens each time you open a new tab, so that when you open a new tab, it will
Finally, a program called Ctrl-Tab allows you to switch between tabs easily, all the while seeing what tab you will be switching too.