Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Iran's Ex-Leader Seeks Return in the Trappings of a Reformer. The front-runner in Iran's elections, who was once a pillar of the Islamic Revolution, is now being cast as the man who can curb the excesses of hard-line clerics. By NEIL MacFARQUHAR. [NYT > International] 10:45:26 PM    comment []

When slang changes, bad things happen to good comix [bOing bOing] 10:39:56 PM    comment []

Iranian Ban on Reformist Candidates Is Reversed. A watchdog group dominated by hard-liners reversed an earlier decision and said today that two reformist candidates could run in presidential elections next month. By NEIL MACFARQUHAR. [NYT > International] 7:05:02 PM    comment []

Iran's elections cast a shadow on nuclear talks. EU ministers warn that if Iran makes good on its threat to resume fuel enrichment, they will refer the country to the UN Security Council. [Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories] 6:59:13 PM    comment []

Product music today. Via Metafilter, I recently discovered this mind-boggling collection of IT-related corporate anthems. Corporations have used songs to rally employees for decades, of course. Many companies (especially department stores and railroad companies) had in-house musical groups in the 1920s... and industrial musicals were the rage among managers, who used them to recruit and motivate employees in the 1950s and 1960s. But who knew companies still made promo music?! Granted, a solid percentage of these songs weren't actually sanctioned by management, or at least not with any degree of seriousness. "At Honeywell Our Quest Is Quality," for example, was written by an enthusiastic employee in the early 1990s. And the wretched, Philips-themed remake of John Miles' 1976 hit "Music"--which simply replaces the word music whereever it appears with "Philips" (as in "Philips was my first love / And it will be my last / Philips is my future / And it will ever last")--is probably a fake. But some of them were indeed created for corporate events and miscellaneous rabble-rousing. Of these, the ones I found entertaining are Hewlett-Packard's ode to its fallen email program, OpenMail; Richard Stallman's "Free Software Song" (which uses the melody of a Bulgarian dance tune),  "Come on Board with BlackBerry" (performed calypso-style to the tune of  "Love Boat"). Many of these songs, like the Starbucks number we posted earlier, are based on awful pop hits that they manage to make awful-er. (Hmm, wonder if they got permission...) [Stay Free! Daily] 6:59:06 PM    comment []

Cringely: Did We Say "Ultimate"? We Meant Ultraeasy: Microsoft recently sponsored an online contest where IT pros from 20 European countries could answer security-related questions and compete for a free trip to a tech conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Microsoft called it "the ultimate IT security arena," but that was perhaps putting it a bit too strongly. Test-takers quickly figured out that by hitting their browser's back button they could resubmit answers until they got the right one, or simply pile on points well beyond the daily maximum. After three days, Microsoft's "Gatekeeper" crew shut down the game, vowing to return once they'd finished wiping the egg off their faces. 9:04:58 AM    comment []

Daily Show torrents [bOing bOing] 7:35:00 AM    comment []

Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation. Darknet (John Wiley & Sons, May 2005) is JD Lasica's new book that offers first-person accounts of how the personal media revolution will impact movies, music, computing, television and games. Darknet intro See early reviews on Amazon [Smart Mobs] 7:33:16 AM    comment []

Preliminary work, but merits further investigation, it seems to me: What Women Want. The gender gap at work isn't due to women's insecurities about their abilities. It's due to different appetites for competition. By JOHN TIERNEY. [NYT > Opinion] 7:32:39 AM    comment []

IPod Plug-In Sets Music Free. A handy plug-in for Winamp wins praise for allowing iPod users to move music off their iPods. By Katie Dean. [Wired News] 7:32:34 AM    comment []

The College Dropout Boom. College dropouts make up one of the largest and fastest-growing groups of young adults in America. Most, like Andy Blevins, come from poor and working-class families. By DAVID LEONHARDT. No Degree, and No Way Back to the Middle. When Jeff Martinelli and Mark McClellan lost their jobs, they found that the market did not value their factory skills nearly as much as it did four years of college. By TIMOTHY EGAN. [NYT > Business] 7:28:02 AM    comment []

Info on Stem Cells. Stem cells are in the news a lot lately, and I thought this link to the NIH Info Center [Stem Cell Information] would be useful to share. [GalaxyGoo Blog] 7:24:20 AM    comment []

BitTorrent Creator to Launch Search Engine. Yahoo is carrying the story about new Bram Cohen's project - search engine (for torrents): "The goal is to get every single torrent on the Internet indexed," Cohen said. I've have nominated Cohen for the Pioneer Award this year, but ... So, I use this opportunity to nominate him for 2006 Award. [unmediated] 7:20:39 AM    comment []

Golf Club Prices Are Up; Scores Are Not Down. The average 18-hole score for the average golfer remains at about 100, as it has for decades, according to the National Golf Foundation. By BILL PENNINGTON. [NYT > Sports] 7:20:14 AM    comment []