Is there a 3rd party twitter app that builds a link page based on my follows? If not, someone should build it. It would be my start page.

I've been saying that twitter is the closest anyone has come to MemeStreams. These applications roll the links people in your twitter network have tweeted. The result may be more valuable than following twitter itself - particularly if these apps are well designed. I haven't had time to play around with them yet.

Twitter Link Page

Five months later and it happens again... my internet is down. The router (an SMC Barricade) that I hooked up during the previous debacle is now unable to obtain a DHCP lease from Comcast's network. This always seems to happen on a weekend...

So, I replaced the SMC with my Belkin. This is the exact same Belkin that Comcast's first and second level technical support insisted MUST be malfunctioning last December because it was unable to obtain a DHCP lease from their network at that time. It works just fine. I'm back up.

The SMC goes into my toolbox - inevitably in a few months I'll wake up and my Belkin will again be unable to obtain a lease from Comcast, and I'll replace it with the SMC, which will work just fine.

My previous explanation of this problem erred in terms of providing a lot of irrelevant technical detail about the difference between the DHCP process that I was seeing from my laptop and my Belkin. I'm now operating off the exact same Belkin that was not getting a lease in December, and it performs DHCP in exactly the same way that it did in December, but it now gets a lease just fine, and I now have a different device that cannot get a lease.

The simplest explanation is that Comcast's network is refusing a lease to my router's MAC address. Other MAC addresses can get a lease just fine. This condition appears to be temporary, but it lasts more than 24 hours and thats as long as I'm willing to wait for it to clear.

This is most likely a configuration problem with their DHCP server - my first guess is that it is not allowing devices with old leases to obtain new ones, but of course I can't troubleshoot this myself, and Comcast refuses to take it seriously. If I was a sadist I'd call Comcast's technical support so that they can tell me, again, that my router must be broken. I've got better things to do today.

I wonder how widespread this problem is. I wonder how many Comcast customers go through router after router thinking that they must be pieces of junk that fail constantly, when, in fact, there is a problem with Comcast's network. Hopefully, some victims of this problem will find this thread and be saved a lot of frustration.

RE: Comcast's DHCP is STILL broken

A First-Class stamp now costs 44-cents, 2-cents more than last week.

Eva Jackson, Inland spokesperson for the Postal Service, says rate increases will be an annual thing.h

Stamps increase again.

While there’s plenty to criticize in that post-9/11 law, it doesn’t contain any provision that abrogates a defendant’s right to a trial...

The boy’s mother, Annette Lundeby, has even acknowledged in interviews that her son has been formally charged, has a court-appointed attorney, and has already made appearances in front of a judge.

Bloggers, TV, Go Nuts Over Misleading ‘Patriot Act’ Arrest Claim | Threat Level

After nearly four months of frank, honest, and open dialogue about the failing economy, a weary U.S. populace announced this week that it is once again ready to be lied to about the current state of the financial system.

Nation Ready To Be Lied To About Economy Again | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

We just launched a new search feature that makes it easy to find and compare public data. So for example, when comparing Santa Clara county data to the national unemployment rate, it becomes clear not only that Santa Clara's peak during 2002-2003 was really dramatic, but also that the recent increase is a bit more drastic than the national rate:

Official Google Blog: Adding search power to public data

6. "I Have Taken The Amino Acid Sequence of H1N1 Swine Flu and Turned It Into a Piece of Ambient Music. Does This Interest You?"
Yes, Stephan Zielinski. Yes, it does. You can listen to Stephan's appropriately haunting, sad and beautiful composition on his Web site.

Swine Flu Q & A - Boing Boing

Rumors from late last week have come home to roost, and as part of its restructuring efforts, General Motors has just announced that Pontiac will be "phased out by the end of 2010." GM will continue to build its accelerated viability plan around four brands: Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, and GMC.

GM kills Pontiac

Decius wrote:

The report points to then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's approval of such techniques -- including stress positions, removal of clothing, use of phobias (such as fear of dogs), and deprivation of light and auditory stimuli -- in December 2002 for detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His OK prompted interrogators in Afghanistan and Iraq to adopt the aggressive techniques.

Apparently the "left wing conspiracy theorists" who argued that what happened at Abu Ghraib came from the top and was not the product of "bad apples" were, in fact, absolutely correct about that. Rumself personally authorized this.

In retrospect, I think I was wrong here. The abuses at Abu Ghraib went far beyond "use of phobias." They weren't authorized by this memo.

RE: The torture row is not going to go away.

If you enjoyed the boss video you'll like this one, although its a little less over the top.

YouTube - The Lonely Island (SNL) - I'm On A Boat (ft. T-Pain) - Uncensored Video (Album Version)