This is one example of the future of the internet and democracy, google style.  And it's one more reason why i don't consider myself a fan of the company.

"Does negative press make you Sicko?" asked Google health account planner Lauren Turner. She was referring to the new documentary by left wing demagogue Michael Moore about the US health provision.

Turner used the corporate blog to condemn his use of "isolated and emotional stories of the system at its worst". Why couldn't the media concentrate on the positive aspects of the system such as 44m uninsured Americans er, "the industry's numerous prescription programs, charity services, and philanthropy efforts."

This segues neatly into a plug for Google's core business, as she goes on to explain:

Many of our clients face these issues; companies come to us hoping we can help them better manage their reputations through "Get the Facts" or issue management campaigns. Your brand or corporate site may already have these informational assets, but can users easily find them?

We can place text ads, video ads, and rich media ads in paid search results or in relevant websites within our ever-expanding content network. Whatever the problem, Google can act as a platform for educating the public and promoting your message. We help you connect your company's assets while helping users find the information they seek.
...
"Advertising is a very democratic and effective way to participate in a public dialogue," she urged.

http://www.theregist.../google_sicko_storm/

So.. got a few million dollars of advertising money? Then you too can participate in democracy and buy yourself some relief from pesky bad press and a bad reputation.  If you get caught behaving unethically - use your democratic dollars to buy yourself an advertising campaign that can neutralize those pesky investigators.  It's all about advertising.

Here we have the advertiser's/lobbyist's middle-man game, telling each side they had better quickly get out their checkbooks and starting buying millions of dollars of advertising to try to quickly dominate the message and shout down the other guy's message.

My apologies for the semi-political rant..

This is a surprisingly good essay about content management system (CMS) features, and various features that are essential or merely nice extras.

It doesn't talk about specific products but it's a must read for anyone who has thought they might need a CMS for their website but weren't sure, or really don't have a great grasp of what a CMS brings to you that a simple static set of web pages doesn't.

If we look at content management functionality as a continuum, there’s a graduated scale between the two. On the one side, you have something simple — an “articles” table with a couple of password-protected pages to update it. On the other side, you have a commercial CMS that you paid $50K for with all the bells and whistles. Specifically, how are the two different?

http://gadgetopia.com/post/5940

Member urlwolf runs a great blog with thoughts on academia that someone just pointed me to.  I've visited it before but it really is shaping up to be a nice read and a lot of what he write strikes home.  Definitely worth a visit!

ACADEMIC PRODUCTIVITY is a survival guide for the 21st century researcher. Written by a small team of academics focusing on the topics on knowledge acquisition, production and dissemination, new technologies and productivity strategies.

http://www.academicp...oductivity.com/blog/

recently, i had been hunting for a RPN calculator when i found this brilliant freeware: Excalibur 32-bit.

Features

Powerful RPN entry. 300 Functions (scientific, business, conversion, computer science, physics, complex numbers, geometry, vectors, etc). Full 4 or 8-level stack. International support for different comma and decimal point formats. Programmable, macros, registers, custom button banks, etc.

http://www.geocities...dbergis/freeware.htm

P.S. this calculator program is freeware but the author requests donations to cover bandwidth costs.

While working on a new project (which will be revealed soon  ) I realized I was going to need a way to alphabetize links by their text description. Since I was going to have to do this frequently, I figured I would go hunt for a tool to do it.

I found this little gem.

Just paste in the html list of links, select the option you want, and click the button. Like magic, they will be alphabetized and formatted just the way you want with either bullets, numbers, in a table, etc.

Nice & easy. 

http://www.i-fubar.com/order-links.php

Through this post by ak_, i've found a fantastic piece of software.

Meed Ditto.

It's quite simplistic, only one options window and a quick paste window.
Though, it's quite powerful!! It can handle several types of files in the clipboard and it works VERY well.
I'm definitelly surprised, it's worth a try.

Also, while reading through Ditto's forums, i found an interesting idea: Stack Copy. It's something i had never thought, but it'd be extremelly useful, since i've used CHS several times to reproduce this behaviour.