links for 2008-11-20

"Israel is a democracy and it is an ally. It is a beacon of freedom and it is a historical necessity. For me this is a given. But that doesn't mean you have to present solid support for Israel in a a way that alienates and rejects the feelings of other peoples in the world. And I thought my husband did a pretty good job of that. I thought he had a rock-solid commitment to Israel, a guarantee of Israel's security. The Israelis believed it. We were last there in November and people were saying to him, "Come and run for President here,' because he has such a deep connection and empathy, and I feel it and share it. When he had a process going that kept Israelis and Palestinians talking to each other, people didn't die. There are those who say that that doesn't resolve the issue, so big deal, people didn't die, big deal that for a couple of years not a single Israeli was killed, big deal that the Palestinians were actually starting businesses. Well, I think it was a big deal. A process is

The real thing. From the python's mouth. And a test case in how to do this kind of thing.

"Think about how often it is that a sentence leaves you amazed, unless because it is bringing you a piece of startling news or is appallingly constructed. Yet this critic thinks this writer 'throws down' (!) sentences – in the plural – to leave the reader amazed. I loved the book and by some of its sentences I was, just possibly, struck; but I was never amazed."

"There is a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hand, saying that they're going to be trimming down and streamlining their businesses," Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-New York, told the chief executive officers of Ford, Chrysler and General Motors at a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee.

"Today C, for changing requirements…which are a fact of life — certainly if your life revolves around developing software. During R2 there was a 40% churn on requirements. That means by the end of the project 40% of the work we had done had not appeared in our initial plan — some things were dumped, new things were introduced, and much was significantly altered. The Agile way is to embrace change, and more than that it's to structure your working practices around enabling and encouraging it. There are several ways we make this happen. One is to make sure that every task has tangible value to the end-user. Another is to prioritise the tasks so that the highest value work is delivered first. The second follows from the first: only if the tasks are individually valuable can they be arranged and rearranged."

Great intro to the actual code you need to "go social." Which raises the obvious question why it took Y! so long to do it, and why it was so crap when it arrived. Find the answer to that, and you find the Answer To Saving Yahoo!