Thursday, October 31, 2002

Do Lower Taxes Mean Faster Economic Growth?. The degree of misleading information emanating from both Washington and the media about how taxes affect the economy is disturbing. By Jeff Madrick. [New York Times: Politics] 11:32:47 AM

Software piracy dips in some states. California, New York and Utah are among the states with the greatest drops in piracy rates for business software. But overall piracy rates inch higher, an industry group says. [CNET News.com] 11:29:57 AM

A Versatile Organizer Is All Windows at Heart. With the V35, ViewSonic becomes the 29th company to produce an organizer with an operating system from Microsoft rather than Palm. [New York Times: Technology] 11:24:57 AM

Don't trash that Flash Marc Canter explains why you shouldn't turn off Flash in your browser just because you're annoyed by Flash ads. Canter is the father of Director, the program that Macromedia transmogrified into Flash as it tried to jump into the Web era; I don't know whether that makes him Flash's granddad, or its renegade uncle, or what, but it makes him worth listening to on the subject. [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment] 11:09:48 AM

Bush Wants Fast Vetting on Judges. President Bush proposed a plan to speed Senate confirmation of his judicial nominees. By Elisabeth Bumiller. [New York Times: Politics] Democrats said they had confirmed 80 of the president's nominees. As of this week, there are 79 vacancies out of 849 federal judgeships, or 9 percent. While Mr. Bush blamed the Senate, Democrats said today that the White House and Republicans were also to blame. Ralph Neas, the president of People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group that has opposed Mr. Bush's conservative nominees, said 26 of the vacancies were the result of the White House not yet naming a nominee. An additional 17 or 18 vacancies, Mr. Neas said, were the result of nominees who had cleared the Judiciary Committee but had run into objections from Republican senators. 10:53:58 AM

MS Tablet suits Corridor Warriors, Canteen Commandos.  "Just because Bill says something should be done one way, that doesn't mean it's set down on stone, uh… tablets." [The Register] 10:41:46 AM

Beautiful Case Modding. Miles S.F. writes "Thought you guys might appreciate this little project I've been working on. This is what happens when the left and right brain get bored and ... [Slashdot] 10:39:39 AM

Workstation makers switch off Intel tool. Intel's hyperthreading, a performance-enhancing technology that lets one chip act something like two, has been available on workstations since April. So far it's mostly been taking a nap. [CNET News.com] 10:29:10 AM

Russia: Dial 'H' for Hostage. A Russian dancer held captive in the recent standoff with Chechen rebels uses his cell phone to post a message to the world. Neither his captors nor government censors can stop him. Sergey Kuznetsov reports from Moscow. [Wired News] 10:29:03 AM