That was the final straw.

“I’m hanging around waiting for the nominee to get bumped off”?

Senator Clinton, I assumed that if Senator Obama did not win the nomination, I would support you over McCain in November. No longer. If I have to write in Mickey Mouse and pray that the electoral votes in Maine don’t go to McCain, I will, but you will not get my vote.

You don’t deserve it.

I just tried out Microsoft’s new Live Search Cashback: a search for “TabletPC” brought back 8 hits, all RAM cards. I had to search for “Tablet PC” to find what I wanted.

Ars Technica points at MusOpen.com, which is dedicated to public domain classical music. Besides scores, they take bids on performances: when the performance is fully funded, they record the piece and release it into the public domain.

Neat concept, but there are other places like Mutopia, which have much larger collections of sheet music, along with the Lilypond source files, so you can format them any way you want. There are also sites like the Wikimedia Commons, which have their own music libraries. We’ll have to see how this plays out.

Google Health has launched, but it is not HIPAA-compliant. This is not encouraging.

However, Google may only use health information you provide as permitted by the Google Health Privacy Policy, your Sharing Authorization, and applicable law. Google is not a “covered entity” under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and the regulations promulgated thereunder (”HIPAA”). As a result, HIPAA does not apply to the transmission of health information by Google to any third party.

Dave Winer recently added Firefly to his site: it’s a web app that lets you see who’s on the web page with you. You can track cursors, and chat back and forth. I’ve added it to blog.donnael.com as well: drop in and chat if you like. :-)

There’s further discussion about it at AlleyInsider and Bub.blicio.us.

George Oates, one of the people behind Flickr, tells what you need to do for your online community to actually work.

It’s the sheer breadth of places like Flickr that keep people coming back, and keep people participating. There’s no way to design all things for all people. When you’re dealing with The Masses, it’s best to try to facilitate behavior, rather than to predict it. Design, in this context, becomes more about showing what’s possible than showing what’s there. Imagine your site as a “Game for the Masses” where you don’t make the rules. Leave your members to negotiate and communicate and you’ll get a much richer result.

The author of the article about the woman who let her son ride the subway home from Bloomingdale’s (mentioned below) has started a blog called Free Range Kids. (h/t BoingBoing)

Do you ever…

…let your kid ride a bike to the library? Walk alone to school? Take a bus, solo? Or are you thinking about it? If so, you are raising a Free Range Kid! At Free Range, we believe in safe kids. We believe in helmets, car seats and safety belts. We do NOT believe that every time school age children go outside, they need a security detail. Most of us grew up Free Range and lived to tell the tale. Our kids deserve no less. This site dedicated to sane parenting. Share your stories, tell your tips and maybe one day I will try to collect them in a book. Meantime, let’s try to help our kids embrace life! (And maybe even clear the table.)

Brian Simser has a great step-by-step post explaining how to do branching in Subversion. Check it out!

Roy Osherove has created a LINQ custom provider to create regular expressions in a readable fashion.

            var query = from match in
               RegexQuery.Against("sdlfjsfl43r3490r98*(*Email@somewhere.com_dakj3j")
                        where match.Word.Repeat.AtLeast(1)
                            .Literal("@")
                            .Word.Repeat.AtLeast(1)
                            .Literal(".")
                            .Choice.Either(
                                 Pattern.With.Literal("com"),
                                 Pattern.With.Literal("net"))
                            .IsTrue()
                        select match;

Keith gives us the rundown. thanks to dsharma23@kos.