"Two months ago, we wrote the article “Colocation and the Financial Industry” to summarize the growing demand for outsourced colocation services, especially from the Electronic Trading Community.

It may now be worth a little follow up, not because the landscape described has really changed, but to update our readers with a few events that have happened in the meantime."

"This map, quite simply put, distorts the size of countries proportionate to the ‘distance’ of their writing systems to ASCII code. Countries with a lot of ‘exotic’ characters are biggest, while countries adhering closely to the ‘regular’ western (i.c. English, i.e. Latin) alphabet, are normal-sized. The legend on the left of the map shows some of the diacritical signs and special letters ‘added’ to the ASCII (English) alphabet in other European languages. Each diacritical sign and special letter has a story to tell. Here are just a few of those:…"

"Can you blame us for being a defensive lot, we lovers of early American literature, when all about us we see America's political Founding Fathers (and sometimes Mothers) celebrated like rock stars, on t-shirts, in miniseries, and, most enviably, with best-selling biographical tomes? What about our literary Founding Fathers (and Mothers)? Anne Bradstreet? Edward Taylor? Charles Brockden Brown? Don't they too deserve a little name recognition: at least a spot on CSPAN or a line-drawing portrait on a bookbag? We who cherish early American books and writers come by our defensiveness honestly. It is a long-standing American intellectual tradition, pioneered by fine American literary minds like William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Herman Melville, each of whom in his own way responded to that stinging question posed by Sydney Smith in the Edinburgh Review in January 1820: "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?""

"… Moreover, in order to raise capital and extend their credit over the long, unpredictable term of [an item's] market life, they often endorsed or guaranteed each other's promissory notes, in this way creating elaborate networks of mutual dependence. As a result, when one firm became insolvent, it often took several others down with it. But to make things even worse, many [brokers of these items] estimated their net worth based on unsold (and devalued) inventory rather than on a more realistic accounting of their assets. This meant that, at any given time, it was difficult for a [broker of these items] to know either his own true financial position or that of the firms whose notes he'd endorsed. Thus, by 1819, with many thousands of worthless [items] circulating as inflated currency, the bankruptcy of a [broker of these items] was a frequent occurrence."

"Dan manages to imply that the problem he encountered can be tagged open-source. Coordinating consistent builds across a tangle of libraries would seem to be hard enough that it would require some orchestration. It’s actually kind of striking how well this works in the loosely inter-project world of open source. Stefano has been known to point out that the friction that rises out of solving this problem creates inter-project social energy that’s extremely valuable. Which I’ll admit to wondering if it’s not a good thing that these problems arise."

"The taxpayers are becoming angrier and angrier at the net present value destruction of future opportunities of being a U.S. citizen, while investors cheer every piece of information (whether or not supported by facts) that provides a push to their current net worth, ignorant of what this may mean for the future. There will come a point where this schism reaches a boiling point, in the meantime, the paradox is that so many of the taxpayers are also investors, who are caught in a tug of war with themselves on what the proper response to the crisis should be: happy as a result of bear market rallies, or sad when they put the facts into perspective."

"In 1790, an intense debate swirled around the debt issued by individual states and the government during the Revolutionary War, much of which had been scooped up by big-city speculators after it had plummeted in value. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton's proposal that the newly constituted federal government assume state debts was wildly unpopular among the agrarian types from Virginia. They loathed speculators and the cities in which they congregated, and they viewed the plan as part of Hamilton's scheme to concentrate power in the federal government."

"My eyes were assaulted by this in a shop in Rochester in Kent. The shop sells "customised" vintage stuff (ie terrible knick-knacks sewn onto things by someone with no design sense) and new stuff by small designers (also equally hideous). The shop was shut when me and my friend were passing, but this beaut was the centrepiece of the window display. I have no idea whether it's new or mutilated 2nd hand, but either way it's terrifying. What do you think, fairy hunting trophy of the ball-sack of some fearsome pastel beastie? The world's campest sporran? Other ingenious theories welcome"

"The Mutopia Project offers sheet music editions of classical music for free download. These are based on editions in the public domain, and include works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Handel, Mozart, and many others. A team of volunteers are involved in typesetting the music by computer using the LilyPond software. Why not join them?! See the page on how to contribute for more information."

"This the right thing to do not only because it is a more realistic assessment of an academic’s worth. It’s also the right thing to do because it helps to build the value of the network. If knowledge and expertise are becoming properties of the network, it is the social responsibility of our institutions to encourage the enhancement of that network."

"Like a corn maze with end tables?"

"OAIster is a union catalog of digital resources. We provide access to these digital resources by "harvesting" their descriptive metadata (records) using OAI-PMH (the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting). The Open Archives Initiative is not the same thing as the Open Access movement."

"The article is written apparently without irony. It is, however, such an epic of cluelessness as to beggar the imagination. Having to move from an apartment renting for $7000/month to one renting for $4500/month! Being forced to leave the china at the summer home! Proactively laying off three (nameless) employees! Oh, the agony! The shame!

If you are wealthy, then, to the Times, you are a story in your own right. If you are not, then you tend to be reduced to a number: so many hundreds of thousands laid off; so many millions without health insurance. There are those who are important as individuals and those important only in aggregate."

"In the world where I come from, it is the typical state of affairs. In fact, apart from the elite Westernized minority, most people's assets are covered by paper that is endemically toxic: not recorded, not standardized, difficult to identify, hard to locate, its real value so opaque that ordinary people cannot build trust in each other or be trusted in global markets. In short, for shadow economies outside the U.S. and Europe, "credit crunch" and "meltdown" are chronic conditions. You don't want to go there: It will wipe out your middle class, nurturing radical politics, class confrontation, violence, crime and massive drug production and narco-trafficking. (North Americans only know drug consumption; just wait until you see the supply side of the deal.)"

"Tracker is a simple, story-based project planning tool that allows teams to collaborate and instantly react to real-world changes. It's based on agile software development methods, but it can be used on a variety of types of projects. Tracker frees you up to focus on getting things done, without getting bogged down keeping your plans in sync with reality."