mrbill writes "Seems that South Korea and China have mandated Common Cell Phone chargers and data cables. No proprietary chargers and data cables any more. Must use USB for charging etc. "

Dekortage writes in with a new study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research suggesting that the North Pole may be clear of ice in summer as soon as 2040, decades earlier than previously thought. From the article: "'As the ice retreats, the ocean transports more heat to the Arctic and the open water absorbs more sunlight, further accelerating the rate of warming and leading to the loss of more ice,' Holland said in the statement. 'This is a positive feedback loop with dramatic implications for the entire Arctic.'"

twofish writes to tell us that Sun's Tim Bray (co-editor of XML and the XML namespace specifications) has posted a blog entry suggesting RELAX NG be used instead of the W3C XML Schema. From the blog: "W3C XML Schemas (XSD) suck. They are hard to read, hard to write, hard to understand, have interoperability problems, and are unable to describe lots of things you want to do all the time in XML. Schemas based on Relax NG, also known as ISO Standard 19757, are easy to write, easy to read, are backed by a rigorous formalism for interoperability, and can describe immensely more different XML constructs."

At a dinner honoring those who stand up for freedom of speech, former House speaker Newt Gingrich issued his opinion that the idea of free speech in the U.S. needs to be re-examined in the interest of fighting terrorism. Gingrich said a "different set of rules" may be needed to reduce terrorists' ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message. The article has few details of what Gingrich actually said beyond the summary above, and no analysis pointing out how utterly clueless the suggestion is given the Internet's nature and trans-national reach.