Provide an Embeddable Widget option for Views aside from Page and Block. This will enable the view to be embedded to any website as Javascript, IFrame/FBML (Facebook support and similar), Google Gadget, or even Flash.

This looks like a neat Summer of Code project.

To ensure that a user actually owns a number we use a double opt-in process where a confirmation message is sent to the handset with a four digit code. The user is then asked to enter this code to confirm ownership.

Fannie Mae -- the Federal National Mortgage Association -- was created in the 1930s to facilitate homeownership by buying mortgages from banks, freeing up cash that could be used to make new loans. Fannie and Freddie Mac, which does pretty much the same thing, now finance most of the home loans being made in America.

The case against Fannie and Freddie begins with their peculiar status: although they're private companies with stockholders and profits, they're "government-sponsored enterprises" established by federal law, which means that they receive special privileges.

The most important of these privileges is implicit: it's the belief of investors that if Fannie and Freddie are threatened with failure, the federal government will come to their rescue.

This implicit guarantee means that profits are privatized but losses are socialized. If Fannie and Freddie do well, their stockholders reap the benefits, but if things go badly, Washington picks up the tab. Heads they win, tails we lose.

...

Fannie and Freddie had nothing to do with the explosion of high-risk lending a few years ago, an explosion that dwarfed the S.& L. fiasco. In fact, Fannie and Freddie, after growing rapidly in the 1990s, largely faded from the scene during the height of the housing bubble.

Partly that's because regulators, responding to accounting scandals at the companies, placed temporary restraints on both Fannie and Freddie that curtailed their lending just as housing prices were really taking off. Also, they didn't do any subprime lending, because they can't: the definition of a subprime loan is precisely a loan that doesn't meet the requirement, imposed by law, that Fannie and Freddie buy only mortgages issued to borrowers who made substantial down payments and carefully documented their income.

My name is Sean Tevis. I'm an Information Architect in Kansas running for State Representative. I've decided to "retire" my current State Representative. I'm going to win. This is my story (XKCD homage style) so far.

In the month of June we enabled Google Analytics on Drupal.org as part of an effort to build a user experience toolkit. The toolkit was designed to provide insight on: what users were searching for, what traffic patterns and workflows vistors were following, and what usability feedback we can get from field studies

The poop is hitting the fan over tax breaks given to ratings giant Nielsen Co., which pocketed millions in Florida jobs-creation tax concessions but has turned around and dismissed hundreds of local workers after inking a $1.2B outsourcing deal with Tata Consultancy Services of Mumbai. Lou Dobbs is on the case. Lou may go even more ballistic once he sees the Nielsen-Tata pact, which assures Nielsen that OT worries are a thing of the past ('there shall be no additional charge for overtime work'), allows Nielsen to have unsatisfactory Tata hires replaced within 4 weeks of starting with no charge for the original or re-performed work, gives Nielsen up to 6 man-weeks of free labor when a Tata worker is replaced, and allows Nielsen to make 'any TCS Resource' disappear with no more than 5 days notice if their presence 'is not in the best interests of Nielsen.' Nielsen execs have launched a PR counter-attack, pledging not to bully 85 year-old ladies in future layoffs. In a Letter to the Citizens, Nielsen CEO David L. Calhoun explained that Tata won a 'rigorous competition' to get the job, failing to mention that Tata was also tapped by Nielsen EVP Mitchell Habib in his CIO roles at both GE and Citigroup.

I wouldn't object to the outsourcing and as for the issue of deserved tax breaks, well corporations don't deserve them at all from my point of view. If there were no tax breaks given, this would be a non-issue.

Thousands of people took the streets of Sudan's tense capital Sunday in a carefully choreographed protest against the expected request for an arrest warrant on war crimes charges for Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Monday.

Students and members of the ruling National Congress Party were bussed into central Khartoum, where they waved banners denouncing the I.C.C. and the United Nations. Sudan's government met in an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss how to respond to the announcement of a request for an arrest warrant for Mr. Bashir, who has ruled Sudan since taking power in a military coup nearly 20 years ago.

The Bush administration is considering the withdrawal of additional combat forces from Iraq beginning in September, according to administration and military officials, raising the prospect of a far more ambitious plan than expected only months ago.

Just in time for the election!

So, what to do. I have an idea. Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There's no way I can personally get them -- my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I'm sure -- but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won't be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart. If you can smuggle some out from under the armed guards and grim nuns hovering over your local communion ceremony, just write to me and I'll send you my home address.

Since the original post, William Donohue and the Catholic League are up and arms and they want the university or the state to do something. Myers is looking to rally the troops and getting more comments than he can handle (sounds like they could use Drupal). Meanwhile, there is concern that Myers might be violent and that more security is needed for this year's Republican National Convention. Fellow SBling GrrlScientist is quick to point out Americans mocked Muslims for issuing death threats over the cartoons in Danish newspapers. Another SBling, Mike Dunford, gives us the backstory that many people lost in Myer's original post due to its inflammatory nature:

To be fair to Paul, it's not like he pulled that idea out of the blue. A college student in Florida smuggled a consecrated host out of a Catholic Mass at the school. When this became widely known, a large number of Catholics became extremely outraged, and the student received a number of death threats. The college responded by supplying armed university police officers to stand guard - not over the student who received the death threats, but at Mass, to protect the eucharist from future kidnapping. The university police will apparently be receiving additional backup from a nun that the diocese is sending to help protect the Eucharist. (No, I'm not making any of that up.)

It's easy to understand why Paul - and, for that matter, any number of rational people - were outraged by that story. The kid removed something from the church that is, as far as anyone can tell from any measurements of any physical properties, a thin wafer made out of wheat. It's about the size of a quarter, costs a lot less, and has both the texture and flavor of glue. It is absolutely, completely, and utterly insane that there are people who are willing to threaten the life of another human being who failed to display proper reverence for an object that is, by all objective standards, nothing more than a Necco Wafer that's been subjected to a flavorectomy.

Regardless of what we believe about the Eucharist, we should all be able to get behind the idea that it's absolutely wrong to threaten to kill someone who treats it disrespectfully.

Richard Dawkins has weighed in in support of Myers now.