Links before I sleep

A few links to stories that I found interesting, sans (much) comment:

Even simple phones vulnerable to "SMS of death"

And you were sitting there all smug with your free Nokia handset watching the iPhone people freak out. Ha! (Actually, the iPhone people stopped freaking out over a year ago because they just assumed Apple fixed the problem with a software update. That might or might not have been a wise assumption: I seem to recall that much of the vulnerability lay in AT&T's own insecure wireless infrastructure.)

Tim Bray's wish for the country, 2011

Here’s the country I want to be a citizen of: the one that decides to buy comfort and convenience by deploying courage.

Krugman on "The New Voodoo"

Expedia drops American Airlines

The Fort Worth, Texas-based airline has said that it would like to sell more tickets through its own website, as paying to have its flights listed on sites such as Expedia can be costly.

The article notes that American pulled out of Orbitz last month. Translation: American doesn't like competing head-to-head with other airlines. If its service is still anything like what I experienced fifteen years ago on a transatlantic flight, it's right to be afraid.

The view from Mr. Borges' window

I wish we could have gotten a photo instead of a line drawing. Not that it would have made it any more straightforward to bend my mind around his stories.