Events

Some misguided people in the ancestral homeland want to rename Big Ben in honor of a living monarch: London's Big Ben clock tower is to be renamed Elizabeth Tower to mark the queen's 60th year on the British throne. Prime Minister David Cameron welcomed the name change. "The renaming of the Clock Tower to the Elizabeth Tower is a fitting recognition of the Queen's 60 years of service. This is an exceptional tribute to an exceptional monarch," he said. Reactions among the public were mixed, however. "Big...

I don't know how extensive this is, but Google Maps street view now goes inside buildings: To see this for yourself, go on Google Maps to 1028 W Diversey Pkwy, Chicago, 60614. Click on the balloon over Paddy Long's Pub, and click Street View. Notice the double chevron pointing toward the sidewalk: Click that. And then explore. I can only weep that we didn't have this kind of data throughout history to see how people lived in the past. And I can only weep for what this will do to privacy. Update: It...

Chicago is about to get hotter than the pit of hell: Our predicted 39°C high Thursday would mark the first "official" triple-digit [Fahrenheit] temperature in Chicago in 7 years. (Note: 38°C readings occurred at Midway Airport twice last July—but NOT at O'Hare, the official site.) And the heat appears likely to hang on through the coming weekend and into next week—though scattered thunderstorms may bubble up in spots and afternoon breezes off Lake Michigan may temper the hottest readings on area beaches...

The U.S. Supreme Court handed down three decisions in the last few minutes that generally change nothing, though one of them was unexpectedly unanimous. First, in Arizona v. U.S., a unanimous court (except Justice Kagan, who recused herself) agreed that the supremacy and naturalization clauses make Arizona's draconian immigration law unconstitutional. Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion; Republican party operatives Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito dissented in part. In his dissent, Scalia proposes...

James Fallows today suggested a parlor game you can play at home: This is distilled from a longer item earlier today, at the suggestion of my colleagues. It's a simple game you can try at home. Pick a country and describe a sequence in which: First, a presidential election is decided by five people, who don't even try to explain their choice in normal legal terms. Then the beneficiary of that decision appoints the next two members of the court, who present themselves for consideration as restrained...

I have just spent an hour of my life—one that I will never get back—trying to figure out why I couldn't install any software from .msi files on one of my Windows 7 machines. Every time I tried, I would get a message that the installer "could not find the file specified." I'll spare you all the steps I went through to figure out why this was happening, and get to the punchline: > Yeah, you see, the SYSTEM account needs full control over any file you're trying to install on Windows. Here's how it should...

Continuing my general theme the last few days, the New York Times reminds us what Mitt Romney's biggest backer really wants: Mr. Adelson’s other overriding interest is his own wallet. He rails against the president’s “socialist-style economy” and redistribution of wealth, but what he really fears is Mr. Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on companies like his that make a huge amount of money overseas. Ninety percent of the earnings of his company, the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, come from hotel and casino...

I fretted earlier this week about the pattern that has emerged in the U.S., driven primarily by the the Republican Party (though my party isn't guilt-free), to return to the golden age of fiefs and barons. Paul Krugman provided another clear example: Over the past few days, The New York Times has published several terrifying reports about New Jersey’s system of halfway houses — privately run adjuncts to the regular system of prisons. The series is a model of investigative reporting, which everyone...

To readers who couldn't care less about my Exchange migration post, here is Parker reacting to the cleaning service's vacuums: They're about to vacuum under my desk, which will make him a very unhappy dog for a few minutes. He'll survive.

Last weekend I described moving my email hosting from my living room home office out to Microsoft Exchange Online. And Thursday I spent all day at a Microsoft workshop about Windows Azure, the cloud computing platform on which my employer, 10th Magnitude, has developed software for the past two years. In this post, I'm going to describe the actual process of migrating from an on-site Exchange 2007 server to Exchange Online. If you'd prefer more photos of Parker or discussions about politics, go ahead...