Ingenious Bank Robbers
From UPI: Bank robbers build a fake chimney on the roof of a bank to hide the fact that they were cutting through the roof.
And they would have gotten away with it, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!
Microsoft Incompatible With Microsoft
From (duh) Slashdot is this article:Microsoft.com Makes IE8 Incompatibility List!
“Microsoft is tracking incompatible Web sites for its upcoming Internet Explorer 8 browser and has posted a list that now contains about 2,400 names – including Microsoft.com. Apparently, even though Microsoft’s IE8 team is doing the ‘right’ thing by finally making IE more standards-compliant, they are risking ‘breaking the Web’ because the vast majority of Web sites are still written to work correctly with previous, non-standards-compliant versions of IE.”
Microsoft, here is the bed you made. Now spend some quality time in it.
I Hate Boring People
OK, so you know I like to play word games. I’m actually writing about a family, the Borings. Of course, if they really lived up to their name, I wouldn’t be writing about them, would I?
Apparently, they’re very private people. They live in a secluded house on a private road in Pittsburgh. Along comes the Google Maps Street View team, running their 360° cameras, up the road they (allegedly) don’t know is a private road, and shoot video of the road and the house. The Boring family finds out, freaks out, and gets their lawyers out. They sue Google for tresspassing, invasion of privacy, and a few other serious-sounding charges. The court eventually threw out the case, essentially because (1) they platintiff simply didn’t make a strong enough case for compensation, and (2) Google actually has a system in place to request images of a person’s house be removed from their website, but they chose to sue instead of use it (Google did remove the content when asked nicely).
I strongly believe people need a mechanism like law suits to fight injustice, but this is a prime example of why the system doesn’t work better. It’s clogged up with cases like this. You can read more about this case here.
Some Good News From The Stimulus Package
Anyone who follows long-term technology progress will tell you that one of the biggest obstacles is power generation and storage. It affects everything from medical devices, to cars, to embedded hardware to space exploration. Generating electricity is often very inefficient, transmitting power over long distances is often very lossy (and that includes light and heat, as well as electricity). For vehicles, the problem is exponential, as the heavier your power store, the more power it takes to move it.
I was pleased to discover this post on Slashdot saying part of the stimulus money is going to this issue.
“Provisions in the Congressional stimulus bill could help jump-start a new, multibillion-dollar industry in the US for manufacturing advanced batteries for hybrids and electric vehicles and for storing energy from the electrical grid to enable the widespread use of renewable energy. The nearly $790 billion economic stimulus legislation contains tens of billions of dollars in loans, grants, and tax incentives for advanced battery research and manufacturing, as well as incentives for plug-in hybrids and improvements to the electrical grid, which could help create a market for these batteries. Significant advances in battery materials, including the development of new lithium-ion batteries, have been made in the US in the past few years; but advanced battery manufacturing is almost entirely overseas, particularly in Asia.”
While I’m excited about this from a technology point of view, I fear it won’t do what the stimulus money’s primary job is; getting money and products happening now.
Got Robots?
BostonFirst is coming up 03/06/09 at Agganis Arena at Boston University.
The largest robotics competition in Boston and the largest regional competition in FIRST history — In 2008, over 7000 attendees watched more than 1000 high school students competing. Free and Open to the Public! … The FIRST (For Inspiration & Recognition of Science & Technology) Robotics Competition is an exciting, multinational competition that teams professionals and young people to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way. The program is a life-changing, career-molding experience—and a lot of fun. In 2009, 1700 teams of nearly 43,000 high school students from around the world will compete in events in the US, Canada, and Israel.
I’ve never been to this event, but I would really love to go. Has anyone else gone to this? Anyone going this year?
Really Cool Art Projects
I found ARTMARCOVICI from the oddly-name But Does It Float, which I found from the Some Random Dude mailing list and blog. There is, of course, regular interesting art there. But he also has some interesting concept pieces I found fascinating. Some are futuristic designs, some are more sociopsychological in nature. I love the high-tech futuristic stuff, but what kept me on the site is the creativity and diversity.
As an example of the creativity is the project Hell. The artist notes that Hell in German also means “bright”. So he designed a display with insanely bright LEDs that form the word “HELL”.