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.
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.
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.
Originally from Slashdot. Jamie Price is a very cool dude. He designed and built a robotic bartender. No, that doesn’t quite capture capture the degree of his awesomeness.
- I’ts mobile. It’s on wheels and can drive around.
- It’s got a full light show that responds to the music via a microphone
- It has a rotating clip of beer bottles that rise up to the top one at a time on a beer elevator. Kinda like a Beer Howitzer
- It has a series of six liquor bottles in the top section for dispensing shots
- He posted the instructions on how to build it on Instructables
- He posted a video of the robot in action on break.com
- He calls it …………..BaR2D2!
I’ve talked before about how wonderful Stack Overflow is. I found this great post today listing free books and quick reference cards. There are a lot of out of work geeks out there that could use a refresher or some cross-training.
The largest sources out there seems to be Added Bytes and 37Signals. I hope to compile and publish a list soon too, because I have a bunch of links to documentation on various software packes and languages.
Found on Slashdot: Energy-Generating Floors To Power Subway Displays In Tokyo.
In short, they’re installing piezoelectric circuitry in the floor. Piezoelectric devices convert pressure to energy and back. Squeeze them and they generate electricity. Send electric waveforms into them and they vibrate to the pulses and make sound. It’s what watches use for buzzers. The system is going to be used to power ticket gates and display systems. Here’s another article on it with more of a technical slant.
Two words: Too Cool!