Apparently Jesus works at Microsoft Middle East division. You may be glad to find that Jesus’s “job is my passion”, and that he has “learned to appreciate different cultures, religions and people.” Bet you didn’t know that Jesus was a triathlete, though. Maybe the Beast from Redmond isn’t so bad after all.
Yes, I know it’s a common Hispanic name. What can I say, slow news day.
Something fascinating is created when one fuses form and function. Witness the finalists of the 2004 Idea Design Excellent Awards (IDEA).
My favourite is Farm Design’s Weight Forward Hammer. It has an elongated, smooth top makes it easier to less damaging to take out nails, while its continuous curved shape makes it easier to pound nails in with less effort. The fact that it looks like it travelled through a temporal distortion from the 24th century doesn’t hurt, either. It’s a simple concept, yet they managed to refine it into a higher level of usability.
Other winners include everything from a cardboard toilet (once it’s done, you can burn it for fuel!) to a cocoon-like kidney transporter to this really cool Umbra salad bowl. Amusingly, Apple seems to have pulled a Lord of the Rings and carried off a multitude of awards, including ones for the G5 and iPod Mini. [from engadget]
In a matter of months, Bell Canada will make it easier for Dexit tag users (like me) to funnel cash into their RFID tags. Using voice recognition and authentication, people can just pick up the phone, dial the Dexit 1-800 number, and say, “Hey, it’s me Bob. Stick $20 more in my account.”
There’s been a Dexit stand in the basement of where I work, hawking these tags for the past two days. All the employees even got an email to come on down.
Bell Canada has had great success in using voice recognition in fielding their own service calls. When calling 310-BELL, Bell’s consumer hotline, customers can interact with a chip voice called “Emily” that will point them to the right department. It uses Nuance’s SayAnything software, and they plan to roll it out to all of Bell’s subsidiaries.
Too bad they can’t get robots to pay that $1.50 refill fee too. That would be lovely.
“The weekend started with a literal bang here in the Baldwin household, as the nation of Taiwan attempted to kill me and my child.” It’s the screwball way that Matthew Baldwin explains his altercation with a exploding Taiwanese-made balance ball is what makes this story a winner. The funny thing is, Silverlotus owns the same ball for yoga. Same colour too. Yes, it’s still a ball. [from This is Broken]
On the night of April 17th, 2002, two hotshot American pilots detected small arms fire as they flew over Tarnak Farms, Afghanistan. Maybe it was the speed they were taking to improve their reflexes, or plain machoism, but despite being told by AWACS to “hold fire” twice and that friendlies may be in the area, wingman Major Harry Schmidt dropped a 500kg laser-guided bomb. A bomb that killed four Canadians and injured eight others. The Canadians were undergoing a training exercise in a designated zone.
His punishment? A reprimand and a $5,600 US fine. That comes out to $1,400 a head, literally. Maj. William Umbach, who flew with him, was given a reprimand and voluntary early retirement.
We give worse sentences to hockey players who whack other players.
Well, the guy did get a tongue-lashing from the judge. A real flame of Internet proportions. In the verdict transcribed by CBC News, the judge charged Schmidt with “arrogance” and “poor airmanship”, and felt no “heartfelt remorse” over the deaths.
The judge also had these bon mots to say:
“…You used your self-defense declaration as a pretext to strike a target, which you rashly decided was an enemy firing position, and about which you had exhausted your patience in waiting for clearance…to engage. You used the inherent right of self-defense as an excuse to wage your own war.”
“…You lied about the reasons why you engaged the target after you were directed to hold fire and then you sought to blame others.”
Sounds familiar?
Who do you think sleeps better at night, Bill Gates or Linus Torvalds? We’ll never know for sure unless they ever shack up together like a 21st century Odd Couple, but BusinessWeek argues that sometimes passion and pride outperforms money, like how thousands of developers have contributed their blood and tears to the Linux operating system for no apparent reason.
It’s not like Linus is a pauper. The Linux kernel became his resume, and he was quickly hired by hot startup Transmeta when he graduated from the University of Helsinki. The RedHat IPO left him a millionaire; he drives a Mercedes SLK. Like Gates, he’s married with three kids and lives in the Northwest USA. He’s known for his humility (he was once spotted waiting in line with everybody else for his ID badge at a Linux conference, even though he was the keynote speaker) and straight-faced wit (such as when he stepped in to describe the ideal Linux mascot – a plump penguin).
Despite the fact Bill Gates has personally contributed $5 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest charity in the world, people are merely jealous of Gates. Linus, on the other hand, is adored.
Who do you think sleeps better at night, Dennis Hayes or Dale Heatherington? Together, they founded Hayes Microcomputer, the inventors of the computer modem. If you ever had to type in an AT command, it’s because your modem’s manufacturer licensed Hayes’s technology. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution attests, “Hayes was always the one who got the glory. Heatherington was the one who got the money.”
Hayes wanted to remain in control, and remained there when the company finally fell in 1998. Hayes is currently a part-time consultant living in a rented Manhattan bachelor apartment. He is twice-divorced, hounded by alimony payments.
Heatherington, the silent partner, retired in 1984, shortly after the company hit the big time, amassing a payout approaching $20 million. He now lives in a 7,000 square foot home with his wife, dedicating his time tinkering in his workshop. As Heatherington says, “How much money do you need? You go through life once. You’ve got a certain number of years to live.”
“If you put the energy in to build a profitable company, why not be good to yourself and enjoy it?” says Kelli Greene, an entrepreneur interviewed by Inc.com. She’s managed to handle one of the largest growing private companies in America with a 25 hour work week.
In the D drive: Thief: Deadly Shadows True to its past, but why do I have to fiddle with the default.ini just to make it bearable to play?
“I didn’t upgrade to the latest cheats, and I was banned.” He was waiting at St. George Station, carrying a canvas and a hiker’s backpack, so he’s probably a university arts student. He got banned from playing the online game Counter-strike. No remorse or guilt in his voice; it’s a minor inconvenience. Ironic since in the online gaming world, where gaming skills can mean cash prizes in cyberathelete competitions, cheating brings out very strong emotions. He plays “Amplitude” on the PlayStation2 now.
Two rollerblading teenagers, cruising down Bloor Street Village, are regaling this curious story: “So then, this asteroid heads toward earth and then turns around, saying “F— that!” But he’s not talking about what he’s seen on television or on the movies. He’s talking about the Flash animation “WTF Mates?” (The End of the World).
Saw a man teaching a young girl sign language on the streetcar. Did you know there is a gesture for “Tim Horton’s”? I only caught it in the corner of my eye so I probably am not getting it right, but it looks like the index and middle fingers pointed outward as your right hand moves in a wide upwards arc from right to left. “McDonald’s” is signified with a gesture tracing the shape of the Golden Arches.
One of my local candidates recently had left an automated message on our answering machine proclaiming his support of “safe neighbourhoods, good health care and the care of the elderly”. Just in case, you know, since all the other candidates are running for unsafe neighbourhoods and the mugging of senior citizens. With all this rhetoric and mother-truthing, three groups decided to ask the dominant Canadian parties what their plans were for privacy, copyrights, spam, and open source software. The Toronto Star also covered this topic.
Unsuprisingly, the political parties seemed to not have any clue what they were talking about. The Liberals, NDP, Bloc and Greens nebulously stated they were “looking at the issues”.
The Liberals were the first to respond, pointing out they created an anti-spam workforce, and also launched the infamous CDR tax levy.
The Greens probably responded the most lucidly, claiming they were for music sharing and open source, but didn’t get into many details.
The NDP and Bloc had no position on open source software, but agreed that spam = Bad!
The Bloc answered back in French, but that’s okay if you don’t understand la belle langue because every answer was the same: look up the Bulte Report, an interim government study done by my local Liberal candidate which basically approves Internet censorship.
Unsurprisingly, all four parties said that national IDs were bad.
The Conservatives didn’t bother to respond.
In any case, if you’re Canadian and haven’t voted yet, go vote. And remember, don’t eat your ballot, it’s illegal.
Probably one of Mozilla’s most powerful and yet overlooked features is its extension support. By installing these tiny plugins, you can give Mozilla extraordinary new abilities. Extensions are written in XUL, Mozilla’s cross-platform rendering language, and given an “XPI” file extension (Nosy Programmer tip: they’re actually ZIP files – rename their extensions and see!).
There are dozens of extensions available on Mozdev, ranging from bookmark backup makers to blogging tools to parlour games.
Here are my Top Ten Mozilla Extensions. These are the extensions I personally consider indispensable, the ones that scratch my itches:
CuteMenus: Adds pretty colourful icons to your browser menus. Might as well surf in style.
TextLink: Lets you access URLs written in plain text with a double-click. One of the many extensions that are simply little hacks that brighten your day just a bit more.
Dictionary Search: Just select a word on a webpage, click open the context menu, and you can search for that word on Dictionary.com or up to thre other search resources of your choice. I put Feedster and Wikipedia there too.
Web Developer: A set of tools that are invaluable to any web designer. Want to see what your page will look like in 800×600 resolution? Want to extract all the CSS data on a webpage, find broken images, or validate HTML in two clicks? It’s all there.
IEView: Every once in a while, you’ll run across a page that doesn’t work right in Mozilla. It ain’t the red dino’s fault – the webmaster obviously didn’t care enough to follow proper HTML standards. You can contact the webmaster about this faux pas, but in the meanwhile, you can use this workaround: click open the context menu, click “View This Page in IE” (if you have IE installed).
Diggler: It sits on the left hand side of the Location Bar, and provides a myriad of little options for surfing sites. For example, you can move up the directory tree, toggle popups and images on and off, and more.
QuickNote: Did you ever want a virtual scratchpad so you can quickly cut and paste an address or number off a website? You can load QuickNote in a tab or in a separate window, and it periodically saves everything automatically in plain text files. I’m proud to say I designed the icon for this extension. 😎
Multizilla: If you’re enjoying the power of tabbed browsing, this extension is worth a look. You can reopen closed tabs, make new windows open in tabs instead, and more.
Honourary Mention: Single Window Mode does roughly the same thing.
Tagzilla: Lets you automatically insert a random tagline into the bottom of email messages or website textareas. Taglines are basically pithy witticisms and quotations you store in a text file. If you’ve ever use BlueWave Offline Reader to read mail off a BBS, you know what I mean.
BugMeNot: You know those annoying news sites that make you register your name, email, and blood type just so you can see their fricken’ article? The next time you’re confronted with a registration screen, click open your context menu, click “BugMeNot”, and log in without having to type anything in.
1. People love to play the Two Things game, but they rarely agree about what the Two Things are.
2. That goes double for anyone who works with computers.
The 25 most difficult questions an interviewer can throw at you. From 1983, yet still topical.
23. What do you feel this position should pay?
Don’t sell yourself short, but continue to stress the fact that the job itself is the most important thing in your mind. The interviewer may be trying to determine just how much you want the job. Don’t leave the impression that money is the only thing that is important to you.