2009 Feb 4, 4:16From Sorting it all Out wrt the weather gadget in Vista's sidebar, this link to China's laws on weather forecast: "Article 22 The State applies a unified system for the issue of public meteorological
forecast and severe weather warning... No other organizations or individuals may issue to the community such forecast or warning." "Article 25 When the media, including radio, television, newspaper
and telecommunication, issue to the community public meteorological forecast or severe weather warning, they shall use the latest meteorological information provided by a meteorological office...
Part of the revenues from the distribution of meteorological information shall be drawn to support the development of meteorological service." Whether an application is legally allowed to provide a
weather forecast is not an attribute I would have imagined necessary for a localization API.
via:michael-kaplan china law legal politics weather forecast localization 2009 Feb 3, 11:15"r2719 specifies that browsers should not allow scripts to set document.domain to anything on the Public Suffix List, such as "com" or "co.jp". Essential background reading on why this is dangerous:
Untraceable XSS Attacks. Most browsers already block this attack, e.g. Firefox since 3.0. [Background: Re: Setting document.domain]"
html5 tld publicsuffix dns security html internet web reference w3c 2009 Feb 2, 11:52"Chessboxing: Created in 2003 by Dutch artist Iepe Rubingh, chess boxing has 11 rounds of alternated boxing and chess. In first round, which lasts four minutes, contestants initiate the chess match.
A two-minute boxing round follows. Rounds alternate until one of the players gets a checkmate or a knockout."
humor art chess boxing sport via:boingboing video youtube 2009 Jan 30, 5:21
Over the previous weekend Sarah and I got engaged. I had a limo pick us up and take us to a park that has a beautiful view of the Seattle
skyline where I proposed, then out for dinner and drinks including a bottle of wine for the ride back. What's the point of a limo ride if you don't drink while being driven around? It was a nice
night and only had a hint of rain when we came home. We don't yet have a date set.
engagement personal nontechnical 2009 Jan 29, 10:22Play this game now. Its like half of a delicious club sandwhich. Love the music. "To make it in Nuevos Aires, one has to have nerves of silk and the filthiest of hands. Mix together a batch of
espionage, some high- speed car chases, fire-spewing assassins, and you've got one oven that'll never bake cookies again. We provide the pliers and you bring the moxie."
game videogame quake gravity-bone humor spy espionage 2009 Jan 26, 2:12Mark Pilgrim's series of articles and slides from a corresponding talk on video encoding.
mark-pilgrim video encoding audio reference codec 2009 Jan 25, 5:39
Microsoft isn't completely shielded from our economies issues but I still have a job and
still get free soda. While that's all still the case, I decided to test Sarah's claimed ability to differentiate between Pepsi, Coke, and their diet counterparts by taste alone. I poured the four
sodas into marked cups and Sarah and I each took two runs through the cups with the following guesses.
Soda Identification Challenge Results
Drink
|
Sarah
|
Dave
|
Guess 1
|
Guess 2
|
Guess 1
|
Guess 2
|
Coke
|
Coke
|
Coke
|
Pepsi
|
Diet Pepsi
|
Diet Coke
|
Diet Coke
|
Diet Pepsi
|
Diet Coke
|
Diet Coke
|
Pepsi
|
Pepsi
|
Pepsi
|
Coke
|
Coke
|
Diet Pepsi
|
Diet Pepsi
|
Diet Coke
|
Diet Pepsi
|
Pepsi
|
Total (out of 8)
|
6
|
3
|
As you can see from the results, Sarah's claimed ability to identify Coke and Pepsi by taste is confirmed. The first run through she got completely correct and on the second run only mistook Diet
Pepsi for Diet Coke. Her excuse for the error on the second run was a tainted palate from the first run. I on the other hand was mostly incorrect. Surprisingly though my incorrect answers were
mostly consistent between run one and two. For instance I thought Pepsi was Coke in both runs.
coke microsoft waste of soda pepsi waste of time soda 2009 Jan 22, 9:57'Dubbed the "Light Car," the concept car is designed to communicate with other drivers using a system of OLED lights, which rest on the some part of the body of the car including the front and rear
light, in the form of an OLED display panel.'
car led communication sign signal 2009 Jan 22, 9:48"Revocation presents another challenge. If a system relies only on a biometric for both identity and authentication, how do you revoke that factor? Forgotten passwords can be changed; lost smartcards
can be revoked and replaced. How do you revoke a finger?"
article microsoft security identity authentication biometrics 2009 Jan 22, 9:43'Behind the press reports, the academic community has been engaged in a hot debate over whether the evidence supports a connection between the violent content of games and any behavioral effects. One
of the researchers who has argued forcefully that it's not is Christopher Ferguson, who has just published a paper that argues that the continued societal focus on games as a causal factor in
violence is an example of what's termed a "moral panic."'
game violence society videogames 2009 Jan 20, 6:01Olly Moss designs posters and things that I see people linking to all over the place on the web. Lots of good stuff, esp. the zombies. Check out his flickr account too.
olly-moss design poster movie art 2009 Jan 20, 2:20"Because the G1 has a compass inside, nru presents its data as a sonar-like spinning map when held parallel to the ground, but presents a snazzy augmented reality overlay when tipped up towards the
horizon. It's easier to grok when you can see it in motion; there's a video up above."
g1 phone cellphone compass geolocation video android 2009 Jan 19, 3:18"Perth street art production group Ololo approached the construction manager of an inner-city skyscraper when they heard he hated the grey walls of the recently built Condor Tower five-storey car
park. The three creative friends - Hurben, Shensing and Griv proposed a far more whimsical and creative solution to the bare walls, by allowing the group and their friends to embellish the interior
with street art-inspired murals."
graffiti streetart art cultural-disobediance 2009 Jan 19, 3:14Researchers make another dancing robot. Its sort of owl like.
keepon robot dancing music humor video 2009 Jan 16, 4:02"European regulators notified Microsoft it believes the software giant is in violation of the region's antitrust laws by bundling its Internet Explorer browser in Windows, the company said Friday."
microsoft news browser opera browser-war ie windows eu 2009 Jan 15, 10:28Thanks to Matt, for the first time I can see myself using Twitter. Twitter app on my phone notifies me when something's posted so my build process can let me know when its done, or when sync finally
finishes, etc. I'd been meaning to setup a mini-notification system with a command line tool to my phone (w/o paying per text msg) but I didn't think of Twitter.
via:swannman api internet curl cli twitter 2009 Jan 15, 9:21"My friend Amanda had never seen a whole Star Wars film. When I asked her if she wanted to watch the original trilogy she said that she would, but that she already knew what happens. So I took out my
voice recorder and asked her to start from the top. I then created some very basic animation in Final Cut to go along with her narration."
via:boingboing humor video starwars 2009 Jan 14, 2:03Google Maps now has a public transit route finder. Would have been useful in Munich and certainly will be useful here at home since they cover the Seattle area including the east-side. "I'm pleased
to announce the launch of the Transit Layer on Google Maps in more than 50 cities around the world making it easier for citizens and tourists around the globe to access public transportation line
information in their cities."
google map travel bus traffic seattle redmond munich transportation maps public-transportation transit 2009 Jan 13, 6:20"So we've progressed now from having just a Registry key entry, to having an executable, to having a randomly-named executable, to having an executable which is shuffled around a little bit on each
machine, to one that's encrypted - really more just obfuscated - to an executable that doesn't even run as an executable. It runs merely as a series of threads."
security privacy adware malware advertising ie browser scheme interview bho via:li 2009 Jan 13, 2:56Turn your snowed-in home's front door into a natural fridge. Good idea, although here we didn't get nearly enough snow to make this convenient.
humor beer cold brr snow canada design fridge