Subscribe or change preferences:
It's come to pass that the funding necessary to maintain and grow validation services at the W3C has become overwhelming to the W3C's operational budget. As such, the validators are in jeopardy.
But there are ways to help, and this post is a call to action to do just that.
Relaying Molly on the information. I did not imagine there was such a risk that Validators, which have been serious parts of the web's ecosystem, could be in danger.
Flickr: A Photo Sharing Website An overview by Javier Velasco-Martin Introduction This blog post is based on a presentation I prepared this last semester for a course called Technologies of Friendship directed by Fred Stutzman at UNC-Chapel Hill. This post is a transcript of my notes with some minor editing, it is not a completely polished article, I [...]
Ha ha. Jeffrey Zeldman issues a list of 20 signs that should tell you you'll regret having accepted a project. So true. So very true.
Have you ever wondered what Flickr does with all that geolocation data it gathers from our pictures (apart from pinning them to a map and working out the ratio of kittens to sunsets in a given area)? Well one of the things it does is is generate shapefiles of regional neighbourhoods to better work out where your picture was taken.
Now Tom Taylor has built a tool which allows you to visualise the boundaries of these neighbourhoods and see how Flickr views your part of the world.
Cool stuff.
One time or another, we get handled a case where there's no way to accomplish a certain layout optimally for Internet Explorer 6 without JavaScript. And you know what? That's just fine, shit happens.
But first, make sure it degrades properly without JavaScript. Second, implement it with JavaScript code instead of CSS expressions, for best performance and reliability.
Duly noted (via Bruno on webdevfr).
Well, it’s been almost four months since I’ve moved to Chapel Hill and I’ve been completely silent here. I guess I could now say that I’m pretty much settled here, especially after finally getting our car (Barack), key component of anyone’s life in a US non-metropoli. I’m having a great time at the School of [...]
<ul class="aktt_tweet_digest"> <li>Public Service Announcement: the downtime feature of Nagios is only useful when PEOPLE FUCKING USE IT. That is all. <a href="http://twitter.com/evilneuro/statuses/1001868952">#</a></li> <li>Video game soundtracks ftw: consumed this evening, Jet Set Radio Future and Metal Gears Solid 1 and 2 <a href="http://twitter.com/evilneuro/statuses/1002987524">#</a></li> <li>listening to Jeff Buckley&#8217;s &#8220;Grace&#8221; for the first time in ages, he would have been 42 next Monday <a href="http://twitter.com/evilneuro/statuses/1005336052">#</a></li> <li>Crap, it&#8217;s Sunday, isn&#8217;t it. <a href="http://twitter.com/evilneuro/statuses/1007863527">#</a></li> </ul> </content>
Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday, sweeping away the last racial barrier in American politics with ease as the country chose him as its first black chief executive.
(emphasis mine)
I was deeeply moved this morning, hearing part of his Chicago speech he gave last night:
“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”
Congratulations, USA!
<p>I woke up this morning to find <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/us/politics/05elect.html">Barack Obama has been elected to become the next President of the United States</a>. And what has struck me the most was the way the supporters reacted when the name of the opponent was mentioned by each candidate in their speeches.</p> <p>McCain addressed his supporters in his concession speech, saying he had called Obama to congratulate him. At the mention of Obama&#8217;s name, boos and hisses erupted from the crowd. At least twice in 30 seconds, he had to put his hands up to the crowd to basically shut them up. Meanwhile, at Obama&#8217;s speech, he said the same thing, and was met with a ripple of polite applause from the crowd. He went on to praise McCain&#8217;s efforts, and still the crowd did nothing but applaud.</p> <p>Obama, your supporters, the record number of people who turned out to vote for you, they&#8217;re a class act. Just don&#8217;t let them &mdash; and the rest of us in the world &mdash; down, because we so want to love America again.</p> </content>
Jessica nails it yet again. If you don't already subscribe to the Indexed RSS feed, then you really should.
<p>Is it just me, or has this furore over Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross prank calling Andrew Sachs&#8217; answerphone on a radio show been blown out of all proportion? Both men involved have apologised to Sachs, and that should be the end of it. Instead, they are now suspended from their BBC broadcasts, and Sachs&#8217; granddaughter <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/oct/29/russell-brand-jonathan-ross1">wants them fired</a> (yet she waited until today to <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1867800.ece">express that to The Sun</a>, <strong>after</strong> all this publicity has kicked off).</p> <p>However, this situation is entirely the making of the press &mdash; most notably the Daily Mail. Look at the figures. The original broadcast was on Russell Brand&#8217;s late night Saturday show on BBC Radio 2, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00f0lg8">on the 18th of October</a>. Brand apologised on his show the following Saturday, the 25th. On Sunday the 26th, the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/oct/27/russell-brand-daily-mail-fawlty-towers">BBC said it had received 67 complaints</a>. After the press coverage on Monday morning, that number <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/oct/27/jonathan-ross-russell-brand">reached 1,500</a>. By Tuesday, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1080839/Ross-Brands-jobs-threat-10-000-complain-prank-Ofcom-launch-formal-inquiry.html">it was 18,000</a>.</p> <p>How many of these 18,000 people heard the original broadcast in its original context, over a week ago? How many heard it first on YouTube (in <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=U7IHJ66wj9g">two</a> <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=uAxPkcnlyNM">parts</a>)? How many didn&#8217;t actually hear it at all, but consider Brand and Ross to be the worst of the &#8216;elite&#8217; and &#8216;overpaid&#8217; celebs at the BBC? Only 67 actually considered it worthy of complaint at the time, and I&#8217;m <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/29/russell-brand-jonathan-ross">not the only one to have noticed this</a>.</p> <p>And what of the granddaughter, Georgina Baillie? The Daily Mail has been horrified by all this, horrified enough to publish <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1081414/Georgina-Baillie-Brand-Ross-sacked-way-treated-grandfather.html">large photos of Baillie in burlesque outfits</a> (plus a photo of her at 10 months old, to redress the balance, or something) which can&#8217;t be doing her career as a self-labelled &#8220;satanic slut&#8221; any harm. And just a click away, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1081388/PIERS-MORGAN-Brand-just-sex-obsessed-ex-junkie--Its-Ross-BBC-sack-today.html">Piers Morgan calls Brand &#8220;sex-obsessed&#8221;</a>. In the Daily Mail. Take a look <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/">their website&#8217;s front page</a>. Look at the right-hand column, and scroll down. It reads like a cross between Heat and tmz.com, it&#8217;s the worst kind of paparazzi-driven celeb trash.</p> <p>Still, I guess with the US presidential election looming, and a massive global financial crisis still ongoing, we need something else to fill our headlines. How stupid, as a society, do we have to get before we unnaturally evolve into <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy">idiocracy</a>?</p> <p><strong>UPDATE 2008-10-29 18:25 UTC</strong>: <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7698417.stm">Brand has resigned</a> from his BBC show, Gia Milinovich is <a href="http://www.giagia.co.uk/2008/10/29/save-jonathan-ross/">asking for your comments of support to pass back to Jonathan Ross</a>. Hello, <a href="http://cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/TV/10/29/bbc.stars.row.radio/index.html">CNN.com readers</a>.</p> <p><strong>UPDATE 2008-10-30 09:19 UTC</strong>: BBC <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7699054.stm">now reporting 27,000 complaints</a>. How is it possible to accept complaints about something that has (a) received such a high level of media attention, thus skewing public opinion, and (b) happened nearly two weeks ago?</p> </content>
<p>I was flicking through the iTunes Store this morning and noticed something odd &#8230; some words in reviews and track titles had asterisks in them as though they were swear words (e.g. &#8216;b*ll*cks&#8217;). But they didn&#8217;t appear to be swear words. iTunes uses <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/">allmusic</a> for the bulk of their album and single reviews, so luckily it&#8217;s possible to go back and &#8216;decode&#8217; some of these words. They include: &#8220;porno&#8221;, &#8220;teen&#8221;, &#8220;cream&#8221;, &#8220;sexy&#8221;, &#8220;hot&#8221;. Strangely, variants like &#8220;sex&#8221;, &#8220;creamy&#8221;, &#8220;teenage&#8221; aren&#8217;t being censored. This seems to be a blanket effect on iTunes &mdash; Katy Perry&#8217;s current single &#8220;Hot &#8216;n&#8217; Cold&#8221; is listed on the UK iTunes Store main page under &#8216;Top Songs&#8217; as &#8220;H*t &#8216;n&#8217; Cold&#8217;.</p> <p>This seems to me to be really odd behaviour. They&#8217;ve done the same thing to some common swear words, but to censor &#8220;cream&#8221;? And it&#8217;s inconsistent to boot. Look at the review for Tenacious D&#8217;s eponymous album. The tracks &#8220;Fuck Her Gently&#8221; and &#8220;Cock Pushups&#8221; are censored with asterisks, but the title &#8220;Sex Supreme&#8221; in the review is not. The Roots&#8217; track &#8220;Pussy Galore&#8221; has its title censored, but not the name of the band Pussy Galore.</p> <p>And it&#8217;s not even like people at Apple <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ieDloHZrBSY">don&#8217;t swear</a>.</p> </content>
"Has [the Web] been designed for the executive and the teenager in the modern city with a smart phone in their pocket? If you are in a rural community do you need a different kind of web with different kinds of facilities?"
Sir Tim Berners-Lee asks very valuable questions, as always. I've just heard a Project Manager who mistook accessibility for the taking into account of narrowband, and wants a guesstimate as to when narrowband becomes negligible because he's all for RIAs everywhere.
Most people don't have quality broadband, most people don't have an iPod 3G in their pocket. Wake up, people. It is sad that we should still be forced to tell people that it is so.
And (you know me) accessibility is a broad subject, that can't be narrowed down to narrowband. Heh.
If there's one thing we're still way away from, it's shared real-world awareness. Evangelising is going to last for a long, long time.
Hi, my name is Chris Campbell and I have a color vision deficiency. Like roughly 7-10% of all males, my deuteranomaly makes it difficult to differentiate between some colors, like red and green. Color deficiency, or color blindness as it's commonly referred to, doesn't mean that I or people with similar conditions cannot see certain colors. They're not invisible and I don't see in black and white (a condition that is actually very, very rare). I can still use crayons effectively, find meaning in beautiful sunsets and even enjoy clear blue skies. What it does mean is that certain colors in the visual spectrum look a lot like one another and so I have a hard time sometimes telling the difference between certain colors and even shades.
Title says it all: Chris Campbell gives very good examples and ways to deal with colour blindness.
"Are you an artist?" He looked at me, straight in the face.
"No," I said. I was surprised at how fast that answer came out.
But when I took the chalk in my hand and started drawing a vine, I realised with a mild surprise that my lines are confident, I have a notion of filling in space only as much as is necessary. I'm not an artist, but I have a close relationship with my pens and pencils.
I'm only five years late in reading stuff chez Steph. Better late than never though. I thought I'd share it with you.
I was contacted a while back by the people who make Sumo chairs asking if I wanted an Omni . All I had to do in return was blog about it.
Jeremy Keith reports on the Sumo Omni. How come us French bloggers aren't targeted by this kind of marketing arrangements?
Hey Sumo people: my living room is large enough for me to try one and blog about it afterwards. Hint, hint.
One day, when Marco and I were playing against two computer opponents, we forced one of the AI cycles to trap itself between its own walls and the bottom game border. Sensing an impending crash, it fired a missile, just like it always did whenever it was trapped. But this time was different – instead of firing at another trail, it fired at the game border, which looked like any other light cycle trail as far as the computer was concerned. The missile impacted with the border, leaving a cycle-sized hole, and the computer promptly took the exit and left the main playing field. Puzzled, we watched as the cycle drove through the scoring display at the bottom of the screen. It easily avoided the score digits and then drove off the screen altogether.
Shortly after, the system crashed.
Our minds reeled as we tried to understand what we had just seen. The computer had found a way to get out of the game. When a cycle left the game screen, it escaped into computer memory – just like in the movie.
Daniel Wellman reminisces about the day his program went awol and life started imitating art.
Adobe Max 2008 Europe: 132 sessions, not one on accessibility. Come on guys... really?
[S]ometimes I actually just sit at home and work, make bread, and cook while I wait for Eva to come home. Those are the good weeks.
I can relate to what Chaals says about always travelling for work. Now that we've got two kids, my travelling schedule has eased up a lot, and I'm grateful to my boss for that. I've loved travelling a lot, but yeah, home is a very nice travel destination. My favourite.
<div align="center"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wooshoofoo/2885446294/"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3171/2885446294_d4f75b33e9.jpg" alt="Lunch Club" /></a></div> <p>The first rule of Lunch Club is you do not talk about Lunch Club</p> <p>The second rule of Lunch Club is you <strong>do not</strong> talk about Lunch Club</p> <p>Third rule: If someone says &#8220;nachos!&#8221;, orders a garlic bread, or eats with their fingers, the lunch is over</p> <p>Fourth rule: Only one plate to a person</p> <p>Fifth rule: One course at a time</p> <p>Sixth rule: No napkins, no salad forks</p> <p>Seventh rule: Lunches will go on as long as they have to</p> <p>And the eighth and final rule: If this your first day at Lunch Club, you <strong>have</strong> to munch</p> </content>
One thing I definitely want to say is that, from the start, we've surrounded ourselves with people who believe in us. Even when we've had no money, the same people have been behind us and worked on our behalf over the years. It's not about being lucky with record companies – it's about the people who've stuck with us through thick and thin. So this is a celebration for about three dozen people, and we're going to throw ourselves into their arms and have a massive party. And I have to say, on a final note, we're all very, very accomplished drinkers.
- Guy Garvey from Elbow on winning the 2008 Mercury Music Prize
<p><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/y0EGpuu45Mo&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/y0EGpuu45Mo&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p> <p>Ahhh, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_tape">Christmas Tapes</a> &#8230;</p> </content>
<p><a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/?p=1247">Jono&#8217;s post</a> about taxi cabs and close calls with death reminded me of how little hassle I&#8217;ve usually had with cab drivers.</p> <p>I usually chat away to cabbies, and tip pretty generously on most occasions, but one guy in San Francisco took the biscuit, and didn&#8217;t get tipped. Or chatted to, as I was giving him directions.</p> <p>I had to go 8 blocks from Clay to Green carrying a load of crap in plastic bags, so thought &#8220;fuck it, cab&#8221;. There was one across from the hotel. &#8220;Battery and Green&#8221;, I&#8217;d asked. &#8220;Do you know how to get there?&#8221; he replied? I thought he was implying it wasn&#8217;t that far, or did I know where I was going? Nah, he was asking because <strong>he didn&#8217;t bloody know where it was</strong>. Then, when I gently discussed how cabbies in the UK have to do The Knowledge before they&#8217;re let loose on the streets, he told me that that was &#8220;not true, they can just go out and drive like here&#8221;. Hey, don&#8217;t mind me, I only bloody live there. I ended up having to guide this guy to the destination as, by his own admission, he&#8217;d only been working for two days, including that one.</p> <p>Then there was the private cab driver who, on taking me from Chelmsford town centre to Stansted Airport on a Friday afternoon, seemed to be dominating the conversation. He was basically chatting me up. He even broke my cardinal rule, which is when taking a cab for work travel, expense the bare fare, but pay with a tip. That way, the tip comes out of my own pocket. But nooooo, this guy threw an extra fiver on the receipt. &#8220;There you go, mate, something back for yourself&#8221;. Brrrrrr. I took a meal off my expenses that week to counter it.</p> </content>
<p>So, I finally finished Grand Theft Auto IV, nearly 4 months after buying it. Well, I thought I had.</p> <p>When the final credits had finished rolling by, I got some achievements for being awesome enough to finish the game &#8230; and then I was back in Liberty City. Not at the start again, but where I was when I finished. Then the phone goes: it&#8217;s Niko&#8217;s cousin, checking he&#8217;s OK.</p> <p>What the hell, <strong>the game hasn&#8217;t stopped yet</strong>. I checked the stats page: apparently after doing all the missions, I&#8217;ve only finished 67% of the game. It&#8217;s not finished yet.</p> <p>Augh.</p> </content>
<p>So two things i&#8217;ve been looking forward to for a long time are going to see <a href="http://imdb.com/title/tt0468569/">The Dark Knight</a> and finally getting to see a movie at the <a href="http://www.glasgowsciencecentre.org/imax.aspx">IMAX cinema out at the Glasgow Science Centre</a>. It&#8217;s a crying shame that the actual experience of going to watch the movie didn&#8217;t match up to the movie itself at any level.</p> <div align="center"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/neuro/676713/" title="IMAX® at Glasgow Science Centre by neuro, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/1/676713_7e5f7a1a9e.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="IMAX® at Glasgow Science Centre" /></a></div> <p>So the movie itself is just frickin&#8217; awesome. All kinds of awesome. Every performance is note perfect, and makes me itch for more. I don&#8217;t want to go too much into the movie, as I tried to stay clear of any pre-release hype to keep the movie fresh for me when I saw it, and I don&#8217;t want to spoil the experience for anyone who hasn&#8217;t seen it yet. However, if you&#8217;ve seen it, you hopefully know what I&#8217;m talking about.</p> <p>No, the reason I&#8217;m blogging about going to see the Dark Knight in IMAX is sadly rationale for yet another &#8220;neuro is ranting&#8221; post.</p> <p>The actual experience of the IMAX segments of The Dark Knight were truly stunning, expanding the more traditional widescreen segments vertically up- and downwards to absolutely fill the field of vision. However, the non-IMAX segments of the movie had terrible black level definition, as though someone had turned the brightness way up on your television. That&#8217;s my only real complaint about the movie presentation itself, as the IMAX segments were amazing (I&#8217;ll keep reiterating that to make the point that there&#8217;s nothing wrong with the IMAX process itself), and the sound system was leg-shakingly loud.</p> <p>Well, except when the ushers used it as a PA system. Just before the start of the movie, after seeing some postage-stamp sized ads, and a 5 minute fluff piece on Christopher Nolan and crew espousing how awesome IMAX is to shoot with, one of the ushers gave us the lowdown on where the exits where (I&#8217;ve just gotten back from a couple of weeks travelling; the last thing I want to hear is someone on a PA telling me where the exits are &#8230; are there lifejackets in this cinema too?) and to &#8220;keep your feet on the ground, get ready for The Dark Knight: the IMAX Experience&#8221;. Just get on with it!</p> <p>I should point out that my agitation at this point was that it was around 11pm by now. We&#8217;d gotten to the Glasgow Science Centre at about 9pm to get our tickets and avoid a massive queue &mdash; indeed, we were amongst the first into the cinema itself &mdash; but then we were made to queue until around 10:45pm for a 10:15pm showing. It was nearly half one in the morning by the time we got outside.</p> <p>So the movie starts. I&#8217;m sat in my rather uncomfortable seat, drinking my bottle of Coke which had gotten lukewarm between my buying it and actually getting sat down. Our little movie going group had already eaten most of our movie munchies. And we still had two and a half hours to go. This was not going well.</p> <p>And so the movie finished. Not five seconds after the end credits have appeared, the lights went up (well I say &#8220;lights&#8221;, it was a massive spot up in the rafters somewhere) and another usher grabbed the mike to tell us to take our rubbish with us, and to use the exits at the back of the theatre. Meanwhile, the credits have gotten to Michael Caine&#8217;s name. I don&#8217;t mind the lights coming up after say 10-15 seconds of end credits; most movie-goers are on their feet by that point anyway, but to actually interrupt the movie by blabbering on a PA is massively disrespectful to not only the feature, but the process too.</p> <p>I now have an indelible impression that going to see a movie or feature in IMAX will be marred by dreadful pre-entry procedures, awful seating, poor herding of patrons, and shoddy treatment by the staff to whatever&#8217;s being shown; sadly I shall never return to the Glasgow IMAX cinema. For every moment I was enjoying the movie, there was another wishing I was back at home, in my comfy chair watching something in HD on Sky or on my Mac mini, and that surely is a damning indictment of any &#8220;experience&#8221;.</p> </content>
<p>As someone said on IRC this morning: &#8220;the FSF appear to have come up with <a href="http://www.defectivebydesign.org/apple-challenge">the perfect plan for how to look like a bunch of annoying, smart-arse tossers</a>&#8220;. Has the <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a> gone nuts?</p> <p><strong>Update 13:30:</strong> I don&#8217;t seem to be alone on this: <a href="http://popey.com/Demented_by_Design">popey</a>, <a href="http://mgdm.net/weblog/defective-defective-by-design">mgdm</a>, <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2294">ZDNet</a>, <a href="http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/26/1827208">Slashdot</a>.</p> <p>I&#8217;ve been saying for a while that the more zealous methods used by proponents of Free software have been somewhat over-the-top, and do more to detract from the FOSS public image than to build upon it in a constructive way. Now they&#8217;ve taken a sip from the poisoned Kool-Aid. The FSF, via it&#8217;s Defective by Design campaign, is advocating that people block-book sessions at an <a href="http://www.apple.com/retail/">Apple Store</a>&#8217;s <a href="http://www.apple.com/retail/geniusbar/">Genius Bar</a>, a sort of drop-in and bookable repair and support centre. &#8220;Having lots of slots booked will get Apple&#8217;s attention and ensure that the Geniuses have done their homework&#8221;, says the &#8216;Apple Challenge&#8217; page, posted by FSF employee <a href="http://mat.tl/">Matt Lee</a>. The rationale apparently is that Apple is now the enemy, since Vista is doing more damage to itself than anyone else can from outside Microsoft, and the first target are the Apple Store&#8217;s Genius Bars.</p> <p><strong>Update 13:35:</strong> Just noticed this on IRC &#8230; <br /><tt>[13:33]&lt;mgdm&gt; popey: you mean mattl actually uses a Mac?<br />[13:33] &lt;popey&gt; he does<br />[13:33] &lt;mgdm&gt; IRONY OVERLOAD *head asplodes*</tt></p> <p>My employer purchased both AppleCare and ProCare for my MBP, which has come in extremely handy when the &#8216;O&#8217; key snapped off (keyboard replaced overnight), my battery failed to hold a charge (replaced immediately upon attending pre-booked Genius Bar session) and my motherboard GPU failed (motherboard replaced in 90 minutes). Now imagine any of the following scenarios: you&#8217;re unsure how to use your newly purchased Macbook; you&#8217;re trying to connect a camera to your Mac to transfer photos to iPhoto and print them to send to relatives in a frame; your machine has failed in some way and urgently needs repaired, as you use it for your business. You try to book a session at the Genius Bar to resolve any of these issues, and &#8230; it&#8217;s fully booked. For days. Wow, they must be busy.</p> <p>Well, no, it&#8217;s actually a bunch of uber-asshole Free software zealots thinking they&#8217;re &#8220;special&#8221;, attempting to monopolise a consumer resource in an attempt to &#8220;educate&#8221; or &#8220;catch out&#8221; Apple Store employees, some of whom may have used Macs for years, others may have had a crash course in Apple products so that they know as much as they can about the stuff they sell, but little else. Why harass these people? It&#8217;s like having a constant stream of people going up to the counter at McDonald&#8217;s and espousing the benefits of a low-carb, high-fibre diet to the person who can do the least about it. Genius Bar employees may know all about FOSS, but critically <strong>it&#8217;s not their job to promote it</strong>. It&#8217;s not a &#8220;product&#8221; to be &#8220;sold&#8221;, but a philosophy to be shared.</p> <p>A plea to the FSF: stop harassing Apple staff, and stop alienating the very people you&#8217;re trying to &#8220;save&#8221;. There are better, more ethical, more agreeable methods to promote FOSS. What you&#8217;re doing is none of those things. In the meantime, you&#8217;ve virtually guaranteed I will never promote, condone, contribute or donate to any FSF body, project or campaign. I&#8217;ve had a &#8220;Warning, DRM&#8221; defectivebydesign.org sticker on my Macbook Pro for a while now, mainly for comedic value. It&#8217;s gone now. I no longer want to be seen to be promoting these idiots in any way. As much as I love the thought of Free and Open Source Software being used everywhere and anywhere, this is just not the way to be going about it.</p> <div align="center"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/neuro/2710328838/" title="Ripped Up DRM Sticker by neuro, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3036/2710328838_9889a76fb4.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="Ripped Up DRM Sticker" /></a></div> </content>
It's all been a bit space based round here recently, but this video is too good not to share, a Shuttle launch caught on video from an Air Canada flight.
Hat tip: 37 Signals
Sometimes you see things that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
The Deep Impact spacecraft, with it's original mission complete and now undertaking science under the EPOXI moniker, turned it's cameras back towards the Earth from 50 million kilometers away and over the course of several hours caught The Moon transiting The Earth!
Phil Plait sums it up beautifully:
While there is science galore in these animations, I think their real impact is the visceral one from simply seeing them. As Carl Sagan once said: everyone you have ever met, every human who has lived and died, lived out their lives on that blue ball. And yet here we are, in the 21st century, plains apes allowed to evolve and satiate their curiosity, now with the ability to lob metal proxies into deep space, look back, and see ourselves.
Science. I love this stuff.
The access keys for this page are: ALT (Control on a Mac) plus:
Evolt.org is an all-volunteer resource for web developers made up of a discussion list, a browser archive, and member-submitted articles. This article is the property of its author, please do not redistribute or use elsewhere without checking with the author.
