A while ago in my AP Chemistry class, this one annoying kid and my friend were having a weird argument about who was better. The annoying kid said, “Well, at least I have a girlfriend!” to which I responded, “Whatever. Your girlfriend has 67 protons.” In response, the entire class, including the teacher, turned their heads to look at the periodic table on the wall. The element with 67 protons is holmium, with the chemical symbol “Ho.” My teacher was the first to laugh. MLIA
Vodafone Symphonia
Watch the TXT message symphony played from 1000 mobile phones.
PC Modern Warfare 2: it’s much worse than you thought
We thought the lack of dedicated servers was bad, but now we can add the lack of console commands, the inability to have a say in who hosts the game, a lengthy pause while the game migrates to a new host if the currently selected host quits, no leaning, no option to record matches, and no way to kick or block trouble players, hackers, or cheaters.
You have to wonder if there are any actual PC gamers working at Infinity Ward, as it will be a challenge to find any member of the PC gaming community that will stand up for any of these omissions, not to mention all of them bundled together. At launch, this will be one of the most locked-down, inflexible, and gamer-unfriendly game ever created.
via PC Modern Warfare 2: it’s much worse than you thought – Ars Technica.
…and that’s why I haven’t preordered what certainly would have been the most popular FPS to come out in 2009.
OpenOfficeMouse: The Multi-Button Application Mouse for OpenOffice.org
The OpenOfficeMouse includes default profiles for the five core OpenOffice.org applications based on 662 million datapoints compiled by the usage tracking facility incorporated into OpenOffice.org 3.1. These profiles can be easily customized to suit the user’s preferences using the included OpenOfficeMouse setup software. The setup and customization software is an application that will be released as an open source software project under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3 in the first quarter of 2010. Default profiles for 20 other games and applications are also included; the OpenOffice Mouse supports up to 63 profiles to be stored simultaneously in the mouse’s memory.
via OpenOfficeMouse: The Multi-Button Application Mouse for OpenOffice.org.
I don’t know what’s more ridiculous: that this is actually a serious project, or that that’s the most hideous mouse I’ve ever seen.
Ian Fisher : American Soldier
Dec. 14, 2008. 4:49 p.m. Smoke rises from trash being burned at Camp Echo. The past three days have brought many complaints from Ian: shoveling dirt, sitting in the maintenance bay, picking up garbage.
This is how an American soldier is made.
For 27 months, Ian Fisher, his parents and friends, and the U.S. Army allowed Denver Post reporters and a photographer to watch and chronicle his recruitment, induction, training, deployment, and, finally, his return from combat. A selection of photos from Ian’s journey are posted below.
via Captured Photo Collection » Ian Fisher : American Soldier Photos.
Why do we have an IMG element?
That’s not to say that all shipping code wins; after all, Andrew and Intermedia and HyTime shipped code too. Code is necessary but not sufficient for success. And I certainly don’t mean to say that shipping code before a standard will produce the best solution. Marc’s <img> element didn’t mandate a common graphics format; it didn’t define how text flowed around it; it didn’t support text alternatives or fallback content for older browsers. And 16, almost 17 years later, we’re still struggling with content sniffing, and it’s still a source of crazy security vulnerabilities. And you can trace that all the way back, 17 years, through the Great Browser Wars, all the way back to February 25, 1993, when Marc Andreessen offhandedly remarked, “MIME, someday, maybe,” and then shipped his code anyway.
The ones that win are the ones that ship.