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Microsoft

Microsoft Sends Flowers To Internet Explorer 6 Funeral 151

Several readers have written with a fun followup to yesterday's IE6 funeral. Apparently Microsoft, in a rare moment of self-jest, took the time to send flowers, condolences, and a promise to meet at MIX. The card reads: "Thanks for the good times IE6, see you all @ MIX when we show a little piece of IE Heaven. The Internet Explorer Team @ Microsoft."

Comment Great (Score 1) 154

I think this has lot of potentials to replace Text to Speech.
There are thousands of people with speech disability use some kind of tablet device to type/scan/etc. to formulate sentences and then they get fed into TTS.
This will definitely be faster...but..this technology has to mature into a commercial product which may take years...nevertheless...very good progress.

Image

Measuring the Speed of Light With Valentine's Day Chocolate 126

Cytotoxic writes "What to do with all of those leftover Valentine's Day chocolates? — a common problem for the Slashdot crowd. The folks over at Wired magazine have an answer for you in a nice article showing how to measure the speed of light with a microwave and some chocolate. A simple yet surprisingly accurate method that can be used to introduce the scientific method to children and others in need of a scientific education."

Comment Re:Haha! (Score 1) 184

When was the last time you had to pay the cops for a stolen wallet or purse that belonged to you?

It happens all the time in India. You have to bribe the police to lodge your robbery case, bribe more to recover the stolen goods.
Here is a link to a popular newspaper in India which lists all such cases.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=site%3Awww.thehindu.com+police+inspector+suspended+for+accepting+bribe&aq=f&aql=&aqi=&oq=

Businesses

IT Workers To Get Fewer Perks, No Free Coffee 620

dasButcher writes "While the economy is showing signs of recovery and tech stocks posted double- and triple-digit gains in 2009, IT workers are facing a less hospitable workplace in the coming year. Many employers say they're going to continue trimming budgets, particularly in human resources. Rather than giving up head count, they're planning to trim 401k contributions, eliminate bonuses, curtail travel and, dare we say, shut off the free coffee (it wasn't that good anyway)."
Science

Antarctic's First Plane, Found In Ice 110

Arvisp writes "In 1912 Australian explorer Douglas Mawson planned to fly over the southern pole. His lost plane has now been found. The plane – the first off the Vickers production line in Britain – was built in 1911, only eight years after the Wright brothers executed the first powered flight. For the past three years, a team of Australian explorers has been engaged in a fruitless search for the aircraft, last seen in 1975. Then on Friday, a carpenter with the team, Mark Farrell, struck gold: wandering along the icy shore near the team's camp, he noticed large fragments of metal sitting among the rocks, just a few inches beneath the water."

Comment wow (Score 0) 344

As a person from Pittsburgh, I cannot believe this.
Why would you want to hurt the hand that feeds you...literally?
If you look at all the rust belt cities (Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, Toledo), Pittsburgh is still up and its unemployment rate is well below these cities and the national average. (http://www.bls.gov/ro3/urpitt.htm)
Primary reason behind these numbers is CMU and Pitt. I have worked with 6 different IT companies here and they are all offshoots of CMU. Google, Apple, Seagate, etc. have their R&D site here because of CMU.

Agreed, they need to find some new sources of income for the city with dwindling income tax income...but this should not be way. But, these politicians are SMART...they chose one group to hurt where that group doesn't have no or significant voting power.

Comment Re:personally (Score 1) 1721

And as much as I disagreed with him, you've got to admit that GWB was dealt a pretty shitty hand. Those who remember the 2000 campaign may well remember that he ran on domestic issues. God forbid if we suffer another mass casualty attack -- you think the idealism and international love fest for Obama would long survive the American response to another attack on the scale of 9/11?

Kidding right. Let's see which of the following was due to 9/11

- Iraq war
- Mishandling of Katrina
- Secret CIA prison camps around the world
- Gitmo & torture
- Patriot act

I am sure I am missing many more.

Comment Nightmares (Score 1) 277

Thinking about COBOL gives me nightmares.
In one of our classes ('87), we had to pass a programming test in which you are required to pick a problem from a box (Simplex method) and a language in which you have to implement (COBOL).
We were given 3 hours, needless to say I took the entire 3 hours and more (examiner was very sympathetic) while all my friends were outside the exam hall in 30 mins after doing problems like Gauss-Sidel in pascal & c.

Comment Corporate Culture (Score 4, Interesting) 228

According to this link,
http://www.businessinsider.com/did-apple-lie-about-rejecting-google-voice-iphone-app-2009-9

"In a series of in-person meetings, phone calls and emails between July 5 and July 28, 2009, Apple and Google representative discussed the approval status of the Google Voice application that was submitted on June 2, 2009. The primary points of contact between the two companies were Alan Eustace, Google Senior Vice President of Engineering and Research and Phil Schiller, Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing. On July 7, Mr. Eustace and Mr. Schiller spoke over the phone. It was during this call that Mr. Schiller informed Mr. Eustace that Apple was rejecting the Google Voice application for the reasons described above."

It is interesting that a VP of R&D is talking to a VP of Mumbo Jumbo. Does it tell their respective corporate culture?

 

Comment Solar powered motors (Score 1) 54

I am originally from a rural place in India. I see pretty much everyone uses electric powered irrigation motors and too have an employee sleeps near the motor so that he could start the motor as soon as the electricity comes on. I wondered why they couldn't use a solar powered motor. I found out that there is no incentive for the farmers to move to solar powered motors as they are expensive to buy and more importantly the electricity is free for agricultural usage (in the state of Tamil Nadu...not only that you don't have file income tax if your income is only from agriculture..sweet..huh..while it helps a lot in terms of food sustainability...but i see it exploited as well.).

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