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Not every user is going to be a developer, that's why developers need to listen to the critics, because the critics don't have a developer's hat.

THAT is one of the things that makes OSS great.

No, I'm New Here

i remember seeing the episode 1 teaser preview for the first time and thought OMG yes! this is gonna be sweet. as we all know hindsight is 20/20.

do you like darth vader?
oh god yes! i love darth vader!
well in the first one you get to see him as a little kid.
is he evil like damien?
no he's just a little kid then he leaves his mom and gets sad.

do you like bobba fett?
hell yeah i like bobba fett.
well in the second movie you get to see him as a little kid.
is he like a badass bounty hunter in training?
no, his died dies and he gets sad.

Just so you don't think Americans are the only people who have no clue when it comes to their history, a recent survey found a fair number of British people believe that Churchill, Charles Dickens, and Mahatma Gandhi were fictional characters. Who made the "real people" list? Over half the people asked thought Sherlock Holmes was real. Many people were surprised to find out that The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was not a documentary.

If the people who run Woolworth's website had ever read the famous Nabokov novel, seen one of the 2 movies based on it or listened to the police in the 80's they might have known that calling a line of beds for little girls, the Lolita line, wasn't the best Idea. "Now this has been brought to our attention, the product has been removed from sale with immediate effect. We will be talking to the supplier with regard to how the branding came about." says the company. Other controversial products like the Cobain trigger lock and Ahmadinejad's big book of fictional atrocities are still on the shelves.

Do people root for the clear winner or the underdog when they watch competitions? Recent research showed that people most often support the underdog. The researchers propose that those who are viewed as disadvantaged arouse people's sense of fairness and justice -- important principles to most people.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071219155445.htm

Mozilla has released Firefox 3 beta 2, which sports a wide range of improvements including plugs for memory leaks, security fixes, and a download manager that includes improvements previously available only through plug-ins.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9835823-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

NickCatal writes "The Microsoft IE Team's Blog has a new post announcing that the latest build of Internet Explorer 8 has passed the Acid2 'Face' test in 'Compatibility Mode.' In the post the IE team included the latest 'check in' that passed the test. MSFT may get a bad rap on /., but considering not even the latest release of Firefox passes Acid2 it is good to see that the team developing the IE browser is serious about web standards."
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2007/12/19/internet-explorer-8-and-acid2-a-milestone.aspx?2

Thyamine writes "There's a story on Wired talking about the potential difficulties in retrieving evidence from the iPhone, which makes sense as it's 'new' and the experts aren't familiar with it yet. Then they go on to talk about how OS X is a closed system, and that the iPhone is evil. As opposed to what? Windows? Which is of course completely open? While I'm new to my own Mac, my understanding is that underneath it's a *nix. Are these 'experts' just making excuses for why they don't want to learn non-Windows systems, or are there truly fundamental problems with retrieving forensic data from Apple hardware/software? (Yay for privacy if it's true!)"
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/news/2007/08/iphone_forensics

hweimer writes "Oscar Pistorius is undoubtedly the world's fastest disabled sprinter. Recently, he has started to compete with non-disabled runners, with the goal to take part in the Beijing olympics next year. His carbon fibre artificial limbs, however, have raised concerns whether he has an unfair advantage over non-disabled athletes. The international athletics organization IAAF is currently investigating the issue."
http://www.dailynews.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3937890

Companies are using the Supreme Court's decision in Leegin Creative Leater Products v. PSKS to force eBay to start pulling auctions because the prices are too low, or (You won't believe this) the auction itself is an infringement of their intellectual property rights.

The Consumer Law & Policy Blog has the story.

How do we get this silly law overturned (reverted really) & when will this craziness end?
http://pubcit.typepad.com/clpblog/2007/07/leegin-and-ebay.html

Travelling to a time in the past is, as far as we know, not possible. However, Einstein postulated a faster-than-light effect known as 'spooky action at a distance'. The problem is, how do you test for such an effect? That test may now be here. If all goes well, hopefully by September 15th, John Cramer will have experimented with a beam of laser light which has been split in two to test Einstein's idea.

While he is only testing the quantum entanglement portion, changing one light beam and having the same change made in the other beam, his experiment might show that a change made in one beam shows up in the other beam before he actually makes the change.

An interesting sidenote is that the money for this project was raised not from the scientific community but from the public at large. His fans have sent him the money necessary to purchase the equipment to test Einstein's idea.

An anonymous reader writes "Anonymous benefactors paid to settle a suit to restore clear title to an elderly couple's home, owned mortgage free since the 1960s. http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune/2007/07/couple _gets_home_back_thanks_t.html It all started when a parish assessment of the property placed its new value $10 over its previous tax free homestead exemption. The first ever tax bill for $1.63 was miss sent to their superseded rural route address, the new address was required for 911, and was returned as undeliverable. So the Parish auctioned the property for $1.63 plus $125.10 costs and interest. Seems a speculator Jamie Land Co. got hold of the title and elected to spend $20,000 in legal fees and court costs losing each time and finally electing to appeal to the LA Supreme Court to protect the owner James Lindsay II's "rights"."
http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune/2007/07/couple_gets_home_back_thanks_t.html

Just don't forget basic IT principles

Mobile workshop Our recent wireless workshop has demonstrated yet again that the genuine experts in any area are the people out there doing it for real. Indeed, we saw a number of examples of pragmatic “non trendy” opinions coming back from experienced Reg Readers that don’t necessarily tally with some of the more idealistic views we often hear from the pundits and the press (Reg journalists excluded, of course).

http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/10/practitioner_view_of_wireless/