Archive for May, 2009
While I do realize this is a little old, it’s a topic that’s also not likely to go away any time soon. Earlier this month both Electronista and BoingBoing reported on the remote disabling of text-to-speech for Amazon Kindle e-books. The Authors Guild is claiming that text-to-speech is an unauthorized audiobook performance and is thus [ READ MORE ]
From the BBC comes this rather chilling story about how Germany may outlaw paintball and laser tag. (A similar story from Spiegel is also avaiable.) The proposed bill comes in response to a school shooting at Albertville School. Thankfully, lawmakers in the US have had more sense than this. As far as I know, paintball and [ READ MORE ]
While browsing recently I happened to find a very insightful article about sports and technology. Several major sports are referenced including golf, swimming, and tennis. Of particular note is a quote from Martina Navartilova: To me, using “illegal” equipment is the same as cheating with performance-enhancing drugs. Or, put another way, cheating is cheating, whether with drugs or [ READ MORE ]
I sure picked a great day to read Groklaw. The featured topic today is Microsoft’s attempt to make ODF look bad, using the time-honored FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) techniques. This article refers back to another article highlighting the awful ODF support in Microsoft Office 2007.2 (aka 2007 SP2). which also quotes an article by Rob [ READ MORE ]
Recently on Twitter (from @MyFitFoods who passed it on from someone else with protected updates) I found a chart which compares time spent eating to the national obesity rate. Now while the criteria used to define obesity may be a bit controversial (it’s a simple, no frills, percentage of the population with a BMI over [ READ MORE ]