Category: Random

Firefox 2 inline spellcheck

Firefox evangelists and automatic spellchecks are actually pretty high up on my list of pet hates, but I know that some people like both, and this was something I Did Not Know, and had to fiddle with to get working. See my post #25 on page 2 if you find yourself scratching your head too.

End of the road for traffic lights?

Telegraph.co.uk: Most traffic lights should be torn up as they make roads less safe, one of Europe’s leading road engineers said yesterday.

Hans Monderman, a traffic planner involved in a Brussels-backed project known as Shared Space, said that taking lights away helped motorists, cyclists and pedestrians to co-exist more happily and safely.

Residents of the northern Dutch town of Drachten have already been used as guinea-pigs in an experiment which has seen nearly all the traffic lights stripped from their streets.

Only three of the 15 sets in the town of 50,000 remain and they will be gone within a couple of years.

In Search of the Pope’s Children

This RTE show, presented by David McWilliams, is incredibly well put together; I’d highly recommend watching it next week.

The only thing I’d fundamentally disagree with is McWilliams’ suggestion that nuclear power might be ok for Ireland, when of course it’s not ok for anywhere.

Waste David, waste, waste, waste. When you come up with a solution to the waste problem, feel free to try again.

Google’s New Frontier: Print Ads

They really do have some very clever people working for them. Can we do something like this in Ireland, and finally get some IrelandOffline ads in the mainstream media?

BusinessWeek: Google (GOOG) is rolling out its most ambitious print advertising initiative yet, an online marketplace that will let advertisers place bids on space in more than 50 major newspapers across the U.S.

Ransom Love on SCO/Caldera/Linux/etc

Groklaw: Not only does he testify that all of the allegedly infringing material was in Caldera Linux, that Caldera knew it was in there, that it wanted it in there in some cases, and that the company knowingly distributed the files in its Linux products and from its websites, including the LiS Streams module, he explains very clearly to the court that even after Caldera acquired Santa Cruz’s UNIX assets, Caldera remained, while he was CEO, “always first and foremost a Linux company dedicated to the promotion and development of Linux.”

Safety tablesaw

This tablesaw detects static electricity when a person comes in contact with the blade, and retracts it within 5 milliseconds. The site is under a bit of pressure at the moment, so watch a video on YouTube if the onsite ones are slow.

Sky Ireland gears up to launch broadband

ElectricNews.net: Sky Ireland deputy managing director Mark Deering said the company was “actively looking for opportunities” to launch a broadband service in Ireland, “but different market dynamics in the Republic meant BSkyB’s business plan had to be modified.”

Obviously “modified” is a typo. What they meant to say is “discarded”.

US to screen all who enter/leave country

Listen lads, if ye don’t want us over there, just tell us. I’m not sure I want to visit what’s slowly but surely becoming a fascist dictatorship anyway. Open your eyes America!

Washington Post: The federal government disclosed details yesterday of a border-security program to screen all people who enter and leave the United States, create a terrorism risk profile of each individual and retain that information for up to 40 years.