Chad's News

Now this is -my- type of hard drive enclosure. It’s called a “stage rack.”

Link: http://www.engadget.com/…

Ever wondered how to make “My Computer” open in a double-paned Windows Explorer window? Well, here’s the shortcut that does it (and yes, that’s a double colon):

explorer.exe /e,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/…

A startup company named Coskata claims it can make ethanol for $1 per gallon. The great thing about this, however, is that they can produce the ethanol from pretty much anything organic, so they won’t be cutting in to food production. Coskata is backed by General Motors, and we can expect to see production plants in the next few years.

Link: http://www.wired.com/…
(via Slashdot)

Over a year ago, Walmart released a t-shirt displaying an exact duplicate of the Nazi 3rd SS Division Totenkopf. (Seriously, this is such a perfect copy that the SS, if they still existed, could sue for copyright infringement.) Once this fact was communicated to corporate headquarters, Walmart said it would remove all of the shirts immediately. The reality was much slower than “immediate,” but here it is, 62 weeks after the pledge to remove, and the shirts are still on sale in at least one store. The linked article raises the concern that if Walmart is this bad with Nazi paraphernalia, then how well does it handle product recalls?

Link: http://consumerist.com/…

I’m guessing that the web developer community, like me, is excited to hear that IE8 will pass the Acid2 test. But there has been concern expressed about the various “modes” that IE8 will support.

The basic problem is that web developers write their code to work around (or take advantage of) bugs in the various IE versions. When Microsoft fixes these bugs in subsequent releases, the effect may be to break existing sites. And in the case of Internet Explorer, we could be talking about breaking millions of sites. Web browsers, including non-Microsoft ones, have dealt with this via a method known as doctype switching, where the browser will render the page in one of three modes (quirks, standards, and super-standards) depending upon the DOCTYPE value. When developing IE8, however, Microsoft realized that doctype switching was insufficient for their purposes. Assuming that each new browser release would have unique bugs and quirks, they needed some way of informing future releases of IE that the web page had been coded against a specific version. So they came up with a new method that uses a META tag to determine which browser mode to use.

The META tag, which is described in the linked article, will specify the highest browser version against which the web page was coded. Thus if you set it to IE8, for example, when IE9 (or IE10, or IE11) comes out, you can be assured that your page will still be rendered as if the browser were IE8. Each subsequent version of IE will be capable of rendering the older versions with all their bugs, based on the META tag. If the META tag does not exist, then the current IE7 doctype switching method will be used.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

Update: After a significant amount of web community uproar, Microsoft has changed its mind and decided to use the latest standards mode by default. Thus IE7’s standard mode is no longer the default.

Why go to all that work stealing passwords and financial/personal information when you can have someone else do it for you?

Link: http://it.slashdot.org/…

If you’ve ever asked yourself how Rambo would deal with common, everyday problems in the office, the linked article should be quite enlightening. My favorite is when the copier runs out of toner.

Link: http://www.toplessrobot.com/…
(via digg)

This March an astronaut will test a boomerang inside the international space station, to see if it will work in zero gravity. What an interesting experiment—it’s almost as good as the hammer and feather drop on the moon.

Link: http://www.abc.net.au/…

I’ve just learned of a new site that allows you to share files with others—it’s called drop.io. Say you need to send a large file to several recipients. Rather than emailing it, just “drop” it to drop.io and send the link. The main difference between drop.io and other, similar sites, is that drop.io does not require anyone to register. It does, however, have a 100MB limitation.

Another feature of drop.io is that it gives out a phone number. Call the number and leave a message, then drop.io will convert the message to MP3 format and upload it to your drop. Neat!

Link: http://drop.io/
(via Lifehacker)

Here’s a new type of toy missile launcher. You hook it up to your computer, and it allows other people to shoot you with the missile (via MSN). This is the latest in an evolving line of similar products, except that the other ones allow you to do the shooting.

Link: http://usb.brando.com.hk/…
(via Engadget)

The United States Food and Drug Administration has “ruled that meat and milk from cloned pigs, cattle and goats and their offspring is safe.” It’s not necessary to label the products as being from cloned animals.

Link #1: http://news.bbc.co.uk/…

Link #2: http://arstechnica.com/…

On Jan. 19th, 2038, Unix/Linux systems will run into a major date-related problem. The current method of representing dates/times does not work for dates past 3:14:07 UTC on 1/19/2038. We may start seeing problems beginning tomorrow (Saturday 1/19/2008) because 30-year mortgages will extend past the end date. The migration to 64-bit computers will resolve this issue for many, but the real problem is with embedded systems and some file system formats.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/…
(via Slashdot)