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Over at neosmart, they make the point that Open Search for IE7 is truly open and is one way that Microsoft shows it is now committed to standards. It's a great thing that you can add very specific searches to a browser without having to add a toolbar or a plugin or <shudder> an activeX control. Very clean implementation, and we applaud Microsoft for using OpenSearch.
Hurricane Ernesto is expected to make landfall sometimes Tuesday night Wednesday morning. We are mostly ready.
Sean Carroll hits a home run in explaining some recent science about showing the existence of Dark Matter. I initially had used the word prove, but in science you really never prove anything; you instead add evidence in favor of a theory. Some theories, like evolution, have so many compelling experiments and observations crossing discipline boundaries that they become compelling to the point of proof.
I urge your to read the article above. This is probably the most interesting experimental results in the last 20 years. Wow. From the article:
astrophysicists led by Doug Clowe (Arizona) and Maxim Markevitch (CfA) have now compared images of the gas obtained by the Chandra X-ray telescope to “maps” of the gravitational field deduced from weak lensing observations. Their paper is available here in pdf, and will appear on astro-ph this evening. And the answer is: there’s definitely dark matter there!
Congratulations, Doug and Maxim! Thanks, NASA! What a great job!
Sandi Hardmeier who is a well known MS MVP for Internet Explorer was kind enought to review OpenSearch: add searches to IE7 and add it to her websites www.msmvps.com/spywaresucks and http://www.ie-vista.com/search.html.
On these sites, she covers common issues, problems, and resolutions of Internet Explorer.
I've been included in the Checkmate Yahoo Class action lawsuit. I could opt out in some sort of way but I won't take the effort. This is the seventh class action lawsuit I've been a member of. Everyone of them works the same way. The lawyers walk away with a handsome reward; the target doesn't admit wrongdoing; I get something relatively worthless.
The first one was Nissan. I bought a car where the seats were supposed to be 100% leather. Corinthian leather perhaps? The seats weren't 100% leather. After the suit, I got a coupon good for $50 off my next Nissan car. Great. Lawyers get money; I get a marketing device that Nissan would probably do anyway.
In this Yahoo case, the lawyers fees are set just under $5 million. I'm sure that's what Yahoo considers the "just go away" dollar amount. Their letter assures me that "The amount paid for attorneys’ fees, expenses, and costs will be paid by Yahoo! and so will not diminish or affect any Credits which Class Members may receive." That sounds like a rea estate agent telling me that all the selling costs are paid for by the seller, so it doesn't cost the buyer anything.
I have no knowledge of this particular case, other than remembering that the Yahoo ads were not particularly effective. But the whole concept of these class action lawsuits is very similar to the marketing concepts of coupons and mail-in rebates. A business gives away millions of dollars of coupons knowing that the economic friction of people's inertia will keep them from actually using the coupons. I think it'd be fair to set the lawyers' fees at 5 Million if 100% of the class action members use the coupons or the credits or whatever. If only 50% use it, they would get half the fee.
So anyway, Yahoo, I won't be challenging the clicks or applying for partial refunds or asking for credits or using the coupons or whatever. There's too much friction. And the lawyers know it.
ACE predicts John Mark Karr will not be convicted of killing JonBenet
I agree with him. I didn't follow the case that closely, but if I recall there was one issue that caused me to doubt an outside killer. The killer used a unusual amount for the ransom note, $118,000. Wasn't this number a bonus the husband has recently received?
There has to be some physical evidence linking Karr to scene for me to believe he did it.
Even as I write this, a new theory occurs to me. What if the wife got up early, found the crime scene, decided the husband did it, and tried to help (!) by writing the bogus ransom note. Interesting to see how this unfolds.
Microsoft has released the very cool Live Writer application which lets you post to the major blog providers. I'm currently testing it with Polarman. I tested it at Search Provider Plugins first. As I get more experience with it, I will post further. So far, it's easy and seems powerful enough to handle everything I'll do with posting.
I'm a little disappointed that the spelling check isn't like MS Word. That's the biggest single improvement that would make my blogging easier.
I speculated earlier about the safety of the battery system that Tesla Motors is using. Here's a great article from Technology Review with a lot of specifics. One claim was that there have been about 1 in 10 million laptops that had the exploding problem that I alluded to earlier. However, the Tesla has 7000 batteries, so maybe only 1 in 1000 Roadsters would experience the problem. The engineers at Tesla have put them in steel cases, triple fused them, and have some sort of apparently active liquid cooling system.
This sounds very good. I'm feeling positive about getting a Roadster. But what if you're in an accident where there's a bunch of burning gasoline from the other vehicle? Could that lead to a chain reaction with the batteries? Even if it could, the same thing could happen if you were in a gasoline car, so it's not really a deal killer unless the resulting explosions are really large.
