March 2008 - Techbreak

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Techbreak - March 2008

Lamp knits itself

March 27th 2008 03:09

Knitted lamps aren't so fashionable anymore, but they do give your home a nice DIY feel. And knitting is coming back as the latest craze to hit the nightclubs, with all the celebrities bringing knitting needles to the hot Hollywood parties.

Knitting doesn't really have a place on Techcrunch, though, unless there's something cool involved. Like invisible knitting or even steampunk knitting.

Well, this comes close... this lamp knits its own lampshade. Slowly, but surely.

When it gets too long, just rip off the bottom part and wear it like a skirt. Voila!

From the post:

"it's "a lamp that develops like a living organism: switch it on and it slowly starts growing by knitting its own lampshade at a speed of three rotations per hour.""

It's a great idea, and one that can, hopefully, be extended to other things... how about self-knitting socks, for example? As soon as you've lost one, the other sock has knitted a friend?

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Undersea cables - cut on purpose?

March 4th 2008 08:07

It was big news... five undersea telecommunication cables were broken in the Middle Eat last month, causing major outages to India. People were quick to point fingers and yell 'Conspiracy!' but then the news came out: relax - it's just a ship's anchor snapping the cables.

But the Arabic news was disputing claims, stating that the cuts were in part of the ocean that had little traffic. More people yelled 'Conspiracy!' but they were largely unheeded.

We're still not out of it, though... even Ars Technica is suggesting that it might have been sabotage.

"...but of the five cable cuts, only one (the link between the UAE and Oman) is definitely established to have been an accident. There are doubts regarding the others, as some experts feel that the cables were too deep to be cut and lie outside of normal shipping lanes. The short period of time between the other four failures may also be indicative of deliberate action, as its unusual for multiple critical cable breaks to occur that close together."

Ars Technica also points out that the net effect of this sabotage, if it really was deliberate, is to force the world to beef up redundancy plans and workarounds.

The Internet is already very robust and is capable of on-the-fly self-healing, which is why it's been the model to gain the most traction. If a few more cables were strung out, it'd be tough work indeed to cripple a country's connection.

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Microsoft top management having tough times with Vista

March 3rd 2008 01:45

Vista plagued with problems Steve Ballmer

Microsoft Vista was a massive failure as an operating system... though the company tries to spin the failure with funny statistics.

It's an operating system beleaguered with problems... from drivers that don't work, to hardware that won't work, to the hefty requirements, Vista is an operating system that seems to fight against the user.

From my own experience, I found Vista to be pretty, though not as user-friendly as OS/X, but insulting to use. Every action, it would ask me again, its security model assuming that I'm doing bad things.

That's why I'm delighted to be using Linux, a totally-free operating system that is customizable and, most importantly, fun to use after years of being pushed away from the details by Microsoft.

But that's another post, for another day (though I will suggest that you use Ubuntu, or Kubuntu, or Xubuntu!)

A US court case has revealed emails from Microsoft's top brass, showing even the top level executives weren't having an easy go with Vista.

from the article:

"One executive, Mike Nash, complained he was "burned" so badly by compatibility issues he was left with "a $2100 email machine".

...The "Jon" referred to is Microsoft board member and its former chief operating officer Jon Shirley, who experienced compatibility problems with his Epson printer and scanner and his Nikon film scanner.

Other emails from various Microsoft executives show that even they struggled to work out what "Vista Capable" and "Vista Ready" meant when buying a new PC."

If the Microsoft brass can't use Vista properly, what can the rest of us do? Personally, I'm happy to ignore Vista, dual-booting XP with my Linux distro.

This means that I've got XP and Ubuntu installed, choosing which one to run when the computer starts up. I've gone months without using Windows even once... the only time I need it is for playing games, but even that's possible in Linux using a program called Wine, which allows Windows programs to run in Linux.

It's a beautiful day outside, and my operating system is totally free.

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