mordant wit

Found this on some forum. Forgot the link so my apologies to whoever should be credited for this...

Being an ace coder and/or coding-standards wizard, or an omniscient god of language constructs, OOP techniques and template meta-programming doesn't amount to a hill of beans if you are handed a real-world problem that requires some creativity and thought outside of making a CPU sing. If you are looking to hire someone to write a book on the language of choice then by all means, hire the geek. But our experience over the years has been that the interviewees with the problem solving ability *in any realm* are the aces in the hole. For us, programming is just a tool, a means to an end, that happens to be very useful in solving the real problems our products are designed to handle. A mechanic who is very skilled with a torque wrench isn't necessarily equipped to rebuild an engine.

Sirens blaring, warning lights flashing, computer screens showing nuclear missiles on their way, one man in charge of a red button labeled “START” - that’s start a retaliatory strike — and a roomful of people at their terminals and switchboards waiting for him to push it. Sound like a typical Hollywood Cold War cliffhanger?

It was indeed just like in the movies, says the man who was poised over the red button over twenty years ago, except “in the movies, Hollywood specialists and directors can stretch a little situation into half an hour. In our case, from the time I made the decision to when it was all over, it was five minutes max.”

Do you travel in private jets? Decorate your foyer with real Renoirs? Use the word "foyer"? Then there's no way you're going to get your gadget fix from anything you can get at Best Buy. You crave the most exclusive, the top of the line, the most unusual, and the most attention-grabbing technology, and price is no object.

But there are expensive gadgets, and then there are expensive gadgets. We aren't talking PlayStation 3 expensive — we're talking gear so expensive you'll have your butlers pick them up in your gold-plated helicopter. There are plenty of cool toys out there for you and your mansion, and we've compiled a list — the list — of the 10 best tech toys for the überdiscriminating connoisseur.

Q: Who Invented Body Odor?
A: Advertising Men

In the 1910s and particularly the 1920s, advertising agents focused their attention on identifying—and often inventing—personal anxieties that could be resolved by the purchase of specific products. “Advertising,” wrote one commentator in a trade publication, “helps to keep the masses dissatisfied with their mode of life, discontented with ugly things around them. Satisfied customers are not as profitable as discontented ones.” Advertisers, as historian Stuart Ewen notes, tried to endow people with a “critical self-consciousness” directed especially at their personal appearances.

For 31 years, a hideaway in the rafters of Smoky Hill High School has served as a refuge for select drama students - a secret getaway whose whereabouts were passed down every year from class to class.

Unbeknownst to teachers and administrators, students had hauled up chairs, a radio and candles to furnish the lair above the lights. The room was actually a space created by the vents and walls of the ventilation system, accessible only by perilous traverses across catwalks.

Knowledge about the room had become a sacred Smoky Hill rite until the school newspaper last month revealed the secret. The April 14 article in the Smoky Hill Express prompted administrators to shut down access.

In its wake, newspaper students learned the power of the printed word. Drama students learned that their unsupervised exploits above the rafters could have been deadly.


Something like the dead poet's society

Storm pictures

Scientists make diamonds in the lab that are as flawless as the rarest stones

At a world brewing convention in the States, the CEOs of various Brewing organizations retired to the bar at the end of each day's conference.

Bruce, CEO of Fosters, shouted to the Barman: "In 'Strylya, we make the best bladdy beer in the world, so pour me a Bladdy Fosters, mate."

Bob, CEO of Budweiser, calls out next: "In the States, we brew the finest beers in the world, and I make the King of them all; gimme a Bud."

Hans steps up next: "In Germany ve invented das beer, verdamt. Give me ein Becks, ya ist Der real King of beers, danke."

Paddy, CEO of Guinness, steps forward "Barman, would ya give me a doyet coke wid ice and lemon. Tanks."

The others stare at him in stunned silence, amazement written all over their faces. Eventually Bruce asks, "Are you not going to have a Guinness, Pat?"

Paddy replies: "Well, if you fookin' pansies aren't drinkin', then neither am I".

An impressive collection of 'before' and 'after' photo retouching examples!

There's an old Dilbert cartoon in which the pointy-haired boss is asked if he believes in irony. His reply: "No, I send my shirts to a service." If you don't believe in irony, here's a story that will convert you. It's about a group of workers in India that's holding protests against...outsourcing.

According to India's Economic Times, Indian workers employed by the country's reserve bank this week held demonstrations to protest possible plans by the bank to outsource some routine jobs to the private sector. The Times provides the following quote from K K Sharma, secretary of the All India Reserve Bank Employees Association: "We have two main demands--implementation of the revised pension scheme and no outsourcing of jobs from RBI."

Back-office workers at the RBI are worried about their positions going to a private group called the National Payments Corporation of India. They're concerned that the private sector will pay less and provide shoddy work. Does this sound familiar? I don't know much about NPCI, but with salaries increasing across the board in India, maybe it's also planning to move RBI jobs to China, or Vietnam, or some other lower-wage country.

No doubt U.S. opponents of outsourcing will help themselves to a delicious piece of Schadenfreude over this news. They'll see it as a perfect example of what-comes-around-goes-around. Maybe, but it also puts the lie to the notion that outsourcing represents a conspiracy against American workers. In fact, it's just a business practice that's currently in vogue not just in North America, but across the whole flat world.

... does it take the body to ...

... theme park in the world?

I think no one can disagree with this!

The palindrome

A man, a plan, a canal, Panama

was used as an advertising slogan to attract public support for its construction.

Despite a relatively flat market overall, stock prices of the top six US military contractors have risen nearly four-fold since 2001.


I wonder how many of a stake does Dubya and his cronies have in these companies?

Need an idea for a gift to give to your girlfriend? Just give her an iPod.

More than a half-century after hostilities ended in Korea, a document from the war's chaotic early days has come to light — a letter from the U.S. ambassador to Seoul, informing the State Department that American soldiers would shoot refugees approaching their lines.

The letter — dated the day of the Army's mass killing of South Korean refugees at No Gun Ri in 1950 — is the strongest indication yet that such a policy existed for all U.S. forces in Korea, and the first evidence that that policy was known to upper ranks of the U.S. government.

Vista's content protection will block or blur high-def movies on today's displays.

If you dropped a bundle on a high-end computer display or HDTV, you could be in for an unpleasant surprise when you slip your new high-definition DVD of Star Wars: Episode III into your Windows Vista PC. Vista, the next version of Windows that's slated to appear in about a year, will feature a new systemwide content protection scheme called PVP-OPM (see box below). If your monitor doesn't work with PVP-OPM, all you'll likely see is either a fuzzy rendition of your high-def flick or Hollywood's version of the Blue Screen of Death--a message warning you that the display has been 'revoked'.

I have shifted my allegiance to Firefox. I've always felt that third party browsers use more resources than Internet Explorer, and the web pages view differently in some of them. However, Firefox has won me over. I'm a total fan after I realised what bliss it can bring in the form of Firefox Extensions.

I have this extension called Adblock and an associated extension called Adblock Filterset.G Updater. The updater simply updates the rules for adblock to work properly.

I had no idea how effective it was, until I opened this site I visit regularly at a friend's PC (no doubt running Internet Explorer) and realised it was NSFW at all. I realised that Adblock had accomplished what others have failed to do over the ages. I even don't see the google text ads.

This brings me to the fact that the main source of revenue for Google is the advertising revenues. If Firefox users do start using Adblock (make their surfing experience clean and irritating popup advertisment free) then Google will sadly lose out on all those revenues that seems to keep it buoyant while they go out acquiring everything in sight.

...the processes on your computer

The Back to the Future DeLorean is on sale on eBay!

35% of the packaged software installed on personal computers (PC) worldwide in 2005 was illegal, amounting to $34 bln in global losses due to software piracy. Piracy rates decreased moderately in more than half (51) of the 97 countries, and increased in only 19. The global rate was unchanged from 2004 to 2005 as large developed markets like the United States, Western Europe, Japan and a handful of Asian countries continue to dominate the software market while their combined piracy rate hardly moved.

The Apple rumor mill is once again churning. Supposedly the iPods are going to get some real official gaming action. None of this Brick Attack, Parachute or—god forbid—scroll-wheel solitaire that you are used to.

The rumors are coming by ways of a hotshot gaming software engineer, a software engineer recruiter and an Apple recruiter. We’ll call the recruiters orange and apple—get it? Fruit! Anyway, orange was trying to get some hotshot software engineer prospective to work for his company. Unfortunately the hotshot coder turned down orange because he was being heavily recruited by apple.

Apple iPod owners love their sleek machines. That's when they work. When they don't, they enter a twilight world where they discover their prized music player is considered by its manufacturer as nothing more than a throwaway item.

It doesn't matter that iPod lovers can spend up to £300 on their gizmo. Apple operates on the basis that the iPod life expectancy is a year, and that's it.

Complain that your £200 or £300 could have bought a fridge or TV that would be expected to last five years or more, and a customer services assistant will explain that a one-year warranty is just that, and no more.

It's not just the government... Be sure and cancel your credit cards before you die. This is priceless, and so easy to see happening, customer service being what it is today.

A lady died this past January, and Citibank billed her for February and March for their annual service charges on her credit card, and then added late fees and interest on the monthly charge. The balance had been $0.00, now is somewhere around $60.00. A family member placed a call to Citibank


Must read

Virtually none of the "Name" brands manufacture their own laptops, with the about the only exception being Asus.

Instead they buy their laptops from what is called an Original Design Manufacturer (ODM). These ODMs sell their computers to several different OEMs (like DELL, Toshiba, IBM, HP, Compaq, Sager, PowerPro, Sony and many others) who then install the Hard Drive (usually a Seagate, Fujitsu, Hitachi or Toshiba), an Intel or AMD Processor, and System Memory. They then put their label on it and market it.

For example:

An ODM named Clevo makes the Sager NP9890 and the Alienware Area-51 m7700, the Voodoo Envy u:703, the Hypersonic Aviator EX7, the Falcon Northwest FragBook DR 6800, and they are all the same computer (although Sager usually has the more advanced and exotic technology).

Of course the Sager models have a much sweeter price tag!

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.

It will make you go blind. It will make your palms grow hairy. Such myths about masturbation are largely a thing of the past. But the latest research has even better news for young men: frequent self-pleasuring could protect against the most common kind of cancer.

A team in Australia led by Graham Giles of The Cancer Council Victoria in Melbourne asked 1079 men with prostate cancer to fill in a questionnaire detailing their sexual habits, and compared their responses with those of 1259 healthy men of the same age. The team concludes that the more men ejaculate between the ages of 20 and 50, the less likely they are to develop prostate cancer.

The head of the Nepal Mountaineering Association urged the government Saturday to take action against a sherpa who reportedly stripped off on top of Mount Everest.

The Himalayan Times had reported Friday that the Nepali climbing guide, whose name it gave as Lakpa Tharke, stood naked for three minutes in freezing conditions on the 29,035-foot summit of the world's highest peak.

If confirmed, he would be the first person known to have stripped atop Everest, considered by Nepali Buddhists as a god.

Ang Tshering Sherpa, head of Nepal's top mountaineering body, said he could not confirm that the incident had happened.

"But if he did it, it is very shocking because Sagarmatha is the goddess mother," he said, using the mountain's Nepali name.

"The government must enforce strict ethics for climbing."

Authorities have yet to comment.

But the climb's organizers seemed happy enough with Lakpa Thaeke's strip.

"We are planning to file his extraordinary feat for the Guinness Book of World Records," the paper quoted an official of the hiking group that employs Tharke as saying.

At least 1,345 people have climbed Everest since 1953 from either the Nepali or Tibetan side.

Free Fonts - about 9800 of them.

Ok it's not like we haven't seen this before. But it never stops to amaze how easy girls get at certain events when it comes down to flashing their tits. Would you ask them the same thing when they are in the mall or at college you would get a smack in the face. Don't get me wrong I am not complaining.

Some amazing pictures of storms.

If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.

The OpenDocument Format has come under attack from Microsoft, which claims its Office Open XML format has significantly better performance.

"The use of OpenDocument documents is slower to the point of not really being satisfactory," Alan Yates, the general manager of Microsoft's information worker strategy, told ZDNet UK on Wednesday. "The Open XML format is designed for performance. XML is fundamentally slower than binary formats, so we have made sure that customers won't notice a big difference in performance."

Enter your birthdate: Click on Submit and then scroll down for fun statistics and your astrological data.

Scientists working in the southern Atlantic Ocean have found a 407 °C hydrothermal vent, the hottest yet known on an ocean floor. Although only 5 °C hotter than the previous deep-sea high of 402 °C, recorded in the Pacific Ocean, the new hotspot bumps seawater into the strange state of being a supercritical fluid.

Expedition leader Andrea Koschinsky of International University in Bremen, Germany, and her team found the hydrothermal vent, also known as a black smoker, just south of the Equator on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at a depth of 2,990 metres — or 299 bar pressure. At pressures and temperatures above 298 bar and 407 °C, seawater becomes something between a thin liquid and a dense vapour: a supercritical fluid.

Undo Software today unveiled UndoDB -- the first bidirectional debugger for compiled programs.

A bidirectional debugger allows programmers to run a program backwards in time as well as forwards. The program can be stepped back line-by-line, or rewound to any point in its history. Furthermore, programmers can play the program forwards and backwards in a totally repeatable fashion, allowing them to "home in" on the cause of a bug.

Bidirectional debuggers are much more powerful than their traditional counterparts, which only allow programmers to step their programs forwards in time. This is particularly true for bugs whose root cause occurs long before the ill effects manifest themselves, and for bugs that occur only intermittently.

Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and higher education positively fortifies it.

Russian scientists have invented a battery that can capture energy not only from the sun, but also from the stars, the head of a research institute at the Dubna Nuclear Institute, near Moscow, said.

"The scientists have successfully created a new substance," Valentin Samoilov announced, "thanks to which this battery can work on earth, independently of meteorological conditions, using solar and stellar energy.

"This is a battery like no other," Samoilov, who head's the Institute's center for applied research, told the Itar-Tass news agency, explaining that it could function 24 hours a day and was twice as effective as an ordinary solar panel at converting light into electricity.

Moreover, Samoilov declared, the new battery was cheaper than a solar panel.

When you're interviewing you want a candidate that is going to think about the business context of the system and the utility that the software users are going to require—this is what makes David's answers to the copy file problem so good.

Programmers do spend some of their time putting together complex algorithms, but for most of us, most of the time, we're looking at building systems that deal with the much more general and far more woolly problems that involve people.

• What does the user want to achieve?


• How are they likely to go about it?


• Where are holes in the process?


• What are the exploits?


• Where is the return on investment going to come from?

The bible to lead all geeks!!!

1: Downplay training
2: Give no recognition
3: Plan too much overtime
4: Use management-speak
5: Try to be smarter than the geeks
6: Act inconsistent
7: Ignore the geeks
8: Make decisions without consulting the
9: Don't give them tools
10: Forget that geeks are creative workers

An interesting new take on switching desktops on the Apple laptop.

There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness.

In 2002, Gary McKinnon was arrested by the UK's national high-tech crime unit, after being accused of hacking into Nasa and the US military computer networks.

He says he spent two years looking for photographic evidence of alien spacecraft and advanced power technology.

America now wants to put him on trial, and if tried there he could face 60 years behind bars.

Banned from using the internet, Gary spoke to Click presenter Spencer Kelly to tell his side of the story, ahead of his extradition hearing on Wednesday, 10 May. You can read what he had to say here.

MISSING: scantily-clad females hawking the latest in electronic toys for the boys.

The video game industry's annual trade show in Los Angeles opened its doors to its exhibitors yesterday with organizers ordering women staffing the booths to cover up or face a $5000 fine.

Banned are nudity, partial nudity, bikini bottoms or any sexually explicit or provocative conduct, according to the handbook from The Entertainment Software Association, or ESA, which owns and operates the E3 Expo.

Pauline K, who declined to give her last name, wore a white shredded tank top with an exposed midriff, short mini skirt and knee-high leggings as she handed out fliers for a company that makes custom face plates for Microsoft's Xbox 360 game machine.

She said another of the models received a warning from show organizers for showing too much skin.

"Apparently her cleavage was a little too distracting," she said.

This girl is unnaturally flexible! It's unbelievable!

I never let my schooling interfere with my education

Spotted in a toilet of a London office:
TOILET OUT OF ORDER. PLEASE USE FLOOR BELOW

In a London Laundromat:
AUTOMATIC WASHING MACHINES: PLEASE REMOVE ALL YOUR CLOTHES WHEN THE LIGHT GOES OUT

In a London department store:
BARGAIN BASEMENT UPSTAIRS

In an London office:
AFTER TEA BREAK STAFF SHOULD EMPTY THE TEAPOT AND STAND UPSIDE DOWN ON THE DRAINING BOARD

Outside a London secondhand shop:
WE EXCHANGE ANYTHING - BICYCLES, WASHING MACHINES, ETC. WHY NOT BRING YOUR WIFE ALONG AND GET A WONDERFUL BARGAIN?

Notice in London health food shop window:
CLOSED DUE TO ILLNESS

Spotted in a safari park:
ELEPHANTS PLEASE STAY IN YOUR CAR

Seen during a London conference:
FOR ANYONE WHO HAS CHILDREN AND DOESN'T KNOW IT, THERE IS A DAY CARE ON THE FIRST FLOOR

Notice in a field:
THE FARMER ALLOWS WALKERS TO CROSS THE FIELD FOR FREE, BUT THE BULL CHARGES

Message on a leaflet:
IF YOU CANNOT READ, THIS LEAFLET WILL TELL YOU HOW TO GET LESSONS

On a repair shop door:
WE CAN REPAIR ANYTHING. (PLEASE KNOCK HARD ON THE DOOR THE BELL DOESN'T WORK)

People in other countries sometimes go out of their way to communicate with
their English-speaking tourists. Here is a list of signs seen around the
world.

At a Budapest zoo:
PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS. IF YOU HAVE ANY SUITABLE FOOD, GIVE IT TO THE GUARD ON DUTY.

Doctors office, Rome:
SPECIALIST IN WOMEN AND OTHER DISEASES.

Hotel, Acapulco:
THE MANAGER HAS PERSONALLY PASSED ALL THE WATER SERVED HERE.

In a Nairobi restaurant:
CUSTOMERS WHO FIND OUR WAITRESSES RUDE SHOULD WAIT AND SEE THE MANAGER.

In a City restaurant:
OPEN SEVEN DAYS A WEEK, AND WEEKENDS TOO.

Ageing and unreliable office computers are making workers unhappy and more likely to claim sick leave, a new survey shows.

A poll conducted by Tickbox.net of more 2,700 European office workers from Britain, France and Germany found that workplace dissatisfaction increased significantly with the age of computer equipment.

British and French respondents said working on outdated computers was the most irritating aspect of office life.

Almost 40 per cent of the workers surveyed in the three countries were using computers at least three years old.

At least six policemen have been killed and nine hurt in a series of explosions at a police training academy in the Pakistani city of Quetta.

The blasts were caused by five bombs planted in the firing range at the academy, a Quetta police official told the Associated Press news agency.


Is Pakistani Police the new target? If the angered tribesmen are lashing out at the local officials, is the spilt blood not the responsibility of the current rulers? Shouldn't they be trying to bring an end to this senseless violence? I don't see much happening!

Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo put their cards on the table here this week in the high-stakes contest for control of the next-generation video-game console market. And, while all bets are still off, the challengers' hands look stronger than ever.

Much of the momentum comes courtesy of Sony, the current market leader, which suddenly seemed more vulnerable following a pricing bombshell of $600 for a fully functional version of its still-pending PlayStation 3 console.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

Over at Google Hacks, Bigthistle has posted his tips on using Google language tools service as a proxy. This is useful when you are in universities or offices and want to access web sites that are black listed. All you need to do is to type this URL:

You gotta click here to get the URL ;)

What will the office of the future look like? "Microsoft sees Tablet PCs as a possible tool for biometric logins--authentications employing things like fingerprints and handwriting--in place of usernames and passwords." Complete with photos.

While DVDs are high quality and you can rip them to your computer, they do have drawbacks, such as large file sizes (4-9 Gigabytes per movie) and obscure file-naming.

By ripping a DVD to *.avi or *.mpg format, you benefit from small and portable file sizes, your own file naming, and free conversion software (DVDx).

Approximately three new manuscripts are discovered each year that are initially attributed to William Shakespeare. Only one in the last 50 years has ever been conclusively proven to authored by the Bard.

The Microsoft- Google rivalry is shaping up as a titanic corporate clash for the ages.

It may not turn out that way. Markets and corporate fortunes routinely defy prediction. But it sure looks as if the two companies are on a collision course, as the realms of desktop computing and Internet services and software overlap more and more.

Microsoft, of course, is the reigning powerhouse of computing and Google is the muscular Internet challenger. On each side, the battalions are arrayed: executives, engineers, marketers, lawyers and lobbyists. The spending and competition are escalating daily. For each, it seems, the other passes what Andrew S. Grove, a founder and former chairman of Intel, calls the "silver bullet test" of strategic competition. "If you had one bullet, who would you shoot with it?"

Americans have a bleaker view of the country's direction than at any time in more than two decades, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Sharp disapproval of President Bush's handling of gasoline prices has combined with intensified unhappiness about Iraq to create a grim political environment for the White House and Congressional Republicans.

Mr. Bush's approval ratings for his management of foreign policy, Iraq and the economy have fallen to the lowest levels of his presidency. He drew poor marks on the issues that have been at the top of the national agenda in recent months, in particular immigration and gasoline prices.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has said more than 1,000 people were killed last month in Baghdad as a result of continuing sectarian violence.

Mr Talabani cited a report from a Baghdad morgue saying 1,091 people were killed between 1 and 30 April.

He said he was "shocked and angry" at daily reports of bodies being found.


Operation Freedom Iraq seems like a success to me! I wonder what those liberal tree huggers consider as the benchmark of freedom. The Iraqi's are now free to die rather than being killed by a dictator!

High-end laptop vendor Alienware said Tuesday that it has released two high-end computers for gamers with built-in Wi-Fi technology that uses Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MIMO) technology.

The laptops enable users to play complex and interactive games without being tethered to a network by Ethernet cables, the company said in a statement. Alienware said it is using MIMO technology provided by Airgo.

MIMO uses multiple antennas to intelligently send and receive wireless signals, which, in turn, increases both wireless speed and range. MIMO will be an intrinsic part of the forthcoming 802.11n specification, which is expected to receive final ratification by the IEEE within a year.

The amount of wrapping paper used this Christmas is long enough to circle the globe four times.

Scientologist Tom Cruise has taken the owner of TomCruise.com to domain name arbitrator WIPO to win it back.

The Hollywood star, and lead of recently released Mission Impossible III, is a bit slow off the mark - the domain was registered in November 1996, and other super-celebs have been going to WIPO for years trying to win back their namesake domains.

The domain owner is none other than the world's biggest cybersquatter, Jeff Burgar, registered under his Alberta Hot Rods company name.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

I promised a real life example of someone who wins a “gold star” for dealing with deadlines and offers from competing companies, and here he is: Mark Bolin.

I recently hired Mark into a position for MSN Search Multimedia team, however it could easily have not happened if Mark had not helped steer the recruiting process in some subtle and effective ways. Mark’s candidacy started out like most others: he sent his information to an MSN jobs alias he found on the internet and included a well written resume and short cover letter in the body of the email. I replied with a little information about a job and asked him if he would complete a coding exercise via email. He agreed, completed it, and sent it back.

Then I neglected him. I did not reply. I was busy. I was like all those other recruiters who don’t respond.

The Iranian Government has released to the public, the full text of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's letter to President George Bush.

"The letter to US President George Bush carries the Iranian nation's views and comments on international issues as well as suggestions for resolving the many problems facing humanity," said the Iranian president.

The letter was submitted to President Bush on Monday, May 9, 2006 via the Swiss embassy in Tehran, which takes care of the US interest section in Iran and acts as a liason between the two countries.

Korea has developed its own android capable of facial expressions on its humanoid face, the second such machine to be developed after one from Japan. The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy invited some 60 children to the Kyoyuk Munhwa Hoekwan in Seoul to introduce Ever-1 to the public. The name combines the first human name found in the Bible, Eve, with the "r" in robot.



The Korean Institute for Industrial Technology (KITECH) said the android, which has the face and body of a woman in her 20s, is 160 cm tall and weighs 50 kg. Ever-1 can move its upper body and “express” happiness, anger, sadness and pleasure. But the robot is still incapable of moving its lower half. Ever-1's skin is made from a silicon jelly that feels similar to human skin. The face is a composite of two stars, and its torso on a singer.

1. Understand and accept that you will make mistakes.


2. You are not your code.


3. No matter how much "karate" you know, someone else will always know more.


4. Don't rewrite code without consultation.


5. Treat people who know less than you with respect, deference, and patience.


6. The only constant in the world is change.


7. The only true authority stems from knowledge, not from position.


8. Fight for what you believe, but gracefully accept defeat.


9. Don't be "the guy in the room."


10. Critique code instead of people-be kind to the coder, not to the code.

It will not have escaped your attention that Microsoft is labouring to finish the next version of its Windows operating system, Vista. A version aimed at the corporate market is supposed to be ready for Christmas, with the consumer edition following some time later (missing the Christmas market, which has irritated computer manufacturers and retailers more than somewhat). Last week, Gartner, a leading IT consultancy, predicted that Microsoft would miss those shipping dates.

'Microsoft's track record is clear: it consistently misses target dates for major operating system releases,' the firm wrote. 'We don't expect broad availability of Windows Vista until at least the second quarter of 2007, which is nine to 12 months after Beta 2.' Microsoft challenged this. A company spokesman told CNET News: 'We remain on track to deliver the final product to volume-licence customers in November 2006 and to other businesses and consumers in January 2007.'

So there! The significant thing about Vista, however, is not the shipping date but the fact that it has been an unconscionable time in the making, subject to endless slippages (which have triggered major organisational changes within the company) and - when it eventually ships - will be just a shadow of the system envisaged when it was conceived. And while all this has been going on, Apple has released several major upgrades of its OS X operating system, and the programmers behind Open Source Linux have significant upgrades over the same period.

Mark Dochtermann, 34, director of technology, Electronic Arts: "When I saw my first computer, it was love at first sight. As a kid I spent a lot of time on a Commodore 64, writing my own programs, figuring out games, hacking.

You can learn an awful lot about programming doing that. I majored in computer engineering but never thought I could work in the game industry -- it was a dream job.

After college I sent one of my creations to a small game company. Next thing I knew, I was their programmer.

Since then I've built a career in the "first-person shooter" category with games like Duke Nukem 3D. During the tech boom, when others left games for the money in start-ups, I stayed.

I make a good living, and I'd rather work on a game I don't care for than write code for a financial company. I'm building a product that entertains. Unlike engineers in commerce or aerospace, I can push the envelope without someone getting hurt.

A urine powered battery the size of a credit card has been invented by Singapore researchers.

A drop of urine generates 1.5 volts, the equivalent of one AA battery, says Dr Ki Bang Lee of the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology.

He says the technology could provide a disposable power source for electronic diagnostic devices that test urine and other body fluids for diseases like diabetes.

The nation's largest beverage distributors have agreed to halt nearly all sales of sodas to public schools — a step that will remove the sugary, caloric drinks from vending machines and cafeterias around the country.

The agreement was announced Wednesday by the William J. Clinton Foundation and will also likely apply to many private and parochial schools.

"This is a bold step forward in the struggle to help 35 million young people lead healthier lives," former President Clinton said at a news conference. "This one policy can add years and years and years to the lives of a very large number of young people."

To many people these days, simply sweetening a cup of coffee is practically akin to picking a poison. Sugar or honey? Too many calories. Equal or Nutrasweet? Too many health risks, especially given recent reports detailing diet soda's dangerously high levels of the cancer-causing compound benzene.

So to the sweet-toothed consumer, the increasingly popular, all natural, calorie-free substance called stevia sounds too good to be true.

How to steal an election

See how easy it could be to rig the elections of the country that champions democracy!

Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come back home.