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2007-09-30

Water forms floating 'bridge' when exposed to high voltage

When water in two beakers is exposed to a high voltage, a floating water bridge forms between the beakers.


http://www.physorg.com/news110191847.html

Do Migratory Birds 'See' The Magnetic Field?

"These findings strongly support the hypothesis that migratory birds use their visual system to perceive the reference compass direction of the geomagnetic field and that migratory birds are thus likely to "see" the geomagnetic field."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070926140836.htm

Why Microsoft must abandon Vista to save itself

"While Vista was originally touted by Microsoft as the operating system savior we've all been waiting for, it has turned out to be one of the biggest blunders in technology. With a host of issues that are inexcusable and features that are taken from the Mac OS X and Linux playbook, Microsoft has once again lost sight of what we really want."

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9785337-7.html?tag=nefd.only

OpenOffice.org documents within Firefox

"If you are running OpenOffice.org and Firefox at the same time you can view OpenDocument and other OpenOffice.org supported file formats using the provided Mozilla plug-in."

http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2007/09/openofficeorg-documents-within-firefox/

Night of the Living Vista

"Today, I think of Vista as the zombie operating system. It stumbles around, and from a distance you might think it's alive, but close up it's the walking dead."

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2190228,00.asp

Bob Sutor - Remembering September

"Starting with the defeat of OOXML in the JTC1 ballot, which I would term devastating, and continuing on to the release of OpenOffice.org 2.3 and IBM joining OpenOffice.org, which I would term thrilling, it was an exciting month that gives, I hope, a glimpse of the future."

http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=1851

Math is hard....especially in Microsoft Excel

Here's a story about a major bug in MS Excel 2007

http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10006016o-2000331777b,00.htm

Try multiplying 850 by 77.1 - the answer should be 65535.

Excel 2007 thinks it's 100000.

EU Urged to Open Monopoly PC Market

"bundling of Microsoft Windows with computers is not in the public interest, and prevents meaningful competition in the operating system market."

http://roughlydrafted.com/RD/TechQ307/Entries/2007/9/24_EU_Urged_to_Open_Microsofts_Monopoly_Billions_to_Free_Market_Competition.html

How to use a slide rule




See how calculations used to be done before the days of electronic calculators. Find out about an important piece of engineering history. All pieces of the slide rule are draggable.