The Cool Tools weblog features Yaktrax, grippy rubber-bandy things that snap onto the bottom of your shoes for a slip-proof walk through snow and ice. Yaktrax work like snow chains on your car tires.
I'm not a little old lady (yet) but I don't want to fall on ice on my way to the bus stop, either--especially not while carrying my laptop back and forth to work! These things, which fit over shoes or boots, really work well! I can walk almost normally over packed snow, as long as the surface has a bit of texture--and the added confidence has been great! (Smooth ice is still pretty challenging...)
Yaktrax are available at Amazon for about 17 bucks.
(Via Lifehacker.)
Boing Boing guide to defeating censorware
Boing Boing: Guide to defeating Censorware: " 'The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.' -- John Gilmore If your employer or corrupt, undemocratic, dictator-based government uses a filtering service such as Secure Computing's SmartFilter to block access to BoingBoing.net, you can try the following workarounds:
(Via Boing Boing.)
The Ethical Hacker Network - Google Hacking: Ten Simple Security Searches That Work
The Ethical Hacker Network - Google Hacking: Ten Simple Security Searches That Work
(Via Lifehacker http://www.lifehacker.com.)
Security: Sony puts hidden hacking tools on your PC
Sony jumps the shark as far as CD protection goes. Now they're installing a hacker rootkit on your PC before you can play their CDs. And you can't uninstall it. And if you try... it breaks your PC. Maybe I won't buy that PS3 after all. Maybe I'll tell everyone I know never to ever buy anything from Sony, ever again.
News: Hidden DRM code's legitimacy questioned: ""
(Via SecurityFocus News.)
ACM Queue - Learning from THE WEB
A very interesting article from Adam Bosworth on how the take-up of web technologies suggests problems with the structure of XML, and how Atom may be a better data format than plain XML. Also lessons to be learned by database designers from the HTML experience.
ACM Queue - Learning from THE WEB - The Web has taught us many lessons about distributed computing, but some of the most important ones have yet to fully take hold.: "Tue, Nov 01, 2005
Intranet Portals Get Streamlined (October 24, 2005)
Jakob Nielsen writes some interesting things about intranet portals
Intranet Portals Get Streamlined (October 24, 2005): "An analysis of intranet portals found slimmer information architectures and a renewed emphasis on fresh content and useful applications. Past findings, including those on role-based personalization, were confirmed."
(Via Alertbox: Jakob Nielsen's Column on Web Usability.)
For some time now, I've been reading The Daily WTF, a weblog that exists to make fun of bad programming. Now, I've seen plenty of bad programming in my time, I've even written some, but the things that show up here are generally quite unbelievable. Usually they involve someone reinventing a completely bog-standard mechanism, like loops or pointers and trying to re-implement it without realising that there is a one-line way of doing what they are after.
Here's an instance that almost anyone can see is a bad idea:
The trouble is, I can understand exactly how this came about. I've had problems with companies that won't open the APIs to their systems, and I've worked with programmers who look at every problem and go "I can solve that using VBA!" (or javascript, or stored procedures, or whatever else they're good at).
This was supposed to be one of the things that integration hubs would get rid of. If everyone can export XML, and everyone can read XML, then all you need is a hub in the middle making sure that the XML gets to the right place. For some reason, it never seems to work out that well in practice though.
(Via The Daily WTF.)
Here's a cool idea.
Three Lazer units are included in each package, and it's going for $29.99 at ThinkGeek.
Lazer Trip Wire [ThinkGeek]
(Via Gizmodo.)
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