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MyCuppa
Mugs to help you mix your favourite brew to just-how-you-like-it by matching the colour guide on the inside.
Available in Tea or Coffee styles.

It's 'just tea' for me

http://www.suck.uk.com/product.php?rangeID=76
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The TENORI-ON provides six different performance and sound/light modes for broad performance versatility,
and these modes can be combined and used simultaneously for rich, complex musical expression.

http://www.global.yamaha.com/tenori-on/features/index.html
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Looks like Yamaha is jumping on the Monome bandwagon...

"We can read fingerprints from about five meters .... all 10 prints," said Bruce Walker, vice president of homeland security for Northrop Grumman Corp (NOC.N).
"We can also do an iris scan at the same distance."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070921/tc_nm/homeland_technology_dc_2

hell yeah, who needs privacy anyways...

well, it is a good thing to know how stuff works
sadly, most of the time one doesn't have the time (or virtue) to dig into the details.
esp. if you're coding stuff at work where money and time matters ;-)

[DLSB]

looks like i'm a DLSB:

You're a Doer.
You like coding at a Low level.
You work best in a Solo situation.
You are a liBeral programmer.

There was already a posting about a Myers-Briggs Test before on DC, but this a very short version, made especially for the programmer types.
I think it'll hit the target audience quite well being posted here ;-)

Below is the programmer's personality test.
It is based of the Myers-Briggs Personality Test and has been changed to relate to your programming personality type.
This is not a joke test and is really only relevant to programmers, however anyone is welcome to take the test.
There are 12 questions with 2 answers for each question and you must choose one answer from each and every question.
There are no 'right' or 'wrong' answers, your answer will simply show what type of personality you have.

http://www.doolwind.com/index.php?page=11

i sure hope you used dcraw for raw conversion, otherwise you might have re-invented the wheel

the basic idea for image conversion usually is:
- load format x (this should give you a bitmap)
- convert said bitmap to destination format y

i recommended using libjpeg (http://freshmeat.net/projects/libjpeg/)
just spare yourself the effort of reinventing the wheel

esp. for image processing algorithms the already existing solution is magnitudes
better/faster than what you would come up with.
unless you're a image processing god, or the problem is very special ;-)

There's a beautiful princess, prisoner in the highest tower of a castle, guarded by a mighty dragon, and a fearless knight must rescue her…

This is how each language would manage to rescue the princess from the hands of the dragon

• Java - Gets there, finds the dragon, develops a framework for dragon anihilation with multiple layers, writes several articles about the framework… But doesn't kill the dragon.
• .NET - Gets there, sees the idea of the Java developer and copies it. Tries to kill the dragon, but the monster eats him.
• C - Arrives, looks down at the dragon, pulls out his sword, beheads the dragon, finds the princess… And ignores her to see the last checkins of linux kernel cvs.
• C++ - Creates a basic needle, and gathers funcionality until he has a complex sword that he can barely understand… He kills the dragon, but gets stuck crossing the bridge because of memory leaks.
• ... click here for the rest of the extensive list

http://blogs.sun.com/roumen/entry/how_to_kill_a_dragon

Just (re)found this gem of hackerdom:
How to hire and threat your hacker in a corporate environment.
Link to the full text below the TOC ;-)

Section 0: Basic understanding.
0.0: Won't my hacker break into my computer and steal my trade secrets?
0.1: Was it a good idea to hire a hacker?
0.2: How should I manage my hacker?
0.3: Wait, you just said "10 times", didn't you? You're not serious, right?
0.4: I don't understand this at all. This is confusing. Is there a book on this?

Section 1: Social issues
1.0: My hacker doesn't fit in well with our corporate society. She seems to do her work well, but she's not really making many friends.
1.1: My hacker seems to dress funny. Is there any way to impress upon him the importance of corporate appearance?
1.2: My hacker won't call me by my title, and doesn't seem to respect me at all.
1.3: My hacker constantly insults the work of my other workers.

Section 2: Productivity.
2.0: My hacker plays video games on company time.
2.1: But it's been two weeks since I saw anything!
2.2: Isn't this damaging to productivity?
2.3: My hacker is constantly doing things unrelated to her job responsibilities.
2.4: My hacker is writing a book, reading USENET news, playing video games, talking with friends on the phone, and building sculptures out of paper clips. On company time!
2.5: But my other workers are offended by my hacker's success, and it hurts their productivity.

Section 3: Stimulus and response
3.0: My hacker did something good, and I want to reward him.
3.1: My hacker did something bad, and I want to punish him.
3.2: I don't get it. I offered my hacker a significant promotion, and she turned it down and acted offended.
3.3: My company policy won't let me give my hacker any more raises until he's in management.
3.4: I can't believe the hacker on my staff is worth as much as we're paying.

Section 4: What does that mean?
4.0: My hacker doesn't speak English. At least, I don't think so.
4.1: I can't get an estimate out of my hacker.
4.2: My hacker makes obscure, meaningless jokes.
4.3: My hacker counts from zero.

http://www.setec.org/hirehacker.html

guess i'm the first to vote "i don't use windows"
thanks for including this option

Whether you're a crosswords nut or just the occasional bored player, try this one.

http://militantplatypus.com/games/gamepage.php?game=crossword
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a lot of standards are the same for each standards body.
eg. quality assurance  is ISO 9000 (9002, 9004, etc) (international), or DIN 9000 (german), or EN 9000 (european) and often gets a long name like DIN EN ISO 9000 or similar.

Typical behavior.

Microsoft joins the committee to draft ODF, stays silent, doesn't contribute.
But what they do is grab all the good stuff and figure out a way to "improve" (read: add something proprietary) the format and stab everyone who made an effort in the back.
Corporate leeches.

Not much to say about that one other than it's pretty simple and nice for maybe 5 to 10 minutes.
Make a bet, watch the shellz change places, and pick the right one when it's done spinning.

As you can see from the screenshot, it is kinda simple (I was betting all each round).
26,214,406 points was when I stopped, clicking the 50K button was becoming quite a chore at that point ;-)

http://www.ohoboho.com/games/bbf03c806f746dbf51a00fcc57051c66.swf
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Never spar in New York City's Central Park.
You might get stalked by an a-capella group from UC Berkeley demanding you to fight harder

http://www.brainblog.to/mediaview/239/Acapella
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If you're running a free, open, wireless hotspot in Germany and someone (mis)uses your internet connection for, say, piracy, you're responsible.

In Germany you're responsible for...
    * ... what people post on your forum or blog
    * ... the content of external websites you link to (even tho they are not your websites)
    * ... every crime committed using your free wifi hotspot

http://nrrd.de/dasbuch/hadez/offering_free_open_wireless_germany_youre_guilty_bye_bye_fon

.

while speech recognition may work (reasonably) well for 'normal' documents i see no future for it in the programming world
one reason is the nature of most programming languages (maybe except for cobol or stuff like that)
those are the reasons:

* programming languages make use of a lot of special characters
* if the language is case sensitive, good luck
* speech recognition uses quite some heuristics based on 'normal' language

thus, programming languages don't work well.
what i could imagine seeing tho would be macro-based voice recognition, which would need a special support packages for each programming language.
one would define standard blocks (for loops, class templates, switch-case, if-then-else, or more abstract templates) and name them eg. "new for-loop from 0 to 20" and it'll spit out "for(int i=0; i<20; ++i) { }"
this combined with classic keyboard input might have a future.

basically, replace everything you can't do by keyboard shortcuts (aka, you'd have to use your mouse) with a voice macro.
for everything else... no way

Does this new Law affect Austria, too? 

i don't see why
it's a german law.
last time you had to have worries like that was in the 1930's and 40's ;-)
but hey! if it keeps going like that...
... maybe we'll get v2.0 of that too....

... or how I feel when I have to tell ignorant users how to do simple tasks.
This video is just awesome Worth wasting 2.5 minutes on

The very first IT professional.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epJtqYAZCgQ
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do they really know any thing about "hacker tools"? a web browser can be used to do a lot of damage..

sorry to break it to you
but NO, they know SHIT about "what a browser is" let alone "hacker tools"
it's also linked in the blogpost but let me link it here again:

kid reporters interview German politicians (German language)
Here's a small best off:

Kid: Do you own a computer?
Politician: Yes I do, but I hardly use it, it mostly "disagrees" with me.
Politician: No.
Politician: Yes, and I also use the internet. But only if I have specific questions for which I then seek answers online.

Kid: Could you name a couple of webbrowsers?
Politician: uhhm, wait, what are "browsers" again?

Kid: Do you have your own homepage?
Politician: Yes, I do have my own homepage,.... BUT I hardly know how to use it myself, I have people doing that for me.

yes joto! exactly
SS-chaeuble has to go. actually he should have already been gone for 2 years now.
police state countdown: 2 minutes to 12. (that's my optimistic guess)

It means we're fucked.

The government propaganda tells us it wont harm the IT sector at all, since this law will only be used on "the bad guys" (fuzzy FUD definition as always).
So it's an opt-out law, my most loved system of suppression.
Make everything illegal and let the courts decide who's bad and who's not.

German government just passed a law today that makes OWNING any such "hacker tool" which aim is to "commit a crime" illegal.
I just can't take it anymore.

Read up here to get a feeling how "being German" is getting worse and worse by the minute:

[...]
If you own any hacker tool which "aim is to commit a crime"...

    * nmap
    * metasploit
    * any penetration testing tool in general
    * port scanners
    * network analyzers? (hopefully not those too)

... you're signing up for one year in jail or a hefty fine.
That reads OWNING, not using, it's just OWNING.
[...]

Long version here:
http://nrrd.de/dasbuch/hadez/now_theyve_done_it_just_owning_hacker_tools_illegal_germany

Please speard the word and DIGG IT http://digg.com/politics/...in_Germany_jail_time_fine
It's no fun anymore. We're getting screwed big time.

Can you change the battery?

i stumbled onto a page yesterday (can't seem to find it in my history anymore  with all the iphone noise..) where they took the phone apart..
and no, you can't change the battery, the battery makes up a good 50% of the case interior and to get where it was they had to pry the case open.

short answer: no
long answer: no, never ever