Tea Bird

First Peek at Windows 7’s User Interface

Looking at the first screenshots and description of Windows 7 reaffirms my commitment to the Mac platform. On the bright side, the latest version of Windows is starting to look a lot like old versions of OS X. Of course, the marketing hype is out in full-force:

These UI changes represent a brave move [...]

Preventing train crashes

From The Economist:

A little automation could save lives
TIME and again, evidence shows computer-controlled vehicles have fewer accidents than those driven by people. Still, we have a pathological reluctance to surrender control. We seem to find all-too-frequent deaths caused by human carelessness somehow preferable to the obscure possibility of death by bloodless automaton.
The rail crash [...]

not really reading

Mark Bauerlein has an article on the difficulty of slow reading online.
In the eye-tracking test, only one in six subjects read Web pages linearly, sentence by sentence. The rest jumped around chasing keywords, bullet points, visuals, and color and typeface variations. In another experiment on how people read e-newsletters, informational e-mail messages, and news [...]

Apple recalls ultracompact power adapter

Apple said their new ultracompact USB power adapter is a safety hazard and should not be used anymore.
CNN has more

O’Reilly: Stop throwing sheep, do something worthy | The Social - CNET News

I’ve always admired Tim O’Reilly. Of course, the books he publishes always have that “Get Real” focus to them, which is why they’re often the best. He also gave Web 2.0 Expo attendees a dose of reality:

(These are) pretty depressing times in a lot of ways,” O’Reilly said in an address that first [...]

Can Cell Phones Contribute to Male Infertility?

From Newsweek:

A new study finds that the radiation emitted by cell phones can lower sperm quality.

Officials: Damage to collider forces 2-month halt (AP)

Not with a bang but a whimper?
From the AP:

The European Organization for Nuclear Research says its new particle collider has been damaged worse than previously thought and will be out of commission for at least two months.

More on Google Chrome’s fine print

As I wrote earlier, it isn’t exactly consumer-friendly.

By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is [...]

Activists seek moratorium on use of Tasers by police

From the Post-Gazette:

About a dozen human rights activists and people who had been stunned by Tasers gathered yesterday to call for a moratorium on the use of the weapon by police.

I’ve never been tasered, thankfully, but it did recently cause/precipitate the death of a man in a Pittsburgh neighborhood. Is this another instance [...]

FYI: read Chrome’s fine print

More Google world domination stuff:
From Ina Fried:

1. Google reserves the right to automatically update and install Chrome.
This is becoming standard fare with much software these days, but worth noting.
…
2. Although you retain any copyrights to content you own and use in the browser, Google says it has a right to display some of your [...]