Now you can give your sweetheart a URL instead of one of those yucky magnetic cassette tapes.

Muxtape

Since people seemed to like the Akira motorcycle, NW thought he'd mention the Mach 5 on display at the New York Auto Show.

Also appearing on the show floor are some unique vehicles that first came to life on-screen, including the Mach 5, a prop car from the upcoming "Speed Racer" film.

I want it.

Flash in the Pan

The F1 World Championship started in 1950. Early years were notoriously dangerous, including spectators who stood on the kerb of whichever road it was they were racing down. Essentially it was all-or-nothing: if everyone kept on the track, no-one got hurt; if someone went off then lack-of-limbs was the best case scenario.
...
So what has this got to do with software? Well, I think there are direct parallels; the history of software is very similar. Thankfully, very little software is responsible for life-and-death issues, although there has been many instances of deaths being directly attributed to faulty software; the failures of software are mostly financial. Money is lost due to either: a) projects being abandoned or significantly over-running; or b) faulty or inefficient software in production.
...

So, how can the software development process improve? How did Formula 1 get to it's current very good safety record? The answer, isn't technical. Technology changes like HANS devices, etc., definitely have worked; but most of the shocking incidents of the 1970's and early 1980's were avoidable. They were caused by lack of preparation (e.g. fire-extinguishers around the track), or lack of communications (e.g. between cars and marshals).

1. Lack of complacency; no-one goes round saying "but why would two cars crash? You need to make a case before I can approve that new helmet".

2. Lack of buck-passing: Race control, from a safety point-of-view, is the ultimate responsibility of one man. He doesn't need to get approval from Bernie Ecclestone before calling out a Safety Car; he has the power. Whilst sporting decisions are made by a panel of stewards, safety issues are dealt with immediately.
...

The moral of the story: responsibility is meaningless without power. If you genuinely want quality, you have to have in your team a single "quality manager" - a person who will be rewarded or sacked based on the fitness-for-purpose of the end deliverable. And, which is even more important, this person must not be in a position where he can be over-ruled on quality issues by other managers.

We recently started taking that approach to quality assurance at work. A single QA person can stop a release. They no longer report to the development manager of the product they're responsible for assuring quality in. Hopefully this will mean less fiery, fiery deaths.

What Software Development can learn from Formula One

Clearly, after the first day of practice for the Malaysian Grand Prix, it is going to be close between McLaren and Ferrari for the rest of the weekend. That is an obvious conclusion to a day that saw several teams running light to achieve apparently promising times.

Generally, the new surface at Sepang required some rethinking on set-up, but most drivers seemed content with the balance they achieved on Bridgestone’s hard and medium tyres; the major problem for some was in getting the best out of them over a single lap, ready for qualifying.

McLaren
Lewis Hamilton, 1m 36.626s, P5/1m 35.055s, P1
Heikki Kovalainen, 1m 36.556s, P3/1m 36.512s, P7
McLaren did not rise to the bait this morning as Ferrari set the pace, and for most of the afternoon the red cars continued to rule. But then Hamilton put on the softer tyres and got going for lap times. He was happy with his MP4-23’s consistent pace. His only real problem was with the gear selection at the end of the morning session, but it did not require a change of unit as was first thought. Kovalainen was the faster runner in the morning, and felt he had made a steady start to his weekend as he made progress with chassis set-up.

Ferrari
Felipe Massa, 1m 35.392s, P1/1m 35.206s, P2
Kimi Raikkonen, 1m 36.459s, P2/1m 35.428s, P3
Ferrari set the pace all morning, and for most of the afternoon. Massa was fastest in the former, after Raikkonen rolled to a halt after a misunderstanding over fuel load saw him run short. Both drivers said they were happy with the F2008’s performance over a lap on both tyre compounds, though Massa reported that he could not get the best out of his second set of soft tyres in the afternoon when he was upstaged by Hamilton.

Malaysia 0300EST Sunday.

eEye Digital Security tomorrow will make its first foray into the Web vulnerability space -- with a new member of its Retina Security Scanner family that roots out Web application flaws.
...
Retina Web Security Scanner officially ships tomorrow and list pricing begins at $6,995.

That's pretty cheap.

eEye to Add Retina Web App Scanner

I’ve noticed that marketing departments of some information security companies like to throw around the limitations of Turing’s problem to sell their consulting services. I agree that a human brain must always be involved during security assessments (a fool with a tool is still a fool), so much so that I consider assessment tools to only be a first-pass sweep for vulnerabilities during any security assessment.

It is impossible to build a house using ONLY a hammer. But it sure helps to have one, along with all the other necessary tools.

Illogical Arguments in the Name of Alan Turing

On a day that Ferrari might prefer to forget, McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton opened his 2008 world championship challenge by grabbing pole position for the Australian Grand Prix from a super-impressive Robert Kubica in the BMW Sauber.

First F1 grand prix of 2008 tonight at mid-night! (EST)

Hamilton draws first blood in Melbourne

MIT professor and Web star Walter Lewin swings from pendulums and faces down wrecking balls to show students the zany beauty of science.

Walter Lewin is not merely dangling at the bottom of a 15-foot pendulum. He is swinging high and wide, his rapt audience of 300 counting off each cycle.
At 71, he's likely missed his window for a shot at Cirque du Soleil, but the Netherlands-born MIT physics professor seems happy with his own high wire act -- revealing to students, in the most unorthodox ways, the beauty of science.

MIT professor Walter Lewin's elaborate physics demonstrations are a hit in the classroom and online.His pendulum ride comes at the end of a lecture on Hooke's Law, in which he proves the pendulum's period, or time that it takes to complete one cycle, is not affected by the mass at the bottom -- in this case, his own body.
He will also, on other occasions, suck helium and continue his lecture sounding like a Dutch Daffy Duck to highlight the differences in the speed of sound in certain gases. He'll shoot across the classroom stage astride a bicycle mounted with fire extinguishers to demonstrate a rocket's change in momentum.
"It took me a decade to come to the realization," says Lewin at his MIT office, "that really what counts is not what you cover, but what counts

That guy rules.

High Wire Act

* Sometimes, people get drunk and drive, or get drunk and abuse others. Therefore, we should outlaw all alcohol (rather than just outlaw drunk driving and assault).

* Sometimes, the media libels people and destroys their reputations. Therefore, we should outlaw all freedom of the press (rather than just proscribe libel).

* Sometimes, children get a hold of cigarettes or pornography. Therefore, we should outlaw all smoking and pornography (rather than just outlaw the act of selling cigarettes or porn to minors).

* Sometimes, men rape women or molest minors. Therefore, we should outlaw all sex (rather than just outlaw rape and child molestation).

* Sometimes, people use drugs (prescription or recreational), get addicted and then steal or act violently. Therefore, we should outlaw all drugs (rather than just outlaw theft and violence).

* Sometimes, people force women against their will to work as prostitutes. Therefore, we should outlaw all prostitution (rather than just outlaw forced prostitution and human trafficking).

Misadventures in logical reasoning

Prism makes it possible to launch web sites from the desktop and load them into a simple browser window without all of the extra features and functionality of a regular browser. This is advantageous for users because it allows them to run those sites in a separate process from their regular Firefox browser and interact with the content without any unnecessary distractions. Prism also allows web application content to be customized in some ways to make it more conducive to desktop use.

Good for helping to prevent your Gmail account from being CSRF'ed.

Hands on: Mozilla's new Prism brings web sites to the desktop