Judge Says U.S. Money Violates Rights of the Blind

Judge Says U.S. Money Violates Rights of the Blind. America is one of the few countries in the world whose currency isn’t distinguishable by blind people. Most use different-sized notes, raised text or other methods to allow identification by touch. A recent court ruling means that the US has to start working on a solution.

It’s amazing that this has only just started to be addressed, but now that it has it poses some interesting questions. Will cash and vending machines all have to be modified? The money drawers in registers? Will it be applied retroactively to currency already in circulation? Say they were to create embossing stamps that create raised areas on the notes, would there be any security measures to prevent the incorrect stamping of bills?

I’m intrigued as to how they’ll solve this problem, the potential costs could be huge.

Shock news: ASA gets something right!

Shock news: ASA gets something right! Geeklawyer comments on the Advertising Standards Agency’s recent decision to reject complaints against no2id’s recent Guardian advert portraying Tony Blair as Hitler.

Watch a few online vids, get a free copy of Vista or Office

Watch a few online vids, get a free copy of Vista or Office Sounds too good to be true: get a free copy of Vista Business or Office 2007 Pro just for watching a couple of Microsoft propaganda videos. Engadget has confirmation from another source inside Microsoft that this is, in fact, the real deal, and that the number of copies of software that Microsoft has available for this offer is in the “five-digit range”. Update: the free copies of Vista have all gone, looks like there’s still some office ones left, though.

ROLLERtoaster: the best thing to happen to toasters since sliced bread

ROLLERtoaster: the best thing to happen to toasters since sliced bread. I’m not sure what the whole collective obsession is with toasters, but this one does look pretty damn cool.

3Dconnexion announces SpaceNavigator

3Dconnexion announces SpaceNavigator. Just another six-axis CAD/CAM controller, except this one costs $59USD ($99 for pro, with better professional software support like Maya). Looks interesting for graphics work, gaming, possibly even music as a MIDI controller. I think it’ll sell pretty well.

Novell Dumps the Hula Project

Novell Dumps the Hula Project. Nothing to do with the recent Microsoft deal, oh no. Honest.

BBC News – Dollar plunges on world markets

BBC News- Dollar plunges on world markets. What d’you mean, 8.6 trillion dollars’ worth of national debt isn’t a good thing?

Outages for MediaTemple Grid Hosting Service

Outages for MediaTemple Grid Hosting Service. So much for the bombproof reliability.

Akismet for Movable Type v2

I recently saw a discussion over at 456 Berea Street discussing the etiquette of posting comments and how it had become difficult to manage them due to the huge increase in comment spam.

Akismet, the latest anti blog-spam wonder from the developers of WordPress, was mentioned several times, but unfortunately he’s running an older version of Movable Type so can’t use the official MT Akismet plugin as it’s only for v3.2 and above.

I thought it might be a good idea to provide a solution to this problem… (more…)

Are you tone-deaf?

Test your musical skills in 6 minutes. Jake Mandell, while working at the music and neuroimaging lab at Beth Israel/Harvard Medical School in Boston, developed a quick online way to screen for the tonedeafness. It also turned out to be a pretty good test to check for overall pitch perception ability. The test is purposefully made very hard, so excellent musicians rarely score above 80% correct. Give it a try!