I think the world will embrace the talking rodent phones.

An oldie but a goodie: Student Suspended Over Suspected Use of PHP

According to the Sunday Times, “Men with heart disease are more than twice as likely to be given heart bypasses than women with the same condition. Researchers who carried out a study say heart disease is seen by many doctors as a male illness and often taken less seriously when it affects women.”
I wanted to copy some text directly from the article instead of typing it in, so I headed over to the Sunday Times website, where I had to register to read the article I’d already paid to read on paper. The amount of questions asked during the registration process is ridiculous – I know it’s really common, but I don’t feel like helping out their direct marketing people. They’ve reversed the onus on sending spam, too – you have to ‘tick this box if you don’t want to receive offers from us or third parties’, a surprisingly sleazy move for a paper like the Sunday Times.

Following an old recommendation, I checked out http://www.groninger-museum.nl/, only to find that, “The Groninger Museum website has been created for a minimum monitor resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels. Your screen resolution is less than required.”
So much for laptop users. It does explain how to change the screen resolution for Windows machines, but the warnings about saving all your documents and re-booting machines are probably enough to frighten the kinds of users who need those instructions. This warning is the final touch:
“NB. The Groninger Museum cannot be held responsible for any damage of any nature whatsoever that may result from adjusting your screen resolution.”
I tried to have a look at the ‘Limited Version’ but it detected iCab as IE4 and I got a small pop-up window and no content anywhere. It’s all a pretty good example of what not to do.

Cripes. An Australian doctor is being prevented from practising in the UK because she has not passed an English test, even though it is her native language.
It appears that she hasn’t actually been able to take the test yet, as opposed to having taken it and failed.

John Howard out? The Age reports that “[Howard] said he was not aware of any calls within Liberal ranks for him to retire.” but an article in the Australian today, “Costello to challenge if PM stays“, says “While the Prime Minister has not yet made up his mind about retiring, the Costello camp now knows the Treasurer would take “unilateral action” if Mr Howard did not retire.”

I like this blog about living in Japan – Kristen’s Japan – interesting personal descriptions of the world around her and some of the frustrations of being a foreigner.

Apple are trying out new designs for their support pages. Go to http://www.info.apple.com/, check them out, and vote. You don’t need an AppleID to get support now, which is a huge step forward. I’m helping my mum upgrade my old G3 remotely, and I need all the help I can get.

I missed this at the time but it makes the ‘1-click’ patent look reasonable: A 7-year-old Minnesota boy has patented a method for swinging side to side.