links for 2009-03-21

"As for holding one bad grade — or even entire bad subject areas — against someone, I’m more suspicious of people who did get good grades in every subject. In my experience they tend to be rule-crazy conformists, obsessed with their grades rather than with particular subjects." John Gruber, thanks for saying this.

What do you think of Chrom v Firefox?

"Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such miniscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle." What do you do as a designer in an engineering firm.

"Farmers in Argentina are launching a seven-day strike to protest against the government's agricultural policies." After export taxes went up on soya beans.

"The networks powering industrial control systems have been breached more than 125 times in the past decade, with one resulting in U.S. deaths, a control systems expert said Thursday." Wow, that's a problem people.

How well does IE8 compare to Safari 4 and FF3 and FF3.1 Beta.

"Staff at a high school in the US state of Texas had students settle their differences by fighting inside a steel cage, a local newspaper has reported." WTF?

"President Obama’s budget proposals, if carried out, would produce a staggering $9.3 trillion in total deficits over the next decade, much more than the White House has predicted, the Congressional Budget Office said on Friday. As for the differences among various budget projections, Mr. Orszag attributed them in part to small percentages — such as divergent assumptions about the rate of economic growth — that, when applied to huge numbers, can produce eye-popping contrasts." Still no real clear idea why the numbers are different.

"Summary: Discussing the House vote to levy a 90-percent tax on executive bonuses, NBC, ABC, and Fox News all advanced the false Republican allegation that by passing the recovery bill, Democrats created the right for AIG to pay bonuses. In fact, the bill did not create the right for AIG — or any company — to pay bonuses; rather, it restricted the ability of companies receiving TARP money to award bonuses in the future." Ahh I love the smell of faulty reporting in the morning.

Automatically deploy GoogleCheckout to osCommerce.

"The International Space Station has been brought to full power just over 10 years after assembly began." Very cool.