Here are a few of the things that slipped through the proverbial cracks this week but are still worth mentioning:
If you’re afraid of being in a bank during a bank robbery, don’t go to the bank on Friday mornings between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. …
TIVO Patent Upheld, Dish May Have to Disable DVR. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a ruling by a lower court that Dish Network DVRs infringe upon TiVO’s patent on a ‘multimedia time warping system’. According to some analysts, this could not only make Dish liable for damages, it could force them to shut down their DVR service, harming their customers. The patent in question has already been reexamined once and the ruling on appeal (PDF) was unanimous.”…
Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday she might be willing to garnish the wages of workers who refuse to buy health insurance to achieve coverage for all Americans. The New York senator has criticized presidential rival Barack Obama for pushing a health plan that would not require universal coverage…
One out of four children involved in a divorce and custody litigation undergoes the so-called Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), consisting of the manipulation of children by the custodial parent, who incessantly tries to turn them against the other parent by arousing in them feelings of hatred and contempt for the target parent…
Capturing images of fleeting events — a horse’s gallop, a bullet’s impact, an electron’s escape — is easy if you have the right equipment. Faster camera shutters used to be enough, but recently lasers have let physicists break the femto- and attosecond barriers, compressing the temporal resolution of images down to the time it takes light to cross a hydrogen atom…
When people bitched about the iPhone’s 3G sansness, one counter was that it didn’t matter, since AT&T’s 3G network was far from ubiquitous anyway. AT&T is stepping up on their end this year, planning on smothering another 80 cities in sticky, delicious 3Goodness for a total of 350 markets, and all of the top 100 cities. Topping it off, the whole thing will be HSUPA by mid-year, for snappier uploads in the 500-800 Kbps range (vs. HSDPA only, D standing for downlink). Next piece of the perfect mobile internet device puzzle: an iPhone that can use it…
And finally…
A survey claims that having an office romance actually improves your quality of work. Researchers found the thrill of a fling “raised energy levels and led to better professional capacity.” One in five people quizzed by Italian sexologist Serenella Salomoni admitted to an affair at work. “We discovered that people who had an office romance said they were happier, more energetic and more productive.” Nearly twice as many women as men admitted to having a fling in the workplace, Dr Salomoni added. One in three owned up to having a relationship with a superior to enhance their career.