The reality of bottled water

In a blind test, most people cannot determine which sample is from the tap or a bottle.

According to a NYT article; " Ounce for ounce, it costs more than gasoline, even at today's high gasoline prices; depending on the brand, it costs 250 to 10,000 times more than tap water."

Also, access to sanitized water for 2.6 billion people who currently go without would cost "...less than a quarter of global annual spending on bottled water." Link (via Boing Boing)

Geeks are the canaries in the coalmine...

quote: "geeks are the canaries in the coalmine for the problems that will eventually affect most “normal” people. For example, geeks had spam before most normal people had ever even heard of AOL." Link

Why Bill Gates Wants 3,000 New Patents

The NY Times looks at Microsoft's newly acquired passion for patents and wonders: What would Thomas Jefferson think if he were around to visit Microsoft's campus, seeing software patents stacked like pyramids of cannonballs? Jefferson might also be shocked by Microsoft's summer crop of patent apps, which includes Creating a note related to a phone call, Adding and removing white space from a document and Identifying when baseball is exciting. Gotta meet that quota of 60 fresh, nonobvious patentable ideas a week!" Link (via slashdot)

good saying to express inevitability

...like a rifle on the mantelpiece: if it's present in act one, it'll go off by act three. Link

Espresso and caffeine

A common misconception about espresso is that it is a "caffeine jolt". It isn't. It takes as many as 3 or 4 espressos to give you the equivalent caffeine you find in a 12 oz mug of Nescafe Instant coffee.

Link