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Microsoft wants Firefox on Vista!

08.22.06

As crazy and scary as it sounds, it’s true! Sam Ramjii, Director of Microsoft’s Open Source Software Lab, has extended an invitation to the Firefox and Thunderbird developers asking them if they’d like to visit the company’s open source research center. Microsoft’s hopes are that, in a four-day span, the company can provide the open source developers with enough information to get the popular web browser running smoothly on Windows Vista.

Last Saturday, Ramjii posted a message in the newsgroup “mozilla.dev.planning” asking Mozilla’s Mike Schroepfer and any other Firefox developers if they’d be interested in visiting the Windows Vista Readiness ISV Lab. Ramjii said that he’s made a special exception for the Mozilla team since this isn’t how the lab invitations normally work.

More on this news at Arstechnica

World’s smallest dice!

08.22.06

Billed as the smallest dice in the world, each one measures 0.3 x 0.3 x 0.3 mm (for perspective, see the photo above showing one of the die next to a 0.5-mm diameter mechanical pencil lead). The tiny dice are painstakingly crafted one by one from BsBm (brass) in a 9 hour long fabrication process that relies on the latest in micromachining technology. Each one weighs 0.00016 grams and the pips measure 0.05 mm in diameter. While the 100,275 yen (US$870) price tag includes a special case and the cost of shipping, it does not include the price of the microscope you will need to make sure nobody cheats at the craps table in your flea circus casino.

Source: Tanomi.com