Hasta La Gadget!

If you are a Doctor Who fan and are getting married, I hope you have a friend like graverobbergirl who created this TARDIS-themed quilt for her friend’s wedding present. She is a very good friend, indeed.

It features an swirling TARDIS surrounded by a whole mess of Daleks. Plus there’s a star field border on the outside. This queen-sized quilt measures 92″ x 92″ and is done in a pieced Irish Chain pattern. It was hand-quilted and machine-quilted, along with hand-applique and hand-embroidery.

The lucky couple will sleep just fine at night with this quilt keeping them warm. No doubt they will dream of Daleks and adventures on far away worlds. He will be the Doctor and she the companion. May they be happy for many years.

[via io9 via Geeks Are Sexy]

The sci-fi movie masterpiece Blade Runner turns 30 this month, and it’s still ahead of where we are culturally.
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Microsoft‘s attempts to have a billion dollar anti-competition fine crossed off the books have been rejected, with the European Union only conceding to a smaller discount on the penalty. Microsoft had submitted an appeal to the General Court of the European Union over an €899m ($1.12bn) 2008 “penalty for noncompliance” with a ruling that it must make third-party compatibility with its server systems more broadly available.

Instead of dismissing the fine, the EU court knocked €39m ($49m) off it, after deciding that the original ruling had been insufficiently clear in laying out to Microsoft the urgency of the requirement to change its behaviors. However, the overriding judgement – that Microsoft had purposefully made integrating third-party code so expensive to do that it rendered it much the same as noncompliance in the first place – was deemed safe.

The court “essentially upholds the Commission’s decision and rejects all the arguments put forward by Microsoft in support of annulment” it said in a statement.

Unsurprisingly, Microsoft itself isn’t as keen on the decision. “Although the General Court slightly reduced the fine,” it said in a statement, “we are disappointed with the Court’s ruling.” The company faced three separate fining incidents, dating back to 2004.

[via San Jose Mercury News]

Microsoft loses EU anti-competition $1.1bn fine appeal is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Modbook — now there’s a portmanteau we haven’t heard in a while. Looks like that’ll change this week, however. The company has offered up the intriguing promise that “imagination goes pro. Tomorrow,” alongside the image of the edge of a slick looking device and some familiar OS X icons. Color us modtrigued.

Modbook teases a ‘Pro’ announcement on Facebook originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 17:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Outside of approved Googlers, a handful of folks have just been given a canned demo of Google Glass, including myself. I’m living in the future and the future is now!

While brief, I demoed Sergey’s own personal set of Glass. They’re extremely lightweight and worked over my existing pair of eyeglasses. In its current iteration, the battery pack is situated on the right side and counterbalances the circuitry and camera hub, so it feels pretty weightless.

The demo itself was fed through the one lens on the right side of some fireworks and audio with the latter only coming in through the right side. Per Sergey’s suggestion I cupped my right ear to really hear the audio. Panning your head around offers up an AR experience. Video quality was fairly poor but, again, these are prototypes and Sergey admitted the demo is old.

Notifications are currently served up to Glass wearers via a “ding” that prompts the user to tilt his or her head up to read the actual message.

I’ll have a bit more on Glass later today but here’s a higher-res photo with another pair of Glasses.

Read more here: Project Glass Is The Future Of Google