Jinn of Quality and Risk

After having eliminated Netscape, and recently announced that they will not produce further Web browsers, Microsoft apparently wants to strangle Google. Given that MS controls almost 9 in 10 personal computers in the world, they may very well succeed in this new endeavour. Unless Google finds a way past them. Anonymous Source at Scripting News: They have Google in their crosshairs. They are trying to replicate every feature of Google in the next year, and have tie-ins with the next version of IE (including a 'search' box right on the browser toolbar that by default points at MSN Search) and in Windows Longhorn (the Search function in the shell will have an Internet option that will go to MSN by default). 

NYT reports on research on the impact of using daylight: Among the most significant are two studies conducted by Heschong Mahone Group of Sacramento, Calif. One involving 20,000 students in California, Colorado and Massachusetts in 1998 and 2002 found that standardized test scores among comparable students could be as much as 26 percent higher when they attended classes in buildings illuminated primarily by natural lighting, compared with those who relied mainly on artificial light. Another Heschong Mahone study, conducted in 1995 at a Wal-Mart store in Lawrence, Kan., showed 40 percent higher sales at checkout counters underneath skylights. There are so many shops, schools, and offices that have it so wrong... but not always. In one place I worked at, we had very large bay windows, leading to minor seasonal temperature problems (no air-conditioning...) but having trees waving in the sunlight in front of you was priceless. And in high-school (Chamblandes, in Pully) we rotated classroom every six months (over the course of 2-3 years), so that we would all at some point profit from the large windows and balconies overlooking the lake and facing the Alps.