Well, I cam to Toronto for some meetings and have changed my mind about this town - slightly.

It may not be the most boring town in North America - top ten but not the most boring.

Met up with some friends from Mac and their new spouses.

One of the things that have thrown me is that everyone looks a lot older. Wayne Gretzky is really showing his age.

And you think your users use passwords that are insecure?

At least they can't fire nuclear warheads.

I discussed Sony's attempt at surreptitious DRM shipping with CDs.

This is not the only case of unwanted software being installed by music corporations on individual's PCs.

So, unfortunately now Van Zant, who I assume had no knowledge that their CD would be carrying this software are now having their CD slammed on Amazon.

The only reason I can see that the large music corporations are doing this, is to kill the CD format. As they continue to limit the uses of CDs through the use of more restrictive DRM, the attraction of online sources with their well published DRM becomes apparent. In addition, P2P sources allow people to gain access to uncracked versions of music that they have already purchased.

This fight has only just begun and already the music corporations are losing.

How does the Death Star work?

I am wondering when this will be featured in Make Magazine. "A galactic space station made from PVC and duct tape: We show you how."

Free access to Nature's Insight edition on Sleep

This is important on a lot of the fronts that I am concerned about - the opening up of scientific literature to those who would benefit from it, and the ability to read articles on sleep, since I live with someone who has sleep difficulties.

Buy a cd - get free software.

That is surreptitiously placed on your computer and acts a lot like a rootkit.

All from Sony - the music company you can trust.

Update: Another completely unrelated story has Sony in a pissing contest with Apple using DRM as the main weapon.

New Systm episode has been released.

If NerdTV needs to find inspiration - this is what good interview skills and camera work looks like.

Interviews with some very talented people, bnrought to you by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Computerworld's Salary Survey is out.

See how you compare to our Yank Cousins.

Don't blame me for this little life stealer.

Gravity

Fire an atom amongst gravity sources. Great fun and probably educational - if you were an atom and needed to avoid gravitational forces.

I wonder if naming your kid Google is any worse than naming it Kylie or Jon?

The Escape Pod Podcast

The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine. Each week Escape Pod narrates fun science fiction and fantasy short stories, with commentary and review

Go look at a few thousand SF Covers.

Haul out the conspiracy theories.

Tiny yellow dots have been discovered by the EFF and have published DocuColor Tracking Dot Decoding Guide to show you how this printer is encoding every page you print with a forensic tracking code.

Update:

Here is a list of printers that have been found to do the same.

What could be sweeter than a young man and his rail gun?

The story can be found here.

When USA Today determines that 30 percent of Americans are "early adopters", it means that they do not know how to construct a standard population graph and that they are well behind the bleeding edge where "early adopters" reside.

Amazing Colour photos of World War I

Why are these images more poignant when you see them in colour? Maybe it is the shift in perspective.

This is what happens when a good presentation style is combined with compelling content.

Dick Hardt's Keynote address at O'Reilly's OSCON on Identity 2.0 is well worth watching.

Orson Scott Card, reviews Serenity.

Card is one of the authors I respect greatly, he manages to incorporate the concept of consequence into his books, which results in humans in space, rather than mannequins in spacesuits.

Agenda for Change (or A4C) has managed to screw up the lives of a lot of people who build and manage the IT Systems for the NHS.

Just when we needed some stability in the National Health Service, a new initiative comes along to mess it all up.

They are saying that people will ciculate posts, I see a hemorrhaging of IT Staff from the NHS.