No ISP royalties

Thank you supreme court!

In a unanimous 9-0 decision, the court ruled that although ISPs provide the hardware and technology, they aren't responsible for what people download.

Top court rules ISPs not liable for royalties The music companies wanted the big providers like Telus, Bell, Sprint, and AOL to pay because some people download music from the Internet. I hate this sort of "punish everyone, guilty or not" mentality like we currently have on blank media. Buy a 30 cent blank CD in Canada and 21 cents goes to some musician no matter what that CD is for. *sigh*

Please stop using Internet Explorer

1. It's not safe. IE has serious security flaws. In some cases bad guys could get control of your computer just from you visiting a website.

• Internet Explorer Is Too Dangerous to Keep Using
• Internet Explorer Is Just Too Risky
• US Dept. of Homeland Security Says to Stop Using IE

2. Other browsers like FireFox aren't just safer, they're better. FireFox blocks pop-up ads, has tabbed browsing (multiple pages in 1 window - my favorite feature), it imports all your IE settings and favorites, and has easier to use options. It's free. Finally, it's no risk to try since you can keep IE around.

Green Party gaining support

Well the Green Party of Canada didn't win any seats, but they went from 0.08% of the vote in 2000 to 4% this time. That's encouraging and means a lot more federal funding for them next time. CBC News: Greens earn funding with 4 per cent of vote

I'm going Green

I've always voted Conservative and was planning on doing it Monday as well, but I wasn't totally happy with that decision. Now I've "discovered" the Green Party and I feel great :) I always thought they were left-wing tree-huggers, but thanks to my friend Rod, I checked them out in more detail and now see they actually fiscally conservative. Most importantly, they are focused on long term solutions like addressing health care by addressing health. They stand for tax cuts, innovation, power to the municipalities, and (of course) the environment. (we have an upcoming federal election in Canada)

First private space flight

It's a great day for space exploration, the first private space voyage was just completed today. The company website has details on the project and lots of photos. Congrats to Paul G. Allen (yes, him) and Burt Rutan! It's exciting that we're so close to someone wining the X Prize. It's $10 million to the first company that

• Privately finances, builds & launches a spaceship, able to carry 3 people to 100 km
• Returns safely to Earth
• Repeats the launch with the same ship within 2 weeks

DRM bad

Digital Rights Management is technology that limits what you can do with content you have purchased. Entertainment companies want it everywhere. This article explains why it's bad. BTW, I'm a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit that fights for our rights and freedoms.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was created to defend our rights to think, speak, and share our ideas, thoughts, and needs using new technologies, such as the Internet and the World Wide Web. EFF is the first to identify threats to our basic rights online and to advocate on behalf of free expression in the digital age.

Do you fold at home?

Distributed computing is spreading a large computing task over multiple computers. In the case of Folding@Home, it's installing a program on your computer that uses your computers leftover computer power to fold protein in the background. Most of the time your computer isn't being used to 100% of its capacity so you probably have power to spare. In this case it's for a good cause as the data is used, among other things, to help fight disease.

Most of the time I don't even notice the program is running. When I'm going to do something "intensive" like... um... play Warcraft III, I turn it off.

If you do decide to give Folding@Home a try, please consider joining our team.

The last angry programmer

I just discovered a funny blog, causticTech. Actually, it's probably only funny to those of us in the IT industry, but the child in you might still giggle at all the swearing. I can relate to his comedy because the company I work for hired BlunderMan a few years ago. Thankfully he only lasted a month.

City Chase

Dave and I were in the Calgary City Chase on Saturday. It's sort of an Amazing Race meets Fear Factor meets Downtown. After a quick scavenger hunt we received our list of clues to the 15 chase points from Fort Calgary to the Talisman Center to Kensignton. Traveling between the points can only be done on foot or the c-train. At each point is a challenge. Some memorable ones included diving for pucks, eating a live cricket, searching for coins in a bucket of snakes... see the website for more :) We came in 16th out of 192 teams. I bet we could have gotten in the top 10 if I was in a little better shape...

Rotten sandwidch

I've always found that very appealing because everything does change with time -- especially sandwiches -- and if you can just unlock the secrets of how something changes over time you can derive time from it.

So this guy connects sensors in an old prawn sandwich to a computer from 1982 to tell time or something. The link has pictures.

Two days in, the bread is getting drier and drier and the mayonnaise is pretty stable, but all prawns have this catastrophic event at two days and 11 hours past sell-by date.

What if... The Lord of the Rings was made in Hong Kong?

I'm not sure exactly where these came from, but here's some more. I imagine it's more funny to people who know the actors. Am I right Allan? Tai?

Map of Springfield

Finally, a complete map of the Simpson's home city. It's great to read some of the names like "Snuggler's Cove B&B", "New Bedlam Home for the Emotionally Interesting", "Veterans of Popular Wars".... It's all the little jokes that really sets the Simpsons apart from most of the stuff on TV.

While the placement of most locations is arbitrary, many are placed according to where they appear in relationship to each other in specific episodes of The Simpsons. In some cases 'one-time references' to specific locations have been disregarded in favor of others more often repeated. Due to the many inconsistencies among episodes, the map will never be completely accurate.

Well done Jerry Lerma and Terry Hogan. To paraphrase Mr. Hutz: "I don't use the word 'hero' very often, but you are the greatest heroes in American history".