Coding Horror on The Magpie Developer

I think both youth and the sort of person attracted to programming both contribute to the tendency to collect shiny new playthings, a syndrome covered in Jeff “Coding Horror” Atwood’s article, The Magpie Developer. I find that having a strong “get outside and away from the computer” lifestyle helps, and if that doesn’t work, growing […]

Facebookers Playing Fast and Loose with Canada’s Youth Criminal Justice Act

For the second time in a week, a group of Canadian Facebook users broke the law by publishing the names of youths charged under Canada’s Youth Criminal Justice Act…

Whirlpool’s Fridge has Docks for Tablet Computers, iPods and Digital Photo Frames

Gizmodo reports: “Whirlpool’s latest tech for their refrigerator line is based on their ‘centralpark’ feature, which is a essentially dock that lets you plug in a bunch of different gadgets into the big gadget that holds your food.” Such gadgets include digital photo frames, tablet computers and the Brandmotion iPod speaker system.

Losing an Edge, Japanese Envy India’s Schools

From the New York Times: “Despite an improved economy, many Japanese are feeling a sense of insecurity about the nation’s schools, which once turned out students who consistently ranked at the top of international tests. That is no longer true, which is why many people here are looking for lessons from India, the country the […]

Gag Orders in a Facebook Age

“For 24 hours, newspapers, TV and radio stations were legally forbidden to release Stefanie Rengel’s name [a teenage girl in Toronto allegedly murdered by a teenage boy, allegedly at the request of his girlfriend, also a teen], but on the Internet tributes to the slain teen – and the names of her accused killers – […]

Unwitting Facebook Spokesmodels

If you’re going to become a fan of a business on Facebook, you’d better make sure that your profile photo is a good one — you might end up as that company’s unwitting spokesmodel!

On Extended Warranties

Illustration by James Kaczman for the New York Times.Click the image to see the illustration with its original article.
In response to an article from last year titled Extended Warranties are for Suckers, a reader going by the name “any non moose” pointed out in the comments that:

Corporates often prefer to warranty their purchases, since having […]

Assrockets and Opportunities (or: Why I Changed Jobs)

Why I Changed Jobs: The Best Guess
A number of people have approached me — both online and in person — and attempted to guess what it was that made me consider leaving my Technical Evangelist job at Tucows, a job that I enjoyed and to which I was well-suited.
The person who came closest, a “long-time […]

Is it Illegal to Make My Own Ringtones from Music I Bought? (No. Mostly.)

That’s the answer, courtesy of an Engadget interview with Apple VP Phil Schiller. Strangely enough, some thanks goes to those enemies of fair use, the RIAA:

Well, the RIAA wanted to be able to distribute ringtones of its artists without having to pay them big money to do so (surprised?), and it won a decision last […]

Richard M. Stallman: Copyright vs. Community in the Age of Computer Networks

I attended last night’s presentation at the Mississauga Campus of the University of Toronto featuring Mr. Free Software himself, Richard M. Stallman. The presentation was titled Copyright vs. Community in the Age of Computer Networks.
Here’s a brief abstract of the presentation, courtesy of Greg Wilson’s blog:

Copyright developed in the age of the printing press, and […]