U.K. assaults Pirate Bay — and digital rights
By Saskboy Children learn how to use computers and work around restrictions by experimentation and reading. So too must adults when they are confronted with restrictions. It’s a good idea to learn how to evade censorship before the flow of information is shut off — otherwise, working around the problem becomes much more difficult because [...]
Carbon capture: Opportunity cost; opportunity, lost
By Saskboy One of the more ridiculous logical fallacies that climate change denialists use is that carbon dioxide can’t be pollution because it can also be breathed by plant life. It’s really sweet they care so much about plants’ respiration, but I’m a little more concerned with the survivability of humanity. (Never mind that most [...]
Let’s get this party started
By Mark Evans South of the border, the party is raging. You can almost hear Prince’s “1999″ playing in the background as startups find themselves being courted by investors and snapped up for eye-popping amounts. The current case in point is Facebook’s $1-billion purchase of Instagram, which is staggering any way you want to slice [...]
Ottawa ventures forth
By Mark Evans While Canada’s venture capital sector is showing signs of improvement, it is a long way from being robust, let alone healthy. So it was encouraging to see the Conservatives commit $500-million to support venture capital initiatives. The support consists of $400-million into VC investment, although the details have not been disclosed yet, [...]
Tech in ’12: Apple may be in more trouble than we realize
by Eric Pettifor First of all, I’m not going to predict the end of the world. I know, 2012 is the year that the Mayan long count calendar ends, on December 21st, to be exact, but somehow I doubt it will be terminal. Really, our best shot at near term extinction comes from science. But [...]
So what if RIM failed? Would that be all bad?
By Mark Evans As an enthusiastic supporter of Canada’s high-tech community, I’m hoping RIM can somehow find a way to revive its flagging fortunes. But the terrible debut of the PlayBook, the modest reception to the BlackBerry 9900, and October’s global network outage has not only put RIM on its heels but caused some industry [...]
Letter to Steve Jobs
by Eric Pettifor Dear Mr. Jobs: I write to you on the occasion of your death to congratulate you on making a difference. As more of a technology visionary and businessman than a true geek (that was your erstwhile partner Steve Wozniak, or “Woz”), you may not recall that this was the concern of a [...]
Designer Worms
by Eric Pettifor Remember all those episodes of the various Star Treks where characters were genetically altered, either willingly or unwillingly, by some means or other? It would happen within the course of a single episode and be neatly fixed at the end, with a hypo from the lovely Dr. Crusher. In reality, of course, [...]
Adobe Previews Adobe Flash Killer
By Eric Pettifor Back in March, I criticized Apple for not including support for Adobe Flash in their iPad tablet. Their reasoning seemed to be, at least in part, that Flash was going away, to be replaced by HTML 5 with support from javascript and CSS, to which I responded that may very well be, [...]
Canada’s startups get the flag
By Mark Evans Canada’s startup landscape is healthier than ever, as evidenced by the recent International Startup Festival in Montreal. Putting aside the ambitious name (I would have selected something like the Canadian Startup Festival), the fact that it was well-organized and well-attended suggests there might just be some real traction within the startup community. [...]
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