BlogOfTheMoon

The large accountancy firm PriceWaterhouse Cooper has recently released a report for the Dutch presidency of the EU that software patents could be a potential threat to the software industry in Europe. Recognition of this from Big Business is something that many people have been waiting for for quite some time, and the fact that it's a company as large as PWC that came up with it could be a wake-up call for European Governements and the EC (oh look, avian pigs...).

I missed this first time round, but apparently the Independent on Sunday ran a story (no longer available online for free, but can be found here) about anti-drug "vaccinations" to stop people getting addicted to heroin, cocaine or nicotine. Now, this sounds all very well, but my first thoughts were a) what are the side effects and b) where is it going to stop? As a form of social engineering this could be incredibly powerful. Could people be "immunised" against alcohol, chocolate, sugar etc? This could be an incredibly valuable weapon for adults to use in their own personal fight against addiction but giving it to young children seems like a very bad idea to me.

This is without even mentioning that possible problems with messing around with delicate brain chemistry, especially at an early age. Who knows what the long-term effects could be.

Commentry on the article can be found here.

And here's another DRM-related article expressing doubts about the technology. Nothing really new, but it's good to keep this stuff in the public eye.

This looks quite cool. Amongst my peers, several have large music collections, and it would be quite nice to dip into some of their stuff to get a feel for it (before maybe buying some it myself). It's like borrowing a CD without the need to actually remember to ask for the CD and for the other person to actually remember to bring it to a designated transfer point. Of course, it will only work if if you've bothered to digitise your media collection. Lucky that I have, then :-). Shame that it only works in Win 2K/XP.

Microsoft Windows is to run the Royal Navy's warships from now on. Um, RUN AWAYYYYYYY!!

So Bunsen and Beaker are Britain's favourite boffins, eh? Is it just me or is this poll completely and utterly useless? I mean, if it had referenced real scientists, with maybe the chance to find out more about them, then I could have seen the point of it, but as it is, I really don't know what this told us (and Dame Higgins' explanation in the article left me none the wiser).

Not that any of this stopped me voting for them...

It's nice to see limitations finally being applied to the American DMCA, with the case against an automatic garage door opener being thrown out of court. The original (silly) filing for this case can be found here.