Recently in Sci-Tech Category

Wrong anywhere really. If you haven't already read Cory Doctorow's "OMFG I'm talking to MSFT about DRM" talk, you really should. There are enough "arrrr!" references to keep any pirate happy.

Read it and then if you aren't an EFF member, join up so you can help Cory continue to do more talks like this.

"...standard interfaces that anyone can build for are what makes billionaires out of nerds."

"Compared to anti-trust people, copyright lawmakers are pantywaists."

"Because if you don't do it, someone else will."

When I worked at EFF I heard a lot of reports about certain sites being blocked in certain countries. We never knew if the site was really blocked or if their net connection was hosed, or if the site had just been down at that moment. In other words, there were a ton of different reasons that person may not have been able to get to the site and not all of them were because an oppressive government was being all evil and stuff. Now a group in Toronto is trying to hone their net detective skills and find the real reason behind people not being able to get too their favorite site.

"We're attempting to technically confirm reports that we get in various countries that the reason why they can't access certain websites is because the government or the internet service provider is deliberately blocking access to those websites, as opposed to it being some network error or some other reason," he said.

Simply put, the Citizen Lab is trying to find out which websites a particular government or internet provider might be blocking, and how they are blocking it.

Excellent.

Magnetic Field Is Fading, but No Dire Effects Are Foreseen

Scientists have known for some time that the magnetic field is in fact collapsing, at a rate faster than it would if flows of molten iron in the core had stopped completely.

There was a cool NOVA episode on this very topic. Bottom line is we are overdue by tens of thousands of years for a flip of the poles. The theory is that the field will weaken, then flip, then go back to normal. Rinse, lather, repeat. It won't happen in my lifetime (probably), but it will happen soon, geologically speaking of course.