Anil Dash comments on one of OS X Leopard’s new features, Time Machine, which allows users to restore files to a previously saved version. Windows introduced a similar function around 2003, called Volume Shadow Copy, but Dash notes that Apple will get the credit - OS X makes it easy to use, understandable to the [...]

“Six years and several billion shared songs later, the original Napster fiasco is finally about come to an end. EMI and Bertelsmann [which financed Napster] have reached a settlement that will close the book on the original Napster’s biggest legal woes—legal woes so old and so confounding that it’s amazing that these guys don’t have [...]

“The California secretary of state’s office has shut down portions of its website after it was discovered it had been selling hundreds of thousands of public documents containing social security numbers and signatures, a practice that lasted for years … The discovery reveals the pitfalls of fostering open government in the age of online communication [...]

A report published by the Royal Academy of Engineering has recommended that CCTV systems should be made freely available to the public. In effect, CCTV would become a network of webcams which anyone could view. The authors suggest that this would help avoid a Big Brother society, but as far as I’m concerned it would [...]

From the brilliant xkcd, here.

“A privately developed rocket that carried the hopes of cheap access to space was lost minutes after launch from the Marshall Islands on Tuesday — but the millionaire behind the launch called it a success … Despite that initial setback, the company has retained the interest of government and companies, said Gwynne Shotwell, the company’s [...]

The Washington Post reports on the “confession” of 9/11 suspect, Khalid Sheik Mohammed. While the Pentagon happily released a transcript, they weren’t so keen to release his description of the torture he suffered in secret CIA prisons. That part was promptly classified. Bizarrely, the administration argues that by being interrogated (read: tortured) the detainee is [...]

” ‘He’s been in the western world’s most notorious prison for five years, the last year or so in pretty much isolation,’ David McLeod, an Australian lawyer, told National Public Radio. ‘It’s been a pretty rough trot over the past five years. And if it was yourself, you would be thinking, I suspect, about how [...]

“Yahoo is moving to secure a position on the next Internet battleground: Web search and advertising on cellphones … The company plans to announce on Tuesday that it is creating a mobile advertising network that will allow marketers to place ads not only on its mobile services, but also on those of other online publishers.”
Innovating [...]

“Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams sat side by side yesterday to announce they had reached agreement to share power from May 8 in a devolved Northern Ireland government … The appearance together of arch-enemies - delegations from the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin - in a televised statement at the end of a meeting [...]

From Explosm, here.

“The sudden jump in use has put a strain on Twitter’s servers, and the service has become ’sluggish’ as a result, said Mr Stone [of Obvious, who own Twitter]. That could point to the sort of difficulties that accompanied the sudden popularity four years ago of Friendster, the first widely used online social networking service. [...]

Robert Peston writes on his blog about problems he’s experienced upgrading to Windows Vista. The standard complaints are there - missing drivers, incompatible software and obsolete hardware. However, more interesting is the revelation that Microsoft deliberately cripples Office XP when it’s installed on Vista meaning, for example, that users have to enter their password every [...]

A recent survey shows that many Internet users have a total lack of understanding about online security. Less than half of the respondents thought they were primarily responsible for ensuring that sites they use are secure; a sixth of people said their bank was wholly responsible, implying that they believe they have no duty at [...]

A great little ballad about Facebook. From YouTube, here.

Reproduced by permission of Chris of the Book of Biff. Website here.

“For months, diplomats have labored to draft a formal birthday message that would highlight the historic accomplishments of the union … Although the declaration is nonbinding and almost devoid of specifics, hardly anyone is willing to sign it … As a result, the declaration — a draft of which includes the phrase ‘We, the peoples [...]

Bizarrely, Symantec’s 11th Internet Security Threat Report lists Microsoft Windows as the most secure Operating System (OS). It’s based on the finding that Windows had the fewest number of patches as well as the shortest average patch development time of the five OSs monitored in July-December 2006. Cynics would claim that Microsoft should be the [...]

“The UN’s new emergency relief coordinator John Holmes has been turned away from a camp in Darfur for those fleeing the Sudanese conflict … Within hours of arriving in Darfur, Mr Holmes was stopped at a checkpoint. His convoy was sent back and television groups covering the visit had their video tapes confiscated, our correspondent [...]

“Taiwan is to close one lane of a major highway to protect more than a million butterflies, which cross the road on their seasonal migration … The purple milkweed butterfly, which winters in the south of the island, passes over some 600m of motorway to reach its breeding ground in the north … Many of [...]