Day: February 12, 2006

I wanted to label this post “Proposed law would require web site operators to delete all unnecessary personal information” or something like that.  But the title is already long enough as it is, so I snipped a bit, and put the longer title in the body.  And now that you’ve read the overlong explanation of that useless information, head over to the full article.  Of course, the real question is, can our government actually make reasonable rules on what is and is not appropriate for web site operators to keep for business purposes?  Or something like that.

[tags]Web, personal information[/tags]

Again with an Ars Technica link.  Here is a wonderful write-up by Caesar about the MPAAs claims that DRM is good for honest users.  I’m going to steal this great quote off the Ars page, too:

“Content owners use DRMs because it provides casual, honest users with guidelines for using and consuming content based on the usage rights that were acquired. Without the use of DRMs, honest consumers would have no guidelines and might eventually come to totally disregard copyright and therefore become a pirate, resulting in great harm to content creators,” he said.

In other words, people can’t be trusted to not steal, so we’re going to make stealing impossible.  Of course, DRM fails to do that.  But the people who weren’t going to steal in the first place, and therefore don’t need restrictions put on their media, aren’t going to be able to accidentally steal content.

[tags]DRM, MPAA, piracy[/tags]

I wish I were as smart as the Ars Technica folks.  I also wish I could write as well as they can.  Read about this issue over there.

[tags]DVR, TV, HBO[/tags]

My wife never believes me when I tell her this, but gaming can be good for you.  On average, it seems that gamers can tune out distractions better than non-gamers.

Before you assume gadgets and video games fry the minds of the future, consider this: Canadian researchers are finding evidence that the high-speed, multitasking of the young and wireless can help protect their brains from aging.

A body of research suggests that playing video games provides benefits similar to bilingualism in exercising the mind. Just as people fluent in two languages learn to suppress one language while speaking the other, so too are gamers adept at shutting out distractions to swiftly switch attention between different tasks.

[tags]Gaming, Games[/tags]