EFF has released a wonderful checklist that sheds some very important light on the topic of digital books, and your rights.

You may be asking yourself, who gives a hoot?  Well, lots of people do.  More importantly you should care, and you should know and understand what is happening when it comes to this subject.  We’re not exactly entering the age of Star Trek datapads being fully pervasive in our daily routines, but sure as sin we’re there with computers.  Same concept, only wrapped in a different physical device.  Even if you may not appreciate the value of such hardware/technology, it’s safe to say these devices are coming, and will be common place before you know it.

There’s much to be excited about when it comes to eReaders.  These little devices are fantastic.  The thought of being able to walk around with every book you want is overwhelming.  Think of all those miserable days lugging around kilograms of textbooks!  The tactile relationship between reading, and physical books will remain.  Let’s be honest, if I could get all my textbooks, or O’Reilly books in a single device I could read easily — I’d be pretty happy!  I appreciate books, I have close to a thousand in the basement, so it’s not like I want to replace the book.  I just see eReaders as a natural movement of technology for storing and displaying information.

Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Nobles Nook, Sony’s Reader series, and the upcoming iPad from Apple are opening up a huge can of worms on the subject of Intellectual Property and who owns what.  That’s really the big issue here.  Are you borrowing a book?  Or do you actually *own* it?  What happens if the publishers change the rules?

It’s happened before.  Amazon removed Orwell’s 1984 from Kindles all around the world last year.  As the software/OS allows personal annotations (a common feature of eReaders), all of that stuff was deleted too.  Nice eh?  Each Kindle owner had zero say in the matter — people just woke up, and no more 1984, all their notes and comments lost.  Irony aside, this is representative of the problems we’re going to have to address — and soon.

My point is we’re dealing with yet-another Elephant-In-The-Room scenario, one of many that exist in today’s technology that need to be resolved.  You need only query “eReader rights” on Google and you’ll see just how crazy this topic is.  We’re a long way from figuring this out, but at the very least the average consumer should know their rights.  The EFF’s checklist is definitely worth your time to read — perhaps if you are lucky enough, on your eReader.

Ever watched Star Trek The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine?

Ever notice those data pads?

Ever notice how the pads aren’t used for anything overly excessive except for informational/planning actions?

Ever notice how if the characters wanted to do something of value, a pad may have been used, but ultimately the hard work was done through a terminal, or interfacing with the Computer, there by allowing for multitasking and more difficult/complex computing to be accomplished?

Congratulations.  You just realized what they were using was an iPad in conjunction with a workstation/desktop.

TEH FUTURE IS NOW.  etc. 

My point is, the iPad is taking a serious amount of slag from people, but ultimately the apps, the creativity/imagination/ingenuity will make (or break) the iPad.  Those apps, the ones we HAVEN’T yet seen, will have a major impact on computing.  Just you watch and wait.

Considering everyone likes to make New Year Resolutions, I have decided to go against the grain and simply not make any.  Take that society!  I stab at thee with nothingness!  I should point out I never make resolutions purely because it’s a poor method to change your life.  Grand ideas like making a billion dollars, or losing 50 kilos of weight are examples of things destined to fail.  Smaller steps make for larger gains.

So rather than striving for a nugget of Unobtainium, aim for the betterment of your life at all times.  Reflect often, something people do very poorly these days, and see where you can improve.  I’m far from a perfect example of this, but I do try to be like that.  From my perspective, isn’t life all about trying to better yourself at all times?  If it’s not, I can say with certainty, I would be bored to tears.

My good pal Ken chimed in via twitter and pointed out this current theme wasn’t offering up a way to subscribe via RSS!  Now, in this day of social media RSS is still very important.  I like to write, so a blog is a natural platform — it sort of helps, you know, if you can make sure your readers can subscribe!  Derp.  Of course, Twitter helped me out here, so social networking does indeed have its value some days.

Simply put, my failure was not remembering that the missing RSS 0ption was built in to the theme.  That leads me to my grievance with Wordpress in its current form.  The line between theme options, plugins, and widgets (plugins-that-arent-really-plugins-but-sorta-are) is far too grey.  I’m sure the pay-for themes may offer all the bells & whistles that I might desire, but let’s be honest here, I’m not exactly running a super high profile site.  Of the ho-jillions of themes that are out there, it’s easy to see just how varied they are in the little details.  Lesson learned.

Fortunately there is a little widget that works really well for what I needed.  Here’s hoping the next generation of Wordpress will sort out all this theme-vs-option-vs-widget-plugin mess.

It’s rather nice some days to open up Google Reader and see some wonderful artwork.  The artists are typically given links to their own online portfolios and in all cases it’s definitely worth a Sunday afternoon to check them out in more detail.  When you consider just how important concept artwork is for things like movies and book covers, it’s great to see blogs covering this rather under appreciated art form.

I must admit though, Google’s 8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4 addresses are definitely a breeze to remember.

This is so fucking awesome on a hundred levels.  First, I am gobsmacked Bulgaria even has a space research institute.  Plus, according to this chap, these alien spies are responsible for global warming!  I’m not sure about you, but I know *I* can rest so much easier now this is out in the open.

I rather enjoy Winter.  I prefer cold temperatures as opposed to our oppressively hot humid summers.  As I remind people who bitch incessantly over how cold it is, we live in Canada.  Enough said there.  Complain all you want, we’re not exactly in a geographically located place that is conducive of pleasant Winter temperatures.  Thus why complain about how cold it is?  It’s bad enough the Economist offers polite commentary about how much we talk about the weather — too much!

Never the less, I have seen one thing that has made me extremely happy lately.  Even though it’s not law in Ontario (yet), the increase of winter tyres on cars has been a joyful sight on the roads.  We’ve not been in a position to need them, but the fact that drivers are taking responsibility for their own safety and OTHERS around them is fantastic.  Last year Québec made winter tires mandatory through their Highway Safety Act.  Ultimately it comes down to people being more aware that the cheapest of winter tyres are a thousand times better than the best all-season.  Could it be that common sense is trickling down to Ontario drivers?  Gosh, I could only hope.  I’m hoping Ontario will follow suit sooner, rather than later, with our own Law requiring winter sets for the road.

It comes as no surprise that I see more and more AWD vehicles on the road too.  Nearly every manufacturer has some AWD offering, even if it isn’t a double Haldex system, Jeep’s manually engaged 4×4 awesomeness, or Grand Father Quattro running things.  It seems that auto manufacturers & people are cluing in to the fact that Canadian driving conditions can be some of the worst in the world.  Even if belt tightening is getting a bit tougher, a long term investment in to the cheapest of winter tyres can be a huge difference to your Canadian driving experience.  We’ll have to wait and see what our Canadian karma delivers us this Winter.

While winter tyres won’t solve bad driving habits, nor will AWD systems automatically correct for driving well beyond the driving conditions of the roads (I’m looking at you SUV owners), I’m liking what I see so far by my fellow Ontarians.

Also, if you have an iPhone, do a search for 1Password and grab the app — it’s free until Dec 1.  All hail technology.