This article from the BBC News Service is well worth a read if you want a chuckle.

With the recent support of Cuba's dictator Fidel Castro by such celebrities as Danny Glover and Naomi Campbell, there is little doubt that the leader is still up for some debate (at least in some circles). Here is an interesting article on the subject of celebrity support for Fidel. Particularly …

Thanks to Amanda for pointing me at the following article on FreshMeat that describes perhaps the most significant issue in the free software movement, quality. The barrier to entry being as low as it is (relatively), many free software providers would rather build it themselves than coordinate with other groups …

Just in time to save the consumer from the changed ways of the RIAA, Methlab Productions has released their PeerGuardian software that blocks transmissions from IP addresses known to be haunted by the music industry. An article from Wired details the next salvo in the fight between the RIAA and …

An article from Reuters (appearing on Yahoo) details the findings of an LA Circuit Court Judge who decided yesterday to throw out the case of a man who has sued eBay for libel over negative feedback on their service. The case involved an eBay user who claims that eBay should …

After a long wait, the folks at DiVX.com have released the Macintosh version of the DiVX software for encoding and decoding movies. For those unfamiliar with the format, it claims to provide DVD-quality for a fraction (1/10th to be precise) of the space. In the past, the Macintosh …

The Russians have proven that it isn't just the US and France that know how to send spacecraft off course using software. An article on MSNBC claims that the cause of the off-course landing of the most recent Soyuz station was an as-yet-unidentified software glitch. Of concern is the fact …

iMimic has announced that it is moving it's Reactor product line to the Macintosh. Their products provide edge caching as well as streaming in order to goose up the performance of web services.

An article from BBC News recounts a poll of Britons asked to opine on the best actor/actress of all time. Others in the top ten are: Al Pacino Robert De Niro Tom Hanks Kevin Spacey Harrison Ford Jack Nicholson Anthony Hopkins Sean Connery Ewan McGregor Cary Grant

An article on CNN tells the story of an Israeli police officer who was mistaken for a stripper when on duty. Apparently, the women of the rowdy party he came to tone down thought he was part of the entertainment and got as far as pulling off his shirt before …

An article in the Washington Post describes a seriously stupid situation between the Nature Conservancy and Mobil (the oil company). It all started when Mobil gave the Nature Conservancy some land in order to protect an endangered bird. Mobil was going to forego exploration on the land in order to …

Are they real? We won't ever really know, but the folks at MacBidouille have been known to be rather prescient in the past. However, they are a very Mac-happy bunch, so it might just be propaganda or wishful thinking. Their latest story contains benchmarks from a series of supposed 970-based …

Continuing a successful launch, Apple announced that their new Music Store has shipped over 1 million songs. They have also sold about 20,000 iPods at Apple Stores and taken 110,000 orders online. The press release on Apple's site provides additional info, including the following interesting stats: over half …

If you are using an Apple iPod and have taken the time to update your entire library with album covers, don't be surprised if you get a long download the next time you plug in your iPod. The pictures are stored in each individual song, and therefore each song has …

An article from Wired describes a recent bill that has made it through committee and in to the full assembly in California which would require that subpoenas made to ISPs for user information be forwarded to the customer within 14 days of receipt and that the customer have 30 days …

Apple apparently had a bug in their AppleID (used for common log in to Apple's services, including the new Apple Music Store). The bug enabled a crafty web surfer to change the password on any user's account with merely their email address as the key. The folks at Wired report …

A thought-provoking article from Wired give a number of different people's take on the appointment of Nuala O'Connor Kelly (formerly of DoubleClick) to the position of Chief Privacy Officer at the Department of Homeland Security. The reviews so far are mixed, but she hasn't really had the opportunity to do …

An interesting article from The Ottawa Citizen has a Canadian interpretation of the latest comments by the US in a recent terrorism action report. In it, the US claims that Canada could be doing more to curb terrorism and sites lack of police and overly-protective privacy laws as part of …

With all of the discussion around these days about The Santa Cruz Organization (SCO) suing people over using bits of UnixWare in their Linux, at least one company, SuSE is claiming that they have an existing cross-license agreement with SCO that will protect them from the legal assaults. According to …

An interesting contest comparing the results of optimization by hand and optimization by optimizing compilers. I'll spare you the suspense, the article shows that the human is a better optimizer than the machine.