Author: Dave Cross

Sony Takes DRM Too Far

Here’s an interesting story from a Windows user who found a rootkit on his system. Further investigation revealed that it had been installed by Sony when he had played the digitally protected music on a CD he had bought (Get Right With The Man bu Van Zant). Sony is apparently so concerned about protecting its… Continue reading Sony Takes DRM Too Far

A Brief History of Disbelief

Most TV documentaries have been dumbed down to such an extent that they are often unwatchable. Programme makers seem to think that it’s impossible to explain concepts to the viewer without flashy graphics or re-enactment of key scenes. And a lot of time is wasted telling us what we are about see or what we… Continue reading A Brief History of Disbelief

BBC Programme Catalogue

When I saw him in Amsterdam, Matt was talking about a secret project he was doing for the BBC. And now he has revealed what it is. He’s putting a web front end on the BBC Programme Catalogue. That’s a database that contains details of almost a million programmes that the BBC have broadcast over… Continue reading BBC Programme Catalogue

EuroOSCON Day 3

Late, but I thought it was worth recording what I did on the final day of EuroOSCON. As always, we started with the keynotes. Marc Heglund talked about privacy issues and the possibility of an “open data” movement. David Heinemeier Hansson talked about the secrets of Ruby on Rails and MySQL’s Kaj Arnö showed us… Continue reading EuroOSCON Day 3

EuroOSCON Day 2

Very late, but here’s a summary of what I did at EuroOSCON on the second day (Wednesday). The keynotes started with Rael Dornfest talking about how “Annenuation is the new Aggregation”. He was followed by Red Hat’s Michael Tiemann talking about quality management. We then had Jason Matusow from Microsoft nicely illustrating how, hard as… Continue reading EuroOSCON Day 2