A bad spell on the Internet connection has kept the blog down for the last few days. If you caught this space sometime since Thursday you were very very quick on the draw indeed.

It’s still really shaky at the moment, in fact, with no real eta on getting it fixed.

I sort of read this one while I was working on a document and patching/rebooting a few servers, and talking on the phone. So I think I understand the point, sort of. Anyway, the article doesn’t say much beyond that “continuous partial attention” is sort of dangerous, and sort of rude, but also can be a good thing.

I can’t stand IM and the annoyances it brings, so I have never been an active user. I am guilty of continously checking two email accounts (work and home), and checking my feeds on Bloglines however, all while doing whatever it is I’m doing at work. I have recently been trying to remember to close the Bloglines tab, at least, once I chew through the morning’s feed glut. I find that helps somewhat with my attention deficit, but only for a little while. Just don’t ask me how many things I am trying to do while also writing something for the blog…

The French government has been making the news with a proposed change to its laws that would require any songs purchased online to be DRM-free. This is welcome news, but I have lots of problems with this article, and others online that fail to see the point of what this would do. The article includes a statement from Apple that criticizes the law:

“If this happens, legal music sales will plummet just when legitimate alternatives to piracy are winning over customers.”

This is a predictable response from Apple given how much it is in bed with the music labels, but they go on to note:

“iPod sales will likely increase as users freely load their iPods with “interoperable” music which cannot be adequately protected. Free movies for iPods should not be far behind in what will rapidly become a state-sponsored culture of piracy.”

The “state-sponsored culture of piracy” part is a bit overdone, somebody should have had a drama-filter on there. The main point is true, though. They would definitely sell more iPods because they would be much more useful, and iTunes without the DRM would quickly crush every other competitor simply because it’s by far the best music store out there. The DRM is the only thing holding it back from even greater domination, really. I would spend much more money there myself. I have had an iPod for a few years now, but I have only purchased 83 songs. I usually try to get CDs because of the DRM.

If the iTunes store came without DRM, there would really be very little need for me to visit a music store, I would much prefer to just get the files digitally. My prediction though is that Apple will close the French iTunes store rather than comply, there’s too much money at risk in the other markets. Can’t say as I blame them, it’s really not their fault the record companies are idiots.

I have mentioned the strange things that scientists do before, like publishing the space weather report. Well, I take it all back, because I guess the pointdexters have actually found something useful this time: it will be “difficult” to make a cell phone call in 2011 or so. So try to get your calling done before then, ok? Yep, apparently Old Yeller up there, Sol, or whatever you want to call the sun, is apparently brewing up a doozy of a radiation bath for us Earth folks. Hard to say what that will mean to you and I, but I would count on wearing SPF 900 and those inexplicably small, dumb, tanning bed nose-pinch sunglasses to work that year, and maybe the next. Also, for anyone who hasn’t procreated yet, I would invest in some Fruit-of-the-Smelters Leadlined boxers ™, very important to keep the fuzzy buddies unbaked.

Here’s the weather warning from those rocket scientists at, uh, NASA: Solar Storm Warning

I’m a busy guy, things to do, people to see, a mover, a shaker; you get the idea. So I must warn you now that clicking on any one of the following links will turn you into a drooling, slack jawed, hand-cramped, red-eyed click zombie. Clicking on two of them will ruin your life as you know it and you will awake in a cardboard box under an off-ramp. I clicked on them all, so you won’t need to, and I don’t need to tell you what this has done to my workplace productivity. So, to recap, don’t click on any of these links. You have been warned.

First we have a silly game: Finger Frenzy Basically a typing tutor on crack, it’s a sprint to type the whole alphabet as quickly as you can. Mildly amusing, but since I suck at typing, not that great for me.

Then it gets a bit more interesting, Planarity is a puzzle game that really really gets hard. Oh sure the first few levels have you snickering, but trust me when I say that things get rather difficult really quickly.

Then we have what a commenter on Digg described best: “it’s a toy, not a game”. The Falling Sand Game is deceptively fun in my opinion, but your mileage may vary. I found myself strangely drawn to this thing, for whatever reason.

Katamari Damacy in a browser, nothing more needs to be said.

Flea Circus and Lemmings are rather alike, the big difference is that Lemmings is rather slow, while Flea circus is most definitely not. I remember playing Lemmings when it first came out, it was really fun. Now you can play in a browser….

And the most recent click-trance I have been subjected to: Blueprint Very fun, well done game that I can’t get much past halfway on, but still pretty neat. It’s a “mousetrap” sort of thing where you have to redirect a bouncing ball to hit a target using the tools provided. Lots of maddening fun.

Credit for these links in no particular order goes to: Digg.com, Metafilter, there may be others.

Just caught this article on Cnet about iPods being the scourge of IT security everywhere. What a load of crap.

This sounds like a security consultant screaming for attention to me. Mention iPods in the press and you’re good for some attention. He wrote software to assist in this data stealing, what amounts to a “batch file”. Ohhh. Here’s a hint, if your employee has access to data, he can usually steal it in any number of ways. Printing, email attachments, other electronic methods (http, ftp, etc etc), even screenshots if necessary. What the hell does an iPod have to do with it? It’s efficient, to be sure, but the risk is the same as the other methods. There’s no indication in the article how the spy-pod magically gets access to data that the logged-in user doesn’t already have access to. The bottom line is; if you don’t trust someone with your secrets, they shouldn’t have access to them.

This problem has existed since computers had floppy drives, and before that when someone who got into your office could *gasp!* take papers right off your desk. Physical access is the whole tamale, it always has been and most corporate offices don’t really worry enough about that, BUT don’t expect any security measures to protect you from having people steal the very data they work with everyday. It’s just silly.