Irish Company claims Free-Energy.

"Ya cannae change the laws of Physics Captain!". Well allegedly you can, if you believe claims from Irish Company Steorn that they've invented a clean free energy source involving magentic fields (well at least it's not di-lithium crystals). They've taken out an advert in the Economist challenging the world's academics to test their technology. Seems they invited academics in 2005 to validate their technology, but seeing as they are violating the Law of Conservation of Energy, many academics see this as essentially bad physics voodoo and refused to have anything to do with it (Cold Fusion anyone?). Steorn claims some did, validated the technology, but refused to go on record.

Not much more information on their website. Only registered academics/researchers can get access to the whitepaper - which seems a bit fishy. Not that I would probably have understood it anyway, but still.

UK adopting US-style threat levels

Hmm. I'm very cynical about this move. The UK has adopted 5 threat levels (current level is SEVERE - the second highest). Do you have a vague feeling of disquiet or even dread? Good, then it's working. Is it going to make the UK safer, probably not.

So what really is the purpose of it? Well, like I said, I'm pretty cynical about this. Attempting to inspire a constant feeling of dread in a populace is best left to the Daily Mail. It's also counter-productive because there's always another threat - did Bird Flu just go away?

So far this information seems to be limited to websites. Which means unless your really crazy and check them all the time (luckily no RSS yet) you'll eventually forget about it. Let's hope the UK doesn't adopt terrorist-ometers in airports, train stations and outside government buildings, because that's really not going to reassure anyone.

Good article on DRM and why it's a waste of time.

Cory Doctorow has a good opinion piece on DRM and why when combined with DMCA, it is of no benefit to anyone but Apple and Microsoft.  A lot of the information here is not new, but this is a really clear summary of the state of the DRM nation.

Good example of the law of unintended consequences: the music / entertainment industry lobbied and pushed for DMCA. Apple convinces record labels to sell using Apple's DRM. Apple's DRM is quite generous, but still unwanted by everyone except the record labels. Eventually Apple gains dominant position and vertically controls all distribution from iTunes to iPOD. It uses DMCA+DRM to lock out rival manufacturers and thus is in a position to dictate to the record labels - ooh the irony.