The travels of Justin

Put in a big order for utopian-engineered peoplehole covers, Microsoft has designed a high school: Students — who are called “learners” — use smart cards to register attendance, open their digital lockers and track calories they consume. They carry laptops, not books, and the entire campus has wireless Internet access. Teachers, or “educators,” rather than [...]

I found this after a visit to http://canada.info-syn.com: Telus is blocking access to a pro-union website that it argues “contains confidential proprietary information and that photographs on the site raise privacy and security issues for certain of its employees.” Michael Geist reminds us that internet service providers—especially Telus—have argued vocally to let the courts, not [...]

This is just a personal note. I’m running an older version of Mandrake Linux on my computer, and I found this information for connecting mailto: links. In case I find this handy in the future, I’m blogging it for future reference and the rest of you can safely ignore it. Mozilla Thunderbird Notes – Waikato [...]

Today is the first time in ages that I’ve looked at my site using Internet Explorer (I’m in the TRU computer lab) and I’m reminded why I dislike that browser. With Firefox, — regardless whether I’m on Windows, Linux, or Apple platforms — the icons for my weather widget on the main-page sidebar blend smoothly [...]

Since there doesn’t seem like much happening in domestic politics to write about these days (sarcasm intended), I think this is a pretty awesome development at Statscan. Now you can use Firefox live bookmarks, or — my favourite — Thunderbird’s RSS reader to keep up with Statscan’s publication, The Daily. The Government of Canada Newsroom [...]

On the heels of Blockbuster’s “end of late fees”, comes an implementation of credit/debit system for libraries. The problems are questions of privacy, civil liberties, and even financial liability for unreturned materials. From the civil liberty perspective, the Patriot Act in the USA allows authorities to keep an eye on what you are reading without [...]