Yes I use a Mac, I've always used a Mac. I believe is a more powerful system that delivers better software and a better experience. But what it delivers more than anything is respect for its users, not the contempt, over-pricing and failure to deliver on its promises that is Vista.

Roughly Drafted / What you expected; what you got

A new album and a new single from the pop punk genius that is Helen Love.

New Zealand's Croucher Brewing Company offers 12 bottles per month for the rest of the life of whoever returns a stolen portable.

A reminder of the first three rules of computing: backup, backup and backup.

BBC / NZ brewery offers beer for laptop

...but even he is more agreeable that the selfish idiots who think they know what we should be allowed to see and hear. Interesting that they don't complain about books - is it because they can't read?

“A note of dissent, however, came from Crystal Madison, representing a body called the Parents TV Council. She complained that prime-time drama series on News Corp's Fox television network showed inappropriate content at peak times, listing several shows as regular offenders - Family Guy, American Dad, Bones and Dirt.

“Ms Madison said there was regular humour about prostitution, masturbation, and infidelity, adding that Bones recently showed a maggot-infested dead body with its feet severed at prime time: ‘Is this entertainment, Mr Murdoch?’

“The News Corp chairman replied that ‘a lot of people think so’, adding: ‘People have a couple of hundred channels to choose from - they don't have to watch this.’”

The Guardian / Murdoch faces investor rebellion

This is the full version of the edited story that I wrote for PC Pro.

Anyone can download Radiohead's latest record without paying a penny after the band invited listeners to pay whatever they wanted for In Rainbows. You might have thought then, that no-on would bother using p2p to grab a copy. You'd be wrong.

Big Champagne, a leading p2p analyst, recorded 240,000 BitTorrent downloads of In Rainbows on the day it was released and with 100,000 new torrent downloads each day, unauthorised copies of the record will soon exceed the 1.2 million acquired from the band's official website.

Big Champagne's chief executive Eric Garland said that is not unusual for p2p downloads to exceed sales, but he was somewhat surprised that this was the case with the Radiohead album. And he can only put it down to habit.

“People don't know Radiohead's site,” he said. “They do know their favourite BitTorrent site and they use it every day. It's quite simply easier for folks to get the illegal version than the legal version.”

He added that price does not appear to be a factor that affects how much an album is swapped over p2p - contrary to the popular argument that record companies could eliminate file sharing simply by cutting the price of CDs and downloads.

Others have noted that by letting users pay nothing, Radiohead have inadvertently devalued their music and legitimised file sharing.

Professor Ed Felten of Princeton University, a digital content and DRM expert, notes on his Freedom to Tinker blog, that the “clunkiness” of Radiohead's website is partly to blame.

“Radiohead’s site makes you click and click to get the music,” he writes. “First you have to click through a nearly content-free splash screen. Then you click through another splash screen telling you things you probably already knew. Then you click an “ORDER” button, and click away a dialog box telling you something you already knew. Then after some head scratching, you realise you need to click the “VIEW BASKET” button...,” and so on. You get the picture. What it all amounts to is getting the downloaders details so that they can later be sold concert tickets and merchandise, which is where most bands make their real money since record labels have no claim to a share.

Faced with that, p2p does look a lot more attractive.

“If people normally choose p2p over authorised channels because p2p is cheaper, we would expect customers to shift toward the authorised channel when it offers a zero price,” Felten writes. “But if people choose p2p for convenience, then we’d expect a shift toward more p2p use for this album, because people have fewer moral qualms about p2p downloading this album than they would for a normal album.”

The building site next door that very kindly wakes us a 7am each weekday morning with the sound of drilling and hammering which then continues throughout the day. I do kind of hope this toilet crashes to the ground and showers shit on them all.

Appearing in Brussels on December 6.

“The globe was thrown into a major political and economic crisis last night following the shock decision of Sir Menzies Campbell to resign the leadership of Britain’s Liberal Democrat Party.

“Eleven billion dollars were wiped off the value of shares in Wall Street before trading was suspended, while other world markets were kept closed to avoid panic and possible financial meltdown. George Bush and Vladimir Putin spoke in emergency session and later issued a joint statement urging for calmness during this period of uncertainty. But the resignation leaves Britain’s third party utterly leaderless, and marks the political demise of an inspiration and an icon who spoke for a whole generation.”

NewsBiscuit / World thrown into crisis as Menzies Campbell resigns

“Every edition of the Guardian and Observer newspapers is to be made available via a newly launched online digital archive.

“The first phase of the Guardian News & Media archive, containing the Guardian from 1821 to 1975 and The Observer from 1900 to 1975, will launch on November 3.

“It will contain exact replicas of the original newspapers, both as full pages and individual articles, and will be fully searchable.

“The rest of the archive will launch early in 2008, making more than 1.2m pages of digitised news content available, with Observer content available from its launch as the world's first Sunday newspaper in 1791.

“New reports featured in the archive cover events including the 1793 execution of Louis XVI, the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, and the 1833 abolition of the slave trade, the first and second world wars and the assassination of the US president, John F Kennedy.”

The Guardian / Guardian and Observer to launch online archive

..another 40 DRM-free, high bitrate tracks at €0.32 (less than 25p) each:

The Retro Spankees / Vowel Play
Charles Caldwell / Hadn't I been good to you
Foetus / The only good christian is a dead christian
Bricolage / The Waltzers
The Retro Spankees / I Know Who You Are But What Am I?
The Retro Spankees / Mr Brilliant & Easy squeezy
Booka Shade / In white rooms
The Piney Gir Country Roadshow / Hold Yer Horses
Kimya Dawson / Being cool, Hadlock padlock & The beer
EZ T / Goodbye Little Doll

I’m on the front page of Ask and Google for “palais stoclet brussels”.

Becs and I came across this patch of beautiful mushrooms and/or toadstools on a Belgian campsite yesterday. Becs took these beautiful pictures: Flickr / Funghi.

“A possum has set an enviable record for doing absolutely nothing. After stuffing itself full of food in a laboratory, one curled up and hibernated for a record 367 days,” reports NewScientist.

[image from Wikimedia Commons]

Rebecca said, “I think this must the be the cutest collection of photos I have ever seen.”

I think it probably is.

Flickr / Tiny Animals On Fingers

These links (should) work for the UK store:
Klaxons / Magick
The Long Blondes / Once and never again
Lost Penguin / I believe I can fly
The Playing Fields / Hello new world

Vitamin String Quartet's String Quartet Tribute to New Order & Joy Division.

British Airways Culinary Map [no apostrophe, sic]

Er, BA, the Grand'Place is a place, not a restaurant. It's also just about the last place* I would send anyone to find somewhere good to eat. Mind you, this comes from an industry happy to describe Charleroi Airport - 50km away with no direct public transport link - as Brussels South Charleroi.

*The last place would be 'Kebab Street'.

'Toe pads have patterns on the surface, it's not a smooth layer. Underneath these patterns, there are fluid vessels, glands and blood vessels,' according to Animangsu Ghatak, an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur.

'Sticky tape gets contaminated with dust and you only use it once or twice. But lizards and toads use their toes all the time. They don't get contaminated and they create very strong adhesion. We are trying to mimic that by creating this material.'

Reuters / Tree-frog inspires new super glue