June 2007 Archive of engeniusBLOG

From time immemorial, cheating our fellow humans has been with us. From the alchemist instilling greed by persuading the punters that they had observed a base metal being changed into gold, to the trader keeping a finger on his scales while weighing produce. Some offences in Europe carried an automatic death penalty -- like clipping, where a silver coin would be cut evenly around its edge and the resulting haul of silver melted down and sold (the reason many coins were later milled aound the perimeter).

There are still scammers out there and the Internet has made it a great deal cheaper, for a lot more, Nigerian scam letters to be distributed around the world. It was nice to read, however, of the Dutch police arresting more than 100 West Africans who were, apparently, behind one of the "You have won 30 milion Euros" spams.

But despite all the continuing scams, there have always been many more ch...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

Editor's Note: I'd hoped to get to this second half of tales from the Maker Faire much sooner that a month after the first installment appeared, but the challenges of attending several conferences, our newly-expanded web site, and the normal demands of our weekly publishing schedule just kept getting in the way. Hopefully, it was worth the wait to find out how I narrowly escaped death at the hands of a flame-spewing jet-powered combat hovercraft...

Attending Maker Faire in San Mateo was a great antidote for the pre-packaged corporate-designed activities that usually pass for fun these days. The can-do, do-it-yourself, spirit of the Faire was extremely evident in the huge assortment of ...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

Even after working with him for more than a decade, my colleague, Paul, is always surprising me with one thing or another. Last week I was doing research for a story about the environmental issues involved with compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) technology when he beat me to the punch with his editorial. He also went a bit further and pointed out the less-than-rational legislation that's driving their adoption before those problems can be addressed. While I might disagree with Paul about whether or not CFLs are quite the toxic threat that he feels they are, I think his analysis of the legislation that will virtually ban incandescent bulbs in Canada by 2012 is spot-on. More importantly, it's another example of well-intended environmental laws creating as many problems as they...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

My daughter sat her very first real exam at school today. A momentous occasion, tackled like a professional with a major reward being that when the exam was over she was free to leave for the day. More exams tomorrow and the next day and then, on Friday, her grade will have their bikes carted off to part of the Galloping Goose Trail, a 55 km multiple-use trail, where they themselves will arrive on a school bus. They will cycle about 10 km to a lake where they can swim, picnic and jape around until it is time to cycle back to the bus.

A good way of letting off steam after a grueling week for them all.

Now she will take exams every year until she goes to college -- when she still will get little relief. But she is luckier than I was. My first exams were at age eleven when it was decided what sort of secondary education you were best suited for. She is also lucky that until she does her Prov...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

What do Internet broadcasters and wind power enthusiasts have in common? It turns out a whole lot more than you'd imagine. For one thing, both technologies have the potential to improve our lives and become the basis of new industries that could help energize our economy. They are also quite disruptive and could undermine existing industries which have become quite cozy with their current quasi-monopoly status. That's why both Internet radio and the wind power industry are under assault by stupid, shortsighted regulations (bought and paid for by the very industries they threaten) that are specifically designed to cripple them.

Most of you are already familiar with it, so I won't bore you with a long lecture on the virtues of Internet Radio. But as I said in a 2004 editorial, "It's allowed me to turn off the homogenized audio pap that passes for broadcasting these days and fill my time at the computer with music from lower-power independent college stations such as W...  -- Click Here to Read More >>