An article on the subject of copy protection has spawned quite a bit of debate. The author is the CEO of a PC gaming company, and here is his main point:

The reason why we don't put CD copy protection on our games isn't because we're nice guys. We do it because the people who actually buy games don't like to mess with it. Our customers make the rules, not the pirates. Pirates don't count. We know our customers could pirate our games if they want but choose to support our efforts. So we return the favor - we make the games they want and deliver them how they want it. This is also known as operating like every other industry outside the PC game industry.

I've heard a number of reactions to this article, and it runs the spectrum. If you work in an industry where piracy is an issue--software, music, movies--you should read it and decide for yourself.

Is it me, or has architecture taken a massive leap in the past ten years? Concepts like this one in Paris are stunning ideas that I hope make it into reality soon. As a society we really need to re-examine the way we plan, build, and operate our metropolitan centers.

This $25,000 high-tech super rifle may soon replace the M-16 as the standard issue infantry weapon in the US armed forces. Sounds like sci-fi, but apparently it's on its way to reality. I'd be great to see this level of innovation in all sectors of the American economy.

It's fair to say that the vast majority of modern cosmology is based on a very simple but incredibly critical assumption: that the laws of the universe are, well, universal. That gravity works the same here on Earth as it does trillions of miles away. Pretty much all of physics rests upon these assumptions as well.

But as technology has progressed, we've observed stranger and stranger things about our universe. Not least of which that most of the matter in the universe is invisible and interacts with visible matter (and itself) in strange ways. In addition, there is also some hypothetical repulsive force, also invisible, that seems to be pushing the universe apart.

But what if the assumption above, called the Copernican Principle, is wrong? A group of researchers have designed an experiment to test it. I'm excited, as I've always felt that these strange observations seem to suggest some fundamental error in our approach. Let's see what happens.