Tag Archives: mindboggling stuff
Copy protection gone awry
The Sony DRM debacle, apparently, is not an isolated case. In 2004, the company launched an e-book reader called Librie in Japan that also failed to take off. The reason? While Librie won plaudits for design, its high price and draconian antipiracy technology (users could only “rent” books from Sony for 60 days before the… Read More »
Is Lee Kuan Yew a fascist?
“If you don’t include your women graduates in your breeding pool and leave them on the shelf, you would end up a more stupid society… So what happens? There will be less bright people to support dumb people in the next generation. That’s a problem.” – Lee Kuan Yew, National Day rally, 1983 “If nature… Read More »
Always read the “fine print”?
You may not be aware, but if you’re using a colour laser printer, its privacy-violating subliminal encoding technology could be leaving a paper trail in more ways than you can imagine. Here’s how it works: A microchip located near the laser beam embeds a series of minuscule yellow dots that, when decoded, reveal the serial… Read More »
Straightening the Straits Times (9)
Sometimes it’s not just our compliant newspaper that will try to mislead the public with its biased reporting. Government and semi/quasi-government officials often resort to flawed arguments to justify flawed causes. Disguised with flowery words and patronising rhetoric, these arguments can easily sway readers who are less discerning. Case in point: The reply by NKF’s… Read More »
Bite-size (ahem!) information
The World’s Most Infamous Killers is a collection of more than 150 tales of the most prolific and shocking murderers to have made the world’s headlines over the years is not a treatise on the psychology of serial killers. As noted on the introduction page, the book “does not discuss how to build up a… Read More »