I’ve finally joined the ranks of those owning monitors that can support a display resolution greater than 1024×768, and it’s an LCD monitor to boot! For the past five years or so I’ve subsisted on 17″ CRT monitors which, I’ll grant, were of above-average size five years ago. But times have changed, and so it came to pass that I invested in a beautiful new LG brand 20.1″ widescreen LCD. Pictures after the jump.

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"Weird Al" Yankovic has a new album coming out soon (although it seems to be available already on the major BitTorrent sites) titled “Straight Outta Lynwood”. The music video for one of the singles from this album was leaked a bit early on YouTube, and in case there’s anyone I haven’t sent it to, the link is right here. This has to be one of Weird Al’s better works, ahead even of “All About the Pentiums” and “Amish Paradise”. The geek references are plentiful, including mention of Wikipedia (which inspired edits like these), D&D, MC Escher and Earl Grey Tea. The Wikipedia article on the song also has a rather complete listing of all the in-jokes, references and cameos. And what I wouldn’t give for a hoodie like the one Al is wearing in the end of the video!

The title pretty much sums it up - you can find this early-release beta software right around here. My favourite new features listed under “Changes in this Development Milestone”? Built-in phishing protection is an unglamorous, but very welcome behind-the-scenes improvement. And the ability to re-open accidentally closed tabs sounds peachy - I can’t count the number of times I’ve temporarily lost a website because of that.

Andrew recently wrote about an interesting idea - a standardized, open source DRM system. The rationale and motivation is thus: Microsoft and Apple (to name two companies with a large stake in pushing the DRM-envelope) have both already developed their own proprietary systems, which both (aim to) work within their own native environments. That is, within Windows and MacOS environments, respectively. This is fine if every consumer only works in one type of environment, and never decides to switch. But for the poor souls that do decide to move away from the corporations’ comfort zones, they’ll quickly find that there’s no support for their DRM-wrapped media on the outside. There can’t be - the systems are proprietary on purpose, ostensibly to protect the rights of copyright-holders, but with the added benefit of pressuring the consumer to stay in line. Things are no better outside of the Microsoft/Apple dichotomy. Any users of open source operating systems like *nix/*BSD will similarly find their content held hostage by over-zealous DRM. And so, Andrew asks, could an open source DRM system be the answer? (more…)

I came across this on BoingBoing, so apologies to anyone who’s reading this for a second time. Senator Ted Stevens is the United States Senator for the state of Alaska. He has held that position since 1970, and was both a public servant and lawyer for many years before that. He served with distinction as a pilot in World War II. He attended UCLA and Harvard University. He is not, in short, just an average shmuck. But despite all of his distinguished laurels, Senator Stevens doesn’t have a really firm grasp on how the internet functions. (more…)