This week the first software patent was granted 28 years ago. Sounds like a good reason to bring about some more news stories, right?

The RIAA has someone tearing into their blanket of lawsuits: Harvard Law School. If you want a great example of what a load of crap copy protection and copyright is, look at all these countries thatdon’t have access to the iTunes Store. Oh and the MPAA says fair use only exists if they don’t put any protection on their content.

Apple is getting a tax break from North Carolina for a server farm. Is the tobacco industry really doing that badly right now? “The New Yorker’s” cover was made on an iPhone. Check out the video with the story. Oh and if you have nothing better to do this weekend, try out The Sims 3 at an Apple Store near you (closest one is Arden Fair Mall).

The Metroid Prime trilogy is coming on one disc to the Wii in August. There goes my spending money. Speaking of me going broke, the Canon 5D Mark II has manual video controls. Of course all my money will disappear with a Value Added Tax thats been proposed.

A new online game from the California Nurses Association has a game explaininghow a single-payer health care system works. Video games and health care. I know, I’m just as excited to play it as you.

Remember when I talked about the FAA being hacked? There’s a lot of data to deal with in the skies. How can it be managed? Find out here.

Digg is pushing the Governator on pot. Speaking of robots, Android 1.5 is out for T-Mobile phones.

A Chinese blogger won a censorship suit against his ISP. There’s a sentence you may only see once a decade

Since everyone has a qualm with Obama’s Supreme Court pick Sonia Sotomayor, why not add in the video game industry.

Color coded fire can help relay messages.

Wiretapping is back in the news as the Obama Administration had until yesterday to convince a judge not to levy sanctions.

Oh and Silverlight 3 is out soon. Another piece of software to clog up your Web browser…

Almost got the bookmarks cleaned out. Hooray!

Yes it’s a rare time when I won’t be in on either a Saturday or Sunday for housecalls. Nor Monday or Tuesday. Confusing I know. But I’ll try to make up for it with a nice healthy stack of news and interesting stuff in the tech world.

• President Obama has outlined a plan for shoring up the United States’ cyber protection which you can read about here. The similarities between the Obama proposal and the Bush proposal are remarkably similar, but I’m not really that concerned about that. We’re pretty screwed anyways. Why? Because morons can’t seem to keep track of hard drives. Sure the Internet is full of dark and scary people who could be plotting to destroy your network and infect the FBI with random viruses, but the level of incompetence that allows hard drives and laptops with people’s personal data to disappear is enough to make me launch into a tirade of profanities which I will not disclose here. Common frigging sense is the best security. Continue Reading »

Oh the joy of furloughs and holidays creating a tangled schedule. But that’s not going to stop me from bringing news and doing a little spring cleaning at the same time.

I’m leading off with a story that’s not so much tech as it is…odd. A group of masked superheroes have taken to protecting the mean streets of Cincinnatti. This is all well and good, but can these ordinary citizens catch the city’s biggest scourge: Falling turkeys. Continue Reading »

Electronics retailer Circuit City is back — sort of. Don’t run down to Roseville or up to Chico looking for the doors to open because they’re still locked and if you do happen to get inside, the cops will probably bust you for trespassing.

The only part of Circuit City that’s back is its Web site. That now falls under a new lord and mastermind Systemax. Well that sounds a little cynical. I’m sure they’ll actually do just fine. Continue Reading »

Here’s the No. 1 item on Amazon’s apparel list right now:

“This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that’s when the magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to ‘howl at the moon’ from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called mehth. I told them no, because they didn’t have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn’t settle for the first thing that comes to him.”

The beauty of this shirt is in the eyes of the mocking beholders who originally berated the shirt in Amazon’s comments, but then began buying it as what looks to be another case of Internet irony. There are about 500 reviews on it so far.