Back in July of 2009, the Canadian government launched an eight week public consultation on copyright reform. Members of the public were invited to let their will be known surrounding issues such as fair use, copyright terms, ISP neutrality and a host of other issues. With over 8,300 respondents in total an astounding 6183 people […] More »
Sunday morning was dark and my alarm didn’t go off, so I slept in. I was awakened late in the morning to a fellow gringo, my friend Luke, shouting through my window. “Ashley!” he yelled, “wake up, did you hear what happened?” I had heard nothing but silence that day. I let him in and […] More »
A new generation of designers propose products and buildings that are energy efficient and elegant Rick Mercer’s quip during the Copenhagen climate conference last December summed it up best: “So [Stephen] Harper flew to Copenhagen to have a club sandwich and hide in his room?” The post-Copenhagen doldrums were still bringing us down when Thomas […] More »
There’s more to online piracy than Beyoncé singles and porn In the summer of 1999, a terrifying rumour began circulating on the then-young internet, gluing millions to their screens: Napster, the illegal music service, was about to be shut down. It seemed like the party with an endless soundtrack was coming to an end. The […] More »
As the internet becomes a global battlefield, a clutch of Canadian programmers are subverting oppressive regimes, aiding online dissidents, and mapping the murky new world of digital geopolitics The Dalai Lama is charged with watching over Buddhist tradition, but on March 29, 2009 The New York Times revealed a shadowy presence was secretly watching him, […] More »
The March-April 2010 issue of This Magazine will be landing in subscribers’ mailboxes this week and is now on most newsstands coast to coast. (If you haven’t subscribed yet, this is a great time to do it, locking in a great price before the HST comes along. Just sayin’!) As always, the stories will all […] More »
In the Twitter-verse, news spreads fast, is debunked faster, and is retweeted before you can think of something better to say. Gordon Lightfoot can attest to this, I’m sure. So when a long story is slowly told through the 140-character limit, it tends to make people pay attention. That’s what happened when Angie Jackson decided […] More »
I grew up in the Greater Toronto Area, home to the most diverse region in all of Canada, perhaps the world, in a Hong Kong immigrant household (caveat: my Man U-loving dad raised me on soccer). I’m intensely proud of that fact. So it ruffles my feathers that, hockey so often precludes all other events — […] More »
We’ve been having a spot of trouble with the commenting system on the blog for the last few days; comments mysteriously changing which post they appear on; comments suddenly appearing on every post on the blog, stuff like that. The magazine and podcast comments work fine. It appears to be a problem with the comment […] More »
The Hub King’s Cross café in London is buzzing today with a new breed of tech geek: consumed not by robots or video games, but African development. This group, about 100-strong, are meeting at the tri-annual Africa Gathering event. And together, through what they call Information and Communication Technologies for Development, or the unwieldy acronym […] More »
I stood there on the street, squinting into my phone, needing to double check. Could the nondescript restaurant before me really have, as the anonymous web commenter put it, “the. best. hot sauce. ever.”? It didn’t seem likely. But sure enough, after popping inside, the fiery, garlicky concoction was a revelation. Later that day, when […] More »