A Minnesota appeals court has ruled that the presence of encryption software on a computer may be viewed as evidence of criminal intent.(Source: C|Net News) Let me first say that this man was definitely guilty of child-porn related charges. That is no question about it. The problem is that the judge used the fact that he had PGP encryption software on his computer as evidence of "criminal intent". (I myself have used GnuPG, which in an OpenPGP type encryption program.) Having an encryption program on your computer is no more evidence of criminal intent than having a shredder. PGP ...

How many planets are there in our solar system? Soon, it may be as few as 8 or even over 12. This is because we don't have a clear definition of what a planet is. There are lots of objects that go around our sun. Most of them are much smaller than the Earth's moon. But consider the planet Pluto. It is only 50% larger than the Earth's moon. Although some people think the moon sized planet should be considered an official planet of our sun, others think it should not. What's more, if moon sized object are planets, than there are several other "planets in waiting" ready to bump the ...

After I watched Episode III I got together with some of my friends and we nit picked the errors George Lucas made in the science of Star Wars. One of my friends is in his last year of studying to be a civil engineer. He generally mocks any attempts to talk about “science” and “Star Wars” in the same conversation. “It's fantasy”, he said, “in a futuristic setting.” And he's right. But just in case there was any doubt, I'll leave you with the following links. WARNING: they contain spoilers! If you don't want spoilers, go to the Bad ...

I was first taught about evolution in grade 7 or 8. My teacher used an example of a deer in a general Canadian winter. Deer, she said, need longer legs to be able to get around in the winter. Because they would not be able to run away from predictors, or run after food, they grew longer legs to survive. This example is wrong. This does not correctly explain how evolution happens. I bring this up because evolution debates are a big thing in politics south of the border. In North America, specifically in Canada and the United States, there is wide spread misunderstanding about what ...