The dirty little secret of Windows is that most problems and error messages you get, including the rather horrible blue screen of d.e.a.t.h come from broken, corrupted or missing drivers. All of which can be prevented if you maintain a healthy relationship with your machine and keep the drivers checked and updated regularly.

One of the things that is so great about the Internet is its ability to bring people together, but often that precise quality becomes a victim of outside influences, whether it’s bad weather breaking cables or oppressive regimes shutting down access. This is why there’s a new movement growing up around the idea of building private Internets, also called mesh networks, which can survive when things get rough.

Everyone loves the Internet, even governments. It’s good for communications, trade and peaceful cooperation. But some of the more autocratic governments seem not to enjoy criticism, and that’s where a lot of the censorship issues arise. Even more ‘liberal’ governments such as those in the US and UK have made it clear that they’re keen to clamp down on content they deem unsuitable, even if those sites are perfectly respectable and legal.

Suddenly privacy is a big thing (again) and people are rushing around pointing fingers, hyperventilating and generally getting worked up. And quite rightly so. But at the end of the day things will only change if and when enough people bang the gong, so till then it’s up to us to carry on and take steps to protect our privacy as we feel is right.

If you’re into science fiction, you’ll love the great deal that’s currently on offer from the SF and fantasy website Tor.com. The site is celebrating its fifth anniversary, and as a rather splendid grand gesture it’s making available an anthology of five years of original fiction. That’s around 4000 pages of cool SF prose for free download peeps!

There’s always something else to do, to fix, to sort out. No matter how fast we run, tasks build up and events need remembering. If you’re like us you’ll already be using something like Google Calendar to help out, but good as it is, it doesn’t really give enough flexibility for coping with every eventuality.