I attended a great seminar this week and one of the topics of discussion was Canada’s anti-spam legislation — otherwise known as CASL because it is apparently a statute without a name. This is interesting to me since the statute is controversial, could be unconstitutional, and quite possibly the most comprehensive (read: onerous) legislation of its kind in the world. It deserves an equally cumbersome title, don’t you think? Perhaps it should be called the “we really wanted to try and put an end to bulk junk mail and don’t know how” statute. It’s so easy to be an armchair critic, isn’t it?

So why do we always tend to make things more complicated?

Roses are red
Violets are blue
The war on piracy
Will never be through

In my Christmas wish list, I mentioned a most amazing machine — the “espresso” machine. No, not the kind that makes coffee, the kind that can print a made-to-order softcover book. How incredible is it that one-off printing of paperbacks might be coming to a coffee shop near you? OK, maybe not a coffee shop, but possibly the corner bookstore you thought would never be able to keep up with the big-box retailers. The more I thought about the possibilities, the more intrigued I became, so I did a little more research.

Just because I’m too old to believe in Santa Claus, doesn’t mean I’m too old to make a wish list. In fact, I have many of them. Keeping in mind that tongue is largely firmly planted in cheek, my wish list this year might look something like this:

Waiting until you’re being sued, terminated, or divorced before acknowledging that there might be a problem is, I think we can all agree, not the ideal approach to communication. And then there are those who would go the distance on principle alone because they believe they have suffered an injustice, and want “their day in court.” Regardless of whether the end result is a lawsuit, a failed relationship, a damaged reputation, or whatever, there must be a way to mitigate, or in the best case, avoid such outcomes. Learning how to communicate (more) effectively is probably a good place to start.

Hello. My name is Sarah. And I’m addicted to my mobile device.

I confess, I have at times struggled to believe the whole “green” movement on the part of big business was anything more than a marketing opportunity for many. Frankly, I’m still not convinced that many companies that claim to be green really are, but there are companies taking big steps forward and interesting projects are afoot that might make being green a lot more than just a publicity stunt. Not that being green doesn’t come with challenges, but my hope is that it will bring awareness and accountability together in a positive way that helps us sustain our most precious resources — well before it is too late.

Seriously, did someone wake up one morning and think to themselves, “I’m going to create a currency today” and subsequently give birth to Bitcoins? Why didn’t I think of that?

So the title might be a bit dramatic, but I’m sure it got your attention if only because you completely disagree. The fact is, the “media” by way of which we record and transmit data has evolved so much since the days of radio, vinyl, and floppy disks, it isn’t just going to be a challenge to get rid of all of the piles of albums, tapes, and CDs you have stored in your basement, it could be a challenge to recover the data you stored on these media. While this might not be a problem for most of us, it could be a serious issue if you need to recover a file to, say, support the validity of a patent.