Brandon Dimmel

Take a moment and thank heavens you live in a free, democratic country. In Canada and the United States, there are (almost) no restrictions on snapping photos and immediately posting them online for anyone to see. While some exceptions may apply, ... even videos of an intoxicated President Bush have made their way to YouTube without FBI or CIA interference. Unfortunately, this kind of freedom eludes the world's fastest-growing economy. Everyone remembers Tiananmen Square. The image of one, solitary man blocking a series of tanks from passing is unforgettable. For nearly two decades this scene ... (view more)

Maybe Michael Moore's next documentary should deconstruct the Bit Torrent phenomenon. The pair seem a match made in heaven, as Moore's recent film "Sicko", still largely unknown across America, has already made its way to various Torrent sites for ... download. Moore shot to fame with his scathing documentaries "Bowling for Columbine" and "Fahrenheit 9/11", which criticized American gun laws and the Bush administration, respectively. Sicko tells the story of the United States' drug and health administration, ridiculing a system that can bankrupt someone for the average broken bone. As you might ... (view more)

When it comes to banning video games, Britain is not a world leader. The country has nixed the releases of just two titles in its history, the most recent being Rockstar's highly controversial Manhunt 2. The outright ban comes as a denial by the ... British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) to even rate the game. According to the BBFC's director Daniel Cooke, Manhunt 2 is guilty of an "unremiting callousness of tone in an overall game context which constantly encourages visceral killing with exceptionally little alleviation or distancing." Manhunt 2 is similar to the original title, which ... (view more)

A few days ago, I reported on the face-off between Microsoft and Google. Although hockey season's long over, it seems the two were ready to duke it out over the future of desktop searches within operating systems like Vista. At the heart of the ... matter is Google's complaint that Microsoft's Windows Vista breaks antitrust law by making it exceptionally difficult to install secondary desktop search programs, like Google Desktop. Although Microsoft admits these programs run a bit slow, they still run, and thus, break no antitrust laws. (Source: zdnet.com ) When we reported on the rising ... (view more)

A year after competitors Lenovo, Dell, and Apple recalled hundreds of thousands of laptop batteries after reports that they caused overheating and fires, Gateway has reopened its doors to 14,000 additional units. Although the number of batteries ... being recalled is somewhat small in comparison, it denotes that notebook owners are hardly safe, even now, from poorly designed parts. Although Gateway hasn't been fingered as publicly as Lenovo, Dell, or Apple, the company has made its own recall before. In October of last year it called back 35,000 of the batteries produced by Sony after worries ... (view more)

Just when it seemed as though the war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD was settling back into a stalemate, the former has once again regained its position atop the high-definition movie standings. Sony's Blu-ray will be the only format supported by ... Blockbuster when the movie and game retail chain integrates HD content into all of its stores next month. Recently Toshiba, the primary backer of HD-DVD, made headlines with the announcement that it will ship its own HD format "under the hood" of future laptops. That means that HD-DVD drives will be standard in all Toshiba notebooks in the future, a move ... (view more)

So far this year, the Nintendo Wii is kicking some serious butt. If you were to deconstruct the not-so-secret ingredients to the Nintendo Wii's success, two compounds would bubble to the top: unique, motion sensitive controls and a considerably low ... price tag. Although it lags behind both Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 in graphics and media features, the Wii is both innovative and cheap. While Microsoft's console may not have fancy "Wiimote" controllers, recent rumors have suggested the company is considering a significant price drop of the Xbox 360. The first such report on the ... (view more)

Those who own (and survive upon) web pages are well aware that Google controls the universe. For a webmaster, ranking high on its searches, be they organic or paid, can make the difference between driving an Infiniti and an infinitely shop-ridden ... vehicle. That's why it's particularly interesting that one watchdog group is chipping away at Google's monstrous success, attacking the search engine's inability to protect the privacy of its users. The report comes from Privacy International (PI), which recently completed a six month study of 23 different web entities. Google finished dead last, ... (view more)

For those who've recently heard that Blockbuster will be exclusively carrying Blu-ray discs, the high-def movie fight does look a bit bleak for HD-DVD. However, just when Sony thought the high definition movie format war was over, Toshiba pulls a ... fast one. With Sony's Blu-ray shipping in each and every PlayStation 3 and new players slowly creeping lower in price, it was beginning to look as if the company had made up for its gaming console's rather miserable start. Unfortunately for Sony, major HD-DVD backers Toshiba have recently announced their own PS3-like ploy, with each and every laptop ... (view more)

Since NASA routinely puts astronauts in space, you'd think the trip would be filled with all sorts of experiments dependent upon modern science and technology. Surprisingly enough, however, it's technology failing the visitors to NASA's ... International Space Station, while extremely low-tech techniques are saving the day. Blame Russia The problems all started with an unreliable Russian navigation computer. The device hung up on the astronauts last Tuesday, causing a not-so-funny comedy of errors while engineers worked to open external solar blankets. Despite the hiccup, the solar technology ( ... (view more)