Back in August last I wrote about feeling like a Second class entertainment citizen. I was hoping for some improvement on that front today. Unfortunately, those of us outside of the US are still limited to music in our iTunes. We have not movies or TV to download.

This makes the appeal of the Apple TV somewhat limited. Ironically, despite the fact that only movies we've ripped ourselves, music and photos can be streamed to the Apple TV, it is on sale right now.

Some will point out that the fact that Apple are launching the Apple TV outside the US means that other terroritories must be getting TV/movie support at the iTuns store soon. I hope they're right, but I wont start holding my breath quite yet.

I've had on my desk for the last few months a Sun Ultra 20M2 workstation. Over the next few days I'll be reviewing/commenting on the box and my experiences with it.

Historically from a Unix vendor like Sun, the workstation was the desktop equivalent of the big server (or servers) you had in the server room. Workstations were typically of two types - the low-end workstation (a comparatively recent invention) provided support for the same CPU as used in the datacenter, but in a format that was useful for developers. The high-end workstation is more usually targeted to solving the high-end computing requirements for, say, 3D graphics.

Just this week I mentioned that you could now get 300GB on the move in the form of a 2.5" HD. Now Hitachi have announced that we can get 1TB in a single drive (Hitachi breaks 1TB hard drive barrier with 7K1000).

A few years ago 1TB sure sounded like a lot, but with the amount of digital media even the average person stores now, 1TB seems remarkably tiny. The benefit of 1TB in a single disk is the reduced heat and electricity required to run the drive, compared to two, or even four drives that you might have required before.

The Cell processor from IBM is probably best known for being a core component of the Sony Playstation 3, but there was a time (however brief) where we all though that it form the core of the next Mac, before Apple made the momentous decision of using Intel CPUs instead.

If you want to make use of the power of the Cell then you might want to check out the new series on IBM developerWorks, Programming high-performance applications on the Cell BE processor, Part 1: An introduction to Linux on the PlayStation 3. This promises to be an excellent guide to programming the Cell for your own nefarious (or otherwise) needs. Sadly I don't have a PS3 (I'm waiting for a Wii to be available), and I doubt the budget would stretch to one of these. Donations, of course, are always welcome!

Stories like US 'licence to snoop' on British air travellers make you seriously wonder how far governments will go. We are on a very thin tightrope between security of ourselves and countries and the security of the information about individuals.

It is reasonable to expect information such as passport info, date of birth and other information to be supplied. But other elements - email addresses, dietary requests - seem a step too far.

I can only agree with Shami Chakrabati - a well known figure on human rights here in the UK:

I'm still preparing my review of the Sun Ultra 20M2 (in fact, I'm writing it in the other tab as I type this), but there's a really good summary of the performance of the beast: Geek Patrol | Sun Ultra 20 M2 Performance.

The figures compare Solaris and Windows on the same box and show some interesting differences in the performance of the two OS on what is otherwise and identical box. For example, these results show that bzip2 compression is much faster on Solaris compared to Windows, yet decompression with bzip2 is faster on Windows than Solaris.

In Real Time: A Hunt for Energy Hogs, Jason Fry did some tests to find out what was really using up the energy in his home.

According to his tests, his other appliances - dryer, cooker, etc - used a lot more energy than the computers, routers and other devices. I don't doubt he's correct.

Light bulbs are remarkably inefficient (which is why I recommend CFLs), and anything that includes both a heating element and a motor (like a dryer or washing machine) at full AC voltage, is going to use a lot of energy compared to the relatively low-end motors and silicon in a computer.

In Real Time: A Hunt for Energy Hogs, Jason Fry did some tests to find out what was really using up the energy in his home.

According to his tests, his other appliances - dryer, cooker, etc - used a lot more energy than the computers, routers and other devices. I don't doubt he's correct.

Light bulbs are remarkably inefficient (which is why I recommend CFLs), and anything that includes both a heating element and a motor (like a dryer or washing machine) at full AC voltage, is going to use a lot of energy compared to the relatively low-end motors and silicon in a computer.