A couple of weeks ago I asked Is data sharing going to far?. I think I basically answered the question myself with the thought that, yes, it is, and worse it is doing so here in the UK in an inconsistent fashion.

Now, mentioned both in UK proposes sharing data among gov't agencies and Is U.K. Data Sharing Proposal a Move Toward ‘Big Brother’?, the question of 'Big Brother' (nothing to do with the recent TV controversy) is being asked.

I started off my review of the Sun Ultra 20M2 workstation (Sun Ultra 20M2 workstation - part 1) with a look at the history of workstations and what they used to mean in the market, and a brief overview of the hardware.

Before I go into more detail on how the workstation feels when you use it, I took a brief interlude to try the Geekbench performance measuring tool on the box - so far I've tried only native Solaris 10 and Windows XP. Both are the 64-bit versions of the respective operating system, updated with the latest patches and the latest driver disk (1.4) from Sun for the U20M2. For comparison, I also added in a 24" iMac (with the T7600, 2.33GHz CPU).

So the iPhone was announced last week, and while there's lots to like, there are many elements which for me either don't fit, or that I would have preferred to see in a separate device. Let's take a look at the detail.

The good:

The touch screen interface, and the UI in general, looks amazing. The integration with the desktop looks good too, if it really does handle everything they say it will. The widescreen, switchable, display, and the other sensors, will turn a comparatively stupid device into something that handles more instinctively. The display is gorgeous, from the perspective of the quality and clarity.

Lost Planet arrived on my desk from Amazon on Friday morning. In release terms, many people are calling it the closest thing to a stop gap between Gears of War and the forthcoming (and eagerly anticipated) Halo 3. Despite my sometimes serious demeanour, there's nothing I like more when unwinding than killing a few unrecognizable aliens on my XBox 360.

In many respects Lost Planet fits the bill. In others, you can see that there are some serious problems with the game. I should stress, however, that despite the issues, the game is incredibly good fun.

Lost Planet arrived on my desk from Amazon on Friday morning. In release terms, many people are calling it the closest thing to a stop gap between Gears of War and the forthcoming (and eagerly anticipated) Halo 3. Despite my sometimes serious demeanour, there's nothing I like more when unwinding than killing a few unrecognizable aliens on my XBox 360.

In many respects Lost Planet fits the bill. In others, you can see that there are some serious problems with the game. I should stress, however, that despite the issues, the game is incredibly good fun.

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.