Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

The M6 Toll Road is a boon to all those of us who used to get caught up in the horrendous traffic snarl that was the M5/M6 junction. Smooth fresh road surfaces glide across the Midlands, bypassing all the hassle for a (relatively) small fee.

However, it turns out that the road's surface is made from romantic novels. To be precise, the top layer of the road contains around two and a half million Mills and Boon novels.

Richard Beal, the company's project manager for the M6 Toll, said the books' absorbent qualities made them a vital ingredient in the construction of the country's first pay-as-you-go motorway

There are 45,000 books per mile.

Amazing the things you find out from radio trivia quizzes.

While we we're up at Worldcon, the Guardian published my piece on the spyware problem, where I provide the obligatory Hill Street Blues reference...

There's a lot of money in spyware - and it could be yours. Last year, thieves used spyware in an attempt to steal £220m from the Sumitomo bank.

Over half of the malicious software creeping onto PCs is trying to ferret out confidential information rather than cause damage, according to Symantec's latest threat report. The problem is getting so bad that American banks have been officially warned to protect their data - and their customers. Meanwhile adware vendors are making nearly $2bn (£1.12bn) a year from pop-ups, hijacked browsers and redirected searches.

While most businesses know spyware is a problem, far fewer have the right systems in place to protect themselves. The average company may not be at risk from commercial espionage and organised crime, but you can lose time and money to adware that slows down your PCs and clogs up your network. Relying on free detection software designed for home use isn't the best way to protect hundreds of desktop PCs.

Read on for a look at the real scale of the problem, and how businesses might just be able to save money and time with a little bit of software, and a lot of user training...

So that was the Worldcon that was...

( Summary: much fun and edification )

Of course, the whole thing leaves us challenged and ready for another 10 years...

( Post con resolutions: )