Month: July 2005

Categories
Apple Blog In The News Politics

Bloggers get ready

There’s going to be a lot of backlash at the blogging community in general thanks to this sicko (Joseph Edward Duncan pretty much detailing his sickness). Just wait until the backlash starts and we get some screwball senator who proposes to require all websites to be registered with law enforcement (the same thing the US has attacked China about).

I’m predicting in the next 18 months, things are going to get rather ugly for bloggers legally. As with any technology a few things will happen:

  1. Someone will find a way to profit – that already happened. There’s a bulk of commercial blogs by CEO’s, companies, media with no other purpose than to gain cheap brand exposure by littering the blogosphere.
  2. Someone will find a way to abuse – that’s already happened. From terrorists (who you can bet have used the medium), to criminals, etc.
  3. Someone will try to legally nullify it, or sue it – that’s about where we stand. Apple started, and it’s going to just escalate. Don’t be surprised if blogspot gets sued by the family or someone else as a result. As if they personally read all of the millions of posts.

Things will get ugly. Don’t forget the whole Patriot Act debate going on. This is right in there. It’s going to get ugly.

Please rel=”nofolllow” links like the above… lets not promote their google rank like many of the ignorant media outlets do.

Categories
Internet Mozilla

BitTorrent

I said over a year ago Firefox should support BitTorrent. Opera now has support. No it wouldn’t support piracy, or any of the other silly comments people have given over the past year about why it shouldn’t be supported. Launching yet another app to download a file is silly. If Firefox dropped FTP support (because it too is just another protocol, and doesn’t relate to web browsing). There would be a boat load of complaints. It’s not a kitchen sink. It’s a usable protocol. What people do with it is up to them. There are many legitimate BitTorrent uses. Linux distro’s use it for example. So do some gaming sites (those giant demo’s). The protocol isn’t illegal by any means. Just some individuals misuse of the protocol. The web is used for illegal purposes all the time, it doesn’t mean Firefox encourages it.

I’m a fan of the protocol. The problem is that it’s still to complex for average joe. Current clients are awkward and slow (while better than previous generations). Why do I need another program to download a file? And for those currently using BitTorrent, imagine the benefits of 60 Million users with BitTorrent capable browsers who can easily participate in torrents.

I still believe it’s a good idea. Congrats to Opera for realizing the benefit of the protocol and realizing the end user can benefit from it. That’s what software is about: benefiting the end user.

Categories
General In The News Mozilla Personal

Back from Aruba

Back from a week away in sunny Aruba [CIA Factbook | Wikipedia]. Beautiful sunny weather, resort, beaches, food. Saw Geraldo Revera [perhaps better link], (apparently staying in the same hotel on our floor, or the one above) and Greta Van Susteren (not sure if she was staying there or another hotel in the area). ABCNews also appeared to have some people there. Obviously in regard to the Natalee Holloway situation.

In other news the hard drive in my laptop is failing, and CDW failed to ship the new drive I attempted to purchase. Tomorrow is the 4th of July, so likely won’t get to call them and speak to a human being until Tuesday, and I’m sure it will take a few days to arrive (sigh). So I’m down to 1.25 computers (my laptop is at about 25%, and my Mac is at 100%).

I’ve got quite a bit of catching up to do as well, reading, bugmail, etc. etc. I’ll be taking care of all that relatively soon.

So that’s why things have been quiet, and will continue to be somewhat erratic (until I get my new Hard Drive, since my email mainly resides on my laptop for mobility reasons).

Oh yea, congrats to Daniel Glazman on NVU 1.0!