DISQUS

do the gubbmint weenies who have their undies in such a bunch over a viral advertising scheme understand just HOW STUPID they look in all of this?

i guess psychiatry has progress some while we weren't looking... they are now able to pith an elected leader in such a way as to kill off their sense of humor once elected.

note to the good people of Massachusetts: you elected these IDIOTS. please go clean up your mess.

normally I'm right there with the EFF when they take up an issue. this time they have it completely backwards. all that would have to happen is someone in our oh-so-unfabulous gimmiement (as in "mine, all mine, gimme!") to leak that they were displeased with certain papers, stories or writers based on the results of this assinine bit of tech and those foriegners would become instant rock stars! you would have handed them a great big badge that says "USA hates me!" and it will only magnify their impact.

no, what we need in our gimmiement are real analysts with real brains that are seriously engaged in reading what foriegners are writing and coming up with better strategies for achieving our ends in this world without unnecessarily pissing off everyone else who lives on this planet.

to enigma_foundry:

we were well on our way to becoming a police state long before our favorite boogeyman struck on 9/11. bin laden simply accelerates the progress in that direction.

it is very sad really. we have debased so many of the institutions that educate, protect and preserve our freedoms. people really do not understand the philosophical underpinnings of those freedoms. frankly, i fear that in a few years we may well lose them all in this irrational quest for "security".

our quest to "be safe" will result in the destruction of what our Founding Fathers fought so hard give us -- freedom.

while i think luis is right -- corporate entities owe everyone privacy and confidentiality for our information the same way our government does -- i think the problem is really more of a system architecture issue.

there are plenty of decent technologies for creating VPNs and doing end-to-end encryption. there are also plenty of ways to serve remote filesystems up to a user over a VPN. why is that sort of data EVER on an end user system period? it belongs on a remote filesystem served up securely over a VPN EVEN IN THE OFFICES!

if the data never really leaves the nice comfy confines of the data center, losing the laptop, desktop or PDA that can connect to that data should not be that big of a deal unless the user has also compromised the security token along with the computer or PDA.

instead of specifying stupid penalties and bureaucratic procedures that will make NO SENSE at all, we should get them to wise up and specify some intelligent modernization of their computing architectures so that laptops don't have that sort of data just lying about on the hard drive.

...but you are missing the REAL point of this farcical exercise...

ALL governments will eventually dissolve into tyranny (or fascism) and OUR government is NO EXCEPTION.

there are those who simply do not want Americans to have the freedoms that were given to us by our Founding Fathers because those freedoms get in their way of treating us as frightened sheep to be shorn at will of our property and freedom. the fact that the "paper of record" (hah) is going along with the imposition of this assininity is because both the Left and the Right want to make us into those sheep. the question is what kind of sheep we will be told to become...

the creation of Homeland (in)Security was a cruel joke. it should really be called "Department for the Imposition of Total Control". our government uses the Bin Laden boogeyman to stampede us into willfully surrendering our Creator-given rights to property and liberty in the pursuit of "security".

i am so sick of what i see in this country that it makes me want to puke.

we really need to find an effective way to fight back, take control of our government and re-guarantee the sanctity of rights to property and liberty.

...and as far as it goes, i generally enjoy reading what gets posted here. usually i find something interesting.

to be honest, i skimmed the Carr piece and found it sort of irritating. there are more ways to get a blog noticed than to have an "A" lister provide a link back. it almost seems as if they want success bundled up with a bright red bow and left on their doorstep by UPS! it just doesn't work that way.

the instapundit case and the daily kos case show that people follow trends and fashions (wow, big revelation huh?) and they'll go surf certain websites and read certain blogs for the same reason that people used to watch the popular TV shows -- so they can talk about it with other people they hang out with!

if your goal is instapundit/techdirt level traffic and all you have is a "joe schmoe" blog you had better figure out a value proposition that will attract a readership -- you have to be offering people something more than "hey, here's my new baby pics" or "god, my boss is an ass" rants if you expect them to read your stuff. and then once you get publishing consistently, you need to work it baby...promote, promote, promote. there are blogs that teach you how -- there is more to it than having instapundit link to you.

and i don't understand the point of MikeT's comment about the "power structure". a smaller blogosphere does not imply less traffic for the A list blogs at all. if anything, it would the potential for more since there would be less competition for the available eyeballs to read it all.

Noel - you are missing the point. the layer of CRAP that VH1 slapped on OK Go's video was TOTALLY UNNECESSARY. the video was unprotected. why did VH1 feel a need to protect something that was unprotected??

all that VH1 is accomplishing is alienating a portion of their userbase by cooperating with Microsoft's crude attempts at platform lock-in. why commercial websites (who theoretically at least) want to achieve the broadest user base & capture the most eyeballs use proprietary plugins and multimedia formats is completely beyond me. it is really hurting their business with mac users and linux users (don't get me started about how far the linux flash player is behind the current pee-cee release...).

as we roll into the age of MS Vista and start to see Microsoft and others try to tighten their grip over the "user experience" (just who is "trusted" when you have TCPA running anyway?) and people will force this issue to a head if significant numbers of them exit the Windows building for other platforms (and i really hope we do!).

interesting post and comments. recently I decided that over the long-term (between right now and the imposition of Vista and TCPA on the computing public) I was going to figure out if it was really feasible for me to jettison WinXP Pro as my laptop and desktop OS.

after some reading of various blog posts and web pages, I decided to take an old laptop (a Dell C610) and install Ubuntu. i tried to install the version that has a default Gnome desktop. the live CD would run but the installer would lock up midway through copying the files to the h/d. i d/l'ed the KUbuntu version (a KDE default desktop) and it worked right out of the box. my prior experience with mandrake v8.x was nasty; this was easier than installing Windows until I got into the tricky parts; re-config-ing X (trying to use a higher screen res I thought the laptop did but didn't).

after installing firefox (i like google notebook and sync...) i surfed over to myspace.com since i use it and knew it would require me to install Flash. that was where things got sort of ugly -- the only Flash you can get for Linux is v7 and most websites that inflict Flash on their users are at least at v8 and myspace is at v9. a v9 Flash player for Linux is still months away. while i only have a couple of days tied up here, i can see that unless there is some sort of sea change, Linux will remain crippled as a viable desktop OS competitor.

Reason 1 -- Plug-ins rule. the average web user has plugins for Flash, Shockwave, Quicktime and how many other things. if you can't use them, you may as well be blind and deaf in the land of the living web. most of the folks in linux-land can't surf these websites and actually see the content.

Reason 2 -- Cash rules. i believe that an unholy alliance of interests REALLY REALLY LOVE Vista and what appears to be its TCPA underpinnings. all the computer manufacturers like it because they will probably sell a lot of new hardware because of it. software manufacturers like it because Vista will probably frustrate users into buying new versions of programs they already own. the "fascist" element likes it because they will assert more control over my computing environment than they should ever have. now cash is in tight supply. if you are gonna spend it, where would you spend it? on a new platform where you can cause users to spend theirs to get your stuff or on a system that users get for free and where much of the software is free? for these reasons, there is a lack of incentive to build things for the linux platform.

Reason 3 -- Freedom can be a problem. as observed, the fact that linux is free anyone can decide to roll up a distro. you can easily see that linux distros are like the weeds in my driveway -- they just keep sprouting. this means that linux !== linux in all cases. you cannot be assured that what you develop for ubuntu or RH or gentoo or ... will work in all cases. so if you are a supplier are you going to spend your cash developing for such a fragmented situation?

Reason 4 -- Open standards won't happen where vendors have a proprietary interest. it is true that IF there were a standard for Flash, someone in the F/OSS community would implement it. the problem is that macro-dobe doesn't see how that advances their interests. it is unlikely to change since i believe they and many other s/w vendors would much prefer the lock-down features of Vista and TCPA that will NEVER get implemented in Linux. and trying to reverse engineer something like Flash would run afoul of that wretched DMCA regime.

i really believe that until there is a way to fill in these gaps you won't see linux be a viable competitor for users desktops -- they want to be able to deal with flash-besotted pages and look at quicktime files and so on -- regardless of how well the actual install becomes (and in the case of ubuntu, it became EASY)...

i will most likely keep kubuntu running so that i can try some of the other multimedia apps i would need if i did switch (audio and video editing) but unless we can begin to easily address the plug-in gaps, i don't see most people converting...

just my $0.02...

...or we could adopt something like the Swiss approach to homeland security...

it used to be that EVERYONE in Switzerland was required as they became of age to report for mandatory military training. part of that training was to learn how to properly care for and use firearms. i suggest that every American be told to report for training and then as you board public transport, you will be issued a firearm. the standing order will be to shoot to kill anyone who in any way threatens the safety of the plane.

who needs air marshalls?

In response to Lewis' reluctance to simply toss software patents into the dumpster (where they damn well belong), I have this to say:

All that software patents did was to tilt the playing field in the direction of larger entities who have phalanxes of lawyers to file patents on their software navel lint! When s/w patents became (horrid!) law, they severely disadvantaged ALL small players then in the marketplace and ALL players to ever follow in the marketplace because these patents that have been granted for OBVIOUS and PRIOR ART by a corrupt and stupid patent agency has made it such that small players simply cannot compete.

The NTP patents were bogus as all hell. So are these dingbat database patents. So was Eolas' patent for what we old assembly language hackers used to call a "wedge". It is IMPOSSIBLE to write code without standing on the shoulders of those who came, saw and coded before you.

Software and business processes NEVER should have been allowed to occur. People spoke out against them at the time but Big Business got their way by buying what they wanted from the legislative branch.

Mark my words well. Software patents are slowly eroding our ability to compete. We are headed to 3rd world status and the slide is slippery.

ripping your own CDs rather than buying DRM-ed files from whoever is the way to go for 2 reasons: quality control and freedom from DRM problems in the future. quality is huge for me -- 128kb fixed rate MP3s end up with too many weird artifacts that cause my ears to go nuts after a while. i can listen to 160kb variable rate files all day.

the sheep flocking to iTunes will figure out the real cost of their shearing one day. so will those who have gathered around PlaysForSure (would you bellieve this coming out of Microsoft's mouth? wouldya?!), Real or whoever.

the good news is that these days there ain't much in the way of Big 6 recording artists that i really care to listen to and the local artists i favor can't afford to buy XCP or some other garbage like that to put on their homebrewed releases...

making net neutrality part of our anti-trust legal structure *might* make some sense if we could be assured that it will be enforced. after all, we can no longer count on the FCC for anything meaningful since it seems bent on doing but two things these days; currying favor with the large bloc of small minded right-wing religious zealots by "cracking down" on dirty words and rolling over for whatever Big Content (RIAA, MPAA, the big 5 labels, movie studios) and Big Business decides is Good for AmeriKa.

the root problem is that i don't buy my network access for the great stuff the network provider brings to the table. unfortunately, the network operators all seem like spoiled bratty kids whining about how content creators (who paid for their network connection the same way i paid for mine) are using up all their bandwidth as if they had something to offer on it that would be compelling enough to look at! the network operators just don't get it. i buy my access so i can go use google, yahoo!, tech lib front, yada yada NOT because i like SBC or RoadRunner's great content...

if network operators succeed in doing this, there will be geeks everywhere trying to come up with something else in an awful big hurry...