FCC & The Intertubes

FCC commissioner Ajit Pai discusses Netflix, net neutrality, politics, municipal broadband & such.

TPB AFK

I guess Sony got pissed off after their servers got hacked & people downloaded some movies & stuff.

Your Intertube Immortality

The Uniform Law Commission is plotting ways for your online life to be handled in a secure way.
If your account goes dormant for long some providers just delete you. If your death is confirmed some places freeze your accounts.
Technically you are not allowed to let other people use your accounts as part of your terms of service with FaceBook & the like so you're not really allowed to let the executor of your estate access your stuff. Even if you did & put all your passwords into your will, that would become a public document after your demise. Seems like that last part has to have some kind of fix just going back to safe combinations. I dunno.
Anyway these guys are going to fix everything & change the service providers' TOSs.

Read more here

Net Neutrality

One of the bitches about this is that there is a third party, the content owners who don't want you to have tapes & disks in your hot little hands. They want you to stream their stuff so you can't steal it from them - like they are great conservators of their own stuff.

Are Your Departed Loved Ones Necro Slaves ?

I do not endorse this company, but they are spot on about the current online memorial services.
I paraphrase

Dad worked hard all his life and now that he's passed, he's still working - selling online advertising.

FWIW, your family can probably get it's own website with message boards, videos, databases & such for around a hundred bucks a year, so 5 zeds or more & you can probably beat the big guys' price of $20/yr apiece & you can set it up anyway you want and no advertising.
Well, if you want to run ads for cousin Otis' bait & ammo shop - go for it.

Pirate Browser

Pirate Bay, the torrent search engine has released a Firefox plug in called PirateBrowser that intends to get around government imposed web censorship.
I mentions the nations of Iran, North Korea, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Denmark, Italy and Ireland and, while the United States isn't on the list, Hamilton County, Ohio doesn't exactly hold the first amendment in high regard & one of Hamilton County's congresspuke is fairly open to internet control / censorship. Might be something to look into if the freedom hating freaks & CO    allies, the CCV have their way.
It is currently Windows only but the developers are promising Linux & Mac versions.

Media Bridges Announces Closure

Media Bridges, the public access venue for Cincinnatians on Time Warner Cable is calling it quits. Originally funded by cable vieweres like you, that support ended due to the original agreement or Time Warner just weasling out - I forget. The city provided funding for awhile & they did some fundraising but Cincinnati had to withdraw funding due to budget constraints. Now their fundraising efforts have fallen short & they're throwing in the towel.
With outlets like blogs, YouTube, Vimeo & such, local access TV is kind of an anachronism, I guess but Media Bridges also offered some training & gave people a chance to use a control board with 3 cameras, mics , titles & telephones to do live shows with live calling - yes, a chance to fly by the seat of your pants. The archival nature of blogs & video don't exactly provide for that live experience and, while the info is out there, it's nice to have a teacher you can bounce questions off of.
oh well - wonder if Ed Rothenberg will figure out YouTube….

UPDATE: Fishwarp clarifies how cable companies lobbied state governments to allow the cable companies to weasel out of paying for local access here

I Can't Read
I give up. I can't read these fucking things. Maybe I am a robot. Some guy online recently asked me if I was related to the great Geoff Peterson, so, maybe that's the problem. I might be having a Rachael moment here....

Timelines

As the dreaded PhaseBuch rolls out it's new Timeline feature that pretty much nobody likes, Google has decided to kill it's very nice Timeline feature. Beloved by students, teachers, sports fans & history geeks, it apparently had no value for the Google overlords.
The world has gone mad.

SOPA is Bad

Anonymous Commenting

The Porkopolis Fishwrap has announced it will "end anonymous commenting" by forcing would be commenters to register with FaceBook.
Anybody who follows the comments knows who the regulars are & what to expect from them. I imagine it can be pretty shocking for someone who isn't used to the wholesale sociopathy that is SW Ohio to read the comments on an article about their kids or local school or charity. That's ok. They probably wouldn't have returned to the mosh pit anyway.
UPDATE: yeesh around 1,400 comments - 98% negative.
Anyhoo, if you don't want to participate in an online dialogue on local current issues the FishBook way there's lots of other choices.
For example:

• Building Cincinnati
• Cincinnati Beacon
• Cincinnati Blog
• The Cincinnati Monocle
• Cincinnati Black Blog
• Cincy Streetcar
• City Kin
• City Beat
• C.O.A. .T.
• The Daily Bellwether
• Fuck Yeah, Cincinnati
• Look Everybody - A Blog!
• Losantville
• The Over the Rhine Blog
• 5chw4r7z
• Urban Cincy
• Visualingual
• And for a more comprehensive list:
   Cincy Bloggers

The Teacher Is NOT Your Friend

Missouri has passed a law preventing teachers & students from "friending" on social media services that allow private messaging. Apparently they don't want kids to turn out like Waldo.
Thing is, teachers and students have always lived amongst us. Teachers have always had rules limiting their behavior. Kids have always been stupid & misinterpret the intentions of teachers.
This legislation is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
It also highlights a problem with social media which is that none of us is just one person. Short of establishing a number of accounts, it's hard to address that with junk like PhaseBuch, MySpaz or Tweeter. Why would an adult teacher want a student reading about cousin Jimmy's upcoming operation? I know I wouldn't have wanted my high school teachers reading about my personal teenage crap.
That being said, being a middle aged geek who likes cartoons, punk rock & zombies, I have accumulated a lot of young "friends" on the intertubes. Some of these kids clearly don't get the idea that they are posting personal crap to the entire world. More than once I have thought about asking to talk to their parents. Maybe their teachers could do this. Well, not in Missouri.

NPR story here.

BYTE BACK

Byte magazine, started in 1975 pretty much reported the birth of personal computing. At one point there were a gazillion PC magazines but with the advent of the intertubes, the geeks migrated online & the paper publications began to suffer. McGraw Hill dumped the magazine on a tech publisher who promptly killed the magazine around 1998.
This July it came back online under InformationWeek.
Wondering how to make a Mac 10.7 install disk? Check out Byte.

ICANN OKs .XXX

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has okd the use of the .xxx top level domain. They did not approve .gay.
Not everybody was pleased. Somehow some people posting adult content think it will be good for their businesses. Porn traditionally spoofs popular names, titles & stuff. Will people get rich with urls like IBM.xxx or marthastewart.xxx ?
It will certainly make it easier for ISPs & governments to block the sites. This actually appeals to some adult content sites. One of their big problems is dealing with minors stealing their parents credit cards & accessing adult sites by lying about heir age. Parents are frequently less tolerant of the sites that have to deal with canceling charges than they are of their lying, thieving pervo-brats.
It won't bode well in authoritarian countries or in first amendment challenged Hamilton County with it's obsessive morals police like Simon Lies, Phil Burress & their minions in the CCV & OCA not to mention the local throng of Gothardites.
Fox News predicts it will bring an onslaught of porn to the internet. uh, guys? Have you looked at the internet lately? I have no idea why established sites would want to change their addresses or why non adult sites would choose the domain given it's likely banning in a number of markets.
We shall see. The phrase, "Be careful what you wish for" comes to mind.

Politico story here.

Virtual Self Flagellation ?
Are the God Hates Fags guys hacking themselves now? I can't get enough victimization....(Sing it, Mick!)
El Reg story here.

More Diversions

A Love Story
Blue Tongue Films - all sorts of macabre little shorts. I love the handprint left on the doorframe in this one.

A little longer one.

I Love Sarah Jane
haha - these guys are great!

Cyber Security
I was babbling at one time about cyber security & compared server administrators to broadcast transmitter engineers. They both manage conduits of information dissemination. So why are broadcast engineers required to be licensed by the government (and required to physically defend the transmitter) but server administrators aren't required of any certification other than their employers wish that they have some kind of hardware / software manufacturer's ?
Jimmy Lehrer's News Hour sent a reporter to The Black Hat Convention in Las Vegas to interview hackers & retired General & ex CIA Director Michael Hayden. While the licensing I am advocating wasn't mentioned I think the dialogue makes my point. It's important that we secure our communications systems but also our utility, service & manufacturing systems as well.

Part I: here.

Part II: here.

.xxx

The porno guys on the web have been pushing for a xxx suffix for porn sites for awhile. It holds appeal for porn businesses because it would make it easier for schools, libraries & parents to block their sites. Sound illogical? Well, it keeps them from having to deal with kids using their parents credit cards & racking up charges & then having to square it with parents who blame the sites & not their perv kids.
ICANN said, Friday, it will consider adding .xxx to the list of suffixes people can pick for their websites.
The problem around here in 1st Amendment challenged Hamilton County is that hyper active law enforcement types & psycho-pervs like the CCV could & probably would try to force all local ISPs to block sites using the suffix.
It would not be a mandatory thing & nobody expects established sites to change over. Altho the bible belt psychos would probably drool at the chance.

AP story here.

The Importance of Naming Your Product
BPOS ? Really?
Micro$oft has a product called Business Productivity Online Suite AKA BPOS.
In these times of snarky internet acronyms, is that really such a good name? Somebody from the marketing department needs to go.

Music After 50
Found an interesting website dedicated to musicians who are over 50 called Music Over 50.
I have to say I have found nothing there of much value but I think the concept makes sense. It is not a year old yet. I found the site through the FaceBook Gretsch page. While it might sound kind of morbid, this site could be a great asset for older musicians who have suffered disabilities, strokes, arthritis & such. Obviously it s meant to appeal to an older audience of a world dominated by yunguns.
It's a web 2 / social media type site & will need some time to build up and will, of course, be dependent on user activity, but it targets a real niche & could just catch on.
So why is the tune, "Old & In The Way" bouncing around in my head, now ?
LOL