Google is Stalking Me
Published February 2nd, 2012 | 
You ever notice how ads follow you around the Internet? For example, if you do a search for “discount fragrances“, you’ll find a bunch of ad for discount fragrances on nearly every web page you visit during that session. It’s like Google is stalking me. Seriously, I was doing a search for info on Doctor Who’s forthcoming season this morning and every site I’m on this afternoon is throwing ads at me for Doctor Who merchandise. It’s like that scene in The Minority Report were the avatars in the shopping mall were following Tom Cruise around trying to sell him a pair of jeans. Creepy.
SOPA Will Break the Internet, But Will Not Stop Online Piracy
Published December 20th, 2011 | If the supporters of the Stop Online Piracy Act believe there piece of crap bill will actually stop intellectual property theft, I’ve got some motorhome insurance to sell ya. Seriously, Online pirates will adapt if this bill becomes law. What will happen is a gross violation of our constitutional rights, a violation that will essentially break the Internet.
Although, intended to block sites dedicated to distributing Pirated material (sites like Piratebay.org and MegaUpload, et. al.), what the bill mostly does is promote censorship and violate our privacy rights. The problem of online piracy has been grossly exaggerated by the entities that support this bill and, to the extent that it is a problem at all, those same entities have created the problem by there own draconian efforts to extend copyright, control access to intellectual property and fix prices. It’s short sighted. Those who download from pirate sites generally fall into two groups: those who weren’t going to buy the product in the first place and those who want to try something out to see if they like it before they buy it. As such, the real loss of income from these illegal downloads is really minimal when you think about it logically. Take a kid who downloads a Jay-Z song illegally. Maybe he was never going to pay for the song. Maybe he eventually pays for the whole album. And maybe he buys a concert ticket or several concert tickets. The government already has the tools to go after pirates and counterfeiters. We don’t need this oppressive bill that will only violate our rights. This is Chinese democracy, folks! Keep the Internet free of government control.
The Kindle Fire is Taking Fire
Published December 6th, 2011 | You wouldn’t ask a bookshelf speaker manufacturer what the the best bookshelf speakers are. Naturally, the manufacturer would claim that it made the best and would no so subtly suggest that its competition makes a lesser product. And so, you can pretty much trust that any pro-Apple content publisher online, will be slanted in favor of Apple and prejudiced against Apple’s competition.
Such is the case with Paid.org is notable for it’s negative stories about Amazon. Recently, Paid.org ran an article critiquing the Kindle Fire. The author took out-context excerpts from a report by usability expert, Jakob Nielsen, to make a case that the Kindle Fire is a piece of crap. Nielsen wasn’t so much critiquing the Kindle Fire device in his post, as he was highlighting a basic display problem when viewing full-page content on a small screen. His point is that most content is not designed to correctly display on a 7-inch tablet device. Of course he did point out that he thought the device was “too heavy,” but, given that his study was done with just 4 participants, one can hardly take his conclusions at face value. That didn’t stop the article’s author from using Nielsen’s conclusions to disparage the device. It’s notable that most of the comments disagreed with both Nielsen and the author of the article and were clearly smart enough to recognize the the bias:
