The fact that there was any debate over whether to call in experts on such a matter should tell you something about the integrity of Congress. It’d be one thing if legitimate technical questions directed at the bill’s supporters weren’t met with either silence or veiled accusations that the other side was sympathetic to piracy. Yet here we are with a group of elected officials openly supporting a bill they can’t explain, and having the temerity to suggest there’s no need to “bring in the nerds” to suss out what’s actually on it… The chilling takeaway of this whole debacle was the irrefutable air of anti-intellectualism; that inescapable absurdity that we have members of Congress voting on a technical bill who do not posses any technical knowledge on the subject and do not find it imperative to recognize those who do.Joshua Kopstein, Dear Congress, It’s No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works (via drinkyourjuice)
This used to be funny, but now it’s really just terrifying. We’re dealing with legislation that will completely change the face of the internet and free speech for years to come. Yet here we are, still at the mercy of underachieving Congressional know-nothings that have more in common with the slacker students sitting in the back of math class than elected representatives. The fact that some of the people charged with representing us must be dragged kicking and screaming out of their complacency on such matters is no longer endearing — it’s just pathetic and sad.
Decades of evidence from around the globe all show the same thing: making copyright law or enforcement stricter does not work. It does not decrease infringement at all — and, quite frequently, leads to more infringement.From TechDirt’s article on PROTECT-IP and SOPA, titled “The Definitive Post On Why SOPA And Protect IP Are Bad, Bad Ideas.” If you had to cut down the entire argument to two sentences, these two are the ticket. By the way, in case you missed it the other night, there’s a letter floating around, allegedly sent by NBC Universal to its suppliers, attempting to strongarm them into supporting SOPA. Chew on that while you’re eating your breakfast of turkey and stuffing.
Now this is a Black Friday alternative we can get behind, even if we disdain the use of Comic Sans in this image. Alexis Madrigal’s heart is in the right place. Chrome or bust!
Tumblr just put up this site warning people about the dangers of PROTECT-IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Read up, kids. This is important.
![futurejournalismproject:
Pick a site, any site, and “share” buttons are littered all over the place.
Mozilla/Firefox is asking why not bring that basic functionality up to the browser. [more]
Not sure how we feel about this. Here’s why. While browser-level functionality would be great, this feels like it could create a situation where Firefox (or Google) picks the winners, rather than letting the market decide for itself. What if, five years from now, Tumblr is as big as Twitter? Or some social networking site we’ve never even heard of usurps Facebook? (It’s happened before.) One could argue this is why Apple’s Twitter integration in iOS5 is a bad idea. At some point you create an artificial monopoly by integrating directly into the browser. And plus, from a Web designer’s perspective, they want that control. It’s their content; let them promote it. They can do A/B testing to know what works best for them. This, however, is one-size-fits-all. It would ultimately curb, not promote, sharing. Let the users decide for themselves. A good developer knows how to integrate these cleanly. Teach good design; don’t let Firefox excuse bad design.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltskvcKOEs1qedj2ho1_500.jpg)
Pick a site, any site, and “share” buttons are littered all over the place.
Mozilla/Firefox is asking why not bring that basic functionality up to the browser. [more]
Not sure how we feel about this. Here’s why. While browser-level functionality would be great, this feels like it could create a situation where Firefox (or Google) picks the winners, rather than letting the market decide for itself. What if, five years from now, Tumblr is as big as Twitter? Or some social networking site we’ve never even heard of usurps Facebook? (It’s happened before.) One could argue this is why Apple’s Twitter integration in iOS5 is a bad idea. At some point you create an artificial monopoly by integrating directly into the browser. And plus, from a Web designer’s perspective, they want that control. It’s their content; let them promote it. They can do A/B testing to know what works best for them. This, however, is one-size-fits-all. It would ultimately curb, not promote, sharing. Let the users decide for themselves. A good developer knows how to integrate these cleanly. Teach good design; don’t let Firefox excuse bad design.
![imwithkanye:
I’ll let Jack explain
“Perhaps it will impress on you how sluggishly your pages load to learn that pornography sites download much faster than washingtonpost.com does! Trust me on this. And those sites’ pages are much more ‘content dense’ and have significantly more ‘dynamic’ content and ads than washingtonpost.com, with very little simple text (obviously!). . . .
“By contrast, your site subjects me to a tedious, lumbering stream of browser ‘Waiting for [various] plug-in’ messages and download-progress bars. Meanwhile, my screen remains frozen, so I can’t even scroll through the content that has already downloaded. This seldom happens on the porn sites I frequent.”
We want to see Jack do a side-by-side comparison in a video.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ls1db73NoV1qanm80o1_500.png)
I’ll let Jack explain
“Perhaps it will impress on you how sluggishly your pages load to learn that pornography sites download much faster than washingtonpost.com does! Trust me on this. And those sites’ pages are much more ‘content dense’ and have significantly more ‘dynamic’ content and ads than washingtonpost.com, with very little simple text (obviously!). . . .
“By contrast, your site subjects me to a tedious, lumbering stream of browser ‘Waiting for [various] plug-in’ messages and download-progress bars. Meanwhile, my screen remains frozen, so I can’t even scroll through the content that has already downloaded. This seldom happens on the porn sites I frequent.”
We want to see Jack do a side-by-side comparison in a video.
Yes, the die hard hipsters on the internet might flock to G to be the first kids on the block embracing the new network, and might even have their own little Google Plus cliques, but most of those who have gone there have found it to be an empty room. They’ve left one party at Facebook, which yes, may have been going on a bit too long, and could be starting to wind down, but arrived at a new one where simply no one has shown up. And those who have arrived aren’t exactly calling their friends to come on over, as there isn’t a whole lot to see. It’s the same party with different decorations but only 3% of the guests. It might be nice there’s better music or drinks, but none of that matters without anyone there to hang out with.
This is bunk. Paul Tassi of Forbes, are you reading the same Google+ we are? If so, shut up. This isn’t the experience of a lot of G+ users. Also, why are we judging a service based on a month of usage? We’re comparing it to services that have been on the market for years already. Let’s compare it to Google Buzz, a service that people stopped caring about after a couple of weeks. People still care about Google+. Linkbait if we’ve ever seen it.
» This means there were 41% fewer websites accessible to China’s residents at the end of last year, compared to a year earlier. And the statistic comes directly from the Chinese government itself (well, a government-run think tank, at least), so it’s probably not an overstatement.
Long live the PopEater brand and their penchant for LiLo. You will be missed.
Why take these perfectly good sites and convert them into nebulous blobs of the Huffington Post? This isn’t the worst example (that’s Urlesque folding into HuffPo Comedy), but it’s definitely in the top five.
I can’t add much to what’s already been (and will be) ...
One of the perks of being an early employee...
Over the last 90 days, the Digg...
#FMMDI (at 30 Rockefeller Plaza)
Thanks. I guess my thoughts are as follows:
1. I think...
A certain hacker group that’s been making headlines lately hacked the Senate’s website. However, they stole nothing of value — they only obtained information about to go on the site itself. The firewall protecting the Senate’s important documents kept them away from the data that could have been potentially harmful if released. Investigators traced the weakness in the system back to one senator’s office, but the senator hasn’t been named. In a press release about the incident, the hackers made it sound like this wouldn’t be the last time they targeted a government site, either. One thing is for sure — the White House should really look into cyber security if some amateur hackers are breaking into government websites this regularly. source
U.S. Develops “Internet in a suitcase”
…the kit is just one of the many tools currently being employed by the Obama Administration to craft “shadow” networks in countries whose Internet has been disrupted or, as was the case in Egypt or Libya, turned off entirely.
With a moderately inexpensive $2 million price tag, the suitcase is but one of the many projects the U.S. government is reportedly researching and deploying as part of an effort to clandestinely support repressed populations abroad. >continue<
‘Liberation technology’ for dissidents | “Mesh network” tech
Virgin Mobile pay-as-you-go phones: The tool of choice for revolutions. Great work by the U.S. for working on a way to undermine dictators who use cable-cutting as a way to undermine free protest.
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