RIAA Brainstorm

 

I know how hard it is to be a student, pay for tuition, books, rent, food, strippers… its tough without the RIAA sending you litigation letters demanding you send them $3,000 – $4,000 dollars to make the whole thing go away, otherwise face a lawsuit which could end up being much more ($222,000 in one case). The record companies point to a decrease of 9.5 percent in album sales in 2007. How about actually take a look at the crap your spewing out of the ass end of your record companies, and maybe consider that people don’t want purchase music when shoving shit directly into your ears would be much easier (and cheaper).

 

I don’t know why these judges allow these things to go through. College students already have enough problems with debt, without “settling” an unfair case with the RIAA over supposed music sharing. Leads me to lose faith in our lawmakers and judges, allowing the country’s youth to be raped like this. The RIAA has even suggested that students should drop out to pay settlements.

When you ponder this keep in mind that the RIAA is a multi-billion dollar association with absolutely no proof other than the IP address of the computer that shared music, which can be compromised in many ways… Most students do not even know they are “sharing” files because it is enabled by default in most music downloading programs.

Two Things need to happen:

1. RIAA needs to embrace digital content instead of trying to protect a dieing system and suing their own consumers. Or better yet the RIAA needs to roll over and die.

2. Our law makers need to put in place a limit to how much the judgment can be in a case… Like I said in one case $222,000 for downloading a few songs. Also maybe talk to anybody that knows anything about networking and understand this one fact: IP Adress does not equal a person..

image via: http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/

Writing stike

I will probably be dragged through the streets and burned in effigy if fans have to wait another year for “Lost” to come back. And who could blame them? Public sentiment may have swung toward the guild for now, but once the viewing audience has spent a month or so subsisting on “America’s Next Hottest Cop” and “Celebrity Eating Contest,” I have little doubt that the tide will turn against us. Which brings me to the second stage of grief: anger.

I am angry because I am accused of being greedy by studios that are being greedy. I am angry because my greed is fair and reasonable: if money is made off of my product through the Internet, then I am entitled to a small piece. The studios’ greed, on the other hand, is hidden behind cynical, disingenuous claims that they make nothing on the Web — that the streaming and downloading of our shows is purely “promotional.” Seriously?

Most of all, I’m angry that I’m not working. Not working means not getting paid. My weekly salary is considerably more than the small percentage of Internet gains we are hoping to make in this negotiation and if I’m on the picket line for just three months, I will never recoup those losses, no matter what deal gets made.

But I am willing to hold firm for considerably longer than three months because this is a fight for the livelihoods of a future generation of writers, whose work will never “air,” but instead be streamed, beamed or zapped onto a tiny chip.

Things have gotten ugly and the lines of communication have broken down completely between the guild and the studios. Perhaps it’s not too late, though, for both sides to rally around the one thing we still have in common: our mourning for the way things used to be. Instead of fighting each other, maybe we should be throwing a wake for our beloved TV. via NYtimes

That was one of the writers of Lost… I have heard many people accuse the writers of being greedy, that they make enough money and should not be demanding more. If you think about it what they are doing is the opposite of greedy… They are putting their jobs on the line for this strike.

As much as anyone I hate reality TV, if this strike doesn’t get resolved soon I have a feeling TV won’t be in my life because the only shows I do watch, like “the Office, Lost, Prison Break, Nip/Tuck” take excellent writers to make it happen. Another thing I love about this strike is that the actors are getting behind the writers because I think they realize that without writers, they would be out of work.

With a slightly more optimistic view, I hope that out of this will give more indie movies and shorts a chance to shine.. Also maybe make way for more internet podcasters and entertainers to get their name out there and get a fan base, because we all know that everyone hates reality TV and that fad will not last.

Want to support the strike? head over to http://www.strikeswag.com/ and buy some gear.

Open Social

OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks:

* Profile Information (user data)
* Friends Information (social graph)
* Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)

Hosts agree to accept the API calls and return appropriate data. Google won’t try to provide universal API coverage for special use cases, instead focusing on the most common uses. Specialized functions/data can be accessed from the hosts directly via their own APIs.

Unlike Facebook, OpenSocial does not have its own markup language (Facebook requires use of FBML for security reasons, but it also makes code unusable outside of Facebook). Instead, developers use normal javascript and html (and can embed Flash elements). The benefit of the Google approach is that developers can use much of their existing front end code and simply tailor it slightly for OpenSocial, so creating applications is even easier than on Facebook. via TechCrunch

About a week ago Google unveiled its Open Social platform. Me being a strong Open Source supporter had to write about this.

Many Social Networks have hopped on board, including Myspace. Just when Facebook started gaining some ground they have to pull this stubborn attitude. What advantages Facebook in staying out of the Open Social game? Nothing. They would have a lot to gain and almost nothing to lose. Heck, even Myspace understands what kind of community development and involvement this is going to mean.

And with the announcement of Google’s Andriord OS today (which is an open source development of mobile phones), Facebook will be left out of all that fun… And I bet when its released (‘08) it will be a big hit.

For open social APIs:
http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/

I like Facebook, but seriously this may be the end of their high road.

Swords and laserz

 

Veronica belmont and Tom Merritt (Two of the best tech podcast hosts out there) founded the Sword and Laser, which is a SciFi/ Fantasy book club.    0.o    I’m so in.   The first book? the Golden Compass. Perfect seeing how the movie is just around the corner…. Note to self; bookstore tomorrow.

PS: Veronica and Tom… Good on ya. 
Visit The Sword and Laser

Ajax, not the cleaner.

Here I will list some of my thoughts on some of the best AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) sites out there. The one page I spend most of my time is Netvibes.com so that seems a really good place to start.

Now I know everyone one at some point without knowing it comes accross an RSS feed. Every single news site you read from CNN to the BBC use RSS feeds so you can get updates from those sites anywhere, most people use desktop feedreaders to import multiple feeds. You would in turn get a little beep and a flashing icon in the bottom of your screen everytime any of your feeds was updated. A good way to stay on top of the news of your choice.

Now Netvibes takes this desktop reader and puts it on a web application. No downloading or anything just login. You have different tabs and they have a wide selections of feeds there that you can explore. You have different feeds categorized under different tabs. My tabs include… General, Tech/Web, Linux/Unix, Business, Science, Podcast and blogs.

Just a note there are other applications like this such as pageflakes and prototype but netvibes has the best features from what I’ve seen so far. It being AJAX I can move these little feeds around the screen and organize them to as far as my mind will allow. Its worth checkin out. http://netvibes.com

Ever been to a library or maybe at a friends house and you find you have no access to AIM? Meebo.com is an AJAX IM page where you are not required to download anything and it will log you into ICQ, AIM, MSN, Yahoo and more. Perfect for if you need to log on quick and your no where near your home computer. Check out Meebo.com

RainBow 9

This one is for web developers. Its a HTML, CSS, Javascript editor for your browser. Allows you to preview and publish anything you create, you just have to register for an account. Check out http://rainbow9.org/

I’m not a big fan, or at least not yet of online office application but google has a nice little app called writely. Which if I had to use an online word processor I guess this would be it. Also has a spreadsheet application. Although AJAX is just simply to slow for this type of user interaction. Check out http://docs.google.com/

I do think AJAX is the future of web applications. If anyone else knows of any other cool ajax web apps, please let me know!

Tweet…

Ahoy! I wrote this entry because I had a few people ask me about twittering from the command line in Linux. So here ya go!

Make sure you have Curl installed… If you dont use apt-get to get it. Make a file called twitter paste the code below in it. Replace the user info with your Username and password and put your new file in/usr/local/bin, I guess you can put it where ever you want, Just remember where you put it.

Make sure it has execution permission. I used “chmod 777 twitter”. Then just type in Twitter from the command line and it will give you an imput field for your update.

Twitter uses the simplest API I’ve ever seen.

echo -n “-> “
read text
curl –basic –user “Username:Password” –data-ascii “status=`echo $text|tr ‘ ‘ ‘+’`” “http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json”

*Shakes fist at Adobe*

There is something about Adobe’s back and forth support of the open-source, that makes me all cranky. They had a killer delay for Flash Player 9 and they still don’t support the flash player for x64 architecture. On top of that they promised Apollo would be released across all three platforms, come to find out release date that they would ship the Linux version shortly after. Well here we are ladies and gentlemen 3 months later and no word at all about x64 support or Apollo.

I feel used. They announced the Linux support and Apollo got my undying love until release date. Even then I still downloaded all the cool little apps for windows, but I have my limits. I feel betrayed.

With Pownce releasing its Mac and Windows version, leaving Linux out in the cold, only leaves adobe’s stubbornness to blame. I shake my fist at you Adobe and if Apollo fails, I will not feel pity.

Pownce?

Yep, I have vast amounts of web 2.0 startup accounts that I just don’t really use… However I am really excited about Pownce. File Sharing? IM? Twitter like service? I am so fucking there, although I really hope they do some RSS feed based stuff like jaiku. I would love one place where I can do my some IM, Twitter like stuff, News Feeds and social networking. Myspace is history, I’m tellin ya.

They are invite only but as soon as I get one I’ll pass some along to whoever is around.

Context

 Everyonce and a while I find something on the net that makes me upset. Like this article “Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace”. Let me just quote a paragraph from the article:

“MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, “burnouts,” “alternative kids,” “art fags,” punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn’t play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after schools. Teens who are really into music or in a band are also on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.”

While this may upset you like it did me for a lot of different reasons. I looked a little deeper to see how the author could have wrote the well put together essay on something so really freaking absurd. Found a blog post from her saying:

“I think some folks misinterpreted this piece as an academic article. No doubt this is based on my observations from the field, but this is by no means an academic article. I did add some methodological footnotes in the piece so that folks would at least know where the data was coming from. But I didn’t situate or theorize or contextualize this at all.”

It was here I realised that this was just an essay not meant to really be shared with 90,000 people, it was really just something to get conversation going between friends and things. Someone posted it on Digg, Reddit and a number of other news sites and it got around fast.

Context is extremely important when judging someones written work. Danah Boyd, who is really an excellent writer was thrashed with hate mail and other bullshit. Check out her blog here.

photo via: Noqontrol

Great Wall

“Flickr is the latest casualty of China’s ongoing battle to control the internet. Wikipedia and a raft of other popular websites, discussion boards and blogs have already fallen victim to the country’s censors.

Yang Zhou is no cyber-dissident, but recent curbs on his web surfing habits by China’s censors have him fomenting discontent about China’s “Great Firewall.”

Yang’s fury erupted a few days ago when he found he could not browse his friend’s holiday snaps on Flickr.com, due to access restrictions by censors after images of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre were posted on the photo-sharing website.

Yang just thinks it’s a pain. “I just want to look at some photos! What’s wrong with that?” says the 24-year-old accountant, typical of millions of young urban-dwelling professionals who are increasingly aware of and fed up with state intrusions into their private life.”

Yeah, damn commies! They are in need of a great cyber revolution…