SOPA lives—and MPAA calls protests an “abuse of power”

 Censorship, Computer News  No Responses »
Jan 172012
 

MPAA, All I can do is a facepalm over this…

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has looked at tomorrow’s “Internet blackout” in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)—and it sees only a “gimmick,” a “stunt,” “hyperbole,” “a dangerous and troubling development,” an “irresponsible response,” and an “abuse of power.”

Wikipedia, reddit, and others are going dark to protest the legislation, while sites like Scribd and Google will also protest. In response, MPAA chief Chris Dodd wheeled out the big guns and started firing the rhetoric machine-gun style. His statement feels unusually angry for the normally unruffled trade group, but the MPAA has long asserted that Google simply wants to profit from piratical ad money.

via SOPA lives—and MPAA calls protests an “abuse of power”.

As one of the commenters said, pot call the kettle black.

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 Posted by Peder at 6:53 pm  Tagged with: , , ,

Visions of the Future

 Video  No Responses »
Dec 232011
 

Here’s a neat set of videos…







And, yes there is quite a bit more on Youtube. I think that this is very cool information!

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 Posted by Peder at 3:08 pm  Tagged with: , ,

Apple Made A Deal With The Devil No, Worse: A Patent Troll | TechCrunch

 Computer News  No Responses »
Dec 122011
 

I  am personally one of the people who thinks that the american patent system is broken.  At one time it was designed so that people had to innovate and make new things, but now, at least in the software world, it’s being used to stop any competition.  Now, thanks to the patent system, there are companies called ‘Patent trolls’ these companies buy patents from a large number of companies and use them to sue other companies or people over ‘patent infringement’.  Now apple just gave one of those companies some patents that they can sue with.

Over the last two years, Apple has been engaged in vicious legal battles over smartphone patents, many of which are aimed at squelching or squeezing money out of manufacturers of devices running Android. And now, for some reason, it has given valuable patents to a patent troll — which is using them to sue many of the top technology companies in the world.

via Apple Made A Deal With The Devil No, Worse: A Patent Troll | TechCrunch.

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 Posted by Peder at 6:57 am  Tagged with: , ,

Tomorrow The Internet Will Begin to Die

 Censorship, Computer News, Earth  No Responses »
Nov 162011
 

This is to anyone that thinks that those of us that live in the United States still live in ‘the land of the free’ …

Tomorrow sees one of the most pivotal pieces of internet legislation pass through the halls of power in Washington. The ‘Stop Online Piracy Act’ SOPA bill, combined with PROTECT IP Act, seeks to give the US Justice Department the power to force Internet Providers into blocking access to any website that is suspected of hosting or linking to copyrighted material.Provision for ‘going after’ ‘disputed sites’ hosting companies; search engines that link to them; payment services that support them, and other ancillary services will also be granted through the act.

via Tomorrow The Internet Will Begin to Die.

So basically, any corporation could yell out ‘Copyright Infringement!’ to any website on the ‘net, and then the site will just disappear.  It doesn’t seem that it’ll matter what site they’re talking about, any site can be brought down, by removal of it’s name from all of the DNS servers in the US.  Any US Based site taken down this way will remove it from the whole world, and it could possibly happen to some sites based in other countries. (though harder, and it’d be less likely to happen outside of our controllable area.)

Small and large businesses that are based off of the ‘net could just vanish and die, I must say that this cannot happen, if it does, there will be some huge, bad, changes to come.

Click the link below to have your say

http://www.mozilla.org/sopa/

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 Posted by Peder at 8:50 pm  Tagged with: , , , , ,

It’s 11/11/11!

 Computer News, Earth, Tech  No Responses »
Nov 112011
 

It’s 11/11/11 today!  isn’t that neat?

It’s a cool day for us geeks, as days where the same number is repeated many times are rare, The last one for quite a long time will be 12/12/12 at 12:12 AM and PM, as we only have twelve months in a year and twenty four hours in a day…  I’ll try to avoid missing that one :)

Also apparently some groups believe that this date may have something to do with the apoclypse, or some metaphysics stuff…  But I just think that it’s a neat date, being able to say that it’s 11/11/11!  In the end it’s just our clocks moving forward, and seeing the changes that are happening to the world.

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 Posted by Peder at 11:11 am  Tagged with: , , ,

Steve Jobs is dead

 Computer News, Mac, Tech  No Responses »
Oct 062011
 

The world lost a great man yesterday…  Steve Jobs, one of the co-founders of Apple, has died.

I may not have used many products made by his company, but I still do have to say that he was one of the greatest minds of his time, without him, I don’t know where computers would be today… though they probably wouldn’t be quite as far along as they are now.

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 Posted by Peder at 8:16 am  Tagged with: , , ,

Linux turned 20 today!

 Computer News, Linux, My Links, PederErickson.com, Ubuntu  No Responses »
Aug 252011
 

Twenty years ago, Linus Torvalds first announced the creation of the Linux operating system, my we have come a long way since then :)

Here’s a full article on Linux, past and present.

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 Posted by Peder at 8:09 pm  Tagged with: , ,

Dell Tablet PC

 Computer News, Windows  No Responses »
Jun 132011
 

Yesterday I went to the Sam’s Club in Startell, MN, and I saw a Dell Tablet/Laptop.  It has a touch screen, and can be converted into a laptop, by opening it, and flipping the screen around.  I used the touch screen for a bit, and found that the default setup on Windows 7 is certainly not made for touch screens.  Defaulting to ‘list’ mode for files in the computer window? BLAH!  That doesn’t work at all!  Otherwise it is a great tablet/laptop

Here’s a short video that I found about it.

Neat huh?

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 Posted by Peder at 1:15 pm  Tagged with: , , , ,

6 Hilarious Ways Game Designers Are Screwing With Pirates | Cracked.com

 Computer News, Games  No Responses »
Jun 092011
 

Yes, I don’t think that people should be put in jail for many years for pirating, but I do still think that it is wrong.  The people that make the games do a lot of work, and usually don’t want people stealing their games.  Here’s some of the funniest ways of stopping pirates…

Piracy accounts for 31 percent of all Internet traffic and, regardless of your personal opinion on the issue, it really does suck for a lot of game developers. But rather than just try to sue the pants off of everyone who ever logs into Bittorrent, some have started thinking outside the box a little.

via 6 Hilarious Ways Game Designers Are Screwing With Pirates | Cracked.com.

I do think that these are some very interesting ways to stop pirates, it appears that many of these worked well, although on occasion a legitimate player got hit with one of these.  In my opinion, the best way to stop piracy is to teach people why it’s bad, such as the fact that the game companies need money to make new games, if you pirate a game, or any other software program for that matter, you will see games and programs that aren’t as good as they could be.

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 Posted by Peder at 9:08 am  Tagged with: ,

Senators Want To Put People In Jail For Embedding YouTube Videos | Techdirt

 Computer News  No Responses »
Jun 082011
 

Seriously?  Are the people in our government insane?

Okay, this is just getting ridiculous. A few weeks back, we noted that Senators Amy Klobuchar, John Cornyn and Christopher Coons had proposed a new bill that was designed to make “streaming” infringing material a felony. At the time, the actual text of the bill wasn’t available, but we assumed, naturally, that it would just extend “public performance” rights to section 506a of the Copyright Act.

via Senators Want To Put People In Jail For Embedding YouTube Videos | Techdirt.

Ok, I must say that I think that throwing people in jail for 5 years for embedding a Youtube video to their website/blog is just stupid.  (actually it sounds like 5 years per 10 views per 6 months…)  All it does is take the person out of productive society, ruin their lives, and make it difficult to get new jobs.

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 Posted by Peder at 9:31 am  Tagged with:
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