A glimpse of the Internet under SOPA
Adding to all the pitchforks people were raising these last days, this story serves as a remainder of what the Internet may become if this legislation passes.
(...) It was someone from GoDaddy's abuse department, who informed me that they were "turning off" weebly.com due to a complaint.
"WHAT?" I said frantically into the phone. He explained that they had received a complaint about the content of a site, and that they were removing the DNS entries for weebly.com because of it. I asked him if they had contacted us previously -- he responded that they hadn't.
The site in question featured a bad review of a local business, and that business had complained. Why on earth would a domain registrar take it upon themselves to police content?
iTunes will be released in Brazil on Dec. 8
Veja is reporting that iTunes is comming to Brazil, and the launch date is supposed to be December 8th. In addition to that, it seems that Anatel has given the green light to the Apple TV to be commercialized here.
Yes, finally. It only took 8 years, but we will have a decent alternative to pirating songs and movies. I'm really looking forward to it.
Boundaries
The boundaries of our country, sir? Why sir, on the north we are bounded by the Aurora Borealis, on the east we are bounded by the rising sun, on the south we are bounded by the procession of the Equinoxes, and on the west by the Day of Judgment.
—The American Joe Miller's Jest Book
Microsoft may halt development on Silverlight
After flash on mobile browsers, it seems that the next on line is Silverlight.
It's not just Adobe that's altering its plans when it comes to browser plugins designed to play back rich web media - Microsoft's joining in too. New releases of Silverlight, Redmond's big competitor to Flash Player, are reportedly going to be abandoned after the launch of Silverlight 5, expected later this month. This information comes from multiple sources cited by the usually well-informed Mary Jo Foley. They don't know how long Microsoft will maintain support for Silverlight 5 or if there'll be any service packs, but it does seem like the company will be switching its operational focus to other areas and halting active development of Silverlight.
My two conclusions, 1) the future is HTML5 based and 2) why - after COM+, .Net and now silverlight - would anyone choose a proprietary solution anymore?
Flash on mobile browsers is dead
Adobe decided to focus on PC browsing and to contribute more aggressively to HTML5.
However, HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively. This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms. We are excited about this, and will continue our work with key players in the HTML community, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM, to drive HTML5 innovation they can use to advance their mobile browsers.
The Future of Interaction
A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design:
There's a reason that our fingertips have some of the densest areas of nerve endings on the body. This is how we experience the world close-up. This is how our tools talk to us. The sense of touch is essential to everything that humans have called "work" for millions of years.
Now, take out your favorite Magical And Revolutionary Technology Device. Use it for a bit.
What did you feel? Did it feel glassy? Did it have no connection whatsoever with the task you were performing?
I call this technology Pictures Under Glass. Pictures Under Glass sacrifice all the tactile richness of working with our hands, offering instead a hokey visual facade.
Fedora 16 Verne
Fedora 16, codename Verne, was released today.
It comes with the Linux kernel 3.1.0, Firefox 7.0.1 and Evolution for mail. It doesn't come with an office suite, but anything you might want - LibreOffice, OpenOffice, KOffice, Gnumeric + AbiWord, etc - is available from the package manager.
Being a debian / arch linux guy myself, I think Fedora is a nice alternative for someone who might want to use the Gnome 3 desktop.
Bug: Community engagement is broken
The Linux Magazine reports about bug #882274. Opened by Tal Liron in launchpad, it is a nice reading regarding the misalignment between the community and Canonical.
This bug is opened with love. The issue appears to be a communications failure between the people who make Unity and its community of users. The bug is easy to reproduce: open a Launchpad bug about how Unity breaks a common usage pattern, and you get a "won't fix" status and then radio silence. The results of this bug are what seems to be a sizable community of disgruntled, dismayed and disappointed users, who go on to spread their discontent and ill will. It's painful for the community, too.
It incredibly generated a lot of attention and some heated answers from both sides of the argument, and with Mark Shuttleworth participating himself:
If there is selfishness here, it's selfishness on the part of people who DEMAND attention and offer no constructive solution. Nobody has a right to expect someone else to devote their time to a mission in which they have no interest.
The argument goes on and on, but I won't spoil it for you. One suggestion, though: it's a better reading with some popcorn.
