Now, do I upgrade to Firefox v2.0 or not?
No doubt, my extensions will break, the appearance changes will annoy me, and it'll eat my profile. That'd be the downside in the worst-case scenario.
The upside is spellchecking in textareas and that nifty Opera-esque state restoration feature. To be honest, though, these don't really excite me: not enough for a major revision, anyway. I mean, seriously… that's extension territory, no?
At least Find-As-You-Type was supposedly fixed. Some might suggest that FAYT is extension territory too, but I'd argue that ctrl+f is fundamental to Windows GUIs. Granted, FF is cross-platform but I'm speaking from my Windows user viewpoint. Therefore, I'm willing to call FAYT a natural development of a standard feature.
Then again, I might subscribe to the thought that anything found in IE6 is 'standard' and anything else should be an extension….. which is admittedly quite a stupid concept.
I think I'll go upgrade.
(Later: smooth upgrade; the only problem was that the damn search box is now variable-width, and so won't right-align on the other side of a Flexible Space toolbar item. Grr..)
Yay, Weird Al! Everyone's favourite parody artist has taken to "happily crediting the internet for his latest album hitting the top ten on the Billboard charts (his first ever top ten hit)".
He says that having his song on YouTube, having a profile on MySpace and everyone downloading his songs (including his song about downloading songs called "Don't Download This Song") helped him get the attention needed to zoom up the charts. Yet, the RIAA will continue to insist that such things are still "stealing" and are destroying the industry.
For all the whining from record labels about how unauthorized downloads and songs on YouTube are somehow "stealing" from them (even though it isn't), it's nice to see an artist who's spent three decades in the business recognizes the promotional value of such content.
The Techdirt article I adapted for this post (thanks, guys) spurned a flurry of comments from sensible people and small-time bands alike, generally amounting to your typical debate about the merits of a more modern distribution medium.
Have you noticed how all mainstream radio is playing mostly music from 10 years ago or older? Only a few new songs here and there – mostly from bands that have been around at least 5 years or more? There are thousands of great bands out there that never get a chance to develop into hit makers because they have no label with money behind them to produce their sound into something better that will break them into the spotlight. No to mention the money it takes to get them onto the radio, or in magazines, to fund a street team, to shoot videos, etc. It all takes money.
Er, no? Arctic Monkeys.. came up from nothing just a year or two ago. Great music, now very very well-known. The Kooks, The Killers, Franz Ferdinand… Lily Allen?! You have been brought up on the myth that you need a record label to save you. You don't. You can think more long term and go the free promotional route: then people will be interested in you and actually invest in your material. TRUST that you're good enough to make that work. And if you have any doubt that you are, then you're probably not and should find a new job.
Don't you just love it when bigshots make up the rules and expect everyone else to agree?
The North Country Gazette has been sticking notices at the bottom of its articles claiming that each is "copyright protected and Fair Use is not applicable", totally ignoring the facy that Fair Use is guaranteed by law. The whole point is to stop people just deciding they can be super-stringent with what they put into the public domain.
A number of sites picked up on the story, from Eugene Volokh's blog through to Techdirt. As Volokh says, "I can just make up the law as I going along, because … because … well I just can. OK, I can't, but the North Country Gazette thinks it can."
And as Techdirt says:
Fair use isn't at the whim of the content owner, and it's not in accordance with fair use to deny "any reproduction."
However, the most ridiculous part of the whole thing is that when Giaclone (a retired member of the bar in two areas) points these things out to the editor of the site, she responds by calling him "an ass," saying that the site would be giving him "some publicity" and accusing him of "practicing law without a license," for which the publication's lawyer and the state Attorney General would be alerted.
All this for pointing out that their legal disclaimer isn't actually binding? And we wonder why some people have trouble dealing with the finer points of copyright law…
Quite right. Some groups of people are just getting too carried away with their control issues over content. Seriously.
Over the past few months we've seen more and more examples of attempting to brainwash kids into believing that all the new-fangled spy technology destined to restrict our freedom is actually a good thing.
For example, there was the instance of fingerprinting clueless kids at an early age to get them used to biometrics, then the MPAA running their brainwashing campaign and the RIAA following suit. The entertainment industry has realised that the future of its age-old arguments and failing distribution model will not hold up for ever, and is seeking to indoctrinate a less well informed generation before they realise they're being led astray.
The latest such story comes from Los Angeles, CA where the Boy Scouts are being offered a "merit patch" for completing one such brainwashing course, compiled of course by the MPAA. Why the Boy Scout council itself did not have a hand in writing the curriculum is unclear, but it seems likely that they figured the MPAA could be trusted.
The big question here is about whether or not the MPAA is teaching the kids about real intellectual property, fair usage or the abusive neglect suffered by artists at the hands of the industry giants. The answer, of course, is 'no'.
From the Boing Boing article:
The merit patch in "respecting copyright" will almost certainly not include any training on fair use, anything about the fact that the film industry is located in Hollywood because that was a safe-enough distance from Tom Edison that the its founders could infringe his patents with impunity; that record players, radios and VCRs were considered pirate technology until the law changed to accommodate them; or that the entertainment industry enriches itself without regard for creators, who are routinely sodomized through non-negotiable contracts and abusive royalty practices. I'm sure it won't mention the anti-competitive censorship masquerading as the Hollywood "rating" system, or the way that the studio cartel's copyright term extensions have doomed the majority of creative works to orphaned oblivion, since they remain in copyright, but have no visible owner and can't be brought back into circulation.
Sure you can be a Scout, as long as you believe exactly what we tell you
The Scouts leaders don't stop at mere brainwashing, and the "respect copyrights" programme is but a single example of it. If, by some chance, their brainwashing fails on a child and said child decides that no, he doesn't want to devote his life and livelihood to Mr Christ, they shun the poor brat.
In particular, a 19-year-old Eagle Scout with 37 merit badges has been ordered to renounce atheism or face expulsion from the Scouts. It's so nice to see that we've advancing as human beings in terms of encouraging freedom of thought and expression. Not.
Although I've not really written about it before, watching the torrent of patent abuse and anti-Google lawsuits has had me entertained for a good few weeks.
In particular, a bunch of Belgian newspapers objected to Google's indexing of their content citing 'copyright violation' and demanded royalties, ignoring the fact that far from really benefiting Google the data in question existed simply to help drive traffic to the websites of those Belgian tomes.
Now, one might think that a website owner would be glad to have high ranks on Google so that internet users can pop along and easily get linked to their content. But no, inline with the media industries' concepts of dragging age-old publication/broadcast models into the Internet age (good luck with that) they are desperate to get paid for it.
Well fine, I imagine Google didn't shed many tears over being ordered to stop serving up links to the news sites from its Belgian version google.be since it's those papers that really lose out on all that tasty, delightful traffic. However, another part of the eventual court order was that Google had to display the order itself on their google.be frontpage, which not only seemed totally unneccesary but which ruins the search engine's famous clean and tidy look. Google appealed and lost that one.
Naturally, though, they made the text as small as possible, sticking it underneath the search box which is practically the only other item on the page. But no, the news sites aren't happy. They want the ruling displayed even more prominently, perhaps even at the top of the page which, frankly, would be ridiculous. Then more Belgian sites jump on the bandwagon and join in the fun because, let's face it, why not?
At this point I'm starting to wonder if Google should just abandon Belgium and let the frazzled remains of their internet community infrastructure implode out of retribution. Or because, let's face it, why not? It's sort of happened before, and it's royally pissed off everyone (read: AFP customers) who had the sense to leave Google be but became victims of the eventual devaluation of their services by court order.
All this commercial legal rubbish is tearing the useful Internet to shreds.
I feel like I should take this opportunity to express delight that Top Gear will go on, and that Richard Hammond is recovering well. I was in Wetherspoons half-drunk when I noticed the news on the big widescreen tele that he'd been in a big crash. I always wished I'd followed Top Gear more closely because I always really enjoy it when I happen to tune in, but just never got into the habit of turning on my tele… probably because I watch all TV online.
I moaned about Tesco's self-service tills ages ago. So long ago, in fact, that my moaning predates this blog so there's no link I can give you. But basically I grew concerned, having scanned my shopping and having been forced to take a plastic bag for a handful of items, I swiped my debit card and was shocked when I was not asked for my PIN number.
Beyond the obvious initial shock at Tesco for not asking for a PIN number at a till, my attention quickly turned to Visa who were clearly authorising the payment anyway. If this is the case, surely any merchant (or possibly just some with a certain reputable status, but still) is 'allowed' to charge a Visa card without any authentication whatsoever.
This sets a certain dangerous precedent… and at the very least it allows any old thief to do snatch my card, do lots of grocery shopping, fly through the self-service tills then pay for it and run away.
Essentially, the problem totally invalidates the usefulness of the PIN readers at the standard checkouts, because anyone using a stolen card will simply opt to use the self-service tills, and then the only people asked to key in their PIN numbers will be the real people using their own credit/debit cards.
Now watchdog Which! has taken note, and pressured Tesco into announcing that they'll be rolling out Chip and PIN on self-service tills over the next two months.
