Technology

While I’ve often thought of becoming a dictator, I had no idea my blog could lead me to such power. Seriously, this is a bizarre article. The author goes from Paris Hilton’s cameraphone to Saparmurat Niyazov, “President for Life” of Turkmenistan, in the space of seven paragraphs. It’s as if someone tried to edit a rambling thesis down to one page. Link courtesy of Techdirt, which needs to brush up on its dictators, but otherwise makes a good point. :) ...

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and a very rich man, talks about taking advantage of the broadcast flag in a way its proponents probably don’t like to think about. :) BTW, that is a blog he’s writing.

The tribulations of running a game store are recounted in nine Books by Keeper of the Retail Faith/Game Store Owner Gord. Highly entertaining acts of idiocy, unless you were experiencing them. :) Sample story: “What did you call my son on the phone today!” “I labelled him a petty thief.” “No one calls my son a thief!” “Actually, I labelled him a petty thief. Would you prefer aspiring criminal, or the more accurately descriptive incompetent law breaker?” ...

Technology has the unfortunate quality of tempting people to use it, no matter how deleterious the effects. The growing ability to keep everyone under some sort of surveillance is a good example. Just today, I ran across a couple of stories that really creep me out in terms of what kind of society we are building. The first story is a classic case of how good motives don’t necessarily excuse ill effects. A school in California tags its children with RFID badges and scans them wherever they are in the school. Apparently this gives them a good way of keeping out trespassers, keeping an eye on the kids, and taking accurate attendance. (Hmm, that doesn’t seem like it would be that difficult. I’m thinking it’s a matter of convenience in collecting data, kind of like the idea of checking out an entire cartload of groceries at once by running it under a scanner.) ...

I’ve been using MapQuest for most maps lately, but the new Google Maps looks good. For instance, it seems capable of giving directions that don’t involve getting out on the nearby interstate for what would be a two-mile trip up the street in front of my house. :)

Interesting article in PC Magazine reviewing 15 Firefox extensions, but it leads off with this bizarre claim: “By itself, Firefox is a lean and fast browser, but it lacks some of the functions that we’ve come to take for granted from Microsoft Internet Explorer.” Easy way to lead off an article, but as someone who uses Firefox at home and IE at work, the only functions that I’ve noticed are “missing” have to do with being hacked and the privacy function that doesn’t work correctly. Firefox comes standard with functions that were only added to IE in the Service Pack 2 update, such as a popup blocker. ...

So, some companies are planning to compete with iTunes by offering a music rental service, where you can get unlimited tracks for a monthly fee but those tracks will die if you do not have a current subscription to the service. While I can see some advantages — trying out new music, getting rid of songs you never listen to — I’m wondering why the same companies that can’t compete with iTunes in the first place think folks will drop the “I bought it, it’s mine” mindset given to us by years of buying CDs, records, and tapes? And for that matter, why should we? Record companies obviously did well off of it. Can you imagine being the customer service person who has to explain to a customer why half their collection just stopped working? ...

You know, I’ve managed to avoid buying a real PDA for around this price, yet when I hear that the North American release date for the PSP portable game machine/media player/ potential PDA-lite has been set and the price will be $249, I end up salivating like Pavlov had been experimenting on me. Courtesy of Engadget

I would love this game. :) Courtesy of Salon (C’mon, get the free day pass)

Brilliant. The state of Pennsylvania has just passed a law pretty much requiring that local governments make sure they aren’t going to compete with private companies when they offer broadband as a public service. Interesting precedent. I’d hate the be the municipality trying to put up the town’s first streetlight. Suppose one of the citizens decides to start his own system of flags and hand signals for the main intersection? Courtesy of Techdirt. ...