Firefox 3, Beta 4

I have been running Firefox 3 since beta 2 (OS X 10.4), this is the first time that (from what I can see), the add-ons are starting to fall behind. I don't give a shit about the Google toolbar and the minor stuff, but I really need Flash Block back. The only reason I ever have Firefox 3b4 crashing is because of Flash, otherwise it runs pretty damn nice.

Also, would somebody please get on with the god damn program and figure out how to write a bookmarks add-on for Google Bookmarks? If you don't take into account the Google toolbar, support for Google bookmarks is literally nonexistent. Everyone has a plugin for frickin del.icio.us, so how come there is nothing usable for Google bookmarks?

Except for those two basic nags, I like it a lot. It is faster and runs even better. So please, with sugar on top, Flash Block and Google Bookmarks.

Photo Credit: Photo by pigstyave, used under the terms of a Creative Commons license.

AOL to Acquire Global Social Media Network Bebo

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AOL announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Bebo (http://www.bebo.com), a leading global social media network. Together with its AIM and ICQ personal communications network, the acquisition will give AOL a premier position in the fast growing world of social media with a network of approximately 80 million unique users.

With a total membership of more than 40 million worldwide, Bebo is a global social media network which combines community, self-expression and entertainment to enable its users to consume, create, discover and share content. Bebo is one of the leading social networks in the UK, and is ranked number one in Ireland and New Zealand, and number three in the U.S. Its users are heavily engaged and view an average of 78 pages per usage day. Bebo has approximately 100 employees operating in offices in the UK, San Francisco and Austin, TX.

The deal comes just one week after AOL’s launch of Open AIM 2.0, an initiative that allows the developer community greater freedom to access the AIM network and integrate AIM into its sites and applications, and the announcement by Apple of a downloadable AIM application for the iPhone.

[From AOL to Acquire Global Social Media Network Bebo]

You gotta be shittin' me. First some morons want to add $5 to everyone's internet bill to pay for piracy, even if the user can't spell "P2P." Now AOL, a company that was the symbol of the Web 2.0 sinking ship until Microsoft decided to buy Yahoo out of existence, are blowing $850 million on a god damn website?

WTF is Bebo anyway? I spend pretty much my whole day online, so I expect to have a slightly higher exposure to new sites than say a guy that works at a counter for 8 hours then goes home and surfs for one hour. And I have no clue wtf that site is, except that from reading the press release it is obvious it is some kind of Facebook competitor.

Is it a full moon by any chance and all the dumbasses are coming out of the woods, howling for dumb deals? What's next?

BTW, AOL: I have another site, it is called Veraperez.com. I am willing to sell it to you for 1/1000th of what you paid for Bebo.com. I'll even give you a free USB wireless adapter for the Xbox 360 and an Airport Extreme wireless card if you send me your purchase proposal by COB 4/15.

Photo Credit: Photo by Grant Neufeld, used under the terms of a Creative Commons license.

Music Industry Proposes a Piracy Surcharge on ISPs

Having failed to stop piracy by suing internet users, the music industry is for the first time seriously considering a file sharing surcharge that internet service providers would collect from users.

In recent months, some of the major labels have warmed to a pitch by Jim Griffin, one of the idea's chief proponents, to seek an extra fee on broadband connections and to use the money to compensate rights holders for music that's shared online. Griffin, who consults on digital strategy for three of the four majors, will argue his case at what promises to be a heated discussion Friday at South by Southwest.

[From Music Industry Proposes a Piracy Surcharge on ISPs]

This is the stupidest idea in the still short history of stupid ideas in regards to online piracy. For starters, why is everyone getting taxed? What would happen if the feds said "you know what? Let's make everyone with a driver's license pay $5 a year to pay for people that don't get caught speeding..."?


There would be riots.

Here in the Commonwealth of Virginia we went up in arms simply because they asked us to pay more money as the moving violation got worse.

Also, wouldn't this legalize all online piracy? After all, if we are paying the $5, it means that the owner of the copyright is not suffering damages, right? Not so fast, because this piracy surcharge would only affect music piracy, they are not collecting the $5 to pay Microsoft for all of the Vista licenses being pirated, or Vivid for all of the porn sales that they lose to piracy.
Nope, it is all about the music.

How much do you want to bet that somewhere in a dusty desk drawer there is a music sales market research study that says that, with zero piracy, the average US household would consume $5 in music CDs every month?

Dumbasses.

Photo Credit: Photo by ndh, used under the terms of a Creative Commons license.

TiVo, YouTube to deliver videos to TVs - Internet- msnbc.com

SAN FRANCISCO - TiVo users will be able to watch YouTube clips on their televisions by year's end, TiVo Inc. said Wednesday.

That's the latest move by YouTube to reach beyond the Web's regular boundaries. Fans of the popular online video provider can view its videos on their cell phones and Apple TV, a box that streams movies from people's computers to their TV.

[From TiVo, YouTube to deliver videos to TVs - Internet- msnbc.com]

When I setup our AppleTV's I thought that the Youtube feature would just sit there unused. Next thing I knew, PJ was spending as much time browsing Youtube from his AppleTV than from his iMac (which is great, it means less bickering between PJ and Ivette about who gets to use the iMac). I also like it a lot, after spending just a half hour browsing videos on a 37" HDTV, you don't want to go back to your computer.
Of course, the feature needs work, but it is most an issue with searching and browsing. The videos look pretty damn nice.

The Faraday Cage

A real Faraday Cage is an enclosure that blocks electromagnetic radiation. Over the past few years I have been struggling with my condo because sometimes it feels like I am living inside of a Faraday Cage: my cell reception always sucks and I never get enough signal strength from my wireless access point.

Once we got the two AppleTVs, it got worse. Two AppleTVs streaming off two separate Macs, both on 802.11g is too much of a pain in the ass, and this is assuming the network is running normally. Mine wasn't, so performance for PJs AppleTV was always subpar when used in streaming mode. Because of that, his is setup to pull the actual content instead of streaming it.

Here's more or less what the network was like:

Red: 100MB ethernet.
Blue: 54MB wireless.
Green: Mac / AppleTV pair
I decided to hell with it, why bother with wireless when the condo is just 1000 square feet? I asked my friends around, and they all recommended the same: wire it yourself.
One of my coworkers lent me his crimping tool and his line testing gizmo, plus a bag of RJ45 connectors. I spent about $40 in cable, plus some really neat cable staples and a $10 5-port 100MB ethernet switch.
Last night was patch cord training, since I had not put together an ethernet cord since sometime in 1998. After two hours I had three completed patch cords that could actually pass the gizmo tests.
Today I wired my office, ran a line to PJ's room and made more patch cords. This is what the network looks like right now:


Red: VoIP line (off the Comcast Arris MTA)
Green: 100MB ethernet in my office
Blue: 100MB line to PJs room
Orange: 100MB ethernet in PJs room
There was virtually no benefit to the Mac Book Pro (which was never more than 10 feet away from the wireless access point), but my AppleTV is a little bit more responsive. The real benefit is that now there are no more networking issues with the stuff in PJs bedroom.

Netscape finally put to the sword - Internet - iTnews Australia

AOL has released its last ever update for Netscape Navigator and is encouraging its remaining users to switch to Flock or Firefox..

"Users will see the following major upgrade notice, released as Netscape 9.0.0.6," said Tom Drapeau, director of AOL's Netscape brand, in a company blog.

"When the Netscape 9.0.0.6 upgrade is accepted and run, the following notice will appear, denoting the end of support date and the recommendations of Flock and Firefox."

The pop-up offers users download links to a choice of the Flock or Mozilla's Firefox browser.

[From Netscape finally put to the sword - Internet - iTnews Australia]

Goodbye, funny guy. No surprise here, except why it took so damn long.

Cable Cut Fever Grips the Web

Are underseas telecom cable cuts the new IEDs?

After two underwater cable cuts in the Middle East last week severely impacted countries from Dubai to India, alert netizens voiced suspicions that someone -- most likely Al Qaeda -- intentionally severed the cables for their own nefarious purposes, or that the U.S. cut them as a lead-in to an attack on Iran.

[From Cable Cut Fever Grips the Web | Threat Level from Wired.com]

Well, yeah! What's the web without some good, old fashioned paranoia?
They go on to claim that on average a cable is cut every 3 days, and that there are 25 ships (in the world?) that do nothing but fix cables. What I find the most amazing is the lack of people asking why the hell we still use cables instead of satellite signals.

Fifth Undersea Cable Cut

[From Fifth Undersea Cable Cut - Underwater bogeyman continues secret mission... - dslreports.com]

Can you spell tinfoil hat? I can. So can Slashdot.

The funny thing is how hard it is to find two news sources reporting a consistent breakdown of what is broken and which countries are affected. Or even make a distinction between cables that were actually cut and cables that are suffering outages due to the traffic rerouting.

5 AM, wtf?

Woke up half an hour ago, a bit too lucid so I said wtf, I'll check my email.

The iPhone couldn't connect, but wireless was up. Checked the laptop, again, wireless was up. The cable modem and router looked OK.

It took another half hour to get the cable modem to pick up a lease, and now I am fully awake.

The funny part? I did not have email, something I already knew since I checked it thru EDGE.

And so the Microsoft/Yahoo soap opera starts

Image by judland, used under the Creative Commons license.

Earlier today, we were set us up the bomb: Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo, badly. They are willing to pay $44.6 billion for it. That figure kept most of the people busy until sometime this afternoon some genius figured out that, horror of horrors, Yahoo owns Flickr!

Oh boy, we got us a rebellion.

This is the kind of thing that I was referring too a while ago, when I decided to bail out of Flickr into the less sexier Picasa. While Picasa is nothing more than a simple photo dump (with really handy hooks to online printing, thank you), Flickr is a full fledged community. And what is an integral part of every community? Douche bags that think that they own the site and that its mere existence is a constitutionally protected right. $25/year buys them the right to dictate to stock holders how the company should be run.

Where were they when Flickr was sold to Yahoo? Yahoo is a big faceless monster, no different than Microsoft. Why these people did not go up in arms?

Suddenly Picasa looks extremely attractive, don't you think?