September 2008 Archives

Back in Hawaii and a lot to get caught up on. Updates across the board. You should find my Denver layover story pretty funny.

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I guess its my own fault for being called Matthew, but my email address (almost all of them) start with a letter that means I get more spam than those with other starting letters. Those letters are "A", "M", "S", "R" and "P". Email addresses that start with these letters on average have 40% of their incoming messages being spam.

The results of a study by the University of Cambridge and reported by the BBC looked at around 550 million emails going to a British ISP to determine what factors could attract spam and found the link to how the first letter of your address can affect your spam levels

The most popular letters for spammers were "A", "M", "S", "R" and "P". about 40% of all the messages arriving in the e-mail inboxes of accounts with addresses that had one of those characters as their first letter were junk. Much less popular were "Q", "Z" and "Y". For these cases, spam was running at about 20% or less.

Other factors were a bit more obvious, like having email addresses that are susceptible to dictionary attacks and having multiple addresses that are the same name at different domains. What annoys me about this study is that they were able to identify which messages where spam a lot better than my ISP. I might do well to change my name to Ziggy.

This is not a political post; I could have easily used any other Wiki example to make my point.

It has been revealed that in the 24 hours preceding the announcement of Sarah Palin as the Vice Presidential candidate for the Republican party, an intentionally deceptive "Young Trigg" amended the Wikipedia entry pertaining to her. A rather unremarkable entry turned into something overly glowing and complimentary. More than 30 edits were made in the hours leading up to the big announcement regarding Palin, and several hundred have been made since.

The powers that be at Wikipedia have now blocked changes and have amended some of "Young Trigg's" additions to Palin's bio, but they have not removed all of the changes. The day of the announcement, my coworker went straight to Palin's Wikipedia entry and read it out loud so we could all hear it. At the time I thought, "Wow, what a bio!"

As an academic, I've been reluctant to use Wikipedia for anything of importance. The information contained in wiki entries is suspect at the very least, and blatantly wrong at its worst. On a personal level, my husband, a retired Ringling Clown, is listed in a short list of clowns on a Wikipedia entry about clowning. It appears as if he is one of 20 amazing and incredible people in the clowning industry. I can tell you this not the case and there are hundreds more clowns with much tighter and impressive resumes than him. I did not make the wiki entry and neither did he;the person who did is unknown to us and even though I've asked them to amend the entry, they have not.

As an instructor, I do not allow Wikipedia entries to be used in a bibliography, and I would never use them as a conclusive resource for anything, no matter how small or large. There is just too much room and allowance for questionable amendments to make me comfortable trusting it as a source of information.

Well, Google went and did it: They put out a browser. The new Chrome Browser is in Beta and it looks great for now. Do we really need another browser in the war?

For those who don't know: There are 4 main browsers - IE, Firefox, Safari and Opera. You then have a bunch of others that are just as important, but are not as popular as these four.

Google Chrome is the "Open Source" Browser with a faster load time. It uses a "sandbox" practice so malware has a harder time getting through. It is based on the Webkit, which is the open-source browser engine that Safari uses. It also has security and anti-phishing features installed and is totally customizable.

Just like Firefox, you can get plugins to enhance your browser. The system embraces multi-process architecture which should not take down the whole browser if one page hangs. I reported it on my Flickr as the "AW SNAP" page.

Another big advance is the searching capability (gee! Who would have thunk that came from Google). The "Omnibox" is integrated at the top of the browser. Omnibox has the learn feature and let you use other websites searches - for instance the search at the top of geeknewscentral.com. Omnibox would treat it like you were using that search and count toward it.

The most interesting feature is the "Incognito" concept which doesn't log any information. It doesn't mask your IP or anything like that - it just doesn't log anything on the computer. That way you can get the kids presents without them snooping in the cache to find out when you were last at toysrus.com.

Walt Mossberg has been playing with it for a week now. He says that Chrome is a "smart, innovative browser that, in many common scenarios, will make using the web faster...". He feels the roughness is because of the beta and will go away with time.

There are some concerns over it. As an IT Pro, I wouldn't deploy this browser simply because of the fact that Google can update it at will. I really don't want someone else playing with these programs for I could find a web program not working correctly because of it.

That is why, according to Sillicon Alley Insider, out of the 75% that use Internet Explorer, 25% are STILL on IE 6. I wouldn't be surprised to see a majority of those in corporate. IE 6 is the default browser installed with XP.

Another concern is Google's history of privacy. With DoubleClick in Google's stable, they might be able to pull on all your history. Maybe even the stuff you deem "Incognito".

It was no surprise to see Google make this browser. The rumor has been going on for years. It was just only a short time ago that Google decided to act upon it. After all, they will need a browser to bundle with Android, right?

I have installed and tested Chrome. I find it to not be much different than Firefox except for it being a touch faster. I tried to kill a process, and the whole browser did fail at one point. I opened four tabs in Firefox with different content and duplicated the sites on Chrome. I noticed that Firefox did take up more memory (166 MB vs. 120 MB of 4 separate processes).

Of course this is a striped down model with no plug ins and still in beta. So in all reality, take the claims with a grain of salt. Let's see what happens when people get their hands on it. The tune might just change then.

Another company is proposing to offer free broadband everywhere. M2Z is gathering venture capital funding and preparing to bid on next year's auction of the advanced wireless services-3 spectrum. I wish them luck.

Their business model, based on getting the spectrum in the first place, indicates deployment by late 2009, with ultimately 95% of the country covered by their ad-supported, free wireless broadband at speeds of up to 768 kbs, almost twice as fast as current wireless broadband offerings. They also intend to offer "premium" services of 3-6 mbps for the low low cost of $20 a month.

Sounds good to me, as I sit and write my check out for 3 mbps monthly through ATT DSL and it's a lot higher than $20.

Of course, the telcos and current wireless providers are crying foul. They don't want to compete with free. It might force them to offer higher speeds at more reasonable costs. As it is, I've long believed that the telcos and cable companies are gouging the market with their high rates and low speeds, while profiting (and pocketing) plenty of my hard-earned cash. The model should allow for infrastructure building to increase speeds and lower costs, not line someone's pocket. The capitalist society we live in, however, lives and breathes to make money, not provide service, and the customers are stuck with whatever is being offered to them.

I am reminded of a question I used to ask students in software classes: "What is Microsoft in the business of?" I'd get a lot of answers, but never the right one. Microsoft is in the business of making money. They aren't in the software business. They are in the business of making money. It is the same with the telcos and cable companies. "Free" and "useful" and "fast" don't fit in their frame of reference.

I'll be interested to see if M2Z can get up and running.

Update: Google has updated the EULA and say the license terms were a mistake! You are now safe to use the Browser without fear of Google profiting from your work.

If you use the Google Chrome Browser you automatically give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty free and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

Google what Happened to do No EVIL?

Until the Google Chrome EULA is changed, I will not be using the Google Chrome browser.

Let’s see your a Comcast executive and you are looking at ways to guarantee success of a new video download service. So the executive comes up with a plan.

1^st Lets cap bandwidth on all of our customers to 250gb per month

2^nd Lets scare people into canceling their Vudu, Apple TV, Download Netflix Account, or any other service which people use to download media by imposing the cap!

3^rd Lets introduce a Video download service.

4^th Lets tell customers using our Video download service it does not count against their cap!

Well the 4^th item has not been announced yet, but I could see the greedy executives at Comcast contemplating this. After all its within their internal network and cost them nothing to back haul it to the customers.

In my opinion Comcast has a lot of nerve introducing this after so publicly telling people they are using to much bandwidth and implementing ridiculous bandwidth limitations.

OK. Keep in mind I have many different passwords. You can't use my MySpace password with my Bank account. You can't use my Paypal password with my email. But I do have a couple general passwords that I use to sign up for websites.

As I was working today I realized - I signed up for 5 different new services out there and I used that same password. I would guess I sign up for 20-30 new sites a week. Thats a lot of places where my password is.

How do I know if my password is safe? Granted, they can't get to my financials with this password, but they could find my profile in several other places and make life more difficult for me. Change the password, change or even delete the profile.

It's not a big deal for me. If I lose my MySpace profile, or the multiple Ning sites I signed up for, that is OK. I can always change the basic password and start over. It would be a pain, but at least it's not affecting my overall personal and financial life.

Once again I go back to the question: do I know if these people can't get into my passwords? Worpress uses an MD5 hash encryption. There are sites out there that offer programs to encrypt and even Decrypt this security. How do I know the webmaster didn't just retool the wp_users field in the database for plain text passwords?

Even today, the word "password" is a common password for people on sites like Myspace. It really should be something like "Passw0rd" so there is some security to it, but the best thing would have it not be password at all.

Here is what I follow on passwords.

1. Multi tier - My email PW is different than my Social Networks PW which is different than my banking PW. I may also use a different email address or logon as well.

2. Don't use the Dog's name - Alex is a great dog, but won't ever be my password. Don't even use kids, street names, or other obvious words. After all, how secure can my long password be if they know it starts with Alex?

3. Two or more words, Different patterns - Alexrocks is a safer password than just Alex. The password crack software usually goes through the dictionary. Therefore making your password 2 or more words makes it harder to figure out.

Alexr0cks is even better, Alexr0ck$ is even more secure. Uppercase, lowercase, numbers and Special characters makes the patterns even more difficult. Of course, the more characters and the more change, the better.

4. Change a password - Business has adopted the 90 day password for a reason. Changing the big passwords every year is a good rule.

5. NEVER give out the passwords. If something happens to you - you should put information down in an area so people can get into your data. I still wouldn't put down a password though - just the location and maybe a username. In an envelope and at a safe place like a lock box.

6. Understand who your giving your password to - That website looks cool, but can it be trusted?

I'll probably continue to join sites. Like I said - I am not using my Bank password for Whatever.com's blog. Hopefully I can trust those I sign up for.

Science daily has an article discussing a new book, "What Bugged the Dinosaurs? Insects, Disease and Death in the Cretaceous," by George and Roberta Poinar. In it they discuss the effect that insect born disease and parasites possibly had on the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. Modern technigues have shown that diseases like malaria existed during the Cretaceous and were present in blood taken from parasites preserved in Amber.

I love the new information we can discover from materials that are so old, and build such complex pictures of what was essentially a completely different world. Well worth the time to read the full article. It sort of puts a damper on the Jurasic Park idea though, if there are parasitic organisms mixed up in the dino blood samples there is even less chance of sequencing dinosaur DNA than ever.

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Tune in to hear what my Doctor had to say, I think you all will be surprised what he said is causing my chronic cough and yes I'm gonna live :)

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There is no bandwidth crisis. At our highest usage, we are using less than 50% of the available bandwidth worldwide. WORLDWIDE.

So why is it we need usage caps in the first place? Presumably, according to the telcos and cable companies, we are quickly using up available bandwidth and when it's gone it's gone. That's what they are telling us.

But even at the current growth rate, we won't use up the world's available bandwidth for many years. And simple infrastructure upgrades will continue to make more bandwidth available over time, always keeping us well ahead of the game.

I wish there was a way to call the telcos and cable companies on their blatent lying about bandwidth capability, and the fact that they are using that argument to apply caps to people's usage. Boycotts are all well and good but sometimes you don't have any choice in provider and have to take what is handed to you. How do we communicate to the telcos and cable companies, call their bluff, and make them change their tune and being to serve the customer?

And, I'm still looking for a bandwidth meter...if anyone knows of a good one, I need to see what kind of traffic we're using here in my house.

The 2008 People’s Choice Podcast Awards start in about a week and I have been very busy getting the site ready for the kick off. This year I have made some significant changes to the sponsorship model.

For the first time ever podcasters are going to be able to become sponsors to help promote their shows. This was done because we have had a huge demand in the past for a podcaster sponsorship category.

I am expecting a little over 3 million individual nominations and over 13 million page views in the next 6–9 weeks of the event.

For all of you that have asked to be a reviewer this year, I will be contacting you within the next week or so and getting you up to speed on how the process will work.

If your a podcaster get your audience members ready to nominate you as we are about to kick this thing off.

I thought that the good old chain letter was a thing of the past, until I received a letter in the mail today that invited me to participate in a pyramid scam. The scam asked me to send a $10 gift to the first name in a 5 person list, then send a letter with my name on the list to 200 people and wait for the money to roll in. I have heard it said before, that if you are tempted to commit a crime your first choice should not be to mail your name and address to 200 strangers.

It did get me interested in how prevelant traditional mail based scams still were in the day of spam and was surprised at how many hits I got on a simple google search. There are actually a number of very prolific mail scams that crop up all over the world. Considering that most scams these days are organised it was strange to see that these limited run type scams would be so common and so alike. I could not see how a scam like this could benefit an organised group without them getting caught by having their address in the scam.

I thought it might be a convenience factor, by finding a pre-written scam on the net its easier for an opportunist to use that than write their own. Then I found a website with a reprint of the scam online (I won't post the link for obvious reasons). Besides a couple of extra references from Oprah and a retired lawyer, it also added a suggestion to get your 200 addresses from a company that sells lists of addresses.

"[company] sells a list of 200 names for only $40.00. They also ship next day C.O.D. The best part is that the names come on self-adhesive labels that you can just peel off and stick right on to your envelopes. This company also accepts Visa and MasterCard so it’s more convenient to get started."

While I cannot link the scam to the company (so will not name them), if they are not directly linked to the scam they are probably benefiting directly from it. Its disapointing sometimes to see how many people are out there that are willing to con other people to get a quick buck.

Hey folks my allergies got the better of me today. It has been a pretty bad 24 hours and I have been as congested as one can get. In fact I have not had this bad of a allergy attack in many years.

I am pretty sure what is causing it and will be dealing with it in the morning. But I just could not do the show tonight. I will be pack with you tomorrow night..

Todd...

A judge decided that J.K. Rowling would suffer "irreparable harm" if the Harry Potter Lexicon, a labor of love for an unpaid web writer, were to be published. Yes, this is a victory for J.K. Rowling, who at this point will never want for money for the rest of her life, but a serious blow to fans and readers everywhere.

I find it amazing and ludicrous that a fan's companion work could be any kind of "threat" to an author who has already established herself and admits that she is "done" working on the series to begin with. In her mind, Harry Potter is "finished" and she will no longer be pursuing the storyline. As an established author, with an incredible fan base and readership, J.K. Rowling should have nothing to fear from fan-authored companion works. In fact, she should welcome such publicity and focus on her work; it can only bring more fans and readers to her.

I may have had some respect for the nobody author who wrote her first novel in coffee shops while her son slept in a stroller. But I have lost much of that respect in the last few months as I watched her misplaced lawsuit progress. Yes, she won the legal victory. But what damage did she do to fans and readers, in the long run? I hope it was worth it.

She could take a lesson or two from some other famous authors, like Neil Gaiman, who welcome and encourage fan companion works. He's not hurting from such activity, that's for sure.

Move over Kindle...there's a new reader in town. Plastic Logic has presented a demonstration of their new eReader product at the DEMOfall 08 technology conference. As yet unpriced, it is expected to debut in the first half of 2009. What's different about this reader?

It is aimed at the business market, featuring a full-size touch-screen that will more easily adapt to business-type reading. It's also only several ounces in weight, and made almost completely from plastics that are much more environmentally friendly than the silicon-based readers that are now on the market. It is 8 1/2 by 11 in size, and no thicker than a pad of paper. It can connect wirelessly or through cable, and hold thousands of documents. Battery life is measured in days rather than hours, and durability is increased because there is no glass involved. Cambridge University's groundbreaking research into high-resolution transistor arrays on flexible plastic substrates is the backbone of how the new reader works.

It can support an array of file types, including business and office documents as well as traditionally-published electronic resources. But here's the kicker: it is designed specifically for magazine and newspaper reading!

I was not impressed with the Kindle because of its size and weight and tether to Amazon. The Plastic Logic reader is definitely something I could be impressed with, and maybe spend a few dollars on.

Back in the Saddle yesterday I was miserable details on the show. Huge stack of Tech today as expected. Podcast Awards Kickoff and Vacation Announcement!

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Rumors are a flying today that the iPod Touch can do VoIP calls via a Wifi connection. This may be the perfect excuse to give my lovely wife my current iPod touch and go out and pick up the new model.

The kids get pretty excited as they end up with the hand me down media players. I have to confess though that my 12 year is not giving up her Zune. She loves being able to pick the music she wants to have on the device through their all you can eat plane.

It is obvious that Apple is not interested in a subscription model. But I will settle for VoIP on the iPod Touch for now.

It looks like Google has drawn the attention of Mommy Government with the proposed partnership with yahoo. It is another case of people crying about big companies being “anti-competitive”. Google owns 70% of the search market and yahoo has about 20%. I am not a math wiz but that leaves about 10%. Other companies are obviously able to get a portion of the business and they are doing so. I understand that Google is huge so that makes them an easy target. The average Joe will not care if some rich tech guys get harassed by the feds. I just don’t understand what is anti-competitive here. No one is forcing any webmasters to use Google’s services. We are free to get our own advertising for our sites instead of using adsense. And we can shop around for other ad space for our businesses instead of using adwords from the Googsters. I can just hear the whiners now, “but it is not fair, we don’t have a chance against a big company like Google, they have to be stopped”. People with that attitude will never be competitive anyway because they will not try. They would rather use the FORCE of government to get there way. Using bureaucrats to force companies to do what the competition wants is more anti-competitve than anything I can imagine.

A few years back there was no such thing as search marketing but since Google perfected it (until someone does it better) some folks believe they need to be punished. It is similar to the merger between XM & Sirius Satellite Radio. The FCC wanted to keep it from happening or impose big restrictions on what changes the companies could make when they combined. The reasoning said that the consumer had to be protected. Protected from what? 10 years ago this technology was not even available but all of a sudden consumers have a RIGHT to a certain price and conditions on satellite radio. Bureaucrats are basically saying that average Americans are too stupid to make good consumer decisions so we will do it for them. These big companies provide a great service to people and that is how they make millions. They should not be punished for doing humanity a favor.

Never forget 9-11, Hearts go out to our Texas Listeners. I spend some time on the soapbox tonight and a listener chimes in as well. Action packed Tech Show..

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Color me confused, but I don't understand the new Microsoft commercials at all. You know the ones, they feature Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates.

I watched the first one, and reserved judgment. Now I've seen the second one, and, well, I still don't know what to say. I've never been a huge Jerry Seinfeld fan to begin with, but these seem even weird for him!

And what's the point? Commercials are supposed to make you remember the product. I don't even know what the product is, and I've seen both the commercials multiple times. And anyway, isn't Bill Gates retired? What's he doing stumping for...whatever it is Microsoft is trying to sell in the commercial?

The initial buzz made me think that geeks were just being cranky in criticizing the commercials. But I have to say, I pretty much agree with most of the comments I've heard this far. What the heck is the point of these commercials? Strange.

For the second time in under a week Apple has rejected a Podcasting Application from The Apple App Store. Earlier in the week Cliff Ravencraft of GSPN had his Podcasting Application Rejected from the App Store as well.

Then today the folks over at Podcast.fm had their application rejected with language that was identical to the rejection notice Cliff received. The odd thing about this is that their are already a couple of Podcasting Applications in the Apple App store (Diggnation Application & Mobility Today Application) the question is why where they approved?

Is Apple playing favoritism in their decision, or more sinister did Apple once again want to slow the progression of new media in lieu of keeping their mainstream media partners happy?

Lets face it, Apple has done very little if nothing to help the podcasting space since July of 2005 when they introduced podcasting download support into iTunes. It is my opinion that the iTunes Podcast Directory is a dismal failure, with 10’s of thousands of podcast listed that are no longer being produced. 

Apple has done nothing to help promote the podcasting space beyond the iTunes functionality. Because in doing so they would have had to recognize that your don’t need a iPod to listen to a podcast. Which has caused many content consumers to become confused thinking they needed a iPod to listen to a podcast.

The Featured Podcast section of iTunes has always been a bone of contention, and subject of a lot of rumors of being able to be influenced by outside firms and old media companies. It is readily apparent that they have bent over backwards to make old media, over-shadow the new media content creators which grew the space into what it is today.

In all honesty Apple has done more to hurt the podcasting space then help it since late 2005. I have talked about this at length on previous podcast and this topic will be a subject I cover on my podcast next Tuesday. 

Here is a little known fact, since the introduction of the Zune Media Player and their prominent placing of Podcast in the Zune Marketplace 13–16% of todays podcast listeners get their podcast on a Zune Media Player. I base that numbers on statistics obtained from over 1000 podcasters that use the RawVoice Podcast Statistic Service. Microsoft has done more to promote podcasting in the past year then Apple has.

Microsoft and Zune are now even signing on as sponsors at podcasting events, something Apple has never done!

In lieu of Apples Action I have stopped RawVoice’s development of an iTunes Podcasting Application. The walled garden of Apple has become very apparent and based on these reports it appears that Apple is becoming a little bit like Microsoft used to be.

One thing is certain the existing Podcast Apps in the App Store should be removed in fairness since the other two applications have been rejected.

It was reported earlier this week that HP is thinking of making it's own flavor of Operating System for their computers. They have been apparently having a hard time trying to get HP machines work well with Vista. According to Business Week, they have a team that simply builds fixes and updates that can and will circumvent certain aspects of Vista.

The new OS would be based off the Open Source Linux OS. HP's "Customer Experience" group was created to look into what people want in a computer. The group has only put the new OS in a thought process right now.

It's great that we are looking into ways to move away from Windows. Even though Linux is an answer, there is still a lot of work that needs to dominate the market. All within moving around an Open Source license agreement.

The reality is there can be too many flavors of Linux out there now. HP Linux would be great for HP users, yet will HP Linux be installable on a Dell? What happens if you move from one machine to another - Who would even support that?

The reality is we want Open Source, but whatever we add to it, we want that system to become "Mine" rather than "Ours". Of course HP doesn't want to see HP Linux on a Dell, nor does it want to make their code Open Source so Dell can copy off it. Still, what made Windows a viable option was that it's base system could be installed - and supported - on almost every machine.

Ubuntu has been pretty good in turning that thought around. We still have all these different "Subprojects" like Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Edubuntu. There is also a Mediabuntu - as a media server. Sugar is the OLPC - turned Open GUI project by ex OLPC President Walter Bender.

On the flip side, you do have different versions of Vista - Home, Business, Ultimate, for example. 32 bit and 64 bit versions. All of them supportable by Microsoft.

Apple Mac is the only one that seems to have 1 flavor of each version. Apple works off a Unix core and runs POSIX - compliant code. There is no 32 bit version of Leopard - it's all 64 bit. If HP Linux is to learn off anything, it should be how Apple does it.

The best thing for HP would be to spin off the OS unit. Make it a project that has a 5 year startup Business Plan attached so HP doesn't get cold feet and close it down if people don't latch on right away. It can then be made a multi-computer Operating System that everyone could use - whether on HP, Lenovo or Dell.

If HP moves forward with this, we'll see another front in the "Windows Free World". HP will have an uphill battle with it though - Not only because of Microsoft and Apple, but the other Linux variants that are freely installable on different types of systems. It will definitely be a large project for HP to undertake.

I sure hope the IQ of new media consumers is higher than that of the average old media watcher. I do not watch much news on TV. It is a waste of time. Well last night my friend is telling me about gas going up. We are in Georgia. So apparently the hurricane has disrupted a refinery in the Gulf of Mexico ….again. The talking heads on the news are saying gas will be in shorter supply and the price will rise. They say you might want to fill up before it happens. Well this sends the thundering herd of idiots out to line up at the gas stations. What do you think happens when people are lined up to buy a product whether or not there is a shortage? The freaking price is going up big time. If I am a barber & I see a line of people out my shop doors, I only have time to do so many haircuts. So my time becomes more valuable so I can raise the price. Supply & demand people! I have no doubt the news people are right when they say prices will rise but they cause a panic by promoting fear as usual. So the prices go way beyond what they would naturally. New media providers are hopefully more responsible than the old school TV people. They don’t have to promote one bad thing after another to keep consumers watching or listening. What if CNN said that drinking bleach is absolutely necessary for good health? I bet 5% of the population would wake up dead the next morning! The herd mentality has to stop. If all I can do as a part of new media content is call out people for doing dumb things so be it.

Todd had the story in the podcast last week about California charging citizens to download or get paper copies of laws. One patriotic guy was distributing them online for free. This guy is a hero and will have to go court to be vindicated in some people's eyes but not mine. Just because some government says something is illegal like this guy giving away information on laws & state codes does not make it wrong. You would think the courts will rule in his favor but I would not bet on it. You see the court’s judges are part of the same government that is responsible for this stuff. This is the most egregious abuse of authority (ask yourself where authority comes from & you will be close to freeing your mind) I have seen in a while. The state is using copyright to keep their little monopoly going. They say they are “doing it to raise money for the people of California”. The “people” are the ones paying! They pay if they break a law or a commit a code violation. But they have to pay first to see if they are about to do something wrong. Ignorance of the law is supposedly no excuse for breaking it. But to charge people just to see the laws is criminal. California has a huge economy so their “public servants” cannot keep their hands off all that money. His website is here.

I was reading a story about a bit torrent site concerning some data that some people did not want made public. I won't mention the site since it would defeat the purpose of this post because I don't want the data seen either. I see things like this all the time and not just online. some group decides that a website has content that may not be suitable for, well, anyone. So they make a big deal and get lots of publicity. Guess what happens then? The website blows up since the word is out. By complaining about content these groups draw attention to the very thing they don't want anyone else to see. Some obscure site that 500 people may stumble across turns viral and 100,000 people see it. The same thing happens with CD's (these things are what music used to be played on). Some group decides that society cannot survive the release of a violent or sex laden music CD so they boycott Walmart and make a bunch of noise. All this does is create interest in the very thing they wish to oppose. When I was in school I remember a couple of rap albums that got all kinds of criticism for their content. Ice Tea & The 2 Live Crew was constantly in the news. I actually bought the Ice Tea cassette (square thing with rolled up film like tape that played music). I probably never would have known who Ice Tea was if not for the helpful protesters. So if you want something to be silenced then keep your own mouth closed.

I believe in the First Amendment whole heartedly. I know that in order for my speech to be free I have to give that right to others. Popular speech does not need protecting. Unpopular speech does. I can choose to not listen to things I don't like or stay away from people who say things that I find awful.