It's funny; when people first started talking about ebooks, there was a feeling that they'd catch on more for reference books than casual reading, that it woulkd take a long time for newfangled gadgetry to make inroads on the comfortable, traditional feel of curling up with a good book ( Read more... )

Yes, My Esteemed Audience, Your Obedient Serpent finally has a Twitter account.

@athelind, of course.

When I was six years old, my father, a newspaper publisher, took me into work to show off the brand-new, state-of-the-art layout and compositioning system that had replaced the gigantic, '40s-vintage printing presses that we'd had heretofore. Even at that age, my fondness for technology and science was evident; it was 1970, after all, and I had ( Read more... )

Originally posted by paka at More signal boosting for Internet Privacy.
Originally posted by lupagreenwolf at More signal boosting for Internet Privacy.
Originally posted by evieeros at More signal boosting for Internet Privacy.
Originally posted by keladry_lupin at More signal boosting for Internet Privacy.
Originally posted by why_me_why_not at More signal boosting for Internet Privacy.
Originally ( Read more... )

The local radio station just did a phone quiz about "frauds and hoaxes", and after questions about Milli Vanilli and the balloon-law-chair kid, the grand finale was a question about the Y2K Bug.

So here's the take-home lesson: if you identify something that might be a problem well in advance, and spend huge amounts of money and effort trying to ( Read more... )

I will allow the possibility that corporations might be considered people as soon as I see one marched to the guillotine.

Parading its head on a pike is optional.

I've added the following to the top of that post, and reprinted it here because it shouldn't just get lost in everyone's already-read backlog:

I am, in fact, keenly aware of the miscarriage of justice visited upon the creator of the Ghost Rider by the courts. In short: they've bankrupted a sick old man by ordering him to pay damages to Marvel/ ( Read more... )

Summary:
The biggest supporters of the Stop Online Piracy Act are also the biggest distributors of torrent software, DRM removal software, and other "piracy" tools -- and their sites clearly show step-by-step how to access copyrighted material using these warez.

Click to view

They've created the download culture and the "piracy problem" themselves, and are ( Read more... )

In a response to my post about the Doctrine of "Real" Names, araquan provided the following insight from a Charlie Rose interview with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg:

Facebook COO Sandberg talked about the power of relationship-based networks, contrasting "the wisdom of crowds to the wisdom of friends ( Read more... )

It is a classic trope of science fiction that In the Future, We Will Have Numbers Instead Of Names.

In almost every instance of this trope more recent than Ralph 124C 41+, this is a sure sign that you live in a dystopia. It suggests a world in which human concerns are devalued, and society itself is engineered to make it easier for a large, ( Read more... )