I'm preparing to move back to Belgium in a couple of months, and one of the things that needs to be sorted out is what the best data plans for smartphones are over there. It's been two years and everything is different. To my great annoyance, Belgium still hasn't invented the unlimited data plan; the most I can get per month is 2 gig, which is just ( Read more... )

In The New Imperialism: Forcing Morality Shifts And Cultural Change Through Exported IP Laws, the always-informative Techdirt gives a rundown of recent incidents where pressure from US media companies forced countries to change their IP laws in ways that are against the interests of their own citizens. The whole thing is interesting and also ( Read more... )

Addendum to that recent whine about how politicians have a responsibility to get educated about the internet: "mainstream" media need such education at least as badly. The internet has become crucial not just to many people's personal lives, but to the functioning of whole societies. There are very many people who don't have the time or the ( Read more... )

I'm increasingly convinced that all schools from the primary to higher level should establish new classes on the history and functioning of the internet. Every adult in the world should be forced to attend at least a semester of such a class. Policymakers who are involved in regulating the internet should be forced to attend and come back for ( Read more... )

New post up at Symposium: on regional releases and disrupting international fandoms.

In other words, on those pesky "not available in your location" videos ;)

This entry was originally posted at http://fanficforensics.dreamwidth.org/52150.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

About a week ago, The Mary Sue reported that some major tech news sites are apparently using the fact that Pinterest has a majority of female users as an excuse to write sexist copy:( Read more... )

I watch tons of interesting talks online every week, academic and otherwise, but I barely ever seem to share them beyond Twitter. Dreamwidth and all the places where I cross-post need more good and watchable non-fiction videos, as arbitrarily decided by me just now, so I'll be posting some on a semi-regular basis from now on. Enjoy!

Beware online “ ( Read more... )

The copyright crazy has been particularly strong on the internets these last few weeks, and I seem unable to concentrate on other topics and finish that blasted Textual Echoes post until I've burned off a bit of steam. So, please have a few random links on the general topic of "die, copyright legislation, die":

( Links links links... )

Originally published at Academic FFF. You can comment here or there.

Yes, marketing across various media is hardly unusual these days, but this combination sounds particularly fascinating. A dating site? It's not as if I'm going to use it myself -it just sounds like a whole lot of fun. This is good marketing. It's gotten me interested in the product ( Read more... )