Bonus post, they know where I am

I'm pretty sure Marcus Yallow would not be an iPhone user after reading this story. It seems like a lot of my posts are Apple here. As an iPhone user, it would be nice if I knew what this information was being used for and who was using it. I doubt they're sharing this information with the government.....yet. DUN DUN DUN.

Bonus Post, eReader price wars

This story is good news for those looking to enter the exciting new world of eBooks. I doubt it will be too long before we start to see eReaders near the $100 price point. This will certainly heat up the adoption rate of the technology, and libraries will have to start to seriously look at how they will handle "loaning" digital books for these machines.

Blog Post #5

What would Marcus Yallow think of this? Under this legislation proposed by Senators Lieberman(I), Carper(D), and Collins(R), the president would be given authority to shut down parts of the internet in the case of national emergencies. It would also create a new agency under the Department of Homeland Security called the National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications. According to the report, "any private company company reliant on the Internet, the telephone system, or any other component of the U.S. information infrastructure would be subject to command by the NCCC." Some companies would also be required to engage in "information sharing". The internet is the defining technology of the past 20 years, and has changed the lives of most people. I personally gather a vast majority of my news from the internet, and I connect with friends and family through it as well. If some terrible event was happening, I would not want to be disconnected from that. I definitely wouldn't trust television news for gathering information on any serious situations.

It seems like there should be a better solution. Dr. Moeller discusses a story about building a newer, more secure internet in her blog post this week. This new internet would be also more restricted. I"m not really a tech person, but couldn't the "gated community" internet be used for government, military, and financial institutions, and the government could leave "our" internet alone? Isn't the Internet one of the most democratic institutions available?

Bonus Post, Free stuff!

This fits into Cory Doctorow's views from his introduction to Little Brother. I have always been a believer in the theory that if you're actually making something that people want then they will pay for it. I don't download 'free' music off the internet(except for maybe live stuff and rarities) because I want that artist to be able to make more of it. I may also be thinking like a musician who would want to be paid for their services. I'm not sure the RIAA has ever thought that maybe the reason people steal so much popular music is because it is of such poor quality. It's basically throw away music for a throw away society. Sorry, I'm a bit of a music snob. Anyway, by giving away something of quality for free, people will turn into fans. Then they'll want to buy everything/go to every event dealing with that author/musician/whatever.

Bonus Post, Apple reverses some censorship decisions

Apple reversed its decision to censor a couple of graphic novels. I post last week about them censoring a graphic novel version of Ulysses, and they also reversed a decision on a graphic novel version of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest which featured some illustrations of buttocks and a couple of men kissing. Apple admits that censoring these books was a mistake, but it seems like they need to review some internal policies to keep these mistakes from happening every week. So, a somewhat happy ending?

Post #4

This, as Stephen Colbert would say, "The Wall Street Journal" article does a decent job of quickly describing recent developments in the net neutrality battle and how they might pertain to AT&Ts new smart phone data plan rates. AT&T is going to start charging users $15/month for up to 200 megabytes of data usage and $25/month for usage up to 2 gigabytes. Any data usage over the plan will be like if you use more minutes than you have on your phone plan. The part that will cause problems for some people is that there is no unlimited data plan. AT&T is basically avoiding the net neutrality problem by charging for the amount of data used, whereas most ISPs charge a flat rate based on the speed of the connection. I wonder what happens when more people are using portable devices as their primary digital device. The iPad has a version that works over the cell network. People with these devices could quickly use their allotted data by downloading movies and music from the iTunes store. I mostly use the iTunes store from my phone because I hear something when I'm out and just download it right then before I forget. The new iPhone will have face to face video chat which will take up quite a bit of data for people that utilize the feature. People are going to have to learn to monitor how much data they access, which is slightly harder than monitoring how many minutes you've talked on the phone. Instead of making a robust network that could handle more data and more users, AT&T seems to be cutting off its biggest users at the knees.

Bonus Post 2, Apple censors Ulysses graphic novel

I just saw this. I'm hoping that Apple will look at it's policies regarding adult content on the iPhone and iPad in the near future. If they consider graphic novels 'apps', then there are going to be a lot of graphic novels not available on the iPad. This would include most Alan Moore books and even Craig Thompson's Blankets. I'm not sure why this wouldn't be treated like a movie in the iTunes store(plenty of which contain nudity). I understand some of the reasoning that Apple has for protecting its products, but this seems to be a little too far. This comes from someone that's posting this message from my iMac while my iPhone is 6 inches away.