Conservative Rumblings

It’s one thing for the company to unofficially campaign for Obama, or for their executives to join his administration. It’s quite another to choose Tetris over D-Day.

With the world’s eyes turned to Normandy as President Obama and European leaders honor the sacrifice of Allied soldiers on June 6, 1944, Internet giant Google chose to honor this 65th anniversary of D-Day by memorializing the birth of a video game.

The search engine’s homepage, often the site of commemorative graphics interwoven with its Google name on special occasions, chose this day to display the multi-colored blocks of the classic game Tetris, which was created by Russian computer programmer Alexey Pajitnov and made playable for the first time on June 6, 1984.

Scrolling over the blocks reveals the words, “Celebrating 25 years of the Tetris Effect – courtesy of Tetris Holding, LLC.”

And while the anniversary of Tetris’ birth finds it unique in popular culture as one of the world’s most popular and enduring video games, Google’s choice to honor it today has nonetheless been met with sharp criticism.

They can have whatever politics they want (it’s a free country, for now), but this is embarassing. To change their logo to the 25th anniversary of Tetris instead of the largest amphibious assault in the history of the world which cost thousands of Americans their lives and turned the course of the most devastating war of the modern era…well…that’s not politics. That’s stupidity.

They can’t argue the “lighter-fare” defense as that article explains they do, because they have changed their logo for Remembrance Day of foreign countries like Ireland and Australia. So why not D-Day?

The American Thinker has the disturbing facts: the Democrats are already moving to adopt a Big Brother-esque Internet “security” policy that gives the White House unprecedented power to regulate the Internet. I predicted this rise of totalitarianism, but not this soon. God help us all.

The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 would, for example, give the President unfettered power to shut down Internet traffic in emergencies or disconnect any critical infrastructure system or network on national security grounds. The bill would grant the Commerce Department the ability to override all privacy laws to access any information about Internet usage in connection with a new role in tracking cybersecurity threats.

The bill, introduced by Sens. John Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe, would also give the government unprecedented control over computer software and Internet services, threatening innovation, freedom and privacy. CDT President and CEO Leslie Harris said, “The cybersecurity threat is real, but such a drastic federal intervention in private communications technology and networks could harm both security and privacy.”

Full text of the bill here (.pdf): http://cdt.org/security/CYBERSEC4.pdf

This cannot be allowed. If the Democrats are allowed to pass this obscene measure, it could spell the end of the Internet as we know it in the United States. The government would be free to regulate traffic and track users in a manner eerily reminiscent to what China does to its citizens. Political dissidents can be cataloged and tracked, their every move monitored and recorded. Every day citizens will be watched as they go about their lives.

Just picture the government being able to pull up your IP address and scroll through a list of every website you visit, every word you type and every email you send. Unnerved yet? You should be; government regulation of the Internet isn’t coming…it’s here and ready to be voted on.

Hello, Big Brother. Goodbye, privacy and freedom.

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One more thing…a good point made by a reader (@Bob_Clark) from Twitter: Didn’t Liberals complain about Bush doing the same thing?

Absolutely, they did…they went nuts about the Patriot Act “stealing their rights” for years, but now we haven’t heard a whimper from them about this piece of work. Double standard? Or stupidity? I say both.

Oh, the power of the blogosphere. Only 24 hours after the company stood pat on their decision to maintain an altered TOS that removed a very important line about who owned what users uploaded, Facebook has done a smart about face and re-added the line.

Yielding to pressure from its users and privacy advocates, Facebook Inc. Tuesday night backed away from controversial changes to its terms of use that some had decried as giving the social network too much leeway with users’ personal information.

Just a day after standing by the revisions, the company said it would scrap the new policy and return to its previous terms of service in a notice to its 175 million users on its Web site.

Welcome to the new world, Facebook. You helped bring it about, and now your users are armed with a voice louder than any generation has ever had. I give the company a lot of credit for putting everything back the way it was, but this is another microcosm of the enormous strength that consumers and bloggers are now wielding. Companies no longer have to answer to the media and their stockholders; they have to answer to everyone.

Facebook has never been the biggest proponents of user’s privacy, but now they’ve gone a step further and removed a key line from their TOS.

The section about keeping your info has not changed:

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

However, the devil is in the details. This section was removed:

You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

So now, Facebook not only owns everything, they also can continue to use it even if you quit today. I automatically import all the blogs I write here into Facebook, and now I’ll have to rethink that. If it came to it, I’d challenge the legality of this under The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 but with the new administration being hostile to privacy and personal rights and Facebook being a multi-billion dollar company, somehow I doubt it would do much good.

(hat tip: Repurblican).

I know, weak pun. After watching President Bush sign in a socialist-style bailout of a bunch of crooked mortgage companies, I’m not feeling very inspired.

I’m going to admit it. I took the hype. Cuil sounded really, really, well, cool, and I wanted to see someone belly up to the bar and throw back a couple of shots with Google without passing out immediately like every other challenger has.

Now Cuil, which was billed in one of the largest media buildups in the history of search engines as a potential adversary of Google, is failing miserably.

Now, to be fair, I understand that this is a new technology and bound to have flaws. But the company brought this on themselves. They strutted around, bragging about everything their engine could do, and they built up an absolutely and impossibly huge expectation. If they had not created such anticipation, they would not have been in as much trouble as it has brought them. Basically, they needed to put their money where their mouth was, and we found out that their money, ala “Kingpin,” was a twenty wrapped around Monopoly money.

I blogged on Monday about the engine, saying that it had promise and that the talent behind it meant that at least they would not embarrass themselves. Unfortunately, they have.

Two days after “launch” and the engine is still completely unusable. The results make no sense; I searched, again, for “ian essling” (with no quotes). It told me I had over 1700 results, but then would only show me two pages worth of results, all of them save one utterly irrelevant.

Cuil was not ready to be unveiled. Never should a piece of software, whether it is an operating system (Vista), a search engine or even a game (everything ever made by EA) be released to the public before it actually works properly.

You would think this is common sense. But no, apparently it is not anymore. Cuil is an embarrassment. It could have been something. Instead, it may be a footnote. Even if it eventually gets online and starts to work the way it was promised to do, many people will never even give it a second chance.

Cuil’s people need to fix it and fix it quick, and then start the long and arduous climb up the “regaining brand integrity” mountain. Good luck with that.

Several Ex-Google engineers have banded together to create a new search engine to challenge Google.

Cuil’s creators claim that their engine will index more sites than Google. Since the site has only been online for a few hours, it’s something to keep our eyes on, but I have to say I am impressed by the layout of the site at this point. It’s very much like browsing a newspaper website or something of the like. Whether that design is really the next generation of search results listings remains to be seen.

I think they still have some algorithm problems, of course; they claim that their site will focus more on content and less on the link-building and ‘popularity contests’ that drives rankings on Google.

However, whatever they are doing isn’t quite right just yet. If you run a search for “ian essling,” my website isn’t even on the first page. Maybe I’m biased, but I tend to think that ianessling.com should be the first result for “ian essling.”

Google right now is the #1 online company, hands down. Within the next ten years, I really expect them to launch a full-scale attack on Microsoft for the title of #1 software company. Cuil is fighting a battle that is beyond uphill; they have the talent to backup their endeavor and not completely embarrass themselves, but they most likely will not be able to stand toe-to-toe with Google any time soon. What they are doing is more important than that, though.

With Google now firmly entrenched at the top of the heap, Cuil, hopefully, will exist to challenge them, just as Google has begun to challenge Microsoft. Why else would the latter be trying to completely revamp their online business model? Just like political parties left in power too long, when a company is left on the top, with no challengers, for too long, they get fat and lazy and make things like Windows Vista. Here’s hoping people like Cuil can save Google from the same fate.

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Section: Opinion/Editorial
Published: Waubonsee Insight, December 2005 IssueTen years ago, if you wanted to get some new music, you went to the store and bought it. You handed the clerk some money, and walked out of the store physically holding your CD.Now that we’re well into the Digital Age of the 21st century, it’s more likely to find someone illegally downloading a “free” copy of a song off of a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing network, then it is to find them in the local Borders. Buying a CD is now a novelty; over 278 million people download over 2.6 billion copyrighted files each month from P2P programs.

The legal ramifications of these actions cannot be taken lightly. Since you’re downloading a file that is copyrighted by the original artist without compensating them in anyway, you are instantly guilty of a violation of Titles 17 and 18 of the U.S. Code. These sections protect copyright owners from the “unauthorized reproduction, adaptation or distribution of sound recordings, as well as certain digital performances to the public,” according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) official website.

The penalties for violations of these codes range from fines up to $150,000 and/or ten years jail time…for EACH song. While the RIAA and others are usually pursuing large-scale distributors of illegal music, the “little people” are not immune. As we give away more and more of our privacy to the government and corporations, it becomes easier and easier for everyone and his brother to see exactly what files you have downloaded to your computer, and whether or not you paid for them. You think paying for college and textbooks is putting a dent in your wallet?

Try settling a fine with the RIAA. They might fine you a couple million dollars, but hey, they are generous souls; they usually settle cases for under $20,000. Wow, how unbelievably spectacular! You saved a few hundred bucks by not buying the CDs, and now you owe ten times what you saved in fines!

On top of prosecuting individuals, the recording industry and national governments have initiated major crackdowns on the programs and organizations responsible for providing the backbone of the illegal P2P market.

On November 7th, P2P giant Grokster was finally defeated in their ongoing copyright violation case. They were ordered to shut down their site, and pay a $50 million fine to the recording industry, by order of the U.S. Supreme Court. MP3.com and the old Napster are other examples of illegal P2P sites that were torn down based on their disregard for copyright laws.

Another downside of getting your music from these less-than-legal sources is the possibility of infecting your computer with spyware. Spyware, nefarious programs that can damage your computer and steal your data, often come bundled with the music downloading programs. For example, the most popular program, Kazaa, installs some of the most ruthless and damaging software known to man. These programs pop up ads, log your keystrokes and transmit other personal data. Keyloggers are perhaps the most underrated spyware tools in existence. It’s hard to fathom sometimes, but they literally log EVERYTHING that is typed into the computer. Passwords, account names, credit card numbers…it’s all fair game.

On top of the spyware installed by the downloading program itself, most of these programs give no guarantee as to what exactly you are downloading; just because the user named RockFan291 says that the file they uploaded is the latest song by Three Doors Down doesn’t mean it is actually that file. It could just as easily be some sort of virulent and invasive virus.

These programs, if left unchecked, will eventually require professional intervention. You’ll end up calling in a computer repair expert and paying them an exorbitant fee to clean up the infestation on your computer, if it can even be fixed. I have personally repaired dozens of spyware infections in the last few years, and 75% of them began with a music-downloading program like Kazaa or Grokster being installed.

The effect of all this on the recording industry, while perhaps not immediately apparent through the factless and biased articles floating around on the Net, is easily discernible with a little solid research.

Between 2003 and 2004, sales of CD Singles in the U.S. dropped 62%. During that same time, the number of people downloading illegal music doubled, according to a study conducted by BigChampagne.com, an Internet monitoring firm.

As of June of this year, full track CD sales in the U.S are down by 6% compared to this time last year, and the sales of CD singles are down another 37%.

Not all of this drop can be attributed to illegal downloading; legitimate pay-per-song sites such as ITunes and Wal-Mart.com are taking a small part of the revenue from traditional CD sales (around 5%), but most experts agree that piracy is still having an effect on sales.

Speaking of sales, people have defended their illegal downloading habits by saying that “CDs are too expensive.” While I’m not a big fan of paying $20.00 for a CD, what these people don’t realize is that while CD prices have risen in past years, they are rising less then they technically should be, were they to stay in proportion with the Consumer Price Index and inflation rate of the country. If CD prices had risen at the correct proportion, then in 1996 they should have been around $33.00 a piece. Instead, they were a measly $12.00. This trend has continued today, although there is less of a gap between the two possible CD prices as there was in ‘96.

Another reason why some people consider it OK to illegally download music is that it’s not “really” stealing.

Now, I understand that different people have different ideas when it comes to what is moral and what is not, but it is safe to say that most of the civilized world believes that stealing, in and of itself, is wrong. Downloading music from a P2P program, without paying the original artist, is theft.

My question is this; if you would not walk into a store and tuck a CD in your jacket, why is it considered OK to download the same music?

The cold, hard truth is that illegal downloading is not OK, and never will be. People like to hide behind the digital aspect of the way they acquire the music. “Well, it’s just a download, not like I light-fingered a CD.”

Unfortunately, it’s the same thing; just because the computer monitor offers supposed anominity to downloaders does not make it right.

I would challenge anyone, and I mean anyone, to come up with some sort of logical argument on how stealing a song online is different then stealing one from a store in real life, other then the fact that they are less likely to be caught online, which, in my opinion, is why so many people do it.

If someone wouldn’t have the guts (or stupidity) to walk into Coconuts and walk out with an armload of CDs, then they have no business doing the same thing in a digital format. There are alternatives: pay for your songs one at a time from Wal-Mart.com or ITunes, or, perish the thought, buy the CD at a music store. After all, if you do that, then you get the fancy album artwork too.

The only good use of P2P music networks, in my opinion, is for small bands that have limited exposure to get their music heard. If they are not charging money for it somewhere else, I see no problem with their songs being spread via P2P. In fact, this can help the growth of these bands quite cost effectively.

With all the problems and dark clouds surrounding illegal P2P file sharing, it’s a wonder that some people still swear by it. When you are faced with the possibility of thousands of dollars worth of fines, irreparable damage to your computer, jail time, and compromising your personal integrity, those $.99 songs from Wal-Mart or ITunes are starting to look really inviting, aren’t they?