Domain Anonymity and the Brilliance of Entertainment Lobbyists

Asides

To rid the internet of piracy, entertainment companies are willing to greatly reduce privacy, at least where website registration is concerned.

Where the entertainment industry views proxy registration as a pirate’s tool for obfuscation, privacy advocates see identity concealment as a feature that can enable free speech and freedom from harassment.

So there’s a new proposal to force any “commercial” website, which could cover pretty much anything, to have real WHOIS/contact info. This is a terrible idea, and of course there are already ample and simple means to bypass proxy services being actually abused with a court order. But they want to go a step further, so potentially a parenting blogger with ads or affiliate links on their site would be forced to put their actual home address and phone number in a public directory anyone on the internet can access, or break the law. What could go wrong? EFF has more about why this impacts user privacy.

I think the better question here, is when has the entertainment industry ever proposed something good for consumers or the internet? I’m not kidding, 100% serious: have they ever been right?

It seems like a good approach for governing bodies like FCC, ICANN, or Congress to just blanket oppose or do the opposite of what MPAA or COA propose, and they’ll be on the right side of history and magically appear to be a very tech-savvy candidate or regulator.

Programming and Writing

Software

I really enjoyed this quote from Brent Simmons in an interview with John Gruber.

I’ve always thought of it this way: a good writer reads a lot of books. They see how other writers solve problems. They pay attention to what’s happening now as much as they pay attention to the classics. Good writers are readers first, but eagle-eyed, careful readers.

I think good developers are the same: they look at other apps. They “read” those apps, the problems they have and how they solve them. They notice trends, they notice new solutions, they notice when things work and when they don’t.

 

It reminds me of some passages from a book I’m reading right now, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott:

Bird by BirdHowever, in the meantime, we are going to concentrate on writing itself, on how to become a better writer, because, for one thing, becoming a better writer is going to help you become a better reader, and that is the real payoff. […]

Writing can give you what having a baby can give you: it can get you to start paying attention, can help you soften, can wake you up. […]

Because for some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. they show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die. They are full of all the things that you don’t get in real life — wonderful, lyrical language, for instance, right off the bat. And quality of attention: we may notice amazing details during the course of a day but we rarely let ourselves stop and really pay attention. An author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift. My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I’m grateful for it the way I’m grateful for the ocean.

That’s how I feel about software.

Avis GPS

Asides

After an amazing WordCamp Scranton on Saturday I was heading to a friend’s birthday on Long Island on Sunday, a few people were surprised I had flown from New York and said driving took about the same amount of time when you factor in all the airport hassle.

I Google Mapped it and it did look like it was only 5-6 hours from Scranton to where I was going. Being a born and raised Texan, I love a good drive, and I probably haven’t had a proper road trip since my sister’s birthday a few years ago when we went up Highway 1. I’ve also never driven on the East Coast, and it seemed like there were some really pretty parks and lakes in between Scranton and Long Island so I ended up going to the airport anyway because that’s where the rental cars were.

I like Avis. They try harder. 🙂 One thing they do that’s pretty cool is sell  decent cables, USB wall chargers, and car chargers for a cheap price right at the check-in desk. (I always carry my own car charger, this is my current pick. It’s super-handy in Ubers as well.) Amazingly though they still try to give you one of those Garmin GPS units that’s worse than your smartphone in every possible way. I’m sure it’s a money maker, otherwise the only reasonable thing to do would be provide a smartphone mount (or have one already set up in the car) rather than saddling people with an archaic, non-networked navigation device that has no idea about construction or traffic.

I ended up going to a Walmart that was nearby to pick up a car mount (price, $12) that ended up being a life-saver for the trip. I also believe that every person in tech should visit Walmart at least once a year, and spend time in their technology section. It’s good to understand and see how people who don’t live for technology every day interact with it. It’s eye-opening, and it’s handy to know what’s in stock in case you need 50 feet of ethernet at 4 AM.

Dropping the car off in Manhattan, it looks like they charged me $20 for a GPS which I don’t even have, so now going to need to sort out both the fee and the “missing” GPS system.

tl; dr: Smart car rental companies should ditch the GPS, provide smartphone mounts instead.

Millions of Blondes

Asides, Humor

I’m not going to particpate in it, but the “best blonde joke” (example) thing is driving thousands and thousands of hits every day to WordPress.com. It’s traffic on par with a front-page Digg, just constant and steady. Where did this thing come from??? (Continuing my tradition of being a month late to internet trends.)

Foto Mateo

Asides

In the interest of expanding the Photo Matt audience we’ve commissioned a team of expert translators to create Foto Mateo. 😉 Update: To clarify, this is a joke. It just is a Google translate proxy of this site. Read the comments for more. Thanks for everyone who emailed in that it was, in fact, a very bad translation.

Original Indiana Jones

Quote

For the first time in his life Rahn met someone even more obsessed with finding the Grail than he was. Indeed, so confident was Himmler of finding the Grail that he’d already prepared a castle – Wewelsburg in Westphalia – for its arrival. In the basement, surrounded by busts of prominent Nazis, was an empty plinth where the Grail would go.

The original Indiana Jones: Otto Rahn and the temple of doom. Truth is stranger than fiction.