Out of Arstechnica today. It appears that Windows’ patch tuesday on August 14th brought Skype to a grinding halt. I don’t use the automatic updates at work, well things like this can happen, plus you always want control over what is updating on your computer(s).

“With so many machines restarting, Skype says the network was sunk into a vicious cycle of deprivation, wherein rebooting machines would attempt to log on to the Skype network, but so many machines were rebooting that the network was unable to meet demand. “

I’m glad they found the bug and hopefully came up with a solution for this in the future.

This comes down to an issue of trust. Do you trust Microsoft? No, I don’t. I’ve had updates break drivers before, FUBAR things, and so forth. In a perfect world you would want to install updates in a lab environment. Then you could have a little reassurance that it would run in the work environment.

We don’t live in a perfect world and things can be rolled back. I guess it all depends on the scale of your company. I couldn’t imagine rolling back everyone of our computers at work. That would be an entire day or more of work.

So I think Automatic Updates is good in theory, but in practice I think it is a very bad idea. IT is about control and you have to control your technology.

I remember when Service Pack 2 dropped for XP. Not a fun experience in the IT world. We now have planned days for the updates and to allow them to “ripen” for a bit.

Adblock Plus is a great extension for the wonderful and growingly popular browser Firefox. If you don’t have Firefox plus get it and use it! If you don’t like ADs on the pages you view, you have a choice, you can control how you want to experience the Internet. This is much like watching TV, if you don’t like the commercials you can either change the channel or flip to another channel.

Well this post is all about http://whyfirefoxisblocked.com/ because the author of this site is claiming Firefox’s Adblock is stripping him of income! You don’t need to visit, here is the general idea.

“The Mozilla Foundation and its Commercial arm, the Mozilla Corporation, has allowed and endorsed Ad Block Plus, a plug-in that blocks advertisement on web sites and also prevents site owners from blocking people using it. Software that blocks all advertisement is an infringement of the rights of web site owners and developers. Numerous web sites exist in order to provide quality content in exchange for displaying ads. Accessing the content while blocking the ads, therefore would be no less than stealing.”

That’s right it’s no less than stealing! stealing, humbug, etc etc, those whipper snappers. Oh no, should the owner of a site have to actually change to adapt to his/her readers! That is non-sense! This reminds me of my previous post, The DRM Dream is Over, because it is similar to the views of the Music Industry/Movie Industry/etc. It’s really like any business, you have to adapt to your customers or your customers will go somewhere else.

The first reason why I started to use Adblock Plus was those stupid ads with the smiley faces that yelled at you! I can block ads in my own mind thank you, just like I can when I am watching TV. When there is a commercial I space out till the commercial is over. I have no idea what the commercial was about and ADs are much like that.

So Adblock Plus saves my mind much processing power, so I can do more critical functions. Like blogging.
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Oh it is all becoming clear.

Recently, AT&T admitted to editing Webcast’s of Pearl Jam at Lollapalooza. What is truly amazing about this story is that “the mistakes of our webcast provider” let the F-bomb drop 20 times, yet they censored negative comments about Bush. Also, in a press release AT&T said this wasn’t the first time things like this has happened! This is such a major violation of 1st Amendment Rights; I think it is called Freedom of Speech? Maybe? Class Action Suit coming soon?

I don’t see how anybody can truly be surprised of actions like this. It is obviously clear that AT&T is a lackey of the Bush Administration. I will point out the whole NSA Warrant-less Wiretaps program that was recently brought to light. It was happening with AT&T and is most likely happening elsewhere.

As an American I am opposed to any domestic surveillance program and there’s a good article on crooks and liars that gives the statistics. 73% of all Americans disapprove of the spying program. That’s a high number and hopefully people in our government will wake up.

What this all comes down to is a law from 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that lays the framework for such “spying” programs. It also has been “udpated” 5 times since 2001, strange huh? It is all very complicated and depressing, please visit the csmonitor’s article on Warant-less Wiretaps Expanded for more information.

Digital Rights Management, oh yes it was a great scheme, a scheme to rule all schemes, unfortunately everybody hated it.

Well I think some people loved it, wanted to love it, trying to still use it; like big corporations that don’t understand technology. But DRM will come crashing down. You know it’s over when Google gets out of the DRM business. I think this issue with Google closing down their video store and saying [oh sorry we don't do that anymore] will have an echoing effect on everybody that uses DRM. This puts a real face and story to why people should not support DRM. If you use DRM you own nothing.

This is the beginning of the end for DRM, which is a good thing for everybody. This should add more value to the digital marketplace. DRM has been a downfall of this virtual world for such a long time. Universal has woken up and has decided to sell DRM free music at various e-tailers, but not at Apple interesting move; slowly in the waters you go Universal. People want DRM-free music and will buy it, but you have to make it available to us.

DRM is a product of FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt), bigwigs think, “hey look it is so easy for them to send it to their friend, so let’s stop them! Brilliant we will save millions!” Unfortunately, they are going to lose millions, because people don’t want to be bothered with such things as protecting your work. If you make it widely available people won’t have to steal it or copy it (which is happens more than not I would speculate) . Take for instance Sony has delayed their online store for the PSP due to DRM problems. They are losing MONEY just by not having a store available; people are going to go to other systems.

It is time to wake up from this DRM dream. Hopefully, content providers, game providers, music providers, everything else providers will see that people want open digital wares. We don’t want to be locked into one portable player, certain types of media players, etc etc.

Farewell DRM.

I am not a professional writer. I have never claimed to be nor intend to be, but I think one of my goals for this blog is to become a better writer. Communication with ourselves and our fellow human beings is a critical part of everyday life.

Recently, one of my articles that was on Digg got a comment, lets say I have a critic.

Here was my thought process on this comment by noamsml:

1. Anger
2. Sadness
3. Happiness

I was a little upset when I first read this comment. Illiterate? Is my writing that terrible? Is my writing so bad that people think I cannot read. Are my thoughts so crazy that they are ridiculous? I was angered and wanted to bury the comment, but I did not. Common sense grabbed a hold of me again. That’s his opinion and as my girlfriend said, “You can’t please everyone“, a truly profound statement at the time.

Next, I go through a phase of sadness, everything I write is junk, complete junk. Why do I even bother? I do enjoy writing, but if I’m not a good writer why should I even try? This stage didn’t last too long, because I think I finally got it. Criticism is how people become writers, better communicators, and well better at anything. People should have varying opinions and I can use this as an opportunity for growth; enter happy stage. So I went back and re-read my article Here comes Linux, Thanks Vista! to critique myself. (more…)