Any Domains That End in .ly Are In Danger

in , ,

From Ben Metcalfe:

The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe

I would like to warn current and future owners of .ly domains of a concerning incident regarding the deletion of one of our prime domains ‘vb.ly’ by NIC.ly (the domain registry and controlling body for the Libyan domain space ‘.ly’).

In short:

The domain was seized by the Libyan domain registry for reasons which seemed to be kept obscure until we escalated the issue. We eventually discovered that the domain has been seized because the content of our website, in their opinion, fell outside of Libyan Islamic/Sharia Law.

This is deeply concerning for everyone, but especially .ly domain owners, because it sets a precedent that all websites running on a .ly domain must comply with Libyan Islamic/Sharia Law in order to maintain their domains. This is especially concerning for anyone running a url shortener or hosting user-generated content on a .ly domain.

You may also not know that since June 2010 .ly domains less than 4 characters long may no longer be registered by anyone who isn’t in Libya – which suggests there is tension around foreign owned, high-value, short .ly domains.

Sucks for Bit.ly

The Evolution of Geek

in , ,

Benjamin Stein made a great post about the evolution of geeks and their choice in technological tools and how they, as early adopters, affect mainstream adoption AND how this evolution has changed somewhat in the past few years.

But then something strange happened. Nerds switched to Apple laptops. Then lots of people switched to Apple laptops. But the nerds didn’t move on. My nerdiest programmer friends use the same MacBook model as my wife.

Marco Arment responded to Benjamin's post, referring to a post he had written several years back:

Part of my own transition was what I called grown-up computing five years ago, after a year of “adult” life:

Grown-up computing is, put simply, the way I use computers and my attitude toward them now that I’m out of college and settling into the 9-to-5 world. It differs greatly from “young computing”.

[…]

The last thing I want to do is figure out why some program isn’t working or reinstall my operating system. I see these as zero-gain activities: generally, I learn nothing new, I don’t enjoy myself, I’m not being entertained or enriched, and my effort only results in maintaining the status quo.

I’d rather get a computer that didn’t require any maintenance and simply allowed me to do productive work. I’d like to have something to show for all of my clicking and typing instead of simply making information balloons go away. I’d rather write an article for this site than type my serial number again. I’d rather search the internet for interesting or entertaining information to read instead of looking for the solution to an obscure problem for which I only have a useless generic error message. I just want things to work.

It’s likely that most geeks that Ben and I know are in or near our age group, and are probably “computing adults” in a similar sense: they’d rather use computers and related technology to accomplish a goal greater than just messing around with their computers.

But what if this effect, on a larger and less age-specific scale, is the bigger trend that Ben’s seeing?

What if most geeks today really are just buying Macs instead of building their own overclocked Windows PCs from Newegg parts?

What if PC gaming really is on a decline because only a very small slice of the population is willing to pay $500 for a giant, hot, loud video card and endure the Great PC Gaming Pain-in-the-Ass Trifecta of drivers, patches, and copy protection, leaving almost every gamer to just stick with game consoles for a fraction of the cost and hassle?

And what if a big slice of even the most hardcore geeks have abandoned their netbooks for iPads because they just work so much better most of the time?

Even geeks (like us) have their limits of reasonability. At some point, we often decide that what we’ve been doing or what we think we should enjoy just isn’t worthwhile.

Marco largely put down on pixel what I was thinking in my head.

The Social Network: My Review

in , , , ,

The Social Network Movie Poster

This past weekend my wife and I went to see The Social Network at our local movie threatre in our neighborhood. Being a huge fan of Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, Sports Night & Studio 60) I had high hopes for this movie. I've loved all of Sorkin's previous work as someone who appreciates when a movie or tv show doesn't stoop to the lowest common denominator in order to try to get ratings. Sorkin is unapologetic in his use of witty dialog that forces the audience to pay attention to keep up with the film. I knew this wouldn't be an episode of The Jersey Shore (which, by the way, is clear evidence that the human race is doomed to idiocracy).

Now, before I go any further... Have you seen The Social Network yet? If not, go see it now. Do not read any further. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Okay, back now? Good. Let us continue.

As a movie, by itself, disconnected from reality? Fantastic. Amazing. Phenominally good. Aaron Sorkin at his best. I want to watch it again. I will buy this movie immediately when it comes out instead of ripping it from a DVD I got from Netflix in the mail. Oops, did I just type that out loud? Anyway, go see this movie. It is worth it.

Like any Sorkin screenplay, this film's dialogue was endlessly witty. As an asshole-in-training myself, I greatly appreciated the intellectual wit that Sorkin portrayed Zuckerberg's character as possessing throughout the film. In my opinion, the most hilarious, stand-out line of the film was when Zuckerberg's character refers to the two rich douchey Winklevoss twins as the "Winklevii". Yes, quirky geek humor, but I loved it.

I also loved how, throughout the film, the story would cut from the past to the future legal testimony of Zuckerberg and the two parties who were suing him. The back and forth time travel from the past events, as they were happening to the testimony served as a nice way to narrate certain parts of the film in order to tell the history as it was portrayed to happen over a several year period.

Now, all of that being said....the film was grossly inaccurate. I love Aaron Sorkin's work but major parts of the storyline were incorrect and most of the inaccuracies came about because of Sorkin's inherent biases. Rather than try to explain these inaccuracies and Sorkin's biases, I will let Lawrence Lessig someone else whom I greatly admire, do so for me:

Sorkin vs. Zuckerberg

...But as a story about Facebook, it is deeply, deeply flawed. As I watched the film, and considered what it missed, it struck me that there was more than a hint of self-congratulatory contempt in the motives behind how this story was told. Imagine a jester from King George III’s court, charged in 1790 with writing a comedy about the new American Republic. That comedy would show the new Republic through the eyes of the old. It would dress up the story with familiar figures-an aristocracy, or a wannabe aristocracy, with grand estates, but none remotely as grand as in England. The message would be, “Fear not, there’s no reason to go. The new world is silly at best, deeply degenerate, at worst.”

Not every account of a new world suffers like this. Alexis de Tocqueville showed the old world there was more here than there. But Sorkin is no Tocqueville. Indeed, he simply hasn’t a clue to the real secret sauce in the story he is trying to tell. And the ramifications of this misunderstanding go well beyond the multiplex....

I recommend you read the rest of his piece, in its entirety for the full rebuttal to the premise of The Social Network's story. That being said, please do see the movie too. Both the movie, and Lessig's article, are worth seeing and reading.

And finally, if you've gotten this far and still haven't went and seen the movie (despite my earlier advice) here is the trailer:


Matt Buchanan on Verizon's Samsung Fascinate Lightning

in , ,

Okay. First off, WTF is a Fascinate Lightning. It sounds like an name the US Military would come up with for a snazzy operation they're trying to execute. OPERATION FASCINATE LIGHTNING. Indeed.

Matt Buchanan:

Verizon, unfortunately, is also what ruins the phone. Or, rather, what it’s forced Samsung to do to the phone, which you could sum up in a word: Bing. Bing is the default—and only—search engine on the Fascinate. A Google Android phone. In the search widget, in the browser, when you press the search button. Bing. No, you can’t change it. There’s no setting for it, and the Google Search widget that you can snag from the Market is blocked (or at least very carefully hidden). Being unwittingly forced into Verizon and Bing’s conjugal relationship is infuriating on its own, but the implementation also feels like the sloppy hack that it is. The co-branded Bing/Verizon portal that an in-browser search takes you to is ripped from the circa-2005 dumbphone-approved “internet,” while the Bing Maps app that it pushes you toward is vastly inferior to Google Maps (no multitouch, Latitude, etc.).

Wow, I sure am sorry I got my iPhone 4. You know, because Apple is so 'closed' and everything. I'd better switch to this far superior Android phone.

Facetime Adoption

in , , ,

Marco Arment wrote an interesting post about the adoption of FaceTime by iOS users over time:

We, the long-time iPhone owners, won’t be the first ones to use FaceTime regularly.

But the next generation of iPhone owners will.

FaceTime is the sort of technology that we “old” people will promptly forget that we can do, and then be shocked when we learn that young people are doing it en masse.