Author Archive
I’m combining my commentary from these three recent stoies into one post, because they are all about Apple’s latest shenanigans and I don’t want to post three in a row. The first two are about yet more arbitrary iPhone app rejections. ZDNet’s The Apple Core blog reports on Apple taking out certain wi-fi discovery applications, on [ READ MORE ]
First the UCSD incident, and now this. Several news reports, most notably KMBC, kansascity.com, the Columbia Missourian, and this picture from theroot.com detail an incident at the University of Missouri where someone (assumably a pair of students) litters the area in front of the Gaines/Oldham Black Culture Center with cotton balls. For those that don’t get [ READ MORE ]
John Gruber’s recent post to Daring Fireball theorizes exactly why Apple has decided to crack down on sex apps in the App Store. While the explanation is plausible, it does not excuse Apple’s censorship and draconian control over the iPhone’s users and developers. In summary, John explains the move as Apple protecting its brand image, inasmuch [ READ MORE ]
A recent article on the Equal Justice Society’s blog details a rather nauseating tale of intolerance at the University of California, San Diego (USCD). From the article: African American students at UC San Diego were shocked and demoralized by a “Compton Cookout” that took place this past Monday February 15. According to the Facebook invitation, students from several [ READ MORE ]
The DigitalBeat column on VentureBeat recently reported on a case where three critics of Facebook had their accounts mysteriously deactivated. Juan Faerman, an author in Argentina who wrote a book called Faceboom, the cover of which has the title rendered in a font which easily could be mistaken for Facebook’s official logo, had his profile deactivating [ READ MORE ]
Normally I relish the opportunity to roast large companies like Google and hold them accountable. In this case, however, no sane person can possibly side with Google’s opponent, the Italian government, in this case. This TechCrunch story links to a post on the official Google blog which describes a situation where three Google employees were found [ READ MORE ]
Russell McOrmond’s blog entry on Digital Copyright Canada chronicles a recent statement by the IIPA (International Intellectual Property Alliance, a name which should have been avoided due to obvious bias). The IIPA attacks legally free software in their submissions to six different countries. Now, having a legally free alternative to something like Microsoft Windows or Adobe [ READ MORE ]
As summarized in FSF’s open letter to Google, there is a strong case for Google releasing the VP8 video codec acquired from their purchase of On2 Technologies. I agree with most of what is in this open letter from the FSF. However, I have some doubt that VP8 will be a better choice than Theora [ READ MORE ]