Tag: technology

I received the following email a few minutes ago:

After around 5 years of the CoComment service we had to decide to terminate the service per 31.3.2012 due to a poor economical perspective of the service and the lack of options and opportunities.

Per 31.3.2009 due to the economical situation at that time we already had to decide to wind-down CoComment to an absolute minimal level of operation. After further 18 months of minimal operations… we now had to finally decide to fully stop also the minimal operation of the service. Unfortunately it was not possible to find any option to continue the service.

We are sorry to have to hereby formally inform you that we will stop the CoComment service according the the Terms of Use per 31.3.2012.

The Service will be switched off at 31.3.2012 at midnight 12:00 am.

We thank you for your comprehension.

I’d be a bit more sanguine about the possibilities if the other options all didn’t seem to be obsessed with forcing Blogger users to convert to the exceedingly limited templates of the “new” Blogger. Any ideas or recommendations? I already know that I don’t like Disqus, having experimented with it a few months ago.

The technocancer is metastasizing post-Jobs:

I have never seen a EULA as mind-bogglingly greedy and evil as Apple’s EULA for its new ebook authoring program. Dan Wineman calls it “unprecedented audacity” on Apple’s part. For people like me, who write and sell books, access to multiple markets is essential. But that’s prohibited:

“Apple, in this EULA, is claiming a right not just to its software, but to its software’s output. It’s akin to Microsoft trying to restrict what people can do with Word documents, or Adobe declaring that if you use Photoshop to export a JPEG, you can’t freely sell it to Getty. As far as I know, in the consumer software industry, this practice is unprecedented.”

Exactly: Imagine if Microsoft said you had to pay them 30% of your speaking fees if you used a PowerPoint deck in a speech.

I’ve downloaded the software and had a chance to skim the EULA. Much of it is boilerplate, but I’ve read and re-read Section 2B, and it does indeed go far beyond any license agreement I’ve ever seen:

“B. Distribution of your Work. As a condition of this License and provided you are in compliance with its terms, your Work may be distributed as follows:

(i) if your Work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute the Work by any available means;
(ii) if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple and such distribution is subject to the following limitations and conditions: (a) you will be required to enter into a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary) before any commercial distribution of your Work may take place; and (b) Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select your Work for distribution.”

And then the next paragraph is bold-faced, just so you don’t miss it:

“Apple will not be responsible for any costs, expenses, damages, losses (including without limitation lost business opportunities or lost profits) or other liabilities you may incur as a result of your use of this Apple Software, including without limitation the fact that your Work may not be selected for distribution by Apple.”

The nightmare scenario under this agreement? You create a great work of staggering literary genius that you think you can sell for 5 or 10 bucks per copy. You craft it carefully in iBooks Author. You submit it to Apple. They reject it. Under this license agreement, you are out of luck. They won’t sell it, and you can’t legally sell it elsewhere. You can give it away, but you can’t sell it.

Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you. This isn’t so much a walled garden as a concentration camp for the creative. When your actions are being compared disfavorably with Microsoft’s, then the dot is a line to you.

The US government takes down Megaupload at the behest of the RIAA, so Anonymous is striking back:

Update: Anonymous says they’ve also knocked off the RIAA’s site—looks down for us at the moment as well.

Update 2: Universal Music Group has also fallen off an e-cliff.

Update 3: Goodbye for now, MPAA.org.

Update 4: Affected sites are bouncing in and out of life, and are at the very least super slow to load. Anon agents are currently trying to coordinate their DDoS attacks in the same direction via IRC.

Update 5: The US Copyright Office joins the list.

It should make for some interesting reading when all the personal information concerning the various RIAA lobbyists ends up being released.

This is anecdotal, but I have the impression that Facebook is rapidly going the way of MySpace. As you know, I am also a regular blogger at the Black Gate, which began receiving a substantial amount of traffic from Facebook about two years ago.

However, looking at the pattern of the traffic received over the course of the year, I began to notice that the amount of traffic received from Facebook was declining. Consider the following numbers as percentages of the Facebook-derived January traffic.

Jan 11 100.0
Apr 11 69.3
Jul 11 45.7
Oct 11 63.5
Dec 11 26.5 (est.)

Now, one might reasonably suspect that this is due to a seasonal pattern, except for the fact that the December 2010 traffic was 112.0… with 35 percent less overall traffic than is presently indicated for December 2011. Since Black Gate’s traffic has been growing steadily throughout the year, this means Facebook-derived traffic as a percentage of all traffic has fallen even more drastically than it appears in the direct 112:26.5 year-on-year comparison.

I was never a Facebook enthusiast, but I really don’t use it anymore. It would seem to appear that I am not the only one.

The new Blogger interface finally supports sufficient column widths to permit my favored layout, so I’m experimenting with going to it and using Disqus. Expect an amount of chaos today. I’m trying to figure out how to turn off the requirement to provide an email address in order to comment; if I can’t, I’ll just trash the whole experiment again.

UPDATE: Thus far, the new interface permits a much better blog search and blog archive functions. So that’s good. Still figuring out how to recreate some of the other functions, though. And the interface for modifying text and text colors in the gadgets is really poor; it insists upon using the same color for the post bodies as well as on the sidebars. This is a problem if one is light and the other is dark.

UPDATE II: Disqus says the following: “Can I remove the email requirement for Guest commenting?

No, Guest commenters are required to provide an email address for notifications and moderation purposes, however the email address will of course never be displayed and does not require verification.”

UPDATE III: I have no idea why IntenseDebate was showing up before and now is not showing up. Or why these Blogger comments look so different than they do on Alpha Game. Or why no one seems to be able to DESIGN A FREAKING COMMENT SYSTEM THAT JUST WORKS. I still miss that original one, whatever it was called. It worked better five years ago than anything I’ve seen lately.

UPDATE IV: And I have officially exhausted the amount of effort I am willing to expend upon “improving” the blog structure. The classic template may be ancient and creaky, CoComment may be quirky and buggy, but it works better than the up-to-date alternatives. There is no point in breaking things simply to make use of comment systems I like even less than what I’ve got.

As you’ve probably noticed, I’m going to give Disqus another try. We’ll see how it goes; if it turns out to be more annoying than CoComment, we’ll simply go back to that.

UPDATE: No way. Disqus is far more annoying than CoComment can manage at its most quixotic. All the new comment systems require a move to the newer Blogger interface to work properly, which significantly reduces one’s ability to control the layout of the blog.

UPDATE 2: Part of that may have been my fault. I may give it another whirl later. But it’s not promising that the Disqus Appearance Settings page gives you two options: Preview and Cancel… the SAVE option is conspicuously lacking.

Charles Stross explains how insisting on DRM caused publishers to leap from the frying pan right into the fire:

DRM on ebooks gives Amazon a great tool for locking ebook customers into the Kindle platform. If you buy a book that you can only read on the Kindle, you’re naturally going to be reluctant to move to other ebook platforms that can’t read those locked Kindle ebooks — and even more reluctant to buy ebooks from rival stores that use incompatible DRM. Amazon acquired an early lead in the ebook field (by selling below cost in the early days, and subsidizing the Kindle hardware price to consumers), and customers are locked into the platform by their existing purchases. Which is pretty much how they gained their 80% market share.

An 80% share of a tiny market slice worth maybe 1% of the publishing sector was of no concern to the big six, back in 2008. But today, with it rising towards 40%, it’s another matter entirely.

As ebook sales mushroom, the Big Six’s insistence on DRM has proven to be a hideous mistake. Rather than reducing piracy[*], it has locked customers in Amazon’s walled garden, which in turn increases Amazon’s leverage over publishers. And unlike pirated copies (which don’t automatically represent lost sales) Amazon is a direct revenue threat because Amazon are have no qualms about squeezing their suppliers — or trying to poach authors for their “direct” publishing channel by offering initially favourable terms. (Which will doubtless get a lot less favourable once the monopoly is secured …)

If the big six began selling ebooks without DRM, readers would at least be able to buy from other retailers and read their ebooks on whatever platform they wanted, thus eroding Amazon’s monopoly position. But it’s not clear that the folks in the boardrooms are agile enough to recognize the tar pit they’ve fallen into …

I avoid walled gardens like the plague. I use Kobo and Aldiko as my eReaders and will not even look at any ebook that is not in EPUB format. And while my publishers publish in Amazon’s KZW format, I always urge them to be sure that an EPUB version is also available.

It seems appropriate somehow, that he should die as his creation stands towering over the cratered ashes of the tech boom. It feels like a metaphor of sorts, but what precisely, I cannot say. As for me, I loved my Apple II and I loathed his lovely technofascistic vision.

Steve Jobs resigns as Apple CEO:

In a resignation letter to the board, Mr Jobs, who has fought a long-running battle with cancer, wrote: “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know.

“Unfortunately, that day has come. I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

I have an admire-hate perspective on Steve Jobs. I hate his technofascistic vision, but I love his passion for design perfection even when it falls short. I hate OS/X, I hate Macintosh computers, I hate Apple attitude, and I especially hate Macintossers, but I loved my Apple II and I still have some affection for my original Macintosh. I hate Apple’s cynical and dishonest marketing even as I am amazed by its sheer effectiveness. I especially hated the Jeff Goldblum commercial for the iMacs; I blame him and Steve Jobs for the opening of the Internet to the technologically pig-ignorant.

But Jobs had a hugely influential run during an exciting time for technology and even an inveterate Mac-hater couldn’t possibly deny it. Here is hoping he will enjoy the time he has left to him.