Advogato blog for chbm

Week In Review 2011W19

Mon, 16 May 2011 23:05:56 GMT

Microsoft bought Skype for a ton of money. So Skype for Mac 5 was just the beginning. And cause Microsoft doesn’t think it needs Windows it’s trying stop Apple’s App Store TM in Europe.
Google announced phone and tablet will eventually merge like everyone expects but it won’t happen too soon. Meanwhile Angry Birds HTML5 landed in the Chrome store just in time for new, rentable ChromeOS netbooks.
The EU wants you to accept every single cookie. For some reason the EU still uses IE5.5 or something and didn’t realize browsers have cookie blocking in this millennia.
RIAA is clearly not suing in name of the artists seeing when they hit payday the artists that have been “robed” get exactly nothing.
In an happy surprise Comcast wasn’t blocking PirateBay and indeed helped fixing the connectiviy problems.

Week In Review 2011W18

Mon, 9 May 2011 23:15:47 GMT

Everybody’s excited about Intel’s 3D transistors which are pretty exciting but not full of unicorns as some media would lead you to believe. It’s mostly a new fabrication technique that’s been really hard so far and they seem to have managed to scale out. It allows to make pretty good transistors but the 3D part is probably confusing a lot of journalists.
Still not a good week to be Sony and even Anon says they don’t have anything to do with it. That’s bad it is for Sony now.
Our Govt isn’t just bad at managing finance, they’re bad at Copyright Law too. They’re trying to outlaw not-for-profit licenses in a kind of blundering way. Meanwhile Canada is still on the US IP watchlist side by side with China and Russia and the Mounties say they have better things to than playing copyright rent-a-cop.
In leaks news, WSJ launches SafeHouse which is full of fail in epic proportions.

Week In Review 2011W17

Mon, 2 May 2011 23:12:13 GMT

It’s still not a good week to be Sony seeing they weren’t really sure about your CC data but turns yeah your CC data was stolen. And people are already suing. But Sony is trying to make good with new stuff and some encription.
It’s also not a good week to be Apple has Korea and EU started location tracking investigations.
You know who’s having a really bad week ? The Symbian guys at Nokia/Microsoft 3000 of whom will be finding a new home at Accenture.
Google is gearing up for video war and its building a patent pool to defend WebM which sounds unlikely against the MPEG-LA but OK.
Meanwhile, while noone is looking the (unelected) EU Council wants to create the Big Firewall of Europe. You know, like democratic countries do. And some WikiLeaks came up about the US Government stepping forward to not only write New Zealand copyright law but also foot the bill. If you had any doubts who’s in the pocket of who …

Week In Review 2011W16

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 23:12:34 GMT

Apple escalated the patent war with Samsung by stating the obvious. Intel is bringing Android3.0 to x86 tablets which I’m sure is much easier than bringing Windows to ARM. Some days sucks to be Microsoft. Not as much as it sucks to be Nokia with dwindling share, operating profits and strategy.
Sucks to be Sony too, PSN is still down and the Finnish Consumer Board says removing OtherOS is worth 100 euros.
EU wants LTE/WiMAX on GSM bands in 2012. I don’t see that happening but hey, it’s a nice wish.
UK is hellbent on killing Digital Economy as UK ISPs can’t challenge the Digital Economy Act. Meanwhile, MPAA comes clean and says they’re against democratizing culture. And a couple of years after someone wanting mandatory FM radios on phone RIAA is opposing it. Apparently payola isn’t good enough.
Obama judged Manning. He’s guilty. Where’s the hope now ?

Week In Review 2011W15

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 23:15:03 GMT

iOS and Android eat into Nintendo’s pie. Good news for Sony as PSP drops only from 9 to 7% :)
New Zealand hates the Internet. And cause music industry shills have no shame they passed a three strikes law on the coattails of Christchurch earthquake emergency measures. Meanwhile, giving Bioware/EA money proves to be the wrong choice and China calls out USA on human rights abuses. Too bad they lump border laptop searches with the abundance of netporn.
In EUland the Dutch Govt has bad news and good news for P2P sharing. While on one hand it actually becomes illegal fair use rights come out on top.
UK MoD wouldn’t be outdone by Wikileaks. They published the full what’s what of UK and US nuclear subs. This is just pathetic.

Week In Review 2011W14

Sat, 9 Apr 2011 23:13:01 GMT

HTC keeps raking in the dough. Becoming a prime android handset maker clearly is working out for them, Microsoft racketeering and all.
Another freakin earthquake in Japan. Don’t those guys get a break ?
SSL trust chain is broken. Not the technology, but as people are involved in issuing certificates
Dire week in EU. While there were some good news from the Czechs regarding data retention Berlusconi’s Italy says search engines are liable for linked content, not to be outdone by the US a music industry lawyer is now out copyright chief and we’re stuck with a Microsoft upgrade cause the people in charge of EU IT are incompetent, corrupt or both. And cause that’s not enough the unelected EU Commission wants ISPs to snoop and censor internet traffic.
And France managed to outlaw all unrecoverable passwords. They didn’t do it on purpose, it’s just they’re clueless and got carried away in their grab for personal info.

Week In Review 2011W13

Tue, 5 Apr 2011 00:14:53 GMT

Amazon is said to have released a music streaming service. Like the Android AppStore it’s also US only.
You still can’t git clone android-3 which should be discouraging Android is Open talk but also crapy cheap honeycomb crapplets. Meanwhile SE scores a few points with unlock Xperia bootloaders.
Google is on privacy watch after Buzz. Twitter is still fighting for us. Censorship vendors will only sell to democratic western govts.

Week In Review 2011W12

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 23:09:15 GMT

The Amazon Android Appstore is apparently online but it’s only enabled in one country so nobody really knows. What everybody knows is you can’t git pull honeycomb.
Samsung promises Tab with unicorns. Nobody’s really convinced. Meanwhile ITC says Apple is cool and Motorola is doing a new HTML based mobile OS. No, really, it’s true.
While Google is spending money on detecting censorship China is working hard at censoring phone calls. And cause you can’t trust anyone anymore there’s phony Google, Yahoo and Skype certs out there. And for some reason Microsoft disabled HTTPS in Hotmail for countries who actually need it.
Limewire is being sued for five US national debts (which stands at 14T). Yes, RIAA is claiming in court Limewire damaged them one thousand Iraq invasions. And cause douchebagery runs in the family the Belgian RIAA wants truck drivers to pay royalties fees. You know, for playing music in a work place. Makes sense!

Week In Review 2011W11

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:13:56 GMT

Oh noes! The Amazon Android Appstore (or AAA) sneak preview. New stuff, exclusive stuff and low low prices. Will it work without the unknown sources bit set ? Who knows!
A study came to the shocking conclusion piracy doesn’t fund terrorism. That was a good waste of money!
On liberty watch this week, Hollywood wants extra judicial powers to do whatever they like and USA breaks the SWIFT agreement which feels extra nice after my govt signed a treaty to give all my personal data to USA for no good reason.

Week In Review 2011W10

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 23:10:52 GMT

Japan was stricken by a 8.9 quake, followed by a huge tsunami followed by at least one nuclear plant going critical and several others damaged. That’s as bad news as it gets.
WiFi can actually interfere with plane displays. One would expect stuff made by Boeing, seeing as it’s much more expensive than my home system, would be much better than my home stuff which doesn’t have problems with WiFi.
A lot of the week was about banksters, secret laws, memory holes, waterboarding and popular uprisings