Although SOPA is shelved for now, it can be reintroduced at any time. PIPA is up for heated discussion — let’s speak out against it, by saying nothing at all on January 18th, demonstrating what the internet might become in the hands of an unchecked government driven by a strong IP industry lobby that tends to shoot first and ask questions later. Who will speak up for the little guy? We all should. Go dark today!

I’m all for protecting and respecting intellectual property (no so much for endless copyright), but there must be due process and there must be equivalent consequences against the copyright claimants as there are for alleged infringers.

Write your Congressman (from within the US) or petition The State Department (from outside the US) here. Infographic on SOPA, PIPA and the ongoing struggle here.

Suggested links: Map of Congressional Support for S. 968 (PROTECT IP Act) | Map of Congressional Support for H.R. 3261 (SOPA) | A .pdf of The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) H.R.3126 | Mashable’s Why SOPA Is Dangerous article | TechDirt’s An Updated Analysis: Why SOPA & PIPA Are A Bad Idea, Dangerous & Unnecessary |

Did a “bored” and “aroused” man commit this crime?

Caption: Plumadore’s MySpace page where his status is “bored” and his mood is “aroused” …

Plumadore has 603 Facebook friends as of today. Browsing through his friends it’s hard to tell how many are real or fantasy exchanges. The man seemed obsessed with fake Facebook profiles, and with young women — more than 90% of his friends being female by a rough count, a good many of those with provocative profile picture poses.

Social experiment question: How quickly will your Facebook friends desert you if you murder a child?

Disappointing answer: Not fast enough it would seem …

Now that Plumadore’s name is all over the press I’m curious as to how quickly his real friends will unfriend him — to remove their names from the public Facebook page of a disgraced, murderous acquaintance. The number had dropped to 601 in the time it took me to write this paragraph.

From another screen shot posted by Angry White Boy, Plumadore may still have had 628 friends yesterday. That’s a loss of 4.3% of Plumadore’s friends on day one.

UPDATE Dec 28th, 2011: Plumadore’s Facebook page has been deleted as of today, although his inactive MySpace page is still up. Late last night he was down to 557 Facebook friends. So, to summarise with what little stats I have …
     628 friends on Dec 26th, the day of his confession
     603 friends around midday on Dec 27th, the day the story hit hard
     557 friends before midnight on Dec 27th
… a loss of 71 friends, only 11% disavowed Plumadore in about 24 hours.

Links Huffington Post’s Babysitter Michael Plumadore Allegedly Chopped Up Aliahna Lemmon With Hacksaw: Cops | Michael Plumadore’s Facebook page (recently deleted)

Some twenty months ago I contributed* two documents to scribd. I browsed around but did not download anything. Today I browsed around again, noticed a heap of banner ads — perhaps too many for my tastes — but hey, you’ve got to pay the bills somehow, right? But then I tried a download and hit a pay wall: Either contribute a new document or pay a monthly $9 subscription. Really? What did I get in return for the two I already uploaded?

Scribd won’t let me download a document without paying a subscription or contributing a new one.

Frustrated with scribd I recalled my docs from their archives and deleted them. I did not want others to have to pay for what I had intended they could download for free. Then I tried another download and guess what? This time I got a single download without the pay wall going up. So I tried another. No go.

How crazy is that? I take my contributions back and get a free download? Who dreamed up this self-defeating business model? I hope it fails fast so that something can replace it. Scribd is dead to me now …

*What did I contribute to scribd: A pair of enigmatic maps which hold precise coordinates to … something. The maps had to be downloaded, printed and assembled. While not the most popular docs in scribd, they were intentionally obscured for an alternate reality game — but they were discovered nearly 300 times.

After upgrading to Apple Mac’s Safari 5 browser I found that I could no longer double-click to download video files in the Activity window as I was able to do in earlier versions of the browser. It’s an option+double click now.

Navigate to the video in Safari.
Open a Window>Activity window.
Look for the download URL or website name.
Crank down the little triangle if need be — to expose a list.
Hold down the option key and double click on the video link to start a download.
When the download has completed, look for the video in your Downloads folder.
Done.

Here’s a cool video link you can practice on YourFaceIsASaxophone–Episode2

Most recent stock price here

Most recent trading day charted here …

Five years charted here …

Suggested reading: AP’s Kodak shuffles restructuring advisers in WSJ | LA Times’ Kodak’s long fade to black | NYT’s Kodak Stock Dives After Credit Line Is Tapped | WSJ’s Kodak Seeking $500 Million in New Financing | Pocket Lint’s The decline and fall of Kodak

Oops, did I do this — just one day after saying it was set to fall below $1?

Reminder/Note to self about how to source and display Yahoo! stock charts …

Replace EK (Eastman Kodak) in the listed URLs with the required stock symbol and wrap an image source tag around it e.g. <img src="http://ichart.finance.yahoo.com/b?s=EK"> to display the image.

URL’s to small charts …

1 day: http://ichart.yahoo.com/t?s=EK
5 days: http://ichart.yahoo.com/v?s=EK
1 year: http://ichart.finance.yahoo.com/c/bb/m/EK

URL’s to bigger charts …

1 day: http://ichart.finance.yahoo.com/b?s=EK
5 days: http://ichart.finance.yahoo.com/w?s=EK
3 months: http://chart.finance.yahoo.com/c/3m/EK
6 months: http://chart.finance.yahoo.com/c/6m/EK
1 year: http://chart.finance.yahoo.com/c/1y/EK
2 years: http://chart.finance.yahoo.com/c/2y/EK
5 years: http://chart.finance.yahoo.com/c/5y/EK
Max: http://chart.finance.yahoo.com/c/my/EK

 
Let’s presume Sprint will use this information responsibly, if harvested (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). The risk of being hacked into? Probably priceless for the hacker, disgruntled partner with access to your handset [enter your own demon's name here].

Read Techcrunch’s article Carrier IQ Video Shows Alarming Capabilities Of Mobile Tracking Software

Then, to be fair and balanced, watch CiQ’s CEO’s explanation. Does it bother you that they disabled comments on this video? Folks seem to be voting it down, so I expect the comments would have been mostly negative.

 
Then ask yourself, if they do not transmit any of the captured information, how can they learn from it? Oops. Not tracking? How can they tell where a call is dropped? Dang! Even if they’re aggregating/anonymising they’re leaving data logs on individual handsets vulnerable to hacking — plus that very CiQ tool is likely draining the battery and retarding performance. Isn’t that counter to the CEO’s stated mission?

Would we tolerate this level of intrusion on laptops for all the reasons given?

Update 12/1/2011: Read Read WSJ’s Carrier IQ Speaks: Our Software Ignores Your Personal Info. So, now they admit CiQ does transmit data, but nothing very personal. My head is spinning from all this flip-flopping. So how about setting this utility to off by default and being upfront about what it collects (offering a preview of the data if we want to see it, before it’s transmitted)?

Et tu iPhone?

To see what your iPhone is up to, and to ensure it’s not sending similar “diagnostic” information out …

Settings>General>About>Diagnostics & Usage>Don't Send [checked]

Then to see what’s it’s capturing, even though it may not be sending …

Settings>General>About>Diagnostic & Usage Data>Messages [today's date]

Doesn’t look to me like there’s any iPhone keylogging going on. Phew!

 
Read The Verge’s Carrier IQ references discovered in Apple’s iOS

Credit Ryan Haugsjaa “Bo-Ashley inkjet ink on paper 8 x 10″

South Africa’s Protection of State Information Bill: The darkest stain on South Africa’s nascent democracy in the making — to cover up graft and corruption instead of addressing it head on. What happened to the dream?

Links: Secrecy Bill: Black Tuesday ‘not the end of the road’

Thankfully my favourite South African fast food franchise, Nando’s, can make light of a serious situation …

At the risk of letting it go public too soon, I’m posting the link to my daughter’s Thanksgiving Day alternate reality game — so interested family and friends can follow along.

Twelve of Bo’s friends were chosen and a series of clues posted to them anonymously which, when solved, and the results posted as public statuses on Facebook, would become trailheads into an ARG — deliberate clues which would enable an unsuspecting thirteenth player, my daughter, to discover a way into the game’s rabbithole.

We’re a week into the game, the final days are playing out now: Here Be Dragons! Read from the bottom up. The associated Twitter account is @Dagroian.

Themes include the number thirteen, codes of various kinds, technology and, of course, dragons.

Suggested links Wikipedia’ entry on Alternate reality game