Does Flickr Censor User Content Over Blatantly Fake DMCA Notices? | Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

Many bloggers and news outlets accused Flickr of censorship and political bias in the removal of what was seen by many as a clear fair use parody image critical of the President. The case made the national press and with an EFF attorney adding that Alkhateeb indeed had a very strong fair use defense. After a substantial amount of critical press over the image, Flickr Community Manager Heather Champ finally came out defending Flickr over the issue saying that Alkhateeb’s image had been removed from Flickr due to a “a complete Notice of Infringement as outlined by the DMCA (Digitial Millenium Copyright Act)” In the same breath Champ accused the press and blogosphere of being “makey uppey.” Shortly afterwards, the thread where Flickr users were complaining about this image deletion was shut down by Flickr staff.

People need to read 1984 and Brave New World again (along with a history of the Soviet Union in the late 20th century).

A state does not need to be all-powerful in order to be oppressive. They simply need to convince enough people to act as spies and censors on their behalf so as to intimidate or throttle dissent.

Knowing Yahoo's history as I do (as a former customer) I am quite willing to chalk this one up to incompetence, coupled with a good dose of political bias. Don't expect the Yahoo's to fess up to either. Their efforts to reinforce the illusion that they have done no wrong, and can do no wrong only adds to my contempt for the company. Eventually everyone will figure out that their ability to deliver falls far short of their promises. My only regret is that the primary beneficiary of Yahoo's demise will likely be Microsoft.

Ballmer Ribs Google's OS At Microsoft Conference (MSFT, GOOG)

"I don't know if they can't make up their mind or what the problem is over there. The last time I checked you don't need two client operating systems."

Only one of the readers at businessinsider came up with this list of MS operating systems (I don't know if they are all current):

* Windows XP
o Starter Edition (16 editions for each of 16 countries)
o Home Edition
o Home Edition N (European market)
o Home Edition K (South Korean market)
o Home Edition KN (South Korean market)
o Home Edition for Subscription Computers
o Home Edition for Prepaid Computers
o Professional Edition
o Professional Edition N (European market)
o Professional Edition K (South Korean market)
o Professional Edition KN (South Korean market)
o 64-bit Edition
o Professional x64 Edition
o Media Center Edition
o Tablet PC Edition
o XP for Embedded Systems
o XP Embedded
o Embedded for Point of Service
o Windows Fundamentals For Legacy PCs
* Windows Server 2003
o Small Business Server
o Web Edition
o Standard Edition
o Enterprise Edition
o Datacenter Edition
o Storage Server
o Windows Home Server
* Windows Vista
o Starter
o Home Basic
o Home Basic N (European market)
o Home Premium
o Business
o Business N (European market)
o Enterprise
o Ultimate
* Windows 7
* Windows Server 2008
o Web Server
o Standard Edition
o Enterprise Edition
o Datacenter Edition
o for Itanium-based Systems

Windows Mobile computing

* Windows CE
* Windows Mobile 6

Microsoft Says New Google Tool Interferes With Outlook Software - WSJ.com

Responding to the comments more so than the article itself...

Sorry, but while I agree with your frustration, I can't in the slightest agree with your explanation for the cause. I take issue with the two other responses to your message so far too. Some examples:

When Microsoft was the upstart company their word processor was good, but not great. As they worked to improve it to compete with the then dominant Wordperfect it had the amazing ability to read and write almost any type of word processing file from any vendor. They also (in a letter from Bill Gates) proclaimed that the operating system should provide open standards for interaction between all applications programs and the hardware (printers, scanners, disk drives) that previously had required each separate application to cooperate with. This is in fact what operating systems are supposed to do. Up to an including Windows NT, Microsoft put a lot of effort into writing and testing drivers for all then extant hardware.

After Windows NT though, things changed. Windows, now the de facto standard of the US government became the arbiter of what new devices users would have easy access to. The Windows-compatible branding program put the onus back on the hardware vendors to be compatible with Windows rather than the other way around. Only that Windows standard has been an intentionally moving target since then with each new version breaking compatibility with whatever came before, at each stage giving Microsoft applications and Microsoft partner hardware an unfair advantage, and inconveniencing users who sometimes were quite happy with hardware made by now defunct vendors.

The Microsoft lock on big government has made them almost invulnerable to competition no matter how poorly their products perform (and by that I mean performance, bugs, security, etc.).

The one company that Microsoft has partnered with (both on and off the books) is Intel and it is no coincidence that each new generation of Intel processors require a radically new version of Windows to work optimally (this is not true technically, but only from a marketing perspective) and each new version of Windows has performed sluggishly on all but the latest Intel processor. Our PCs have been blindingly fast from the mid 90s but you would never know it if you run Vista on anything but the latest systems equipped with more memory than the older systems can even be upgraded to.

This simply ISN'T the results of competition. Quite the opposite it is the results of one hardware company and one software company having completely unassailable positions in the marketplace.

How ironic it is that Microsoft, with a long list of competitors that they ruined by pulling the rug out from under them would now complain when it for once goes the other way. Cry me a river.

If you ever get a chance to speak to a Justice Department official who actually knows anything about computers, please ask them why they have allowed this travesty to continue. Also ask them what percent of their computers are running Windows and Office, and what they pay for it on a per seat basis. Of course maybe MS cut that particular department a deal to stay off the hook.

All I know is that technology would have advanced far faster if WordPerfect and Lotus 123 were still thriving and government offices could run Windows, OS/2, Linux and OS X and all the end-user applications would run on each of those systems. It's doable, as shown by Wordperfect that ran on just about any OS even after they had been reduced to a shell of their former self. It is Microsoft that has held you back, with the help of a few accomplices who all benefited from the arrangement.

Competition, which now rears its head with Google, is the cure for this disease, not the cause of it.

Apple, while I applaud their inroads into the Microsoft monopoly, such as they have been, isn't a whole lot better. They thrive in the shadow of Microsoft by excelling in areas that MS simply can live without. I would love for them to make a run at the entrenched government installed base and provide a credible alternative to Office as well. You'll notice they show no interest in doing such a thing and Microsoft only dabbles (Zune) in areas where Apple is strong. Google is a threat, why?, because so far they have not sent signals that they will join in this dance. So far anyway, and I hope they stick to it.

Gawker - CNN Debates Twitter's Relevance While Ignoring Important World Events Being Reported on Twitter - twitter

"On Saturday, as things turned from bad to worse in Iran as thousands of protesters took to the streets in anger to revolt against the sham election in that country, CNN, a cable news network that rose to prominence largely because of its reporting of strife in foreign lands, was virtually silent about the uprising on television and on the web. As pointed out by ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick, 'hours after Iranian police began clashing with tens of thousands of people in the street, the top story on CNN.com remains peoples' confusion about the switch from analog TV signals.'"

YouTube Provides Better Coverage of Events in Iran Than MSM | NewsBusters.org

"If you are following the amazing events currently unfolding in Iran in the wake of their turbulent election, then YouTube will give you a much better sense of what is happening than the mainstream media. Yesterday, while the dramatic protests were unfolding, CNN held an extended forum on healthcare. The other cable news channels weren't much more enlightening in their coverage of events from Iran."

Barney Frank, Car Czar - WSJ.com

The latest self-appointed car czar is Massachusetts's own Barney Frank, who intervened this week to save a GM distribution center in Norton, Mass. The warehouse, which employs some 90 people, was slated for closure by the end of the year under GM's restructuring plan. But Mr. Frank put in a call to GM CEO Fritz Henderson and secured a new lease on life for the facility.

YouTube - Mad Avenue Blues

Me(to my local paper): Cancel my subscription.
Local Paper: But wait, we have all sorts of valuable content.
Me: Like what?
LP: National and International news, local sports scores, classified ads, police reports, obituaries.
Me: Reuters, AP, UPI, local teams pages, Craigslist, local police web page, … wait, you want me to pay for your paper to get obituaries?
LP: Uh, well, yeah!
Me: Cancel my subscription.
LP: Cents off coupons?
Me: Click.

Slashdot Comments | The case for public run money

For anyone who thinks GM's problems started recently:

The lowliest paid guy in GM can buy a top of the line new car, a caddy say, and never sweated the 5 buck a gallon gas last summer. They can also have a harley, a snowmobile, a main house, a summer camp and etc. That's why no one in the car companies could see they were making way too expensive gas hogs. I was just a lowly GM employee in the 60s, we were making an *obscene* wage for what we were doing and I know it has gone up from then. You could eat steak and lobster every night, and I did frequently. Went out to eat all the dang time. I had friends who bought and trashed new muscle cars every six months on that sort of wage! Wore them out street racing. No probs, just go buy another one. That's how much we were making back then, and what that meant for being able to buy stuff. I mean a real nice apt was 90-100 bucks a month, they would have deals where they could advertise them as less than a hundred, and it was quite possible to find a good enough place for like 12 bucks a week or 50-60 a month. I know I just stayed in a real nice motel efficiency because it had freeking maid service! It was only a little more than an apartment and just as nice, so who cared? Utilities for most people, electric, natgas, fuel oil, phone, were a joke, gasoline was 6 gallons for a dollar, and you had to go way out of your way to find the worst possible job that didn't come with full insurance. When you were making hundreds of bucks a week THEN, with just an entry level blue collar job, well..it leads to "irrational exuberence" that lasted culturally for decades..That's why NONE of those CEOs realized what a bad PR move showing up in their private jets was..no frame of reference with the regular folks in the rest of the nation. The rank and file union "brothers" are similar, just used to living so high on the hog for so long they can't even conceive that they are overpaid by three times.

Projects Gone Wrong - IT Management

Is this the era of "Worst Practices"?

Talking Points Memo: A Real News Source for Maureen Dowd and Others | Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD

"After an initial attempt by Dowd to explain away the similarity between her work and his, the Times is now running a correction on Dowd’s Sunday column, noting that she “failed to attribute a paragraph” to Marshall."

Go to link for more on the blogger that the Dowdwager likes to "quote".

Why Steve Ballmer Is No Steve Jobs (MSFT)

"Hardware has never been Microsoft's (MSFT) specialty, but it seems the world's biggest software company should at least have some idea of what good hardware user experience is all about. Maybe not."

Sunset - Cringely on technology

"IBM doesn’t want Sun and is gleeful with the idea of Oracle taking over, as you’ll learn if you read the internal IBM memo copied below. Big Blue does a very good job here of explaining its thinking and most of it makes sense. No white knight."

Gawker - Why Newspaper Shouldn't Buy What Steven Brill Is Selling - Steven Brill

"Steven Brill launched American Lawyer magazine, Court TV, Brill's Content and those airport security fast-passes. Now he wants to help newspapers broker their online content. Clue: Smarter people already offer that."

H-1B Visa Demand Plunges with Economy

"Four Indian IT outsourcers topped the 2008 list of companies obtaining H-1B visas, followed by Microsoft as the top U.S. user of the controversial temporary work visas. Leading the list of 2008 H-1B permits was Infosys Technologies with 4,559 visas granted.

Following Infosys were Wipro Technologies with 2,678 H-1B visas, Satyam Computer Services with 1,917 H-1B visas and Tata Consultancy Services with 1,539 H-1B visas. Microsoft clocked in with 1,307 H-1B visas in 2008.

Cognizant Technology Solutions (467 visas) and Cisco Systems (422) were the only other U.S. companies making the top 10 list of H-1B users. Other notable U.S. technology companies using H-1B visas in 2008 included Google (207), Oracle (168), Yahoo (139), Motorola (112), IBM (104) and Apple (70)."

Also:

*here*
*here*
*here*

OBAMA, GM: YOU BREAK IT, YOU OWN IT at DickMorris.com

GM, now renamed Government Motors, has a new CEO: President Barack Obama.

By replacing the head of the company and demanding a restructuring of its board in return for further TARP aid, Obama has taken upon himself the responsibility for the future of the company. As Gen. Colin Powell said when Bush was considering invading Iraq and toppling the Saddam Hussein government there: “If you break it, you own it.” Now it is Obama’s company.

Disasters: Times Nukes Itself On Google

"The goal was to fold iht.com into nytimes.com. Fair enough; combining the two sites could have resulted in more juice for the newspaper under Google's PageRank algorithm by combining the strong reputations of the two major newspaper sites.

But the Times executed wrong. Instead of redirecting old iht.com links to the same stories on the new nytimes.com server, it simply redirected all content to the same new landing page. When you click through the landing page, you end up not on the story you were looking for, but on the general global.nytimes.com homepage."

Funny. This just happened to me.

Facebook took ads for get-rich-quick scam - web - Technology - smh.com.au

"Before signing up, people are required to submit personal details including their debit or credit card information to pay a $US1.90 sign-up fee.

But the entire venture is a scam with no ties to Google, and is designed to trick Facebook's 175 million users into handing over their banking details.

People on the RipOffReport.com website said they were charged hundreds of dollars and attempts to obtain a refund were fruitless."

Wtf: Bill Gates Unleashes Mosquito Swarm

"TED, the annual gathering of the most pretentious people from the fields of technology, entertainment, and design, just got punk'd. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates released a swarm of mosquitos into the crowd."

From the same company known for facilitating the spread of viruses.

Obama Is “Failure” At Google & “Miserable Failure” At Yahoo

"I told you so. Or I told anyone who cared. I even tried to reach the Obama administration in four or five different ways. Do a search on Yahoo right now for miserable failure, and you’ll find President Barack Obama’s page ranking either in the top spot or the second spot. Given a redirect that Obama’s web team has put into place, he should solidify into that number one spot over time. Eventually, Microsoft’s Live Search should reflect that, as well. And over at Google, Obama will likely gain a top page listing for a search on failure.

I know. There are bigger issues Obama has to deal with. But then again, this is supposed to be the tech-savvy presidency. It should be search engine optimization savvy, as well."

I may have linked this before.

But clearly Google deserves some sort of special payback from the new administration.

They now say they have a special utility they can run to fix their database. They have now run the utility so as not to label Obama a miserable failure.

Only they've known about this since 2005, so presumably they simply didn't mind having Bush labeled as such.

It's good to have friends in high places. Things haven't changed and it's not what you know, but who you know that really counts.

Bob the Impaler

"So they leave things pretty much as-is, announce a first-ever layoff that’s as close to meaningless as possible, and cut a few expenses to generate a projected $1.5 billion savings. Why not? We’re in the worst economy of our lives. Making ONLY $4 billion in profit last quarter will be quickly forgiven.

I’m not saying here that Microsoft has fudged any numbers. Just the opposite, I’m saying that for maybe the first or second time ever they AREN’T fudging numbers."