What happened: Europe called out Microsoft regarding internet explorer being the default browser in Windows. Europe gets what it wants and Microsoft will now show a menu when you first get a pc of several different browsers, the user will select one to install and be default.

I was just reading comments on Digg relating to the story, a group a people that are supposed to know about tech, and I couldn't be more frustrated by the complete lack of understanding even amongst those people.

The biggest problem people have with the ruling is "it's Microsoft's operating system, they should be able to make whatever browser they want default."

I would agree with that but it's a lot deeper than that. Microsoft has majority market share. Internet Explorer not only doesn't follow web standards, but the IE team seems to deliberately work to go against web standards in instances where there's no performance or technical benefit to do so - Internet Explorer is vastly inferior when it comes to performance. It's another issue entirely that they deliberately don't patch security holes because just like Facebook, identity theft and viruses infecting users' computers translates into big bucks and 3rd party businesses solidifying their position as a platform(ie: people promote the use of Windows because they know it'll make users more prone to exploitation, and so they can sell you security software to fix problems that should be stopped on the operating system level.)

Anyway back to web standards, the Internet is an open place, Internet Explorer is a political tool used by a company to force the majority of people who just use the default browser to use a shitty browser that can't handle most of the web innovations and standards (Internet Explorer 8) and that leaves users behind so that a hugely significant amount of people are still using Internet Explorer 6! It's like 10 years old for fuck sake.

Web developers and designers often have to create sometimes entirely different code and severely limit the functionality of web apps just to get it to show up marginally correct in the various Internet Explorer attrocities still in wide use for no other reason than Microsoft wants to dominate the world and aims to do it by being directly malicious toward it's users and incompatible with the rest of the web to lock it's users into a sick cycle of dependence.

The reason Europe stepped in is because it's not just the saps that by their products that are affected, it's the entire Internet. Everyone is affected by the majority of people using some variety of Internet Explorer. Easily 60%+ of a developer/designer's time goes into trying to get a website to work in IE and deciding what features to take out because of it.  Google got so frustrated they developed Chrome frame, which is an Internet Explorer plugin that renders pages for IE. They did this because Internet Explorer can't/won't keep up with the rest of the web.

It's about time someone did something, Internet explorer is so insecure to it's users, and so detrimental to the web it's difinitively malware and Microsoft should be sued for intentionally distributing it at all with their software.

They're actually not sure if accounts were hacked or phished, but Microsoft is saying it's not a breach of their servers... Their probably going on the assumption that if the content was from their databases the passwords would be hashed, but what about xss or some rogue browser plugin? What if there's a breach in some popular software that lets people log into msn messenger and sends off their credentials? Or those 'who blocked me' sites that lure in American Idol voters. Either way they're reporting 10,000+ accounts exposed beginning with A and B, regardless of how they got the info one can only assume they have A through Z.. the probability of getting that many credentials and all of them happen to start with the first two letters of the alphabet?

ANYONE that still has an @hotmail, @live, and whatever other domains Microsoft uses must change your passwords for ALL the sites you use, starting with your hotmail account. Assume all your mail and calendar appointments have been read by the original hackers AND about 100,000 other random people by now.

Someone with access to your email account can reset all your passwords, online banking, facebook, etc. and gain access to all of it while simultaneously locking you out.

Now while this is almost definitely not Microsoft's fault, I can't understand why so many people still use hotmail. Like it's almost as shit as Yahoo mail, and Yahoo mail is complete shit. Maybe this is a good thing, maybe it'll prompt a wave of computer literacy so users can protect themselves from this stupidity.

Furthurmore WHY hasn't anyone thought to take phishing into the non-virtual world. A bunch of guys set up next door First National Bank with a big sign out that says "Fish National Bank" then just wait around for people to hand over their financial information. People are obviously ridiculously stupid. And while we're on the subject how pretentious is First National Bank, like anyone cares you were first.

I was waiting to see how this would play out, and it was Dan Bull who wrote/sang an open letter making the clearest most to the point and least boring by far explanation of why copyright needs reform (not that the issue is boring, but it gets tedious when one side of an argument has a convoluted detrimental and ignorantly self serving agenda).. now there I go.. watch this:

I had an idea for a set of protocols and a software implementation of those protocols to enhance free speech... There are some rare circumstances where depending on the style of leadership, circumstances, and intent censorship can be a positive thing but I believe the vast majority of the time it does more harm than good. One of the many resources on the subject is Wikipedia and the following is an excerpt from their Internet Censorship article which illustrates just how silly can be to censor, but even more so when you realize a lot of censorship out there focuses on words and not context, arrangements of lines and dots and not meaning or intent. Surely it's not censorship itself that's evil, it's that stupid, evil, and illegitimate people are more likely to use it and push for it than others.

Auto-censorship against sexual words in matter for children, set to block the word "cunt", has been known to block the Lincolnshire (UK) placename Scunthorpe. Likewise, a block against the word "penis" may block the Yorkshire (UK) placename Penistone; and at least one big web forum, set to block "twat", automatically changes "wristwatch" into "wris****ch", and refuses the name "Dick" even when it clearly means a man's name. Other examples are blocking "specialist" because it contains the drug name "cialis", and changing "Essex" to "Es***".

They went through her resignation speech with red pen. Check out all 10+ pages it's astonishing  http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/07/palin-speech-edit-200907?currentPage=1

So much crap fell onto my lap at once, and I was about write this whole thing about some of the stuff I have to deal with that holds me back when I get an email with Tom Green's latest blog post, he said it better than I would have so here's an excerpt. Head over to his blog for the whole thing.

...

So yeah I have now built a TV studio in my living room.  It hasn't been easy.  The technology is new.  The business model is in flux.  But I am going to make this fun.  Even though it isn't easy, and there are roadblocks, and constant frustrations.  I am going to keep on gang.  And I want to set an example here to any and all of you who have been paying attention.  Things don't come easy in this world.  But if you work hard and are persistent and stubborn enough to keep going, you will succeed.  It is the quitters who fail.  If you never quit, then nobody can ever tell you that you failed.  So don't ever quit.  Figure out what you want to do and do it.  And know even this.  When you make it half way to your goal, there will be those around you that insist you have failed.  And they will make you want to quit.  Not everyone wants to see everyone else around them succeed.  There are many people among us who applaud failure.  It makes them feel better about their own mistakes.  What they don't know is this negativity holds them back.  It has held me in back in the past.  And I struggle with it often.  Staying positive isn't always easy in a world filled with hate.

...

Read the full post http://www.tomgreen.com/blog/?post=708

Twitter Users Shame CNN For Not Covering Iran Elections, Riots | NEWS JUNKIE.

Well there you have it, CNN one of the most respected news networks has hit a visible wall with its adventure into social media. They keep adding more and more shows centered around Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace comments and using blogs as sources for stories and it's come back to bite them in the ass. While a blog - the Huffington Post - is liveblogging the Iran elections with Video, images, and reports from the ground http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-demonstrations-viole_n_215189.html. CNN who has enourmous reach and tons of actual reporters and journalists is talking to bikers and reporting on six flags. I'm glad I threw out my tv the other day, but it's not about the medium used it's about all the news shows not just CNN pandoring to advertisers and trying to boost ratings and putting those ambitions over actually reporting news and historic events. A good example of this is MSNBC and their product placement deal with Starbucks and how it's taking over one of their morning news shows. Not just talking about the coffee constantly but also interviewing the CEO about how great the coffee is, instead of the economic shithole the world is in and the thousands of people the guy just laid off.

A brief history of our impact on this island in the universe. It's awing. Remarkable. Yet because it seems to say everything it leaves me wanting to do.

Watch the movie at the YouTube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/homeproject

Watch Yann Arthus-Bertrand announce the film at TED:

http://www.ted.com/talks/yann_arthus_bertrand_captures_fragile_earth_in_wide_angle.html

I thought I'd stop by Facebook this morning(ok it's 1:00pm and I just woke up and happened to go there now-ish, but I was totally working on something cool till early this actual morning[6:40am], so for all intents and purposes this right now is 'morning' for the rest of the post.) and saw they'd updated their Terms of Use now deemed 'Statement of Rights and Responsibilities' which alone probably set at ease at least 30% of its outraged users. For the most part it's the same as before except now they've closed a whole lot of legal loopholes that their lawyers didn't see originally, specifically the stuff that made the contract completely null and void by virtue of being contradictory and unenforceable, and the language has been revised to be 90% not shady, and in the shady spots to be convoluted enough to throw off an estimated further 45% of disgruntled current and former users. After that there's an estimated 20% that have to use Facebook for work or networking and does so cautiously and then the again [personally] estimated 5% that realizes they couldn't take the social network giant in a legal battle, and that they could easily change their TOS by a few words to something like, "By maintaining a membership you give us lifelong irrevocable consent to use and complete ownership of your content to do with it as we please including all the intellectual works you've posted or may in the future post on Facebook, or have stashed away in your basement" oh wait, they already tried to do that. I meant do something like that again.

So with that said, what are the goods and bads about the new Facebook TOS (a.k.a. [long pandoring name])?

Pros

• It's now legally enforceable and valid - a pro cause all the protection they claim to provide, they now actually mean it and are legally obligated to enforce it. With an invalid document as they had prior they could do ANYTHING with voluntarily submitted content, including identity, by virtue of it being invalid.
• They now have to give 3-7 days notification when they change the TOS, which will allow users the chance to get out at the very least for one TOS revision, more if in that revision they don't choose to change that very statement, in which case you get at least one more use out of the clause.

Cons

• It's now legally enforceable and valid - even though they had carte blanche with your identity, content, and intellectual property with their old invalid agreement, some local laws trumped such behavior. Now that you're signing a valid contract by using their service, the shady things they stipulate are now their legal right.
• Their ownership of your intellectual property, personal information, and identity(name, address, phone number, pictures of you, etc.) is total and unlimited. ANYTHING you post on Facebook belongs to Facebook until you delete it or close your account. The excerpt below may be confusing,  it doesn't give Facebook the right to use anything you post anywhere on Facebook, instead it gives Facebook the right to use anything you post on Facebook or anywhere else on the net in connection with Facebook(and increasing amount of sites including CNN and other big players, there is no stipulation how loose a connection it needs to be) anywhere in The Universe(incl. France, Mars, Texas, TV, Magazines, Patent office, Jive Records, Radio, etc.). While you have some control over their ownership of your content via privacy and application settings there is nothing in the TOS that stipulates Facebook has to give you the ability to control all aspects of their ownership rights. Furthermore there's no stipulation that you need to be notified when they remove or change the wording of privacy and application controls. In fact, there are no Intellectual Property controls mentioned.
  "For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account (except to the extent your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it)."

So what to make of this? Is Facebook less or more shady now? Here's my survival guide for the current TOS:

1. Use Facebook every day. In some cases(when it involves money, and/or you've written an application for Facebook) you only get 3 days warning of TOS changes and knowing Facebook's past stance on the permanency of their rights you don't want to be stuck in that mess. You also need time to say goodbye to your 'friends', once you delete your account, any goodbye message will be hidden from other users; snatched from their inboxes.(The TOS allows them to keep these messages on Facebook but as of yet your stuff disappears)
2. Don't put anything on Facebook or any site that uses 'Facebook Connect' or is in any other way connected with Facebook that you don't want to share equal ownership of with Facebook [and any of it's employees acting in the name of Facebook],  including but not limited to your name, likeness, image, identity, video footage of you or your family, art, poetry, music, or any other creative content. It's worth mentioning again that they can do anything with such content anywhere, for and to anyone.
3. If you have to put personal information up, you know, so people know who you are and so you can interact with them, make sure to double check your privacy settings. Keep a note that all the privacy settings that were there yesterday are still there today, because they can change whenever Facebook pleases without notice of any kind. Hope Facebook gives you controls over how THEY can use your content rather than just what type of friends and other users can view your content.

To reiterate and conclude: fuck facebook, they are at par ethically with people that author malicious viruses and data harvesters. I hope Zuckerberg get's analy raped by big donkey dick and/or if the site should EVER manage to turn a profit for him to turn around and support cancer research or something good that balances out the shameless exploitation of his sheep-like mindless users.