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I am not a developer or security expert, but I know quite a bit about Internet services (run my own LAMP server locked as tight as I can afford on a hobbyist's budget) and I do what I can.

Firefox disabled by default ssl2. In 2006, wrote a post telling users how to reenable ssl2 in Firefox. One of my main users (and my fiance) gets lots of Firefox was running into errors. So, I disabled ssl2 in /etc/apache2/httpd.conf.

And now this.

So here is my big giant “fuck off” for the Firefox engineers and managers who collectively disabled ssl2 support to encourage server admins to shut off ssl2 support, even as I suspected all cryptography at the practical level is broken.

Yeah, I know security is a process, not a product, but if this is the case, then “encourging” admins to use one version of a protocol by disabling one is just the engineering version of “I know better than you so follow my lead.”

Something the narrator in the bookscanner video said at the end of his video really resonates with me, which is that

powerful tools invariable have powerful effects. If everyone had a book scanner in their home, it might force the publishing industry to rethink an obviously broken business model.

Lately, I've been posting like crazy about digital print and related topics such as the conversion of paper print to digital audio. Google started their project several years back and publishers are suing to stop the threat to the paper print business model represented by a millions-of-volumes digital book corpus. If these publishers (copyright holders) are successful, it won't be too long before efforts such as the one depicted in the Instructables video are multiplied on a mass scale, what Clay Shirky calls the mass amateurization of a formerly professional field (book publishing).

My best guess is that media incumbents will not adapt, and that what happened to the music industry will happen to all media incumbents. It's not that publishers can't change, but rather something about their culture, their collective belief in entitlement and the "rightness" of legacy media structures prevent them from pioneering the transition.

You can't say we didn't try.

Ecto 2 has serious flaws and the developer suppresses this information on his developer page. Quoting my own blog entry regarding the problem:

If after posting a blog entry (with or without Ecto) you edit the code for a blog entry in a text editor, say BBEdit, and then load that entry into Ecto, Ecto wipes out all advanced tagging, including but not limited to CSS tags, XML markup, and HTML styling. Ecto will not notify you that it has made these changes. So if, for example, you use Ecto to do a minor edit of a blog entry, all of your specialized markup will silently but surely disappear.

Ecto 2 is not for anyone who uses even the least bit of custom CSS and/or markup.

Johnnie Wilcox
aka mistersquid

An RSS reader is better if you want to automate the checking of those sites you're interested in. You don't have to keep refreshing; the RSS aggregator does it for you and, depending on your client, can alert you if there is new content.

This saves you the trouble of loading a new set of tabs and finding no new content. RSS readers are very good with infrequently updated pages. RSS readers also keep you up to date on frequently updated pages because you will be notified of new content once your reader discovers it. RSS readers also are easier to scan content with. I find myself not getting sucked in by story summaries. For many types of news, the headline is enough. In my case, using an RSS reader has cut my surfing time by 75% (as near as I can tell and without exaggeration.)

Finally, some RSS feeds include summaries, others excerpts, and some even the entire article. The amount of information you get depends on the level of detail the feed publisher chooses to provide.

I myself was scratching my own head about RSS readers and so decided to make an effort to see what the hoopdehaw was all about. I blogged about two Mac-based RSS readers (one of them free like beer) and haven't looked back. In fact, I so much prefer surfing by feed that I don't surf without access to an RSS reader. Just thinking about sifting through all the articles, say, on the front page of the NYTimes is fatiguing.

That mental fatigue is the result of the facts that, unlike RSS readers, web pages do not expire older articles as quickly as most RSS feed readers (with their default settings) and that most sites provide no way for you to flag an article for later attention or to mark an article as read.

The short version is try an RSS reader (I mention a few Windows-based clients at the bottom of the above-mentioned blog entry) and see for yourself if loading up Firefox tabs gives you comparable functionality. An RSS reader is one of those things like chat. Trying to explain why chat is in some ways preferable to email gets nowhere fast. You have to try it to understand what is so great about it.

The first time I don't subtract my +1 bonus and I write a gaffe like the parent post . . .

Please do mod the parent down if you can spare the points.

:P

mistersquid

This fake sig admits responsibilty but has the shelter of cowardice.

I mention this in a comment above: the video-frame is reversed. Who knows why, but it is. Take a look at the building number above Buzz's head to confirm.

mistersquid

This sig has been faked

I know this post comes late in the game, but I haven't seen this point made in the above, so I'm going to shoot, FWIW.

The article opines that

We believe e-mail is no more intrusive than direct mail, telemarketing or TV advertising when it comes to politicians seeking to reach voters.

Mike McCurry's and Larry Purpuro's point is that since we don't mind carrier mail spam we should be open to email spam.

The problem, thouhg, is that many of us do mind carrier mail spam, and we mind it very much

Email hasn't been around for all that long, and until recently (about 1998), email was not a venue for mass marketers. Email was a sanctuary from spam, a place where we could get away from advertising. Many of us resent commercial intrusion into our email because we are sick near to death of the rampant advertising in every other aspect of our lives.

The way that quote should be read is that people are sick of most mass marketing. We don't want email spam and, God only knows, we don't want carrier mail spam, either.

mistersquid