12.5 hours of work so far today. The result? The public-facing side of my first CMS is largely done. Awesome!
12.5 hours of work so far today. The result? The public-facing side of my first CMS is largely done. Awesome!
The more time I spend reading things on the internet, the more obvious it is to me that measure matters. Too many sites still have lines running to well over 100 characters. (I saw one recently that runs to 135, and many online technical manuals still run to the full width of the page!) It’s just hard to read.
I locked this site in at between 66 and 72 characters, and it makes a difference. I hope, eventually, that everyone gets this right. In the meantime, Instapaper and Readability carry the day!
Clay Shirky is a consistently solid thinker on media and policy. No surprise, then, that his thoughts on PIPA/SOPA (now dead, thankfully) and the approach of the old media conglomerates in general:
Traditional American media firms are implacably opposed to any increase in citizens’ ability to create, copy, save, alter, or share media on our own. They fought against cassette audio tapes, and photocopiers. They swore the VCR would destroy Hollywood. They tried to kill Tivo. They tried to kill MiniDisc. They tried to kill player pianos. They do this whenever a technology increases user freedom over media. Every time. Every single time.
Pick up the pitchforks: David Pogue underestimates Hollywood→
Best comment on #SOPA by far: “The internet is not owned by the US, thus they should not censor it.”
Following up on yesterday’s thoughts on piracy: I ran across an example that perfectly illustrates the ways that the big content industries are shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to profit and piracy.
Jaimie and I are big fans of Castle; it’s the only ongoing television show we actually watch. I was reading some discussion on this week’s episode this morning, and discovered that while ABC puts the video up on the website for streaming (good move!), they limit access to people in the United States (horrible move!). Read on, intrepid explorer →
The following is adapted and expanded from some comments I left on Cranach: The Blog of Veith‘s post on Wikipedia going dark yesterday.
As many others have pointed out, there are many better solutions to piracy than those proposed by PIPA and SOPA. One of these solutions is to address the root issues of much of the piracy that goes on: the absolutely backwards systems that the content-publishers themselves have created, systems that inconvenience only the people who actually care about copyright. Read on, intrepid explorer →
The following is adapted and expanded from some comments I left on Dr. Gene Veith’s post on Wikipedia going dark today.
Congress is considering two acts – the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act and the Senate’s Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) – which have as their stated goals the elimination of online piracy. This is a notable goal, and one I can get behind. The problem is, these acts do far more than just stop online piracy. Read on, intrepid explorer →