Source: frugaldad.com

However, I came across this and found it very very disturbing. Source will not be revealed:

It’s not a waiting game, it’s a game of poker. Lamar Smith has a royal flush and few people know it.
SOPA may pass. It may not. He doesn’t care, and it doesn’t matter. The MPAA and RIAA started working on their legislative strategy to pass a new anti-piracy bill in late 2010. SOPA was designed to raise the noise. Everyone is playing right into the entertainment industries hand. The lobbyists are laughing manically at the ignorance of the mob. Even Wikipedia and reddit have played into it.
What people don’t know about is the ace: H.R.1981, the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 which is lying in wait. It’s not complete. You see, PCIP is not contestable because it’s about protecting children. They can, and very well might, copy and paste the full text of SOPA to the end of PCIP. That’s the backup. That’s the deal that was struck with entertainment industry lobbyists. We will try to push this anti-piracy bill. It probably won’t work. Don’t worry, we can pass it under an anti-child pornography bill.
There are two things which no Congressman will risk supporting: terrorism and child pornography. There can be no opposition, no discussion. Any anti-piracy law can ALWAYS be reframed as an anti-child pornography bill and it will pass, without even discussion. It will have the full support of the House (minus Ron Paul), the full support of the Senate, and most importantly the full support of the American people. NO ONE wants to risk being called a pedophile.
The entertainment industry has finally caught up with technology. They understand how it works. It took them 15 years, but they know what DNS is. They are going to exploit a fundamental problem with the way DNS is centralized and there is nothing that can be done to stop it. They have found an error in the very architecture of the Internet. The solution, from a free speech standpoint is not to fight it politically. The solution is the fix the error.
We must move to a decentralized system of DNS. It is not impossible. It requires some new thinking and a re-architecture of some web services, but it must be done if we want the Internet, as we know it today, to exist in 5 or 10 years.

Scary isn’t it?

If you want to read more about SOPA, you can go here, here, here, and  here.

Go Daddy has a long history of supporting federal legislation directed toward combating illegal conduct on the Internet. For example, our company strongly supported the Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act of 2008, the Protect Our Children Act of 2008, and the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 (PROTECT IP). Go Daddy has always supported both government and private industry efforts to identify and disable all types of illegal activity on the Internet. It is for these reasons that I’m still struggling with why some Internet companies oppose PROTECT IP and SOPA. There is no question that we need these added tools to counteract illegal foreign sites that are falling outside the jurisdiction of U.S. law enforcement. And there is clearly more that we could all be doing to adequately address the problems that exist.

But it is more than just theft of IP in this situation.  It is about complete censorship.  For a company like GoDaddy to support a bill of internet censorship when its main business purpose is to allow people to create their own sites is ridiculous.  There are even more companies who support this bill.

But there have been dozens of large companies that are speaking out against SOPA.  Ben Huh of Cheezburger, has vowed to move over 1000 domains from GoDaddy over the support of SOPA.  Will this matter to GoDaddy?  Of course not, but news is spreading!  There have been support from a number of hosting providers including our own sponsor HostGator.  It is nice to know that our sponsor sides with us!

So what can you do?  Move from GoDaddy to another registrar or hosting provider.  Here are a list of codes that you can use [Reddit]

• Name.com Use “NODADDY” for 10% off transfer ins (COM, NET, ORG, TV, INFO, IN, US, CO, ME & TEL) and also receive 40% off any of our hosting plans. They also oppose SOPA:  http://blog.name.com/2011/12/getting-on-our-sopa-box-and-saving-you-money/
• HostGator.comis doing 50% off Shared / Reseller / VPS first month. Coupon code: NOSOPA http://blog.hostgator.com/2011/12/22/sopa-must-die/
• Namecheap.comIf you use the code “BYEBYEGD” Namecheap makes a donation to Save The Elephants or use“SOPASucks” for $6.99 transfers.

So what next?  That is up to you!  For now, there may be some interruptions in services here but it will be temporary!  Just until I migrate my domain from GoDaddy to another registrar.

[Wired] [Reddit][TechCrunch]

There is 1 caveat to the entire cloud music service though… Data. I currently use both Amazon and Google Music and I stream music from my phone pretty much all day while I am working. Although I currently have an unlimited data plan through Verizon (I have the Thunderbolt), I have used 0.7GB in the 14/30ish days this cycle. If this rate continues, I’ll use at least 1.5GB this month without tethering! (Yes I tether… 4G speeds for my laptop anywhere is so useful) With Verizon’s new tiered data plans coming out (or AT&T’s data cap), I could only wonder how much data people would use per month…

Amazon Cloud

Initially, Amazon had a cloud storage service where you could store any files that you wanted for a charge per GB used as well as the data transfer fees. This wasn’t such a bad deal since you pay for what you need and use. But then came the talk of cloud music streaming and Amazon decided it would be a great idea to give everyone 5GB of storage on their cloud free! And even better, if you purchased an album online on the Amazon store, they upgraded you to 20GB free (for 1 year, then $20/year after). Sweet! 20GB is some pretty decent storage that is free (esp. when you buy an album for only $0.99). Other storage services charge anywhere from $10/month for 50GB (which is $120/year) but compared to Amazon’s prices, other cloud storage services can’t compare ($50/year for 50GB or $1/GB/year). But just yesterday, Amazon announced that if you had any cloud storage plan above 20GB, your music would not count towards this storage! So you essentially have an unlimited music storage service with 20GB to back up your photos, documents and whatever for just $20/year. To me, this is an exceptional deal! Unfortunately though, if you stick with the 5GB storage that is free, your music storage will be counted. But really, how expensive is $20/year for files you can access anywhere you have an internet connection. OH! And their music player app is cross-smartphone compatible.

TL;DR
Pros:

Cheap
All-purpose storage
Unlimited music storage (for paid only)
Cross-platform music player (app)
5GB FREE

Cons:

5GB is not a lot of space

Google Music

I initially used Amazon cloud first since it was the first available to me and I thought it was awesome until my friend got into the Google Music beta (before me, and also before Amazon’s unlimited music storage). Google offers storage and streaming of your 20,000 songs. Songs, not size! So if you bought your CD (yes, I still buy CDs) and ripped them at a high bit-rate, your files will be considerably larger than the typical MP3 or M4P files. So I requested to be put into the beta and when my invite came, I immediately uploaded my music from both my laptop and desktop. Now, I knew there would be duplicates and I figured that I would parse through everything later… but Google already did that for me once everyone was uploaded. No duplicates and whenever I add new songs to my “Music” folder, it automatically adds them to Google Music. Talk about your seamless syncing! And they even gave me about 20 songs free to listen to as it should “fit my taste.” So as I write this, I am listening to my 2100+ songs on the web based app on my work computer. And when I am away from my desk, I play music through my Droid app on my phone. But how much is 20,000 songs? If you estimate about 4MB/song, you would be looking at 80GB of storage. And remember, this is just for music only! The biggest downside to Google Music is their app, which is only available for Android phones only!

TL;DR
Pros:

FREE
Storage for 20k songs (which is a LOT)
Seamless sync between computers
“Smart” file management
Some Free songs

Cons:

Music only
>App is Android phone only

Apple iCloud

Now, I sold my iPhone 4 just over a month ago and it took less than 2 minutes to sell on eBay. In hindsight, I should have sold it for more, but I was glad to be rid of the phone. Not that there is anything wrong with the phone, I happened to enjoy my Android phone so much more. Anyways, back to iCloud, the new Apple cloud storage system that replaces MobileMe, which was their paid ($99/year) cloud storage system for a measly 5GB which was then upgraded to 20GB. Now, iCloud is free for all iTunes users (Mac or PC) and you get 5GB of storage! This storage is similar to Amazon’s where music, picutres, documents and videos can be kept but Apple also introduced iTunes Match. iTunes Match scans your iTunes library for songs and compares your library with the one Apple has. Match then creates a list of songs that you have and will play the one already on their own servers (at the higher bit-rate of 256kbps). If you have a song that Apple does not have, then the song will be uploaded to their servers for access. Pretty simple and in this case, you don’t need to sit there and manually upload your entire library, which is awesome and such a time saver! And the upgraded song quality is also very nice (although your “unique” songs will not be upgraded). So really, the only storage you would need, would be for the songs that iTunes doesn’t have already which saves a lot of extra space! The biggest problem with iCloud is that you need iTunes… so this will not work on Android devices and computers that do not have iTunes (like my work computer since I can’t install anything myself). All of this can be yours for $25/year!

Another beef that I have is with this graphic:

Not only is it outdated, but the data is completely skewed! Amazon now doesn’t charge you for music storage so the cost is really $20/year but you get 15GB more of general storage! So not only is it cheaper, you get more! And it doesn’t take weeks to upload your entire library. It did take a couple of hours for 2100 songs, but I just let it upload overnight while I was sleeping. Easy peasy!

TL;DR
Pros:

iTunes Match (reduces upload times)
Upgraded bit-rate for songs you have that iTunes has (which is pretty much everything)
All-purpose storage

Cons:

5GB of storage
$25/year (most expensive of the 3)
Requires iTunes
>Not for Android phones

Conclusion

So there you have it. The 3 top music cloud services. If you ask me, I’ll stick with Google Music and use Amazon for documents, pictures and videos. And if I ever get an iPhone again, I might use iCloud, but the chances are good I’d just use Amazon because of their increased storage capacity.

With Google I/O sessions this week, they are just slaughtering everything!

• Google TV (What is it?)
• Froyo (Android 2.2 and why it is faster)
• 30th Anniversary of Pac Man

That last one is the best!  Those people at Google are with it!

Have you read it yet?

Alright.  I want to first say that I completely agree with Marc Maiffret in that computers running Windows as an operating system are in fact more secure than computers running Apple’s OS X.  Don’t get all huffy and say I’m biased as I work on 4 Windows based computers, 2 Macs and my server is Linux. I’m even writing this on a Mac. But the biggest reason I agree with Marc is market share.

“…they try to market themselves as more secure than the PC, that you don’t have to worry about viruses, etc. Anytime there’s been a hacking contest, within a few hours someone’s found a new Apple vulnerability. If they were taking it seriously, they wouldn’t claim to be more secure than Microsoft because they are very much not. And the Apple community is pretty ignorant to the risks that are out there as it relates to Apple. The reason we don’t see more attacks out there compared to Microsoft is because their market share isn’t near what Microsoft’s is.”

Let’s take a look at the Fortune 100 companies:

[docstoc docId="8459550" mId="360797" width="500" height="550" slideMode="false" showRelatedDocs="true" showOtherDocs="true" allowdownload="true" url="http://www.docstoc.com/docs/8459550/Fortune-100-Companies-List-2009"]Fortune 100 Companies List 2009 [/docstoc]

I guarantee you that over 80% of these companies rely on Windows based servers and computers. And why not since Microsoft is geared towards business execution. The other 20% is probably divided into Mac OS X, proprietary operating systems and Linux/Solaris. But what does this have to do with security? Microsoft doesn’t want to push out horrible products that could cost companies millions upon millions of dollars. Could you imagine the lawsuits against Microsoft if they had security holes the size of… you get my picture. So of course Microsoft would have the need to invest a lot of their time, research and money into making their products more secure… but nothing will ever be 100% secure as that is the nature of computational entropy. Yes, that biological entropy only in the digital context. With Apple holding less than 20% of the market share, they also have the need to be more secure, but no one has really attacked Apple’s operating systems yet. And why bother with such a small market presence?

That is where the hacker mindset comes in. Having been there once before (something I’d rather not divulge), you need to dig into the psyche of a hacker. The question of “What can I do to wreck as much havoc as possible with little effort?” is what every hacker is after (I am generalizing virus-makers and malware creators as hackers). Microsoft with an almost 80% market share immediately makes it the number one target. You just need one virus, one malware to crash and affect thousands upon thousands of computers, making companies lose millions of dollars in downtime, data loss and productivity. Yes, that is right… This is what hackers think about. It is all about the e-peen so to speak. If your virus/malware/code does enough damage worldwide, you’ve done yourself a great job! And remember, this is worldwide… if the United States Fortune 100 companies are 80% Windows, what about the rest of the world? What are the downstream consequences from your one code? What is the downtime of companies? What about companies that specialize in anti-virus software? How long until they make a fix? For our sakes, we hope it is less than a day. For hackers, the longer it takes, the better.

So let’s get back to Apple. If someone was to write a virus/malware/code to crash/disrupt all Apple computers, what damage is there to be done? Financially, not very much. Sure there would be a lot of complaints and those companies who have solidified their networks with Apple servers and computers would go down, but how many of those “really important” companies are there? How many are there world-wide? In the grand scheme of hacking, it is all about impact. And right now, Apple just doesn’t have the presence in companies to make that big of an impact. So there really is no need to spend the time to create a virus/malware/hack for Apple products… yet!

Apple’s partnership with Intel has really increased the sales of MacBooks over the past 3 years. Couple that with great advertising, and rabid marketing, Apple is starting to make a bigger name for itself and is starting to infiltrate into the mainstream market. Give it a couple more years and Apple’s market share will be over 30% and I am certain that we will start to see a rise in Mac viruses/malware. Apple is everywhere now… iPods, iPhones, iPads, MacBooks… it is becoming so popular, hackers might start to switch from Windows to OS X and start their malicious attack there.

So for all those current Mac users who feel all immune for the past 10 years, please don’t be so smug and confident thinking that your computer is safe. People comment that they click on links and on Windows, Ad-wares/malwares will infect their computer. And it is true. Over 30% of the links out there are complete garbage and will fill your computer up with trouble. But think about this: why are you clicking on the links? I present to you this t-shirt:

[Click the picture if you want to buy the t-shirt from ThinkGeek]

PEBKAC: Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Computer. In other words? You. Most problems from viruses and malwares come from the users not knowing what certain links are, how to spot suspicious emails or ads.

Eventually, this won’t be a problem just for Windows users. It will be a matter of time before someone out there cripples Macs and then you’ll be singing a different tune. And remember, I have 2 Macs… I won’t be thrilled when that time comes either. But at least I have 4 Windows PCs that have been safe…

Stay safe out there on the internet… it can be crueler than the real world.

[Digg]

After installation, I was greeted by the usual “You’ve updated Firefox, take a look at the new features.” Only this time, there was something to take note of… new themes!

Now, I’m not one for themes since I know it slows down my browser (unless of course it is very very practical), but I decided to take a look anyways.

And then I decided to choose this theme… It was nice, colorful and not very obtrusive. But there was 1 problem… I was using a Mac and the theme didn’t jive so well with my favicons. So I went back to my original theme (Stratini: Small buttons, includes favicons so I can bookmark my many sites (look at first 2 pics)).

But it didn’t stop there as I had to try this on my PC as well. But behold all of Windows glory, the themes actually work and looks good too! Pretty excited… except for the fact that I’m waiting for my first “new” crash of the day. Update now!

You Suck at Photoshop is a series of videos that aim to teach you how to use Photoshop to the programs moderate potential.  If you have ever used Photoshop, this program is not for the faint at heart.  It can get very very complicated if you just try and fool around with it.

Well, these “tutorial” videos are full of informative material as well as some fictional plot/dialogue.  I want to emphasize fictional as although the narrator may sound true and sincere, these series are all scripted.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, the language is not for the faint at heart.

[My Damn Channel]

Tonight, I’ll be attending MegaTweetup at Microsoft NERD in Cambridge.  This is a huge social media event that is bound to break records and should be an awesome time.  I won’t be live blogging but I hope to get some pics.  And all proceeds go to Dana Farber Cancer Institute so hurry up!

Finally, there is PAX East 2010.  As an avid gamer (PC), and an avid comic reader (Penny Arcade eXpo), I am really looking forward to this 3day event.  I’m hoping to get a media pass and live blog a lot of the sessions so stay tuned in March for this awesome 30,000 LAN (local area network) party (LAN parties are people who  network computers to play games).

I’ll be on vacation from December 18th to January 3rd so I will be working on updating the site and the look.  So stay tuned for the new TNMS!

For more details on the meetup, please visit here: http://www.meetup.com/boston-wordpress-meetup/calendar/11552881/