Friday 18 May 2012

Microsoft Digging Their Own Grave?

Saw this article posted at ComputerWorld last week and just got round to posting this now.
Microsoft are going to disallow Firefox *and* Chrome on Windows 8, and Mozilla respond by saying "it probably isn't worth it to build a W8 version of Firefox as it would be "crippled".

I can only see it ending badly for MS, and pulling a stunt like this makes me think just how do Microsoft propose to attract consumers to windows 8? I myself use Ubuntu and it really makes me think, are Microsoft digging their own grave? Take note in the mobile device world, Android is dominating due to its open source nature.

Now look at MS - UEFI/Secure Boot that may disable users from dual booting with Linux, and now locking out Firefox and Chrome? Well done MS, keep alienating what customers you have left.

I sense a lot of anti-competitive and anti-trust lawsuits heading their way, although other 3rd party developers may go with Mozilla on this and just don't bother with MS and Windows anymore. Sure MS and Windows will always be the bigger OS, but they are slowly pushing their more techy customers away.

Saturday 12 May 2012

Facebook & Censorship

Facebook is starting to become more trouble than its worth - the thing that made me want to wrote this blog post is the whole thing with employers wanting access to employees personal Facebook accounts. I know I'm not alone when I say that is a total violation of a persons right to privacy, and thankfully congress is passing a new bill/act that will prohibit employers from doing this.

 On a similar subject, news also appeared recently of school teachers wanting to know what students are up to outside of school grounds, again using Facebook to do so. Again this is in violation to students privacy and has nothing to do with teachers once students are outside school grounds.

Something else I saw on the BBC News website, an article about bouncers wanting to check peoples phones to logon to Facebook as a way of ID. I can't be alone when I say that Facebook has had its day and needs to just roll over and die, its becoming far more trouble than its actually worth.

Anyhow, that's just my view on Facebook, its creating far too many messy legal situations and I think it needs to stop. Now, onto my second subject of this blog post - internet censorship.

Its been all over internet news websites about ISP's being ordered to block their users from accessing The Pirate Bay, so far its mostly started happening in the UK, so far Orange and Virgin Media have blocked users from accessing TPB.

TalkTalk apparently have also blocked it but this has yet to be confirmed. Its still early to tell what effect this will have on TPB long term but so far the only effect its had is increase traffic surge on TPB. However there are a few sites out there sharing tips and tools that can be used to circumvent censorship - the high courts are also trying to censor sites that help users circumvent these censors which is wrong. I can understand "maybe" wanting to block TPB due to piracy, bit blocking sites that fight for internet freedom is wrong, these sites are not doing any wrong, so I'll be this blog post on this note.

To all ISP's & the high court, as long as things like VPN's exist and TOR browser then you will NEVER censor everyone no matter how hard you try.