Fernando's Life

If you ever use the internet you know by now that SOPA is probably the most popular subject right now. It is a bill supported mostly by the entertainment business that will flat out censor the internet. The bill does not target freedom of speech, but it gives the government the power to negate it if it wishes, and we all know that power is always used when made available. SOPA stands for “Stop Online Piracy Act”, it aims to block out websites such as ThePirateBay.org, but it also gives the government to censor any other website if it receives a complaint. To better explain what this new law would do, here’s an excerpt from TomsHardware.com.

• Assign liability to site owners for everything users post, without consideration for whether or not the user posted without permission.  Site owners could face jail time or heavy fines, and DNS blacklisting.
• It would require web services like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to monitor and aggressively filter everything all users upload.
• It would deny site owners due process of law, by initiating a DNS blacklisting based solely on a good faith assertion by an individual copyright or intellectual property owner.
• It would give the U.S. government the power to selectively censor the web using techniques similar to those used in China, Malaysia and Iran.  The Great Firewall of China is an example of this type of embedded, infrastructural internet censorship.

Source: TomsHardware.com

GoDaddy.com was listed as a supporter of this bill, but due to all the rage it caused on websites like Reddit.com, they have withdrawn their support. I’m obviously opposed to the bill, not because of what it intends to do, but because of how it’s being done and the impact it will have on internet freedom. I think the best way to fight this is not only to oppose it online in any possible way, but also to make everyone aware of it, specially to those that don’t use the internet much. Lets keep in mind that this will affect future generations, the internet will never be the same.

SOPA aside, I’d like to share a pretty cool blog I ran into not long ago, MadeInThai.org. It is a blog about all Thai-related things, by Ray Malcolm. If you’re at all interested in other cultures, this is one blog to visit.

I did finally receive my iPhone 4S yesterday and I have been toying around with it. I have been a fan of the iPhone since the iPhone 3GS because they are great phones and fairly durable. I had my expectations low for this new model because I knew it was just a small upgrade to the already awesome iPhone 4. I was pretty disappointed once I received the new model yesterday because despite all the cool new iOS 5 features, the battery life is awful. Apple claimed the battery life would be better than that of the iPhone 4 but I call it false advertising. I think the faster processor is to blame for most of that, which I have to say, even though my apps do open SLIGHTLY faster, it is not that impressive. The camera was another big improvement on this model, and even though it is clearly better because it is an 8MP camera, I wasn’t that impressed by it either. Now, about Siri, the feature that sold the iPhone 4S, also did not live up to the hype in my opinion.  The ability to speak basic commands to your phone is great, but unfortunately it relies on, 1. You having internet on your phone and, 2. Apple servers. So so far it has only worked about 60% of the time for me, the other 40% of the time it won’t work because either the feature itself is faulty, or the Apple servers are just not responding. My advice to anyone thinking about buying it is, skip this model and wait for the iPhone 5.