Alex's Journal

Apparently the Federal Government now allows itself to legally steal your computer and make it its own property for the use of domestic or foreign interests. This is all sorts of messed up. I found the video at another blog called Tom’s Place.

Yesterday, Apple announced the release of Safari 4 at it’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Of course, I upgraded immediately from Safari 3 on my Mac. It seems like a pretty good update so far, but there is one major feature that Apple previewed in the beta version that didn’t make it to the final release.

One of my favorite features of Safari 4 Beta was the tabs on top, which Apple promptly got rid of in the final release of the browser. This feature I liked because I tend to overshoot the tabs quite often and, instead of selecting the tab I want, I click on a bookmark in my bookmarks bar. With the tabs on top, the problem was thus solved. Unfortunately, Apple did away with that feature with no option to change it back. I have to say that I’m fairly disappointed with that.

I realize, of course, that there are many good changes that came about in Safari 4. One of them being the better JavaScript performance through the new JavaScript engine, Nitro. I also really do like the way the new address bar looks. The changes were very subtle, but it looks better in my opinion. Apple, for some unexplained reason, removed the progress bar that was embedded in the address bar and was replaced with a small blue rectangle at the end that says “Loading…”.

Overall, it was worth upgrading despite the tabs now being in their traditional location underneath the bookmarks bar.

In the month since the university has been out for the summer, I have to admit that I haven’t had much motivation to write any entries about history. I haven’t researched anything nor have I really read anything pertaining to history. I have finished a couple of Mark Twain books and a book with short vampire stories, but other than that, I haven’t really read anything. Which brings me to this entry’s topic.

I’ve given it a bit of thought about why exactly I study history. The answer is fairly straight-forward I think. I’ve always had a strong fasciation for the past and for some unexplainable reason, a particular interest in the 19th century. I remember when I was a young child at my grandparents’ house when my grandmother would show me old photos of her grandparents and great-grandparents. I always marveled that the people in the old sepia photographs who I was looking at lived in a completely different time and century when things were much simpler.

Even today I think that same drive is behind my fascination with history. I am obviously a modern student in a modern world, who has a fancy laptop, a couple of websites, a couple of blogs, a cell phone, a Facebook account, several gigabytes of music, etc, etc — all of the so-called modern necessities for people of my age; and yet, even I often feel overwhelmed and feel the need to just reject all of this technology and go back to a more basic life. Studying history gives me the ability to simply disappear into a simpler world in which these modern marvels do not exist and to try to experience what life would have been like before electricity or the advent of microchips.

It may seem strange for the son of a computer programmer who is only 21 years of age and who has grown up with computers all of his life to feel this way, but I often do. When doing research, I prefer to use books in the library and read articles in physical journals and take notes with a notebook and pen rather than finding resources online and taking notes digitally as so many of my peers do. I know it is not as efficient and if pressed for time, I will resort to that, but I feel that if you enjoy the research, why does it matter how long it takes?

When I was much younger, the computer was virtually my life. I’ve created programs on multiple platforms, I’ve experimented with different flavors of Unix and Linux and I’ve done websites since I was 11 and the web was hardly anything but a sparse collection of text. I am by no means computer-illiterate or technology-shy (to be perfectly modest…) as many people I know who prefer to do things the old fashioned way. For me, it is simply a choice.

That is why I study history. Not only do I find it absolutely fascinating from an academic approach, but it is a means of escape, I suppose, where a body can disappear to a time before Facebook and MySpace, a time when calling somebody meant visiting them in person, a time when riding shotgun implied carrying an actual shotgun and a time when things were simpler.

This is a duplicate post from my history blog, History Rhymes.

The fact the the government would even try to do something like this just makes me mad.

A US House of Representatives hearing scheduled for later today will be devoted to deciding if a law should be made that requires peer-to-peer (P2P) programs to issue a specific notice to users that warns them that their files may be shared, CNET has reported. The Informed P2P User Act bill introduced in March by California Republican Mary Bono Back will be the focus of the hearing. The wording in the Act, which would require P2P software to allow file sharing only if two rules are met, could also apply to web browsers, FTP applications, IM programs and any other applications that send and receive files.

Under the proposed legislation, software that does not provide users with a “clear and conspicuous notice” of what it does and requires them to provide “informed consent” every time it is opened will be “unlawful.”

All recent Microsoft Windows, Linux, and OS X operating systems would need to comply if the bill is passed, and launching a web browser would also require a “click to agree to terms and conditions” box. Such a restriction would potentially restrict the freedom afforded by the Internet; however, it’s widely believed the bill, at least in its complete form, will not be passed through to become law due to challenges over its scope.

I don’t understand why they feel like they have to regular everything under the sun. The latest version of Firefox doesn’t even have a UCLA or any terms and conditions. I doubt it passes though.

I, like most people I know of my generation, have an extremely strong web presence. Facebook, MySpace, StudiVZ, Last.fm, Wordpress.com, BlogCatalog and DeviantArt are just a few of the social networking sites that I have an account for. Of course that does not even include the other sites I have accounts for that are not technically social networking sites — websites such as Google and Amazon.com.

You have probably read it somewhere else before, but with the conveniences that these services provide comes the high price of anonymity and privacy. While some sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, are obviously much more attuned to the destruction of one’s privacy than businesses such as Amazon.com who use your personal information for business purposes (such as sending a package to your home address when you place an order), each time you sign up for a new account on a different website, a little bit more of your privacy disappears.

Unfortunately for someone of my age (a college student), having accounts on sites such as Facebook and MySpace are practically imperative for your social life. Let’s say you meet someone at a party who you would like to hang out with later or stay in contact with. The first thing they ask you isn’t for your phone number or your e-mail address, it’s whether you have a Facebook account. It’s gotten to the point that the only people you give your phone number to are your closest circle of friends. Receiving a text message is a far more private matter than receiving a message on Facebook. Why? I can’t really explain that.

Again, the biggest problem with this is the matter of privacy. While Facebook does allow you to change your privacy settings and you yourself can control what information about yourself you post to the social networking site, you can’t control what other people put on there. For example, I have always taken the precaution of not posting pictures of myself on the site; however, I am still somehow connected to over 100 different pictures of me that have been posted by other people. Facebook even furnishes a convenient link to these pictures right on my profile page. It is virtually impossible to control this.

On a side note, some may argue that keeping a blog destroys one’s privacy. That is not true unless the blogger wishes it to be so. While with blogging people have the ability to write about their personal lives or post private pictures (and no, I’m not talking about just naughty pictures), the beauty of it is that the writer has the ability to post whatever he or she wants and therefore the freedom to disclose or conceal whatever information about themselves to the world they want to.

The biggest concern I have with these privacy matters is largely two fold. First of all, I don’t think any government agent should be able to access my private information without probable cause, which is absolutely something he or she could do if it was generically posted online. The second concern I have is that future employers will ‘research’ me on the internet. I find it absolutely absurd that potential employers could justify not hiring me just because they found out about a party I went to or what my political or religious opinions are. That to me is an enormous violation of privacy and therefore I want to reduce the risk because the sad truth is that it actually happens.

In order to combat this potential problem, I have decided to attempt to reduce my web presence. This is by no means an easy task. Unfortunately in most instances, what you post on the web, stays on the web. Fortunately I have never posted anything too terribly private. I have begun by deleting my MySpace account. MySpace does not make it easy at all to cancel an account. They first make you confirm that you really want to three separate times, then they send you an e-mail with further instructions you have to follow in order to delete your account. In the e-mail you have to click a link where you are asked yet again if you really want to cancel your account. Then finally, they say your account has been ’scheduled for cancellation’ and that it will take ‘up to 48 hours’ for the changes to take effect.

I would love to delete the other social networking accounts as well, but unfortunately it is the only way I have to contact a lot of people — especially a lot of international contacts I have. That is the hook. Once you start using the service, you’re essentially stuck if you want to keep in contact with most people.

As time goes on, I plan to systematically remove as many accounts as I possibly can. This task might sound easy, but in reality is quite difficult. Most services provide you with a way to remove your account and others just allow you to hide your account from public view, but most of these companies and websites keep your information despite requesting a deletion. We will see how many I end up actually deleting and how many I will deem necessary to keep.

I found an interesting program for the iPod Touch and iPhone called Stanza. The program allows you to essentially use your iPod Touch or iPhone as an eBook reader. You can buy books directly from a browser within Stanza which connects to a large list of databases to find exactly the book you’re looking for. One of my favorite parts though is that I can download my favorite Mark Twain books for free from sites such as Project Gutenberg which have posted the full texts to books whose copyrights have expired.

The program also comes in a desktop form for both Windows and Mac OS X which I have actually found to be an extremely nice alternative to just reading out of a web browser or reading PDFs.

You can download Stanza for free for the iPod Touch/iPhone, Windows or Mac OS X here: http://www.lexcycle.com/download.

I found an ingenious solution for people who do not like End User License Agreements (EULAs).

I read in a Slashdot post that Microsoft has reintroduced DRM on music that is purchased using its new MSN Mobile Music service. Apparently, the songs you buy are more expensive than songs on places such as Amazon or iTunes and they are locked to the phone you purchase them on, which means if you upgrade your phone, you lose the songs you purchased. All this at a time when everyone else is shedding the dreadful and cumbersome DRM. As usual, Microsoft is ridiculously out of touch with the rest of the world and reality. I don’t expect this attempt at a music store to work any better at all than any of their other attempts. They just can’t get it right because they lack the common sense and the market-reading capabilities that almost every single other company has.

Yesterday I was finally able to order a brand new MacBook. I’m quite excited about it because it means I can finally rid myself of the stupid PC laptop with Windows Vista that I have been using now for a while. I hate that thing. Vista is slow, sloppy, ugly, unreliable and generally obnoxious to work with.

I went to a party on Saturday night and one of the guys who was there brought his computer. It was a brand new MacBook and the first one I’ve seen since Apple came out with their new line of MacBook and MacBook Pros on October 14th. I got to talking with him about it and quickly realized he wasn’t just some guy that follows the trend or buys technology-related items because that’s what the guy next to him bought. He knew what he was talking about in terms of computers.

After talking with him for a while, he mentioned that he just made the switch to Mac and that his MacBook was the first Mac he has ever owned. He also mentioned that he’s worked for Dell for a while, but that he had had enough of the problems attributed to Windows, so he decided to opt for a Mac. Based one what he has experienced so far with his Mac, he said that he will never go back to Windows again after getting used to the Mac.