I think he meant it has nothing that anybody wants to pay to watch. It's popular right now because it's free, but cat videos may not pay the hosting service by themselves.

We are also The Exception.

Fanny packs in the mainstream? Not quite. Pocket protectors only "died out" among the nerd population--the mainstream never adopted them.

Pocket protectors. 20-sided dice. Fanny packs. Floppy diskettes.

You should wear your fanny pack wit pride, and ignore what we say behind your back. Heck, put on camouflage cargo-pants and a pocket protector. We won't mind, really.

The Mozilla Foundation is desperately looking for new ways of acquiring revenue that does not depend on large grants by fickle corporations. Especially when their core competency is being made largely irrelevant by those grantors. Guess the fastest, most common--and apparently very easy to justify morally--way to monetize user access on the Web?

Come on, guess...

Yet, they were vehemently opposed to Microsoft's strategy of blocking third-party cookies by default, and wrote some sort of manifesto on how "user choice" meant letting advertisers fleece those naive enough to not know how to change the default.

        dZ.

You know, if you squint your eyes and concentrate a bit, you'll notice that the Internet is bigger than Facebook, Twitter, and has a lot more than blogs and LOLcats (though, granted, porn comprises most of the non-LOLcat content).

I don't agree that the Internet is a perfect environment, or the answer to all or even most of our problems, like some techno-utopians like to think. However, I also do not agree with those who cannot see beyond the banal facade of the fads du jour.

Sorry, I mischaracterized your post after reading so many "Internet? Meh" posts already.

I agree, Gates and Schmidt are not really visionaries, and when they try to look beyond what they know, all they see is "more of the same," but at a more grandiose scale.

        dZ.

Right.

We had all that in the 1980s with BBS's (and some may say, better, but that's another argument).

Yet, while dialing up to the local "information utility," reading e-mail from strangers half a world away, and accessing the expansive repository of some digitized library--all the time struck with awe and wonder at the fantastic "future" I found myself in, and dreaming of the things to come--I never EVER imagined it like the way it is now.

I sure would not say that the Internet and the technology we have today is just "more of the same."

Sure, it has its problems, and the Internet is most definitely not the bunnies-and-rainbows paradise envisioned by some utopians (I myself expected a lot less ads and LOLcats), but it is absolutely marvelous and transformative in its own way.

Wake the FUCK UP, man, and look around! We're in the fucking future! We got super-computers in our pockets, home computers on a slab of glass, instant access to the mall at any time or place, telecommuting, telegaming... This is the Jetsons-fan-fucking-tastic future! All we are missing are the jet-packs and flying cars.

I sincerely can't wait to see what else is coming.

          dZ.

Chile is the "other main right-wing product of US neoliberal intervention in South America"? Which is the first one? Or did they move Mexico before I got a chance to visit it?

To obfuscated for you?

I wouldn't know, I never used it. Didn't you read my post?

You and your friend not knowing how to use a tool does make it closed; it just makes you ignorant. And telling outright lies based on your ignorance and forcing a discussion about html5 to be Google vs. Apple just makes you obnoxious.

Awww, there you go, turning this into a personal attack on complete strangers about whom you know nothing.

I understand, man. It must suck having all that nerd-rage build up inside and the only inconsequential cause this week on which to focus it is plain old boring DRM. I can see now why you misread my post.

Chip up, though. Maybe a story on personal privacy, or whatever you kids rave up about nowadays, will show up soon. It can only get better.

Have a nice day :)

          -dZ.

He did. His point was to phrase the original post in a way that betrays its absurdity.

I understood what he said.

Haha! That's precious. I love it when my militant open-source-freaky friends send me links to their documents, or to some article or blog post that drives through Google. (Actually, I don't love it at all).

The worst part is that they really have no idea. They are so accustomed to being logged into the Google ecosystem, that they don't realize that it is in itself a controlled and fenced-off environment.

A friend of mine kept trying to send me a spreadsheet from Google Docs, and he really couldn't understand why I was having so much trouble getting access to it (I don't have a Google account, and I disable JavaScript by default). When he thought he sent me a CSV, he actually sent a link to an export function that required me to sign up.

LOL! Open indeed.

They complain vociferously about Apple, but at least when I share photos or web sites from my iPad, it sends the actual content. When I click on "share" from within iWorks, I get the option to send as a PDF, or CSV or something, not some internal link to an Apple web site.

But Google is the openness hero, right?

        dZ.

And then the shitty DRM clients shall replace your Web. Congratulations! See how many third parties you can interest to join your "open Web" with their content, when nobody is there to use it.

This is what is happening in the mobile space with "native" apps. I believe the W3C's proposal is a direct response to this in the hopes of remaining relevant.

When people find it more convenient to tap their Facebook/Netflix/iTunes/Amazon/YouTube/etc. app on their iPad, than typing URLs or searching for stuff on their browsers--and actually receive the benefits of those apps directly and conveniently--why would they even consider the "open web"? Why would they care?

        dZ.