As a general FYI and news of the Day bump, The votes for both PIPA and SOPA have been put on hold, it doesn’t mean they are dead, and with wonderful rhetoric like This Gem from
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt), “But the day will come when the Senators who forced this move will look back and realize they made a knee-jerk reaction to a monumental problem. Somewhere in China today, in Russia today, and in many other countries that do not respect American intellectual property, criminals who do nothing but peddle in counterfeit products and stolen American content are smugly watching how the United States Senate decided it was not even worth debating how to stop the overseas criminals from draining our economy.”
So an industry that employ’s a decent number of people here, but produces all of its promotional items abroad, gets a pat on the back. Millions of jobs lost right there senator.
How can a US law punish someone in another country. I’m pretty sure there are laws in Iran you may have violated today, should we ship you there to face punishment? It makes no sense. All these type of laws do is frustrate and censor citizens in your own country. They can stop a daycare from painting mickey mouse on a wall in Florida but they can’t stop anyone anywhere else from stealing a nickle.
Man I’ve done a lot of ranting lately… Where’s my coffee.
Yesterday wasn’t fun for me. I lost money, and lost a lot of fun. I lost ad revenue from people coming to my tiny little corner of the internet and clicking on an ad or two. Reading a funny post or learning a thing or two. Perhaps listening to the podcast that was supposed to record live last night. I’m not a hard hitting news site, and we all know this. This is where you come for a very niche brand of bad humor, good gadgets and fun. This isn’t a place for political machinations. Hell this isn’t a place that usually uses the word machinations… let alone spells it right both times.
This was the response from former congressman, and now MPAA chief Chris Dodd on Yesterday’s Strike
“Only days after the White House and chief sponsors of the legislation responded to the major concern expressed by opponents and then called for all parties to work cooperatively together, some technology business interests are resorting to stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns, rather than coming to the table to find solutions to a problem that all now seem to agree is very real and damaging.
It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.
A so-called “blackout” is yet another gimmick, albeit a dangerous one, designed to punish elected and administration officials who are working diligently to protect American jobs from foreign criminals. It is our hope that the White House and the Congress will call on those who intend to stage this “blackout” to stop the hyperbole and PR stunts and engage in meaningful efforts to combat piracy.” ~Chris Dodd
Abuse of power? or a showing of strength. I can’t think companies would give up revenue and annoy their uses for no reason.
“If 50 people, yes 50 people a day walk in an sing alice’s restaurant and walk out… then, that, my friends is a movement” ~Alro Guthrie
With all apologies to Arlo for shoving the quote out in a hamfisted way, we have a movement. And people are starting to learn what is happening behind the closed doors in Washington. An educated populace is a dangerous one. You can’t kill a movement.
There are 94 million reasons for the Congress to listen to the MPAA, all of them fronting George Washington. None of those reasons has anything to back it up beyond a old fashioned payoff.
The reasons to keep the internet as it is are much more concrete. The bills as they stand break functionality, will loose people big and small real money and don’t add anything to the equation, in fact the process that the bill would implement would basically set us back years in terms of productivity and cooperative and collaborative work. The DCMA is a fine way to take down content that infringes upon people’s rights. It works, it has oversight. And the onus is on the copyright holder to complain if they feel their work is being misused.
SOPA / PIPA would allow the US Government to shutdown sites first, without a hearing. Upon receiving a complaint. What says the party in power doesn’t use this to shut down a particularly explosive story about one of its members, keep it out of the news long enough to win an election. This is censorship, plain and simple. This is not protecting jobs this is controlling information.
No one is defending piracy. We are rejecting censorship, in any form. Instead of standing up an old business models, innovate. Instead of locking people into content streams and milking them for money at every turn allow them to own their content and take it with them as they see fit. The piracy will go down. People quite simply don’t want to buy DVD’s or disks of any sort. they want files, and will pay for files, as long as the files can be played where they want them to play.
Movies have not lost their revenue due to piracy, but because going to the movies is expensive and the economy sucks. Movies need to be really good for people to throw down coin in a down-turned economy. And that is just logic.
SOPA and PIPA are great examples of how things are really broken in our government. The constituents stand up and say they don’t want something to pass, it shouldn’t pass. Government by the people, not by the bank. A business does not get to vote, and does not get calls it an abuse of power? No my friends we elect people to make that laws. the congress shouldn’t be taking their ques from companies.
You want power? You need to fight. You want to negotiate you have to ask for things you would be willing to cut to get what you really want.
The biggest problems with the SOPA and PIPA legislation that everyone saw right off the bat was DNS filtering. You force sites off the internet by blocking their website from being recognized by DNS, the system that basically runs how the internet works.
DNS as a short example: Every computer connected to the network has a unique address, like a phone number that is that computers signature as it travles about online. There are a host of rules for what address your machine ends up with, and most machines have temporary numbers, when you connect you are given a number dynamically (DHCP), but websites have a Static Address, and DNS is the phonebook that translates www.yahoo.com to 98.139.180.149. Try it… both go to the same place. Big sites have the whole address to themselves, like yahoo, google ect.
but little sites like www.caffination.com -> 74.208.150.174 share the same number with other sites. And its the job of the DNS to sort all of that out.
Well with all of that explanation MPAA has taken the most offensive portion off the table. SOPA and PIPA live on, without the obvious flaw. now the problems which remain are just as bad, but a little less obvious. The laws would require the content providers to police everything that is ever submitted for possible copy-write violation, think about the volume of videos that youtube gets. should someone have to watch every single one as it is submitted. Would you be ok if it took a couple of months for your news and reports to get out?
The laws would also would attempt to legislate non us sites with a US law. How would you feel is Russia passed a law crippling a site you use?
This is like Haggling the MPAA and their friends never really wanted DNS filtering, but how much does it chill you that a company is talking about taking things out of our laws? An organization is negotiating with lawmakers on what they want. The system isn’t supposed to work this way, but it does and its about time it stopped.
The CaffiNation Podcast has been running since January 9th 2006, and Since April of 2006 we have been part of the fine folks at the Techpodcast Network. As it is their custom the fine folks at the TPN are winging their way to Las Vegas for CES, the consumer Electronics show. Basically a week long technology festival where all the vendors unviel thier most awesoem stuff, smaller developers get to showcase their wares, and only the best and brightest of tech shines.
We also have a friend of the Show rocking it out as a man on the Street. Norbert Davis is hunting for the best in Totally Cool Tech, So make sure to check out those websites in the coming days. But the CaffiNation will have the live stream of the TPN events on our homepage for the Duration of the conference!
Steve Jobs died on October 5th 2011, at the age of 56. The news of which broke not an hour before we started to record our podcast.
PodCast… As much as disagree with the association between iPods and podcasts, it’s there. And no amount of Portable on Demand broadcasting can change it. People listen on their ipods, or whatever. And the term is forever linked. Without him that word wouldn’t be here.
There are things being written by people smarter than I am, and by people who actually knew the man. This won’t be 7 fun things he created, or 13 things your didn’t know about the man. A father has left his family, and three young children don’t have a dad tonight. A loving wife doesn’t have a husband. There is a very real loss to the community as a whole, but my thoughts go out to the people who didn’t just lose a leader and a visionary but a human being as well.
Steve Job’s passing saddens me because people are focused on the things he created, and that his vision helped shape. iPads, and pods, Macs and Apples. That seems shortsighted. If you look at this legacy he didn’t love these things. They were designed to be replaced in a year or two. They were products of a much larger vision for the world and a devoting to making beautiful design functional and easy to use. Focus on the abstract.
I wouldn’t have half my friends if Steve Jobs hadn’t been the man he was. Friends in Podcasting, Friends in Graphic Design. My son wouldn’t have his favorite movies, all Pixar. And I wouldn’t have the experience of playing my first video game with my son, not only because it was Cars2 the video game. A Pixar Joint. And not only because the Xbox 360 runs on a PowerPC chip, which for years powered the Mac. And not only because in the 1970′s Steve Jobs and Woz worked with Atari to help cut the code down for Pong, to make room for other innovations. That right there is several layers of genius missing from the world tonight.
I’ll do you one hyperbole better. Steve Jobs, was not the Walt Disney of our time, no he goes beyond that. Everything you touch today is influenced by Jobs, and Thomas Edison. That’s it. I can’t think of another analogue to the mans body of work. He quite simple thought differently, and changed the world. We are living in the world as it is because of what he wrought.
The title pretty much says it all. We here at the CaffiNation are running a fun little contest to give away a free copy of Duke Nukem Forever. This game is a long time coming, over 14 years in the making so we know that everyone wants to get their hands on it! The Contest Couldn’t be simpler, simply email contest@caffination.com and in the subject line of the email tell us what the Duke chews. That’s it. A simple easy contest and we will be pulling the winner on the same date that the games drops. So when the game goes on sale on June 14th the winner will be chosen!
Be sure to listen in the CaffiNation Podcast for extra entry chances. The last show we gave away the contest early, and on the next one we’ll give you another code word you can put into your email header for a second chance to win the game! So Check Back.
Can’t wait to win? Consider supporting the CaffiNation while you’re shopping for the game as well. Amazon Affiliate links below…
Regular Can of Whoopass
A 6 Pack of Whoopass
*Full Disclosure: all Amazon Links are Affiliate Links
What do you do with your time? Personally I spend a good deal of my life in front of a computer screen. Consuming information is an exhausting hobby. More often than not my time away from the keyboard is spent thinking about what news I might have missed or getting pinged by online folks. I needed to spend some time not even thinking about the online world. Despite the fact that I have a smartphone, and can check email anywhere, I think its healthy to unplug. The only problem with unplugging is that not everyone understands there are times when you aren’t accessible.
Between kids, family and house upkeep the things offline are not any more real, they are just harder to ignore. The best memories aren’t seen through a camera lens but rather savored as they happen. This weekend was savored, and the digital world is going to be fine. Wait till you see the power of a fully operational Caffination!
As a site that makes its living off of human connections The CaffiNation is a meeting ground for many different cultures. And we here at the CaffiNation would like to express our deepest sympathies for those who lost loved ones and suffered at the hands of this horrendous event.
I have made no bones about my dislike for the 30 second sound byte, the news media and their treatment of catastrophe in the past. I had seen the aerial footage on most channels as they quickly move on to other news and fluff pieces. But the devastation that hit Japan is mind numbing. The video below is probably the scariest footage I have seen of a real event. To understand what a real tsunami looks like watch it, then consider Helping out in any way you can.
Our thoughts are with you Japan in this very trying time.
For a while now I’ve been using Tumblr. I tried to direct people to the environment over there because I love the community and the workflow and frankly the design just works. I can use it from my phone with no effort, and people can share the work in a very smooth and easy fashion. here is the problem. I had a nagging feeling that by pawning people off of my personally owned site and onto another service I was producing content and sharing bits of awesome with little to no feedback to my site. I did the analytics, and despit automatically posting the episodes onto Tumblr I would only get 1 or 2 people clicking through to the site. not really worth the duplication.
However I found a ton of good stories over there, funny little one off jokes, and lulz beyond imagining. I wanted to continue to participate in tumblr while having the awesome work show up on this site. Not an easy task to do it right. In fact it was a pain. So like any good tech, I’ll show you how you do it.
Easy Peasy
On WordPress install the Feedwordpress Plugin, Be careful. This is a firehose. it is a great way to aggregate content, funneling all manner of RSS feeds into one blog. But it needs a bit of help with Tumblr.
Create an account on feedburner, throw your Tumblr Feed into this. I’ll Explain all the tech details later.
Drop the feedburner feed into the plugin and set the options on each menu.
Post to tumblr, Enjoy on your blog!
Why the extra step?
I know what you are saying. Paul why bother with the extra step? Why do i need to use a 4th party service to process the feed. it works just fine in Google reader, and everything else. Well I tied plugging the feed directly into Feedwordpress, and it would only update the content from the previous day. Nothing new, until midnight struck… the blog turned into a pumpkin. Well not really, but the feed was squashed…
That pun hurt me worse than you, I swear
Here is what I really think. when you look at Tumblr the posts are individual, but they seem to be grouped by date, a very logical configuration, except they don’t “close” the day out until the clock strike midnight. So some feed readers see the open ended attribute and can’t deal. Feedwordpress included. However Google is Smart… much smarter than I by pushing the feed through Feedburner it sanitizes the data and allows for nice pretty formatting.
I tried a couple other plugins to get the Tumblr feed through. Feed2Post, didn’t pull in HTML, so video embeds were lost, and I couldn’t get a couple other ones to work at all. FeedWordpress is a beautiful plugin and still in development, give it a go.. Let me know what you think of the process, the new content and the fun button I placed on the right hand side of the page directing you to the podcast. If you can’t find it I need to a brighter yellow, and I hate Yellow.
I’ve been working on a problem for a while now. I love using Tumblr to pass along great links, funny videos and awesome images. The problem is that it fractures my web presence something fierce. I don’t want to have people traipsing all over the tubes looking for information. I want them coming to the Caffination. We like you here, each and every one of you, the listeners and the readers are like wonderful friends I haven’t yet had the chance to have coffee with.
Tumblr is great, it allows for the community to drive the content and provide limited feedback. But there is nothing like a good old fashioned blog to really spread this information. So I wanted to do two things. First continue using Tumblr without forcing everyone to make an account over there.Post stuff and participate in that community as per normal. But… I wanted to content to appear on the Caffination as well.
I think I might have a solution to update Tumblr as per usual and have the awesomeness show up on this blog as well. There may be some growing pains as I test it out but look for shorter more frequent posts to show up on This page too! Now i have to work on getting all this to happen without breaking the podcast!
On This Date five years ago I undertook an experiment. I wanted to become a DJ, a radio personality in the new revolution, Podcasting. I had heard others doing it, and I thought I could at least do it that well, if not better. While I might not have set the world on fire in 5 years. I have reached well beyond my limited circle of friends, beyond the borders of the town that I love, and even into Other countries to hopefully entertain, educate and enchant audiences beyond my dreams.
In 5 years I have had more than 350,000 downloads of 467 Episodes. Can’t be too sure because I’ve been on too many stat services. But honestly I never thought I would get past any downloads other than friends and Family. I’ve met some flat out awesome people, who are too numerous to mention, but I’ll be featuring them over the next two weeks.
Also over the next two weeks ‘ll be running a giveaway as a thank you to my listeners. If you liked the Tassimo brewbot then now is your chance to own one!
Either Comment on this article, or Email me at Thanks @ CaffiNation.com and ask nicely to be included in the giveaway. ;-) The Deadline is January 25th. Drop me an email. it might be nice if people shared a memory of the show… but no pressure. And thank you agan for listenng to the show. Hope to see you around in the future too!
We all love a good story. I’m a Tech / Coffee blogger and it’s my job to wade through the tons of fun little articles to bring only the best and brightest to you. Its been going on 5 years now that I’ve done this show, written this blog and read these articles. There has been a common thread lacing through each and every one of my weeks of research. There are three articles / article types that if removed would drastically drop my workload down.
Lets make it happen. These topics should be off limits to coffee bloggers from here on out. They have been done, over and over again. I’m good at ranting, but I never wanted to be “that guy”. Like a movie critic who complained about acting in a comedy we need content but its time for some standards. It’s time to clear the filters of the blogosphere and let the crema rise to the top. Read the rest of this entry »
Hello formerly loyal listeners of the CaffiNation Podcast, I hope you’re still out there. So By now you may have noticed we missed two shows in a row… this is bad… very very bad. And something i can’t remember having done in a very long time.
I apologize. I can only offer the bags under my eyes and the nighttime crying, mostly from the baby, up as a panacea for your tech and caffeine deprived ears. I am committed to continuing to bring you awesome content. Hopefully the baby will calm down a bit. With most of the monumental functions for a little while out of the way I can focus on sleeping and enjoying coffee, and recording great shows.
I can’t do a show with lackluster effort, nor content. So If I wouldn’t listen to me I can’t in good conscience record something. I may end up moving to slightly shorter shows for a while in a concerted effort to get the best content and show out as possible. So stay tuned another episode isn’t too far behind.
“Life is not one big joke, life is a bunch of little ones all lined up right in a row… there they are”
So the time has come for the individual event portion of the Summer of Podcasts contest. Basically if you head on over to each of the following shows, each and every single one of them has a different code word for you. Each one of the code words are worth an entry into the drawing for tons of great prizes listed at PodcastMadness.com.
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