Gongol.com Archives: January 2016
January 22, 2016
Police officer unwisely rants against protesters on Facebook
Everyone is of course welcome to have an opinion (preferably one that is well-informed and reasonable), but sharing it publicly makes the situation different. The exercise of free speech is guaranteed, but that's not a guarantee of freedom from consequences. And a police officer in a place with high tensions between the police and members of the local community (due to a police-involved shooting) ought to have the sense to avoid incendiary public speech -- like suggesting that people run down protesters.
USA Today: FBI took over and ran child-porn site to catch users
Nobody should have sympathy for the people who were caught -- but was the process right?
US customs official questions whether people should have anonymity online
His words: "[S]hould not every individual be required to display a 'license plate' on the digital super-highway?" While it probably wasn't intended as much more than a throwaway thought exercise, it does hint at a lack of understanding of how privacy and technology coexist.
"Twin Strangers" offers to help you find your doppelganger
For a small fee, of course
Are the big five of technology inevitable winners?
That is to ask: Is there any reason to believe that we won't still be talking about Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon ten or twenty years from now as the still-dominant players in consumer technology and the Internet? The honest answer is that they all have big war chests and strong market positions, but they also have to make a lot of right decisions to stay on top -- and long streaks of right decisions in technology aren't often made.
Print subscriptions to newspapers are evaporating
If the figures dredged up by one observer are correct, dead-tree editions of major metro newspapers are becoming a rare find
