Things I read today that I found interesting and worthy of comment June 30th:

• Firefox 3.5 Arrives Today, But Are You Dazzled? – Sorry, no love here for FF. Chrome is definitely fast, clean and nice. IE works everywhere just fine and is fast enough. FireFox is slow as molasses to fire up, is still twitchy on pages I use frequently and I have no trust / need for freakin' addons beyond AdBlock Plus, but there are plenty of free equivalents for IE in that arena.

  I'd switch to Chrome full-time and will if / when RoboForm releases a Chrome compatible version.

• Global IT Market: Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me – So they were wrong before, but this time they're right? I hope they are, but my analysis would say no, we're nowhere near the bottom at a macro level and consequently, not at the bottom for the info-tech sector, though it seems possible it could recover faster / cease falling sooner. However, I doubt that as well as much of info-tech is consumer focused and they are not going to come out of their hoarding shells till the bottom has been reached and rebound is visbly on the mend (seeing people go back to work).
• Blood Pact: Return to the depths of the third tree! – Note to self: Buy 2nd spec ability, train this Destro and carry resist gear as alternate set and set up in equip manager.
• Find My iPhone works, and it is awesome. (The Intermittent Kevin) – Interesting and decently told nerd story.
• John Mueller on Nuclear Disarmament – Only problem with the analogy is that the "fever" is self-inflicted and there are those in the "wily cheaters" position that wish to remain "fevered" and they will NOT just lose the thermometer they worked so hard to barely build or steal.

  Disarmament through inattention of naivete is a terrible idea for those that love freedom. Eternal vigilance is a better model to operate under.

• Don't Let Yellow Press Standards Define the Future of Journalism – Journalists locked into their own paradigms and that coloring everything they "report" on? Surely not! .

  Have I mentioned how little respect I have for today's "journalists"? Borders on outright hostility. I still agree with Shakespeare on "lawyers first", but I'd put journalists at a close 2nd.

• Web TV You'll Need to Pay to See: Time Warner, Comcast Roll Out "Authentication." (Peter Kafka/MediaMemo) – If you can follow the sense of this, you need to seek professional help immediately. This is the kind of thing that could be thought up by a committee of paradigm-locked committee members. You know, the same guys blamed for designing the camel. Sheesh!

  I don't understand why you want to wall off and restrict access to shows you've already got sunk costs into. Do anything you can to get me to see it anywhere you can that shows me adds or has other revenue models that already work. Don't create a bunch of walls that turn into a maze for consumers to find the content you already paid for or those folks may jump the maze walls entirely with their torrent "ladder" of choice.

• Oh FriendFeed, What You Really Need is Accountability – Yep, reputation needs to be front and center in any online forum, then the challenges revolve around resolving gaming of the reputation system. There are technical means, but does each community want to do this themselves or would this be something better served at a more "umbrella" level that such communities could use?
• First Two Quake Titles Slated For iPhone, Carmack Says – Completely crazy! I bought a new PC just to play Quake and now its going to be on a mobile device. Wow.
• A Closer Look at Facebook's New Privacy Options – Sounds like Facebook is addressing my main complaint with the site and why I have multiple Facebook accounts to manually separate my various "lives" into different buckets. Sounds like they are still working out the kinks, so I'll wait a while till trying to consolidate my accounts.

  I can't believe this hasn't happened sooner. Note to self: CNTRLSMUPADDR