Who is Hahleq?

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

Things I read today that I found interesting and worthy of comment June 26th:

• Blood Pact: Return to the depths of the third tree! – Hmmm. a direction to ponder as alternate spec.
• Blood Pact: Spelling test – Great stuff and why Naiimtaqr, my warlock is and will always be my "main".
• The OverAchiever: Guide to Midsummer Fire Festival achievements – Purely a link for my own reference. If you don't WoW, nm.
• Mollyshot makes a video for The Guild's "Worst guildie… Evar!" Competitions – If you don't play an MMO or know what the online show about MMO's "The Guild" is, don't bother watching, but the rest of you, enjoy! The WoW Guild I'm a member of is asking for this type of "The Guild" style mock-guild-admission video and this is the first I've seen. Well done!
• Coming Soon: AppDowner, a BitTorrent-Powered App Store Replacement – Cool idea. I didn't know there were alternate stores for the iPhone. Definitely would cause me to consider jailbreaking if I were to slip to the dark-side and get an iPhone.
• How Facebook Could Create a Revolution, Do Good, and Make Billions – Really a good thought-provoking article deserving a careful reading. Sure, it's a bit of a "throw around a bunch of ideas to see what sticks" kind of thing as I can think of several holes to poke at some of the specifics. However, tying in what Facebook could be to VRM concepts, which I agree has been far too academic driven, is looking in the right direction. Give it a read and see what you think. Me? I think that Facebook is likely to fumble the ball unless they drive their service towards both strengthening and anonymizing their identity model. I know that sounds contradictory, but it isn't. Perhaps I'll find the time to post a specific blog post on 1) why this is important and 2) how it is possible / not contradictory.

Things I read today that I found interesting and worthy of comment June 23rd:

• Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network's Plan to Dominate … (Fred Vogelstein/Wired News) – Very interesting and certainly compelling viewpoint from FB. I know I'd certainly search on my circle-of-influence's thoughts, feelings and recommendations than the "world's random postings".
• Quoted – I have two reactions:
  1) Wow, never moving to Lancaster, PA, but heck, I wasn't intending to move anywhere near there anyway.
  2) If the local population is cool with this type of thing, then good for them. This is something that should be handled at a local level based on that communities wishes. Definitely not something handed down from the feds though, that is for sure.
• Adobe Flash Player 10 For Android Due In October (Google Android News Android Forums) –

Things I read today that I found interesting and worthy of comment June 17th:

• Thoughts on Opera Unite (Chris Messina/FactoryCity) – Opera spends a fair amount of time, energy and money to make a good point, yet become even more irrelevant.

Things I read today that I found interesting and worthy of comment June 15th:

• Game, DVD Sales Hurting Music Industry More Than Downloads – Seems like a reasonable, but statistically unprovable hypothesis. Would be interesting to see a real study on the changing buying patterns. I know that my game playing time and spending has seriously moved away from music and TV to games over the last 5 years… durn you Xbox and WoW!
• Sorry, There's No Way To Save The TV Business (Henry Blodget/Silicon Alley Insider) – The money quote and actual limiter / determiner of how fast this happens "ubiquitous high-speed internet". I think this guy's guesstimate of 5-10 years is aggressive when you look at the small penetration of things like DVRs, Hulu, etc. that to high-tech users feels so "last century", but actually isn't for the broader U.S. population. Not even the majority of high-tech game players have their consoles online yet and these platforms offer great access to TV alternative channels. Could I turn off my DirecTV service tomorrow, leaving only my cable modem connection and see everything I want to see? Yes, with the exception of NFL football, which I'd certainly learn to live without, but I'd also be forced into doing a lot of my content acquisition and watching via "illegal" means. Why? Cuz there isn't enough free / ad-based internet content to cover all that I want to watch yet and I'm NEVER going to pay per show out of my own pocket, so BT would be employed. Consequently, my DirecTV stays for now and I suspect for 5-10 years for me and much longer for the wider U.S. population.
• '#CNNFail': Twitterverse slams network's Iran absence (Daniel Terdiman/CNET News) – CNN and fail seem redundant to me. If I was as whacked out to the right as those on the left, I'd be crying about some conspiracy because CNN seems so in love all things anti-American that they wouldn't cover anything showing our enemies in a bad light. That of course sounds even out there for me, so I'll just chalk this up to continued incompetence further dragging CNN to even deeper realms of the ratings-basement.
• Google Voice's Secret Weapon: Number Portability (Michael Arrington/TechCrunch) – So open up the thing already! I want it NOW and will be really, really happy to transfer my phone number as soon as that's ready.
• Take Your Sites to the Cloud (for Free) with Force.com – Interesting. An enterprise class alternative to Google Sites? Not being a developer, I'm not going to dive too much into the application coding side much, but knowing what I do of SF.com's service / platform, this certainly sounds more powerful and flexible than Google Sites which in my personal experience is fine for personal use, a SMB or as a side "forum" for business units in a larger enterprise, but not much else.
• Microsoft justifies that $60 sticker on ODST – Why does MS have to justify the price? If it is too much, don't buy it.
• Microsoft’s Browser Move to Make Windows Even More Annoying – Funny how Microsoft is the one blamed for hurting users and not the real culprits… over bearing, power hungry government bureaucrats. Welcome to unintended consequences of the nanny-fascists!