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1/18/12 – The web protests against SOPA and PIPA

Protests All Across the web

     Today a large number of web sites (Big and Small) all across the internet are protesting the SOPA and PIPA bills that are current in the congress of the United States. The protests range from sites like (LINK) Google (https://www NULL.google NULL.com/) who have put a black bar across their name

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To sites like (LINK) Wikipedia (http://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Main_Page), which is going “dark” for 24 hours.

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Why these bills are such a concern

The following information comes from the site OpenCongress.org

PROTECT IP Act in the Senate

“Establishes a system for taking down websites that the Justice Department determines to be “dedicated to infringing activities.” The DoJ or the copyright owner would be able to commence a legal action against the alleged infringer and the DoJ would be allowed to demand that search engines, social networking sites and domain name services block access to the targeted site. In some cases, action could be taken to block sites without first allowing the alleged infringer to defend themselves in court”. (From LINK OpenCongress.org (http://www NULL.opencongress NULL.org/bill/112-s968/show))

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House

“This bill would establish a system for taking down websites that the Justice Department determines to be dedicated to copyright infringement. The DoJ or the copyright owner would be able to commence a legal action against any site they deem to have “only limited purpose or use other than infringement,” and the DoJ would be allowed to demand that search engines, social networking sites and domain name services block access to the targeted site. It would also make unauthorized web streaming of copyrighted content a felony with a possible penalty up to five years in prison. This bill combines two separate Senate bills — S.968 (http://www NULL.opencongress NULL.org/bill/112-s968/show) and S.978 (http://www NULL.opencongress NULL.org/bill/112-s978/show) — into one big House bill”. (From LINK OpenCongress.org (http://www NULL.opencongress NULL.org/bill/112-h3261/show))

Where can you get more information about these 2 bills
(LINKS)
  • 100 Law Professors oppose Protect IP Act (http://freedomforip NULL.org/2011/07/06/100-law-professors-oppose-protect-ip-act/) – From Freedom for IP (Freedomforip.org)
  • Act Now : This Bill Seriously Screws with the Internet (http://www NULL.publicknowledge NULL.org/e-parasite-stop-online-piracy-act) (SOPA) – From Public Knowledge (Publicknowledge.org)
  • H.R.3261 – Stop Online Piracy Act (http://www NULL.opencongress NULL.org/bill/112-h3261/show) – From Open Congress (OpenCongress.org)
  • S.968 – PROTECT IP Act of 2011 (http://www NULL.opencongress NULL.org/bill/112-s968/show) – From Open Congress (OpenCongress.org)
  • Stop the Internet Blacklist Legislation (https://wfc2 NULL.wiredforchange NULL.com/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8173) – From the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF.org)
  • What is Protect IP and SOPA (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=VxPQ320jBLc) (Video) – From Lockergnome (On YouTube)
  • End Piracy, Not Liberty (https://www NULL.google NULL.com/landing/takeaction/) – From Google

 

Getting in touch with your Representatives in Congress

If you visit a site like (LINK) Project VoteSmart (http://votesmart NULL.org/) and enter your address on the top right,

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you can get a list of information from the President to your local ballot measures.

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If you click on the + next to Congressional (or whichever area interests you), you will get information like Office, First Election, Next Election, and Most Importantly Contact Information.

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If you disagree with these bills and want to protect your freedom of speech, please contact your local Representatives in Congress and let them know that they need to vote against these bills if they want your vote in the next election.

TGM Contest: Winner will get a Google Wave Invite

google-logo One of the most anticipated offerings from Google is called Google Wave. Currently Google Wave is in early testing (Disclaimer: TGM has been testing Google Wave just over a week now), and is available to those who are interested via invitation only.  From the Google Wave About Page (LINK: http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html (http://wave NULL.google NULL.com/help/wave/about NULL.html))

About Google Wave

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

TechGeekandMore now has 2 invites (Hopefully more to come) for Google Wave that it would like to share with TGM readers.  Each invite has its own Contest.

1st Google Wave Invite Contest:

I have not only been a tech but a road warrior for the past number of years. During my travels, I have had more than my sure of “Did that happen to me” stories from the road.

“On one trip during my return trip home, my flight from NY which was supposed to be nonstop, end up having an unscheduled stop in Cincinnati because a passenger on the flight went into labor on my flight.”

“I had a flight from St. Louis to Sarasota, Florida (On an airline that will remain nameless) with a plane change in Atlanta once.  Everything on the flight seemed ok, however, upon my arrival in Sarasota, everyone else received their bags but me.  I waited and waited, and eventually a ground crew person walked toward me (I was a late flight and by then I was the only person standing in the luggage area), and asked me my name.  Once I told him, he proceeded to hand me what looked like a bubble wrapped ball.  Inside that bubble wrap mess was my bag, as I was later informed, my bag in Atlanta either fell or was placed where it shouldn’t have been and was run over by an airplane (Yep no Joke, my check bag was run over by a plane in Atlanta, a 757 as I understand).”

There are many more adventures, but for now with those examples of my life on as a Road Warrior, TGM wants to hear your stories (Funny, Crazy, Sad, etc) as a Tech, Geek or as a Road Warrior.  Your Stories will be judged by a panel at TGM, and the story makes us laugh, or cry or just say “Oh Wow” will be the winner.  The judging will occur on Friday December 18th and the winner will be notified during that weekend.  Send your stories to TechGeekandMore (at) Gmail (dot) com, make sure that you include your name and an email address that you would like to receive your notification at*.

2nd Google Wave Invite Contest:

This one is very simple. Just leave a comment on this post, letting TGM how badly you want an Invite to Google Wave.  TGM will pick someone (It will be a random pick from all the comments ), and make sure you include your valid email address when filling out your comment, so that we can notify you if you win*.

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*As always TGM respects your privacy and HATES JUNK MAIL, so your email will be used for notification purposes only.  TGM will not release, or sale or do anything else to your email (when filled in the email box), other than notify you if you win.

RULES for this Contest:

TGM will use best effort to notify you about being a winner, but we cant control if you enter your email address wrong, or if the notification email isn’t delivered to you.  Additionally, these invite is being given to our readers by TGM for your use, neither Google or any other company have anything to do with this contest.  This is simply our way to say Thank you for visiting TechGeekandMore.  Whatever decision TGM makes is final.

Tech: Something is Missing at Google (Anyone notice)

 google-logo  

     If your a user of Gmail (Google Email), Calendar, Google Docs, or Google Talk, then as of today your no longer using a Beta project. 

    From a post on the Google Blog http://googleblog.blogspot.com/ (http://googleblog NULL.blogspot NULL.com/)

“We get asked all the time why Google keeps its products in beta for so long. And Gmail, five years after launch, is consistently a subject of this questioning, even of jokes.
Some people thought that once we opened sign-ups (http://googleblog NULL.blogspot NULL.com/2005/08/sign-up-for-gmail NULL.html), Gmail should have come out of beta.”

“Ever since we launched the Google Apps (http://www NULL.google NULL.com/apps/intl/en/business/index NULL.html#utm_medium=blog&utm_source=us-en-ogb-oob0707&utm_campaign=oob) suite for businesses two years ago, it’s had a service level agreement, 24/7 support, and has met or exceeded all the other standards of non-beta software. More than 1.75 million companies around the world run their business on Google Apps, including Google. We’ve come to appreciate that the beta tag just doesn’t fit for large enterprises that aren’t keen to run their business on software that sounds like it’s still in the trial phase. So we’ve focused our efforts on reaching our high bar for taking products out of beta, and all the applications in the Apps suite have now met that mark”

So basically since Google has a focus on business customers (not saying that they want to ignore you and me, but business customers are paying customers) and Google has realized that business customers may have a hard time justifying paying for software that is “Not ready for prime time” which is basically the understood definition for “beta”.  So with that in mind if you use these applications from Google your no longer using a Beta.

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