The timing of the mega upload servers take down was interesting but had nothing to do with SOPA. It was clearly political, the administration has a lot of friends who help him the creation content arena. They are not very happy with his recent SOPA position so the Mega-Upload take down should appease them. Mega Upload take down had nothing to do with SOPA, it was much more to do with the DMCA (since the servers and domain names where under US locations). It comes down to the simple fact that the government believes that mega upload breached the safe harbor provision by encouraging illegal uploads with financial incentives to pirates. Also that they were not swift enough/limited on take downs. This is up to a jury who probably don't have any understanding of technology. Getting 12 people to buy into this is going to be hard.
How different youtube was in its early days to megaupload today is an interesting question. Since this is a criminal prosecution not a civil, the level of guilt they need to prove is a lot higher. They may even not even win extradition from New Zealand given how weak their case seems. But Mega upload will be down for several years given the extradition and then the time for a criminal trial. This is decades in internet terms, meaning Mega Upload is history in any true sense of the word. Expect a NewMegaUpload to be online in less than a month by a proxy third party. Thus does not stop the multitude of other virtual hard drive sites. Given how easy it is to create and share a virtual hard drive on a multitude of current servers.
Aka the government just dropped a 500 lb bomb on mega upload but the pirates have already moved on to another site and legitimate users of Megaupload lost their files. So the only people who are happy about this are the content creators and the administration. Mega uploads fate will not be decided until after the election in the fall.
So a political win, but in the actual war on piracy it effect will be negligible.
Since everybody is talking about SOPA today and what a bad idea it is. They are right it reminds me of the carpet bombing of Vietnam. That sounds totally off the wall but piracy is very much like Asymmetrical Warfare a are very large well funded in-trenched industry verses a small agile opponent. Let's say that the film industry gets their way and gets to take a web site down and block it immediately. A little like bombing the hell out of a Viet Cong village with a bunch of 500 pound bombs (Aka $500 an hour lawyers). The Viet Cong are probably already deep in a cave with their weapons and you just killed a bunch of villagers who are stuck in the middle (the legitimate users of the site). The surviving villages now really hate you and join the Viet Cong (the users of the web site).
The US military had to adjust their tactics in Iraq to fight an asymmetrical, Hollywood has to as well, Spotify and Netflix/Crackle are much better weapons. Also use intelligence to identify the key players in Piracy and take them out (individuals behind the web sites).
Like any true geek I've been following CES but it been quiet. Many sources have pointed out that large companies now release new products outside these shows because they can better manage the news and there is less noise outside the event time. Consumer electronics is also consolidating so less small players. The cost to do anything is outside the ability of any company except a huge multi-national.
Had Microsoft planned a major announcement but the product fell through? Sources (Reuters) indicate that Microsoft had planned to release a Netflix competitor based off the Hulu model. The article indicates that cable companies forced the content providers to kill the idea using a high price. It's a lot like the record industry before itunes. Given that the cable companies have cut off programming to the internet companies like Netflix, YouTube etc have started to develop their own programming. I hear that HBO is in a panic over house of cards.
I compare $16 for Hulu and Netflix and $60 for a cable subscription. Somebody has to loose money if I switch over. Remember that most cable companies are vertically integrated, they share their programming with other cable companies (usually there is only one cable provider per area) but they are not going to allow competition. They have already been burned by Satellite (DirectTv/Dish) eating into their viewership and Telco's starting their own services but each has bundled programming.
Though it would be easy for a modern cable company to sell alacart since they now digitally encrypt all the channels except for OTA channels. They have fought the idea saying it is cheaper to bundle. Given that I'm forced to pay for expensive channels like ESPN, NFL, Fox News, Fox sports & Disney I highly doubt if my package would be sixty dollars. It reminds me that I had to buy an Album rather than a single before itunes.
If a company as large as Microsoft cannot break into this industry clearly market forces have broken down and the FCC needs to intervene.
Anybody who works in the tech industry must invest his time in learning a technology. This is quite a gamble since technology is usually tied to a company (IBM) or a product (Linux). The profitable technology right now is IOS. If you can use Xcode on a mac you can easily find a job paying a good salary.
Choosing a company or a technology is not simple. The past is littered with defunct (or shadows of their former self's) IT companies Sun, DEC, Data General, Burroughs, Honeywell, Compaq, the list is endless. If you believe Apples hype then you can add Microsoft to that list. Though Apple should know better since they are a huge customer of Microsoft's services.
IOS looks good now and for a few years but a so did RIM/Blackberry a few years ago and Palm before them. Apple product line up has a very short lifespan of 3 years. Apple must have a hit ratio of 0.4 on product launches each year to keep their enviable 100% profit margin.
Its funny but IBM looks good, big companies are tied to their legacy systems like a Heroin addict. You can still do very well with COBOL/JCL which I thought was old fashioned 30 years ago (a Millennium in IT years).
The problem with Microsoft product like web page designers is that every kid with a college class thinks they can do it and so do a bunch of employers. It keeps salaries down and cheapens the skill set with a bunch of bad code. (The same can be said of PHP)
Java is still doing well even after the death of Sun its still lives on in the enterprise market and mobile markets.
I think the solution should be SQL, that a funny thing to say but its hard to code, few do it well and a well coded stored procedure can do amazing things. Its a language used on all platforms and companies from a smart phone to a IBM mainframe. Though their are many different flavors they are all pretty standard.
The solution is learn SQL and be good at it.
