I admire this move because, honestly, I don’t know how much money I lose to pirates who steal my books. Just a few months back I had an email spat with some guy who tried to justify his theft of my C programming book because he was using an illegal download according to the “fair use” copyright law.

Yeah, I couldn’t figure that one out, either.

While this move may help staunch the bleeding, I have some concerns.

First, there exists a culture, especially among young people, where they believe the works of others — movies, video, music, books — is free for the taking. Too much free stuff has created a generation of moochers and freeloaders. It would be nice to change that.

Second, and more importantly, I fear this move could be used by corporate bullies and governments to shut down legitimate criticism. Such a thing happened a few years back with the whistle-blowing web site wikileaks. That would be terrifying to know that governments or, more likely, some corporation that’s breaking the law could weasel their way out of it by suppressing information on the Internet using the same technology that fights piracy.

I’d like people to pay for my stuff. Google’s move may be a step in the right direction, but I hope it’s a cautious step.

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Internet Explorer once held 90 percent of the web browser market. Today it’s at 26 percent — and falling. Not only are its two main competitors, Chrome and Firefox, faster, but they’re becoming more acceptable to businesses as well as the mobile market.

If you’ve been to the Wambooli Home page using Internet Explorer, then you see a message displayed:

This web page looks much better when you use a web browser other than Internet Explorer

That message doesn’t show for other browsers, mostly because other browsers properly interpret this web site’s style sheets. Internet Explorer screws things up. Now I could go in and adjust everything for IE, but at 26 percent and dwindling, I don’t think it’s going to be a problem. Apparently big business thinks so as well.

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That score comes from the folks at ifixit.org, who frequently disassemble technology to see how easy it is to fix and access. According to the article (link below), the Microsoft Surface tablet gets the lowest score possible. I’m not surprised.

No, this isn’t another Microsoft slam, despite my enjoyment of doing that. Technology is rapidly returning to its pre-1980s mode where you were forbidden to open a device and work on it. Of course, not everything was verboten; lots of microcomputers had to be opened to expand them. But most manufacturers preferred a closed system. Tablets and phones are closed systems. The Microsoft Surface? Very closed.

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The Nexus 7 has suffered another Android OS Update! This one appears to be rather mild: Some minor tunes and tweaks, most of the stuff you probably won’t notice. If anything major appears, especially stuff that affects my books, I’ll be sure to write about it on my Nexus 7 support page.

I didn’t know who John Karlin was before I read his obituary (link below). Even though he worked for Ma Bell back in the 1950s and 60s his vision still has an impact on how you use your cell phone today. He’s the push-button man!

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