By Gregory Maher • January 17, 2012
Here at Look North we are paying close attention to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) currently making it’s rounds in the US House of Representatives. This bill, if passed and turned into law, would greatly affect the web as we know it today. It will require that ISPs and hosting providers shut down websites accused of online piracy or copyright violation - or be subject to fines, or worse. This would be such a burden on the ISPs and hosting providers that they will likely need to comply immediately rather than research each case individually. A simple accusation could take an entire business website offline. That’s not cool.
Tomorrow, January 18th, the English version of Wikipedia is going offline in protest of the bill. Many other prominent web professionals and sites are also against this bill. As is the current administration of Barack Obama.
Learn more about SOPA on Wikipedia.
To learn more and express your concern about the bill, visit the Net Coalition website.
But hurry because there’s not much time left to act on this before it affects all who use the Internet.
Categories: Popular Culture, Technology
By Gregory Maher • October 6, 2011
Yesterday Apple reported that it's founder Steve Jobs had passed. There are a lot of things that can be said about this man. He touched the lives of millions. Many of us use the technology he created and inspired each day. He will surely be missed. But the work he did will live on for generations. I look forward to the day I can tell my children about him and how he shaped the very devices they take for granted. "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened." - Dr. Seuss Thanks for everything Steve. You'll be missed by many.
Categories: Apple Inc., Popular Culture, Technology
By Gregory Maher • August 19, 2011
This style of bike riding (street trials I think) has always been interesting to me. Some of the physics simple seem impossible. This guy is on a whole other level.
(via kottke.org)
Categories: Popular Culture
By Gregory Maher • August 2, 2011
Spotify is a new streaming music service here in the US. Different from Pandora, Spotify users have direct access to millions of tracks. You can search by artist, album, genre and more. It has quite an extensive catalog with a wide variety of great music. Only a few things have we searched for and not been able to find (although, the Beatles would be nice - iTunes has them!).
The subscriptions are simple. You can listen for free, with ads. You can pay $4.99 a month for no ads. And, you can pay $9.99 a month for no ads and mobile access.
Another key feature is you can sync some tunes for offline use. This is great when paired with the mobile plan.
Categories: Popular Culture, Technology
By Gregory Maher • June 1, 2011
You gotta check this out.
Categories: Popular Culture
By Gregory Maher • May 18, 2011
NASA has scheduled the final space shuttle launch July 2011. This will be the final trip for a truly remarkable spacecraft.
Categories: Popular Culture
