Internet Archive

"HTML5 defines a standard way to embed video in a web page, using a video element. Support for the video element is still evolving, which is a polite way of saying it doesn't work yet. At least, it doesn't work everywhere. But don't despair! There are alternatives and fallbacks and options galore."

Since the early days of the internet, it has fallen under control of ICANN, which in turn was bound by an agreement with the US Department of Commerce. As the internet grew bigger and more pervasive, intentional calls for severing the ties between ICANN and the US government grew stronger. Today, the US has ceded control over ICANN.

"With just over a week left before the expiration of the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Department of Commerce, the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) urges the US government to closely re-examine ICANN's structure, governance, and oversight mechanisms before committing to any further long-term cooperation. Significant adjustments must be made to the JPA in order to remedy the egregious problems CADNA has found with ICANN." CADNA not only proposes that an audit be made of ICANN, but they also have released a "top-ten list" detailing the most prevalent problems they find in the non-profit organization.

While browsing the ever-wider world web today, I came across a story about IBM's patent of a sort of "Facebook Remote Control." It was appalling. Do we seriously need more single-purpose devices that will enable us to sit around more wasting more time than we already do? Does anyone really need to seclude themselves from the world even more to publish their lives on yet another teen-infested network? Must we really always be connected to the net? Read on for my ramble concerning a dark side of technology.

Microsoft's Bing search engine is getting a little help from a very smart friend. Wolfram Alpha and Bing have reached a licensing deal that allows Bing to present some of the specialized scientific and computational content that Wolfram Alpha generates, according to a source familiar with the deal. Representatives from Microsoft and Wolfram Research declined to comment on the deal.

"Linux: If a lack of third-party plug-in support (i.e. Flash) kept you from trying out Chrome on your Linux system, then avoid no longer. The 'early developer version' now supports many plug-ins, and they seem to work pretty well. You'll need to add --enable-plugins to your Chrome shortcut's command line operation to get the 'buggy' plug-in support, but it seems worth the hassle, as YouTube videos are playing relatively stable and smooth. Google's updated their alpha-level Chrome builds to include the newest start page tweaks as well, and it's generally a browser worth checking out, even if a few standard settings and convenience items are still missing."