Last week I mentioned the URL amputation that Wikileaks suffered and which has now been corrected, courtesy of a reversal of his original judgment by federal judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco. The judge was reminded by attorneys acting for Wikileaks of the meaning of the First Amendment in the US Constitution, and as a consequence, Wikileaks.org is again open for business.
So I open the New York Times this morning to discover that an English travel agent, who lives in Spain and sells holiday packages to Europeans who fancy a trip to warmer climes – including Cuba, has also suffered URL amputation. This amputation wasn’t inflicted by a judge, it was inflicted by the US Treasury Department which put Steve Marshall’s web sites on a blacklist. The Department also called up eNom Inc., a US domain name registrar, to let it know and eNom Inc. performed the amputation (in October of last year) without even giving notice.
If you’re wondering why an Englishman running a business from Spain to satisfy the desires of tourist who are primarily French or Italian, using a server that is outside the US can be subject to such action, then so am I. Steve Marshall, the victim of this ill-considered action actually has 80 web sites amputated including a literary site, www.cuba-hemingway.com and a historical site www.cuba-havanacity.com. He suffered significant financial loss as a result, but has rebuilt his business using the .net rather than .com suffixes (registered outside the US of course) and now, because of the New York Times story, he can look forward to a huge boost in web traffic due to the Streisand Effect (all lovers of free speech should be grateful to Barbara Streisand).
Marc Andreessen Endorses Barack Obama
In his most recent blog post, Marc Andreessen, the much vaunted founder of Netscape, endorsed Barack Obama in no uncertain terms. He has had the benefit of spending an hour and a half with the man, and he describes their conversation in the posting. The endorsement is not significant because of who is doing the endorsing, it’s significant because of the articulate explanation given for endorsing Obama.
I suspect that Microsoft will respond by bundling Hillary Clinton with the next service pack of Windows and it will be all over for Obama in a month or two.
Incidentally, the Obama campaign has made its database of supporters available to anyone who wants access to the information. The hope is that it will enable Obama organizers to make contact with donors in Texas and Ohio (voting today) in order to boost his local get-out-the-voters effort. This maybe the point where “the audacity of hope” meets the audacity of junk mailers.
MacBook Air as Popular as Obama
Proving yet again that “form beats content” in this modern world, sales of the MacBook Air are much stronger than even Apple expected. It’s been on the market for a month or so and it’s sold out in many Apple Stores, (but not the one at Barton Creek Mall in Austin), Apple is quoting 5-7 days deliver on its web site, Amazon hasn’t got any yet and Best Buy is only has a few, plus the ones on display.
It’s just a thin notebook dammit, and by the way it hasn’t got a DVD drive and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the MacBook Pro – it runs all the same goddam programs. Am I beginning to sound like a Hillary Clinton supporter?
Leave a reply