OK, thanks to Steve Gibson tweeting an article in ReadWriteWeb, my weekend is ruined. A Wall Street Journal editorial claims that according to a business professor and a former book editor (Ron Adner and William Vincent), ads in E-books are the next big thing.

Sacrilege, right? Ads in books were never done, according to the editorial, because “there is no guarantee of when or whether the book will sell”. But with E-books we can have more timely and more reader-focused ads. Fantastic! Right?

I don’t think so, Skippy.

If I buy a book, I pay anywhere from $10 to over $100 (depending on quality of book, both physically and content-wise). Putting ads in a book that I’m already paying for is comparable to putting an ad in the middle of the movie that I just bought on DVD. Or an ad in the middle of that new CD. They’re annoying, because they distract from the story, music, or other activity I’m engaging in.

One argument used why ads in E-books may succeed is that tech giants like Google are already adding ads to content. But you cannot compare free content (search results) with paid content (books). What works on one platform will not work on another. We live in a world where people pay $0.99 or $1.99 to download an application to their smartphone, just to have no ads. So now we’re going to create a model where I pay for the content and are exposed to ads?

The article in ReadWriteWeb also states that E-books are not a possession, since you cannot share them with friends, or that the seller can make the book disappear from your library. Give me a break.

First of all, the only time E-books cannot be shared with friends is if the book has DRM and has a flag set that specifically prevents that from happening. Apple’s iTunes has DRMed songs that can be copied, but have your signature in them – so mass distribution is not a good idea. On top of that,  there are plenty of DRM-free publishers out there. They allow you to share a book – without any technical barriers. Second of all, the seller that did make a book disappear (Amazon and the books “1984″ and “Animal Farm”) received a storm of critique, no matter how legally justified and compelling the removal was. They vowed never to delete a purchased book again.

Ads in E-books? I think it’s an extremely bad idea. It’s an old  media idea, where you try to get as much money out of a product, instead of trying to make a product that is actually appealing to the customer. Go read “What Would Google Do?” by Jeff Jarvis for some tips on that idea. And no, I didn’t get any money for that “ad”.

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Before this plugin, you were forced to use the Chrome Option to disable JavaScript, and selectively allow sites to run JavaScripts. However, when you enabled it for a site, everything that that site sent to you was enabled – including potentially harmful third party sites using JavaScript. It is possible to dive into the settings and enable some sites while disabling any malicious websites, but it was far from user friendly. I desperately missed the NoScript from Firefox. So desperately, that in some cases I went back to Firefox to make sure I wouldn’t be exposed to any JavaScripts I didn’t like.

After installing NotScripts, a little pyramid icon appears in your address bar, to the left of the bookmark button. Clicking it shows a list of all the sites that try to run scripts on the page you’re viewing. You can enable them one by one, or temporarily allow scripting globally. When at least one site is enabled, the pyramid now gets a green square over it.

The installation requires you to modify a file deep in the bowls of your computer. The file contains a password used to encrypt the settings from NotScripts, as they are stored in an area accessible by any site you’re visiting. So to prevent tampering with the file, it’s encrypted. I think in later versions this may be controlled with a settings option, to make it user friendlier. Then again, this is a one-time option, so it’s not too invasive.

Part of NotScripts option page, with password enabled

NotScripts is open source and is released under the GNU General Public License v3. Development is continuing (version 0.9.1 was released the 18th, one day after 0.9.0!), and the author is asking for donations to continue development.

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Concept art from Google of Chrome OS tablet

Although that sounds like good news, I’m kinda disappointed that it’s not going to be an Android tablet. After the recent Android tablets from third parties (most notably/notoriously the “KMart tablet”), I hoped this rumor would be Google’s tablet version of the Nexus One. Google is now trying to cover the same market (tablets) with two different platforms (Android and Chrome OS). I think that could be a serious mistake: developers already have to choose between iPhone/iPad and Android, and now you’re adding a third platform in the mix. And that new platform is from the same company as one of the previous choices.

That doesn’t mean I’m not excited about the news. I hope it’s true, and I guess I’ll have to start saving up my money for Black Friday (or Cyber Monday).

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Something like this perhaps…:

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Now the FCC issued a Notice Of Inquiry seeking input on a new technology to open up cable channels to other devices, breaking the settop box monopoly. Engadget has a nice summary, with the non-surprising camps: Sony, TiVo and the Consumer Electronics Association make up one side, the NCTA (National Cable & Telecommunications Association) and the MPAA make up the other side. We won’t give away which side is in favor and which side is against.

But is this really the future of watching television in our homes? Since the NOI is the first step in a long process, we won’t see anything for years out of the FCC. By that time, the group of people watching TV in different forms (i.e. not through a settop box) will have grown even further. So any legislation coming out of this FCC process may be applicable or affecting only a small group of people who use old standards – similar to requiring the broadcaster to switch to digital broadcasting. Meanwhile, the rest of us will be watching Hulu, Google TV and Boxee Boxes, and ignoring whatever “new” technology the cable company tries to sell us…

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And then of course, there are also the equally wrong arguments to chose an HTC over an iPhone:

P.S. Wonder how these movies are made? Check out Xtranormal!

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The center of the page is taken up by the stories being dugg by your friends. The right side bar is showing the top stories as dugg by your friends. And your friends can also be people you have interest in or whose opinion you respect (think of for example the old Screen Savers cast – Leo LaPorte, Patrick Norton, Martin Sargent, and oh yes, Kevin Rose…).

It looks great, and hopefully I’m not breaking any non-disclosure agreements by posting about it. If you want to sign up for the new Digg, head over to new.digg.com and put your name on the list.

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Windows cannot connect to the domain, either because the domain controller is down or otherwise unavailable, or because your computer account was not found.

Since I was rolling out a change to a web service running under 10.1 at the time, I was not a happy camper. It took me the better part of a day to try and come up with a solution. Unfortunately, none surfaced, even after some helpful hints from our systems engineer (“Did you reboot?” – “Yes.” – “Must be a Windows patch.” – “I have had no new patches in the last week and half.” etc.). The weekend came and went, and today I was back at the same problem. Ruling out anything general (like the domain controller actually being down – we could log in to everything except the VMs), I started scouring the Internets. And lo and behold, back in 2006 someone else had the same problem. With a regular XP machine. In a Windows domain. Wow!

In a nutshell, it comes down to the fact that the domain controller is confused about your machine and SID, and won’t trust you. Removing the machine from the domain, and adding it back in, solves the problem somehow.

Thank you, My Digital Life!

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While recipes are a good analogy, for people who like the analogy a bit more specific to programming (and still have fun), here are some good resources:

• Lightbot, a neat little robot game that uses instructions to light squares.
• Lightbot 2.0, the sequel to Lightbot.
• Robot Battle, a game about building a robot and competing against others in an arena.
• Logo, the original educational programming language
• Alice, a 3D programming environment tutorial.

Learning to program should be fun, and I hope these resources help you out.

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