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This article is about telling you how to get $1000 electronics and other products for pennies on the dollar and then to explain why it’s a big sham you should avoid at all costs (unless you like playing the lottery).

In the village they can guarantee your privacy because there are no computers.

Apart from being a fantastic “parody”, using one of Lily’s songs as the basis for this letter, Dan Bull is helping to bring to light the fact that what we call digital piracy isn’t as simple as people make it out to be.

Google Chrome is now 1 year old and it looks like add-ons might be just over the horizon. Earlier this week Google turned on extension support in Chrome for development releases of the browser.

The video here was created by Karl Fisch, director of Technology for Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado. In 7 short months, this thought provoking PowerPoint presentation evolved into a point for global consideration. While I cannot speak to the success of the presentation in terms that Karl is concerned about, for me it vital that we continue to examine the world from fresh perspectives and remember that on this ever “shrinking” planet.

I just posted an article about (with the video) Shift happens and it’s original PowerPoint presentation by Karl Fisch , director of Technology for Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado. While researching that post I stumbled on a slightly more global version of the original video which I’ve embedded here.

Google.

The name conjures mythical stories of the American dream gone right. It inspires hopes of a better more ethical world. It means relevant search results. It represents new ways of doing things and challenges our worldview.

Or does it?

You’ve probably heard about a thing called Second Life but I’ll bet you don’t know much about it. When I first heard of it I thought it was a game like World of Warcraft. But as I continued hearing about it I realized that it wasn’t a game at all, but literally a virtual second life people were living in a virtual parallel universe. I’m all for escaping from reality but my instant reaction was that this had gone too far.

As I periodically review the site stats, I am often interested in what sites are referring traffic to us. Recently I have seen a trickle of traffic coming from http://www.floxter.com/ . Finally when I found a free moment I actually went and checked it out.

Apparently Floxter is some kind of shared human energy web application that reminds of me of distributed or grid computing as is used in the SETI@home project . In this case though the grid is not your computer, but you.

Philadelphia has revived their citywide wi-fi hotspot project. The project, Wireless Philadelphia, is ambitious covering nearly 135 square miles and would be a boon to all citizens of Philadelphia. According to WP the network is nearly 80% complete but complications could delay the last 20%.

I posted a brief article not too long ago about Second Life and my own confused feelings as we rush towards a brave new world. “Dan”: having never even heard of Second Life, posted a comment expressing even more confusion than I.

I am a Libertarian, a capitalist, a free thinking idealist, and have a lingering fear that I suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect.

While on a personal level I do not consider myself an expert at computers, compared to most internet users I might as well be a computer science major. People often turn to me for advice on how to use their computers. When they do I feel obliged to assist because I owe a debt of gratitude to the handful of people who helped me back in the early nineties, and so I continue to pay-it-forward.

But I fear that my passive lessons are not enough. It is time to take proactive action. Capitalism, nay freedom in the modern age may be at risk from you not knowing what a browser is.

A browser is a program (aka application or tool) that you run on your computer’s operating system to access information on the internet, especially information using the http protocol.

And what does all this have to do with the future of the internet and capitalism? Read on and find out…

I don’t travel a lot, but when I do, and even close to home, I am always wondering where the free internet access is.

This post does not answer that question. But after recently noticing that Jack in the box is experimenting with free wireless internet in some California and Arizona restaurants while heading over to use a gift card at Starbucks with paid internet access, I had to wonder aloud, yet again, where is my free internet access.