Posts tagged Version
Harry Reid Wants a Bigger, Badder Version of SOPA/PIPA
Feb 9th
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., still licking wounds from last week’s defeat of the Protect IP Act and its House counterpart the Stop Online Piracy Act, is reportedly working on an even more sinister, Internet-regulating bill.
Few details have been publicly disclosed about the latest push by legislative Democrats to expand executive-branch authority over the Internet, but the Daily Caller has pieced together publicly-available clues suggesting that Reid’s newest bill is even broader than President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity proposal.
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Released last May, Obama’s proposal would give the Department of Homeland Security broad regulatory authority over civilian networks when faced with a cybersecurity threat. The White House proposal is encapsulated in the Promoting and Enhancing Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Effectiveness Act of 2011, or PrECISE Act, which is currently stalled in the House.
In other words, the executive branch could take over big portions of the Internet in an emergency or a declared emergency. Known as the Kill Switch bill, the proposal has thus far been wildly unpopular, yet Reid seems poised to one up it.
Reid has yet to publicly announce plans (so far his office hasn’t gotten back to us on a request for comment) but after an Internet protest effectively killed SOPA and PIPA last month, Reid seemed resolved to regrouping and pushing forward.
“There’s no reason that legitimate issues raised about PROTECT IP can’t be resolved. Counterfeiting & piracy cost 1000s of #jobs yearly#pipa,” he tweeted.
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Why the “S&%t X Says to Y” Version of This Meme Exploded
Feb 3rd
“The thing about memes is that through repetition, they create a shared language,” says Professor Julie Levin Russo, an adjunct assistant professor at Brown’s Modern Culture & Media Program. “If you understand the premise of the meme, you can communicate a lot very easily, with whatever twist you’re putting on the meme structure.”
On Jan 4, the “Shit Girls Say” meme was radically transformed. New York-based graphic designer & video blogger Franchesca Ramsey a.k.a. Chescaleigh unleashed “Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls”, and it blew up the Internet. In the video, Ramsey plays her blonde-haired white friend who she portrays as curiously confused, and innocently ignorant. “Why isn’t there a white entertainment television? The Jews were slaves too, and you don’t hear us complaining all the time,” Chescaleigh as-white-girl asks the camera. She portrays her friend as at times confused (“Is this racist?”) other times annoyed. Overall, her white friend is completely unaware of fundamental cultural and racial differences between her and her black friend. It’s these awkward moments that fuel the humor of this viral video.
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When Franchesca appeared on Anderson Cooper a few days after the video blew up, Cooper asked *the question* that mainstream media was dying to know: Is the video racist?
“I don’t think that talking about ignorance is racist,” Franchesca tells Cooper. “And like I said, I’m not labeling anyone racist because that would infer that the statements were saying someone was better than another race – and that’s not what any of the statements are doing.” Shortly after her Anderson Cooper appearance, Franchesca produced a sequel, “Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls Part 2.”
Soon, more “Shit X Says to Y” versions of the meme began to appear. “Shit White Girls Say to Brown (Desi/Indian) Girls” features an Indian woman portraying her white girlfriend, who asks questions like “Do you want to go to 7-11? Oh oops, is that racist?” It is cutting, and points to some of the underlying racism that Indian-Americans experience regularly.
In “Shit White Guys Say to Asian Girls,” actor/comedian Cindy Fang dresses in drag, playing a white dude and points out some of the obnoxious, arrogant statements that some white guys say to Asian women. “Sorry, I have a hard time telling Asians apart,” she says, with a tone that conveys how the white guy she is portraying doesn’t feel like trying to educate himself. He is blissful in his ignorance. And then, a blatantly racist statement: “Why do they call it Bangkok? They should call it Bang Pussy!!!” This video speaks to the painful sexism and racism that Asian women experience.
Of course, it’s just comedy – and the talented Fang masterfully exaggerates these statements to hammer home the crass, yet serious joke. Moreso than “Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls,” “Shit White Guys Say to Asian Girls” is doubly as biting, taking swipes at sex and race relations. It’s almost as upsetting as “Shit Asian Girls Say”, another version of the original “Shit Girls Say” meme.
In Latoya Peterson’s blog post “Exploring the Problematic and Subversive Shit People Say [Meme-ology]” on Racialicious, she notes that it isn’t until “Shit Black Gays Say” (and part 2) and “Shit Southern Gay Guys Say” that the viewer starts to see the performer’s subjective interpretation of themselves.
“It’s notable that these videos are the principals representing themselves (as opposed to someone else’s interpretation of them), perhaps since these groups are still so invisible in the public eye that no one else but them could speak to their experience,” writes Peterson.
How “Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls” Shifted the Conversation
“There’s a way in which the meme format allows for a more granular renditions of identity than you often see in mass culture,” says Professor Russo.
Chescaleigh’s video shifted the focus from the narrator as subject to the narrator as a vehicle for social critique. Now X is saying something to Y. Previously, X was either speaking for themselves, or portraying the stereotypical subject, usually in drag.
“Do you know the guy at the liquor store? I mean, I assume you guys all know each other,” says the Arab girl portraying her white friend in “Shit White Girls Say…to Arab Girls”. “I’ve never met one of you before! I mean, I’ve seen Arabs on TV…on the news. Was 9/11 your fault?”
“Friendly Prejuidice”
Writing for The Guardian, Thea Lim points out that the statements in all of these videos imply a sort of “friendly prejudice”:
What’s friendly prejudice? The most common defence of racism is: “But I didn’t intend to be racist.” This response relies on the idea that if we didn’t intend to offend someone, then their feelings can’t possibly be hurt. The Shit X Says to Y videos are delightfully validating because they show that those with the genuinely lovely intentions of being your friend and seeking commonality with you can still be rude and hurtful.
A commenter on the NPR story that questioned if Franchesca’s video was “racist” tried the good ol’ “role reversal” trick (that always fails), which attempts to deny the existence of white privilege. “If the roles were reversed…Jesse [Jackson] & [Al] Sharpton, would be involved, lawsuits filed, perhaps riots…”. Says Lim:
The reason why relationships between white and non-white people, or straight people and gay people are fraught, is because of our history – long gone, recent or ongoing. Racist, homophobic or simply thoughtless comments are insulting not just in and of themselves, but because they are a bilious reminder of the times when straight, white people have dehumanised and denied other groups their human rights. Of course, non-white and gay people can say nasty or even prejudicial things to white and straight people, but those things don’t deliver the sting that comes from decades of being on the wrong end of an unequal relationship.
Where Do We Go From Here?
I have watched my friends react to these videos with anger and sadness. I have seen others shout “That’s me! That totally happened to me.” Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. The most important aspect of these videos, however, is that people are actually reacting to them. They’re easy conversation starters, a segway into sharing experiences past and present.
Looking at our own biased perspectives and cultural baggage is not easy, but it is necessary. The “Shit X Says to Y” iteration of the “Shit People Say” meme forces viewers to actually think about what they’ve said to their friends, and what their friends say to them. Humor helps us in those strange, uncomfortable moments.
But are we ready to deal with this?
In her post on Racialicous, Peterson points out that, still, “Shit Girls Say” and “Shit Black Girls Say” received a lot more views than their “Shit X Says to Y” social commentary videos. “Maybe that’s because, as a culture, we are accustomed to laughing at stereotypes,” writes Peterson, “but we aren’t prepared to unpack how we perpetuate them.”
After a few weeks of Internet madness, the noise died down. By the end of January, conversations about this meme were starting to feel stale. So the Internet chilled out and went back to its usual, easy humor. I started seeing these videos on my Facebook news feed: “Shit New Yorkers Say,” “Shit Chicagoans Say.” But it’s only a matter of time until the currents shift again.
Image via Chescaleigh’s Facebook page.
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PhoneGap Build Support Comes to Version 1.4.0
Jan 31st
When it comes to the pace of mobile app innovation, there are a couple leaders in the field that need to be watched on a regular basis. Foremost among them is the PhoneGap, also known as Apache Cordova these days. Call it the leader of the leaders. Today the company announced the newest version of its platform, PhoneGap 1.4.0. In addition to fixing many of the bugs found in version 1.3.0, the PhoneGap Build cloud service will be fully supported in the new version. Check out below to see what is new in the platform.
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The biggest aspect of PhoneGap 1.4.0 is definitely the integration of PhoneGap build. The service compiles developers HTML, JavaScript and CSS in the cloud and then delivers the app as a ready-made for the Apple App Store, Android Market, webOS, Symbian and BlackBerry. It is one of the more powerful functions of PhoneGap and a great resource to developers looking to build hybrid apps. As we have noted in ReadWriteMobile before, hybrid apps are a good way for the cost-conscious developers to release a native applications to the various popular apps stores.
Here are the highlights of what is new in PhoneGap 1.4.0 as broken down by each platform.
Android
- Work-around Feature for Classic PhoneGap 320×480 resolution
- Add compass demo for Android
- IllegalArgumentException if it is not a JPEG nor a PNG
- Adding JUnit dependency
- Fixing issue with FileTransfer.upload when the passed in url contains a ?
- Allow internal SD Card to be used as storage
- Fixing a timing issue with the web view history not being cleared properly
- Making preference reading code more robust
- Using preference=fullscreen for fullscreen view
BlackBerry
- #124: Adding Battery events to the PlayBook.
- #153: Default for camera destination type changed from DATA_URL to FILE_URI.
- #CB-122: native JSON writer class needs expandable char buffer
- Fixing playbook plugin manager
Note: These are not the BlackBerry highlights. That is literally all of the new documentation for BlackBerry in PhoneGap 1.4.0.
iOS
- Added stand-alone PGViewController (Cleaver – PhoneGap as a Component)
- Added ‘How to Use PhoneGap as a Component’ doc to the .dmg (as a PDF)
- Added for legacy support of deprecated PhoneGapDelegate, in core plugins
- Updated the app icons, splash-screens, and template icons for the Xcode template to Cordova ones
- Added Battery core plugin to PhoneGap.plist
Windows Phone
- Compass API fixes
- Added VERSION file to be like other platforms
- Updated phonegap.js to include XHR updates
- Fix for single document – multipage layouts
- Changed default destination to FILE_URI
- Acceleromter fix #CB-141 – InvariantCulture
There were a lot more bug fixes in PhoneGap version 1.4.0 than in earlier releases. It also comes a little more quickly than previous versions though the update schedule is about once every five or six weeks or so. That would put PhoneGap on par with Firefox, which also is a company that sets the pace of software innovation.
Does the newest version of PhoneGap solve your development problems with the platform? What are you still waiting for to be fixed? Let us know in the comments.
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No One Cares That Novell Has A New Version of GroupWise
Jan 23rd
Today Novell released its 2012 version of its email software GroupWise, and the announcement was greeted by most with a big yawn. GroupWise? Seems so last century. (Actually, the last updates to the software were for version 8 back in 2008-2010.) According to one analyst, “GroupWise has 10,000 customers and is used by 47 of the 50 US state governments.” It has been a distant third to Exchange and Lotus Notes for a while, and many GroupWise customers have switched over to Google Apps in the past several years.
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GroupWise 2012 comes packed with nifty features such as an iPad client, better Web access, integration with Vibe and uses Skype for presence detection. Some of this is certainly late to the game, for sure. The software sells for $143 per seat, and Novell will even throw in a free SUSE Linux server too. Here is an example of its unified inbox from the new version:
While I am glad to see this product still get engineering mind-share from Novell, it is sad to be reminded of how poorly Novell’s stewardship of GroupWise has been. Let’s set our wayback machine for January of 1996, Mr. Peabody, when GroupWise was still a player and probably at the height of its market share.
Microsoft had just come out with Windows 95, the first version of Windows to really embrace TCP/IP and the Internet. Outlook hadn’t yet been invented, and the world was running for the most part on Novell’s Netware networks, which had its own directory services and distributed architecture long before Microsoft copied them into its Windows equivalents. Novell also had purchased GroupWise and it could be found in numerous enterprises as their email solution. Email for an entire enterprise was still a new concept to many, and while many corporations had Internet access, it was still somewhat novel to send emails from one corporate domain to another.
GroupWise was ahead of its time in many areas: it was the first to offer an integrated scheduling and calendar in your inbox, something that Outlook came out with eventually.
Here is an example of what that unified inbox looked back in the day.
Back in 1996, using a Web browser to read your email seemed clunky, mainly because broadband connectivity was sparse and because the UIs were miserable. When Exchange came out with its first Webmail client, it couldn’t view email attachments for example. That would be unthinkable now.
One of its best features was what we’ve called the “save your job” button. You could recall any unread messages in case of a change of heart. This was something that was part of the product ever since the early days when it was called Word Perfect Office. It also had for a long time the ability to check-in and check-out documents from pre-specified libraries.
Well, GroupWise was certainly ahead of its time, at least back in the 1990′s. Will this update make anyone switch from Exchange or Notes? Doubtful. Certainly, the few existing users will rejoice.
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New Mobile AdWords Targeting Options: WiFi & OS Version
Jan 20th
Google AdWords advertisers can now target campaigns to mobile devices that have a high-speed WiFi connection. Advertisers can also now target specific versions of operating systems on iOS, Android, and WebOS. Here’s how to take advantage.
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Google Chrome: New Version Faster and More Secure
Jan 9th
Google Chrome, which recently released version 17 to beta, now has the ability to prerender webpages on the basis of what site a user is likely to visit. When a user begins to type a URL or search query in the address bar, Chrome predicts what page the user wants and begins to load that [...]
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Poll Results – Do you like the new version of Google Analytics?
Jan 5th
Well, the results of our poll, “Do you like the new version of Google Analytics?”, are pretty interesting. I think it is clear that the majority are not happy, but I guess some of our readers like it. 83 people voted that they “love it” and “can find everything”. 91 voted “it is ok”, which [...]
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Do you like the new version of Google Analytics? [POLL]
Dec 29th
I have seen many complaints about the new version of Google Analytics. I have to say that I don’t like it myself and have a hard time finding what I need. I was wondering how you feel about it and if you have any tips, suggestions or recommendations for other analytics programs to supplement GA? [...]
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Boxee Said To Drop The PC Client Biz With Latest Boxee 1.5 Version – ReelSEO Online Video News
Dec 27th
 ReelSEO Online Video News |
Boxee Said To Drop The PC Client Biz With Latest Boxee 1.5 Version
ReelSEO Online Video News The following is an index of our more popular video search engine optimization (Video SEO, VSEO,… Many of us here at ReelSEO are still settling back into our routines following the awesome SMX West… We had the privilege of speaking with Bruce Clay … |
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Kindle Fire Loaded With “Pre-Alpha” Version of Android Ice Cream Sandwich
Dec 26th
The hackers at XDA Developers have been hard at work trying to port Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich onto the Android Kindle Fire. The first success was made in early December when a limited version of ICS was run on the Fire. Last week there was a breakthrough in what the XDA coders are calling a “pre-alpha” of the fire running an actual version of the newest Android OS. See the video below.
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The newest hack of Ice Cream Sandwich on Kindle Fire is based off of CyanogenMod 9. According to the XDA Developer Forums, CyanogenMod 9 is not all that fundamentally different from the standard the stock edition of Android Open Source Project (AOSP) Ice Cream Sandwich. That does not mean to say that CyanogenMod 9 will not fork away from ICS and bring additions to the custom ROM, but for now there is little different in the code bases.
XDA developer JackpotClavin released the “pre-alpha” last week and the XDA community has been building off it since. Previous work on bringing ICS to the fire was done by an XDA member know as g1011999 who has made significant progress.
There are still several bugs to work out of Android 4.0 on the Fire. Wi-Fi is working (the all-important first step) while video playback and some audio are not yet working. That is significant progress for the project that had stalled (in terms of updates) through the middle of the month.
The work of g1011999 was built from CyanogenMod 7. Prerequisites for building ICS on the Fire include installing custom software such as CM7 or TWRP 2.0 after rooting the tablet. Then perform a factory wipe of the device and install JackpotClavin’s work.
Currently the biggest obstacle is getting the SD card to save files from the device. That has been the most recent fix but still remains a work in progress.
Here is a video of ICS running on the Fire.
To follow the discussion on XDA discussion boards, see this thread based on JackpotClavin’s pre-alpha launch. The thread was split from this thread that details the work done by g1011999. The IRC associated with ICS on the Fire is located at irc.freenode.net/#kindlefire-dev. To learn more about CyanogenMod 9, see the company’s blog here or join the CyanogenMod forums here.
As this is a “pre-alpha” the current build of ICS on the Fire is not really ready for public consumption at this time. If developers want to help in the work of bringing ICS to the Fire, go jump into the XDA Forums or the IRC and volunteer your expertise.
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