NY Times - The Death of the Open Web

It’s pretty inevitable some of the possible uses of the Web like blogging, video sharing or social networking would usher in an age of ‘mega-sites’ like Blogger, YouTube and Facebook. After all, it’s a lot better for a user to be where everyone else is, or search where everyone else posts, and alas, distributed-network efforts are still not mature enough (it’ll be interesting to see how Diaspora pans out, but it’s hard to imagine 400 million people quitting Facebook and start using it).

However, the article talks about something else, which I would describe as people giving up their freedom in exchange of gadget design lust. The iPad proves Apple’s enemy is not just Google or just Microsoft: it’s the open Internet. Their Galambosian vision of the future - every byte is pay content - sure got journalists and publishers of all sort excited. Keeping with Steve Jobs’ “Want porn? Buy an Android phone!” stance, it’s worth noting the media’s enthusiastic coverage of Chatroulette, the anedoctal evidence of that Open Web children must be protected at all costs…

Microsoft's grinning robots or the Brotherhood of the Mac. Which is worse?

I wholeheartedly agree with Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker on the main virtue of Windows: no zealots. I dislike Macs by the same reason why I’ll defend my crappy ‘95 Punto against every verbal assault. It works for me, so shut up already. (via The Null Device)