I’m at Heathrow airport checking for books and in the top 20 section, there were 4 books all about child abuse and child betrayal with jarring subject titles such as “please daddy no” and “the ultimate betrayal”, “don’t tell mummy”, I didn’t realize it was such a hot topic here…it’s sort of depressing.

This led me to some other thinking which is, why is bad news so popular? It’s popular everywhere, in the news (bombs, explosion, death and destruction), in gossip magazines (divorces, fits of anger, temper, outbursts), and now even in the bookstores it’s filled with a variety of disturbing topics.

As a parent this is very bothersome for me, because all the books up until a certain age are all about a wonderful wonderful world, colorful and happy and then it all seems bad news after that. I cannot imagine telling my 2 year old about what is in the news but it’s all over the place, on the web, on tv, radio etc., it’s impossible to shelter him and it would probably be wrong to do so anyway.

If an Alien landed on planet earth, and read our news he’d think this was a horrible place….but that’s simpy not true! If you count how many good things happen to you in life, I would wager they out do your “bad” things unless you live in Iraq or one of those war torn places.

We take what we have for granted, what would someone in Somalia give for how someone in a safe place (I don’t even mean rich, just safe) where there was no War and you had food on your table. This is happiness to them, but many take that for granted. A good meal is happiness too but how many people rejoice about the good food they had, or that they even had food? How many people truly cherish their relationships, their families or their friends? Newspapers don’t sell if the headline is “a happy family”, we crave for this bizarre sensationalism of “big news”. Is it because we are not able to enjoy the happiness of others and can only be made to pay attention on the eve of disaster? That would be sad indeed, but the world cannot truly be that pessimistic, because if it was, we would not know how to laugh, smile or enjoy anything. Being sad cannot exist without being happy and we must have many moments in the day that make us happy, we just don’t realize it. It could be a small victory, a success, an achievement, some good news, no matter how small or unimportant, if it pleases you it’s positive, it’s some form of happiness.

We take happiness for granted, we really shouldn’t. If we can learn to appreciate what makes us happy and enjoy it more I’m sure the world will be a better place.

Nowadays you can set up a complete Open Source based PC for minimal cost, using Ubuntu or a Linux Variant, Open Office for your Word Processing needs and a variety of Browsers and E-mail clients like Mozilla and Thunderbird are all freely available such that you could have a PC that is completely made up of free software.

There must be an opportunity for charity organizations to take advantage of this as a low-cost, highly efficient system in place, the 100 dollar PC alone isn’t going to cut it, second hand PC’s could be donated and free OS could be installed and then given away to individuals and families who truly need it.

I can’t seem to find anyone who has done this, why has this not been done? You could take advantage of giving old PC’s new life as Linux is far more efficient than Windows for most basic computing needs such as getting introduced to programming, web browsing and office work?

This is old news for most of the blogging world but being able to use Qumana with  Sanriotown blogs is good news! While this is still in a testing phase I’m pleased to see that progress is being made and finally the API’s are being put to good use. The Qumana Blog Editor is a very useful blog tool, in particular if you’re editing multiple blogs and while it may not be the most powerful, it is free!

Google finally responds by denying all that what Viacom accused them of which I posted a bit about before.

 A fairly complete report exists here. I don’t think anybody expected Google to just sit back and take it, certainly not when Viacom is looking for a billion dollars in damages.

The outcome of this (which no doubt will take a long time) will be an important case study and it will put into question many issues on the internet once again like the Grokster, Napster and Kazaa cases. The difference here is that it’s one company (albeit a very large one) vs. an entire industry (eg. the MPAA) and Google/Youtube has examples who are partnering and licensing content with other companies such as the BBC.

The bigger question to me however is the point I previously made, and that is that I don’t think this is just about Viacom feeling violated. It’s about defending its original way of making, producing and ultimately controlling content. The good news is that the particular Video in question is finally back up and posted again, but the damage was already done and this particular Video probably benefited from the recent release of Final Fantasy in the US!

A recent study indicates that less than 10% of YouTube’s popular videos are actually due to copyright materials. This is significant and potentially galling for the likes of Viacom because it may prove that this type of content is far more popular than they themselves are willing to accept and could potentially turn their existing industry upside down. Of course the study may have it’s inaccuracies but the point is that unlike the previous P2P cases, YouTube owes much of it’s success from these new creations due to the availability and low cost of making such productions and that is a very powerful and relevant statement.

I hope this case will also make the point that the little guy with the big idea will continue to be protected.

This one is a little different, because it’s flash based it should not have to go through the same javascript trouble that other RSS readers have difficulty embedding, meaning it can be used with myspace and other sites like that.