SOPA Infographic: How The Entertainment Industry Always Resists New Technology

After yesterday’s widely publicized (and we’d say rather successful) “blackout”, the world is far wiser knowing the dangers that SOPA/PIPA present to not only the U.S. internet, but the global internet as a whole.

If you really cut through all the crap (government, lobbyists, etc.), you’ll see that it is once again the entertainment industry trying to cripple/reject evolving technologies and services so that they can keep sucking in record revenue year after year. Of course, making money isn’t bad. But how they do it, all why crying out that their industry is dying, is repulsive to say the least.

At every step along the way in the last ~100 years, the entertainment industry has fought tooth and nail to keep technology at bay. And time and time again, they’ve lost. Perfectly illustrating their repeated failures at stalling innovation is a handy infographic from AddictingInfo. Check it out after the break…

Infographic: The Worst Web Outages Of 2011

A lot of exciting announcements were made in 2011 for the tech world. With them, however, came many examples of tech failures, namely network/service outages. There were quite a few. Everything from Foursquare to Twitter to AT&T, and more suffered their own fair share of hiccups — Perfect subject for an infographic. Smart Bear software sat down and did just that, making an infographic showcasing 2011′s worst internet/network/service outages and organizing it into a more palatable format.

It’s big, graphic, and full of interesting stuff. Hop past for the read…

Irony: Most Pirated Games Of 2011 Are Still At The Top Of The Sales Charts

This isn’t a post promoting piracy or anything, just an informative post about the level of downloaded games on these here interwebs. And with how that level of thefts of a game, it can still top the charts and set records for sales. TorrentFreak has posted it’s annual list of top 10 most pirated games on the internet and some expected results made the list.

Crysis 2 topped the PC download list with almost 4 millions downloads. Gears of War 3 took the 360 list, which beat out Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. With MW3 hitting $1 billion in sales in just 16 days, it’s surprising that it was still downloaded over 800k times. Super Mario Galaxy 2 topped the Wii charts for the second year in a row. Do these results surprise any of you out there?

I know people pirate games because they probably can’t afford to buy them. That is why my cabinet isn’t as stocked as I’d like it, because of the price. So these people do like that game they downloaded, just couldn’t afford it. But then that game they just downloaded hits $1 billion in a hair over 2 weeks, and the developers sit and cry that they are losing money about the piracy.

It’s a double edged sword. I agree that these hard working developers need compensation for their work. I appreciate every minute they put into giving me hours and hours of entertainment. But the level of talk about loss in sales when they are sitting in a ivory tower is a laughing matter. I don’t support piracy, that isn’t what this is about. But I know how hard it is to buy things that you really want, and I can see the levels of these numbers as high as they are.

Jump past the break to see the rest of results…

GoDaddy Drops SOPA Support After Tidal Wave Of Protests.

Score another one for the internet. After a massive outpouring of public discontent over GoDaddy’s continued support of SOPA, the company has (finally) announced they are officially dropping support for the extremely harmful anti-piracy bill, SOPA.

If you were thinking it’s time to bury the hatchet, we’ll invite you to merely put it in the closet for now as the company’s tone in their official statement makes it sound like they’re only dropping SOPA to appease naysayers, and that ultimately some SOPA-like bill will be passed. With that said, GoDaddy says that if/when consumers support SOPA (or a similar bill), they too will get back on board.

As for those with plans to transfer domains away from GoDaddy, will you continue? We took Gadgetsteria.com and ran. While GoDaddy caved this time, their track record isn’t exactly a beacon of truth and honesty.

[Update] GoDaddy Seems To Think It’s Ok To Support Censorship, Laugh Off Critics.

If you haven’t followed the whole SOPA/ProtectIP drama over the last few weeks in particular, just know that the 1-2 combo of terribly written bills could, if passed, turn the U.S. into a 2nd China in regards to censorship. While we won’t get deep into why either bill is bad (there’s already plenty of that online), we will highlight a humorous/intriguing boycott that is gaining momentum — a “Leave GoDaddy Day” on December 29th — that all started from a single Reddit post.

Disclaimer: We began the transfer process to move Gadgetsteria.com away from GoDaddy yesterday.

GoDaddy’s public image to the internet loving people is, understandably, tanking. The statement they gave to Ars Technica in response to questions regarding the December 29th boycott and their SOPA/ProtectIP support in which they blatantly brush off criticism doesn’t help either. In short: GoDaddy is saying they don’t give a fuck about you, the internet, or the idea of a free and open web. On top of it all, they’re laughing at everyone. Though, we’re pretty sure GoDaddy won’t be laughing if more people follow “I can has cheeseburger” (Fail Blog, etc.) CEO Ben Huh — Huh is moving over 1,000 domains off of GoDaddy if they don’t drop support for SOPA (via: Twitter).

If the boycott actually has as impact, big or small, it will be our turn to laugh back.

See ya, GoDaddy.

• GoDaddyBoycott.org

Update

Score one for the internet — GoDaddy has officially dropped support for SOPA.

Google’s Latest Trick: “Let It Snow”

One of the coolest things about Google is the ever changing search logo. Whether it be a serious, important highlight of world history or something as simple as a nerdy little inside joke, Google is always keeps it fresh.

Even cooler than a simple logo change, however, are the “search tricks” (no, not those tricks) whereby typing a simple phrase into the search bar causes the browser to do something. The last time we encountered such a trick it was the nifty “do a barrel roll” phrase that caused the window to spin, but this latest trick is a bit more festive.

Typing “let it snow” in the Google search bar will reward you with slowly falling snow flakes across your browser window. It’s nothing big or meaningful, sure. But it’s still awesome that Google, despite their sheer size and endless supply for full plates still finds the time to add in nifty little browser tricks such as this.

Protip: Disable the instant search feature so you stay on the simpler search page, and in turn, see the effect a bit better.

Microsoft Goes On The Offensive With Internet Explorer.

Microsoft is taking matters into their own hands regarding the — Won’t it ever DIE!! — Internet Explorer 6. Now more than a decade old, IE 6 is a perfect example of what happens when complacency and laziness take hold, if not a bit of obliviousness. Whatever the reason may be for a particular person or company to continue using IE 6, very soon you’ll have to work even harder to keep the old internet relic chugging along on your computer thanks to new auto and transparent updating of IE.

Essentially, Microsoft is making IE update much like Chrome and Firefox already do — in the background silently. IE updates won’t even show up in Windows Updates anymore either. For most consumers, this is great as they don’t have to think about browser maintenance and in turn get stuck in the version number battle. For companies with ancient software that requires and equally ancient browser, the news isn’t entirely exciting. But there’s a perk: the process will be opt-in meaning companies (and consumers should they choose) can keep going the manual route.

The new auto-update functionality is scheduled to begin rolling out this coming January in Australia and Brazil, “scaling up” over the year to other countries.