Morning, people. After looking at last night's post (and wondering what the hell was I thinking?) I've decided that today shall be Tech Issue Friday. Yeah, enough of my whining about the girlfriend who left me, the state of my notes and whether I'll get to do my doctorate. For today, at least. Anyhow, back to Tech Issue Friday!

The browser wars have new combatants. Apple just unleashed version 1.0 of its Safari browser for the Mac, boasting faster speeds, tabbed browsing, integrated pop-up killer. Yum. On a related note, Mozilla 1.4 RC 3 has just been released, giving us one more option in the race to force MS to make IE at least competent.

Are you a music/software/video downloader? Have you ever used Napster. Grokster, Morpheus, AudioGalaxy, Imesh, Kazaa? If you have, and like me, have several folders of music/downloaded stuff on your hard drive, well our days may be numbered. As anyone who's been keeping up knows, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of Good Ol' America) has launched a massive campaign to nab file swappers on the net. The extent of their power also includes scanning the public directories of P2P sharing apps so as to identify swappers and their ISP. Oh, and did you know the FBI could be knocking on your door, too? Apparently, just because we don't live in the States does not make us safe. Once they identify you as a major swapper, they'll put pressure on your ISP to release your personal information. And after that, well..God help us all. They project that the first round of lawsuits will be underway as early as August. For more details, get the article here.

I could write an endless tirade on why I think this isn't right and what the recording industry SHOULD do. But I found this article written by a fellow "pirate" that sums it up better than I ever could. Obviously we DON'T want to buy pirated stuff. Or download songs off P2P engines. But as the article puts it, even when you buy an original music CD, you DON'T own the music. At least not in the way you think you do. So WTF?

Link this to the current crackdown on pirated VCDs, DVDs and what not in Malaysia. Hell, if I had the dough, I'd stick with original DVDs all the way. I'm a DVD freak, and look at all the beautiful special editions (including boxes, figurines, tags, what have you). So the government wants to make these products controlled items. Well, it's a start. But also, bear in mind that the Malaysian public does NOT need to be shielded so much anymore. We can take a little gore, death, mayhem, even sex. Find a way so we can get original editions at good prices WITHOUT the censorship. Until that happens, I'll stick to ordering my DVDs from Amazon (where it's actually cheaper than Speedy!! Don't believe me? Go here.) or, from my secret pirate somewhere in KL.

This also applies to uni/college students. How on earth do we expect students to keep up when an original copy of Photoshop 6.0 costs several thousand bucks? Or Director/Flash/Dreamweaver MX? Me being an IT grad myself, I can safely attribute most of my software knowhow now to good old Imbi and its 10 (5 now) ringgit CDs.

I had a conversation with a friend last week and he had a theory. He says we're putting so much pressure on the pirates so that in the end, we'll have no choice but to all go out and buy sub-par Malaysian stuff, original. Sembilu XIII: The Wrath of Wati, anyone?

Till then, I pirate on, albeit unwillingly. Whining continues next week.