The Disney Vault is something I loathe and admire all at once. They release movies to DVD (or, in the old days, VHS) for only a limited window, and then put the title back into the “vault” for another 10 years. It creates a nice marketing buzz and cranks up the demand for their beloved films.

It’s a genius idea, from a business perspective–and not too many studios have the cache to pull it off.

But as a consumer, it’s mind-numbingly awful. You have to wait years for certain titles to become available. I honestly think it’s counter productive at this point. In today’s on-demand world, I think they’d make more money if I could buy Bambi whenever I darn well pleased.

(Don’t even get me started on this business about Disney DVD’s ALWAYS costing $20, no matter what… no matter where… no matter the title. That is about as annoying as anything.)

So the announcement today that Disney will start streaming their films online for free caused a bit of cautiousness in me (understandably so). Because I figure there would have to be some major catch to this deal.

And guess what… there is.

First, not all Disney movies will be streamed. Only the films they are showing each week this summer on ABC’s Wonderful World of Disney series will be streaming online for free–and only for the week following their airing on television.

So, it’s basically the streaming-online version of the Disney Vault.

That being said, if you have kids, and haven’t bought Finding Nemo for them yet (what are you waiting for?), you can watch it online with them for free through Friday.

While I can see some upside to this for the consumer, it’s very small. Fact is… if you’ve got high-speed internet and a hearty enough computer to handle quality video streaming, you can probably afford to own the Disney titles your kids love–and you probably already do.

Oh well. At least they’re trying something. Here’s a sampling of some of the other movies to come this summer, from the article:

“Monsters, Inc.,” “Haunted Mansion,” “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen,” “Princess Diaries 2,” “Freaky Friday” and “Peter Pan” also will be available on the site this summer.

So there you go. If you want to watch any of those movies online for free, with your family or something… check out the article. Or you can just borrow my Finding Nemo DVD.

This is fantastic news, and I say that with not even an ounce of my traditional sarcasm.  Anytime I hear about a new WiFi hotspot in my area, I’m happy about it.  If I had my way, I would see every square inch of Sumner County covered in a giant net of WiFi.  (And I think that day will come… but not yet).

Hendersonville residents visiting Drakes Creek Park can now surf the web for free.

According to the article:

Its wireless Internet access has been available off and on since mid-May, parks Director Dave LeMarbre said. “Within the last week to 10 days, it’s been up and operational 100 percent,” he said. LeMarbre said it cost about $5,000 to install the Web access.

Now I can go to the park on Friday nights, and live-blog the pick-up volleyball matches.  Or check email while I sit in the Little League stands.  Or download White Castle nutritional information before walking across the street for some tiny square burgers.

Outstanding news.  The park is already a favorite spot in town for many–this news only makes it more attractive.  Instead of buying a Starbucks card just for the privilege of using their WiFi, I can just buy my grande latte and walk on down to Drakes Creek… and get my Internet for free… no hoops to jump through, no strings attached.  Thanks Hendersonville!

PollDaddy is a create-your-own website poll service, and we thought we’d take it for a test drive for you.

The core service is free. You can create polls, publish them on your website, and have unlimited responses to them.

If you want to pay $20/month, you can upgrade to a premium package that allows for even more scalability and customization… as well as access to statistics about your poll and the people who took it. (We’re testing out the free version, because we’re cheap and we spent all our money on golf balls).

To give this thing a trial, we decided to ask our audience to help us name our robot.

We recently added a robot to our payroll. He takes care of a lot of the more mundane tasks such as taking out the garbage, cleaning the office, & fixing paper jams in the printer. Oh, he also answers tech questions from our readers in a new online Q&A column over at iSurfSumner.com (Dear Abby for Technology). Right now we’re calling him Arnie the AnswerBot, because we’re not very creative and didn’t want to waste precious time on the robot-naming task.

But we wonder if there isn’t a better name out there for him. Here… before you make up your mind… he looks like this:

Okay, so what does that guy look like to you? A Mike? A Simon? Maybe a Winchester?

Killing two birds with one stone, here is our PollDaddy poll where you can vote to help us name our new robot. Feel free to suggest a name yourself if you don’t like our choices, and vote as often as you like. Take the poll now:

As you can see, the poll is quite slick. It was easy to build and only took about 3 minutes. If you have anything worth letting your readers vote on… head on over to PollDaddy and sign up. Oh, and check back here on our blog to see what kind of name the little robot guy ends up with.

Most who have taken “Intro to Economics” in college are familiar with the term “TAANSTAFL.” My Econ 101 professor wrote that on the board as soon as he walked into the room. He proceeded to explain: “If this is the only thing you learn or remember, you’ll be far ahead of most of the world.”

For those who weren’t introduced to the term, please allow me to decode it for you:

There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

Yes, it’s bad grammar, but it gets the point across.

There is always a price to be paid with “free,” period. There are no exceptions. Either you’re paying with your time, your connections, or you’re paying in ways you don’t yet comprehend. You may never understand how you paid, but trust me…you did.

And free software is no different.

Some “free software” installs code on your computer that allows someone to track your Web surfing habits. They view your online history then push pop-up advertising, specifically related to your interests, as you surf the Web…wasting your time and annoying you to no end. But hey…that software was free, right?

“SpamAssassin” is a popular “free” spam-blocking application. It’s quite popular amongst the free software set.

When SpamAssassin blocks suspected spam, it creates a message that tells you why that particular message was blocked. It compares the incoming potential spam message to a list of criteria that might indicate a message is spam. If the domain name the message is being sent from (such as kbsweb.com) hides the identity of the owner, SpamAssassin considers the message potential spam.

Sounds like a good reason to block mail, right?

Unfortunately it’s a terrible idea. Over the years, scammers and rogue domain registrars have utilized the public database of domain owners as their own private spam and direct mail database. Despite the fact that the organization created to police the registrars has specifically disallowed such behavior. By posting your real address, phone number, email address, etc., you’re essentially giving these scofflaws your exact location and a way to contact you.

The market, being the ultimate genius, started to offer “private registrations” for your domain names, thereby thwarting the would-be spammers attempts to contact and defraud you. Millions of domain owners utilize this service. Millions.

As I mentioned previously, SpamAssassin made the ridiculous assumption that if a domain owner is hiding their contact information using private registration services, they’re probably a spammer. SpamAssassin utilizes the database at open-whois.org to determine which domains utilize private registration.

Here’s what open-whois.org has to say about “privacy”:

What do you have against privacy?

In a word: nothing. This is not about privacy, but about accountability. The Internet is built upon cooperation and accountability, anything which undermines accountability is a bad thing. The usability of the WHOIS database is seriously undermined by anonymous domains.

Open-whois.org’s stance on privacy and the Internet is patently ridiculous. It might have been feasible for everyone to be committed to “cooperation and accountability” when the Internet was a few thousand benevolent techno-geeks fifteen years ago. I’m pretty sure you can agree that it is not a good description for the Internet in 2008.

So, fast forward to me on the phone talking to a customer who wants to know why emails he is receiving from certain senders all go to his junk mail folder. Ugh.

Freedom isn’t free…and neither is software.