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I think this pretty well sums it up.

Microsoft isn't a person, why should it have first amendment rights?

The difference being that Microsoft isn't a non-profit organization, but a for-profit corporation. Corporations had been prohibited, by law, from influencing elected officials since the days of Abraham Lincoln all the way up till 1886.

This fact should serve as proof to everyone that commercialism cannot be allowed to become the backbone of the internet. Without the 'e-blitz' (I made that up just now -- thank you, thank you) that gave birth to this freed medium by beating lawmakers and profiteers to the punch, would we even be talking about this right now? Hell no. The only reason we are; the only reason we can muster thousands of protestors for a cause; is because we get swarms of unfiltered opinions over our computers. People make up their own minds for change, and the the issues that come to the frontlines get there because, guess what, it's common sense that jailing a visitor for breaking the pathetic security protected by a fascist law is wrong.

So what will happen when the same "journalism" that dumbed down generation after generation before the internet moves the bulk of it's weight online? Why should sites like Slashdot, that got where they are through the ingenuity of a few schmucks like you and I, be bought out by a bigger fish? I trust the integrity of this site and the owners, from top to bottom, (I've done my homework), but do you think they could resist a million dollar offer from a big fish in the mainstream media? And I wish I had an answer or an alternative, but I don't because this is what happens when the greedy minority is allowed to lobby on capitol hill while the rest of the country watches breaking news of a shark attack on stations owned completely by that minority. They can piss on the constitution because they own it. They paid their way into deregulation that stood for over 100 years as a shield for democracy against greed and corruption. The biggest mistake of the plutocratic movement was to let the internet slip through, and they're going to correct it.

Call me an extremist, but the way I see it, if we don't succeed in using the internet to get people interested in politics, and ruthlessly protective of their rights -- if the transition to online life doesn't help the people and their elected officials to restore antitrust laws, to denounce the words that gave corporations the rights of a living, breathing person -- if this all, instead, ends in a hostile takeover of the internet by profiteers, then mark my words, the next civil war will be fought between Americans and Corporate Americans. You'll see an end to unions, minimum wage will drop, working conditions will resemble pre-union factories where 1 in 5 workers was dismembered or killed because of a lack of safety requirements. Businesses that grow tired of listening to complaints will build sweatshops. Dissent would be minimal considering that all information and events are under the influence or control of one or two corporations. Believe it or not, because that reality is already in it's early stages today. It's a horrible picture to paint, but it's the logical conclusion to the path we're on. Nobody wants it to happen. Not even the CEO's of corporate america. But business operates like a well-oiled machine when it reaches a certain complexity and size. It's only goal is profit, and it's going to that end whether people like it's methods or not. To make that point; do you think any actual human wakes up in the morning, goes to work at the clothing business they own, and says "I think I'll enslave a few children and construct a sweatshop today." No. They compromise, they convince themselves that it's not as bad as it looks, and the machine continues to operate independently towards it's goal. This brings me back full circle, to the idiocy of deregulation.

(Apologies for the long rant and weird grammar, I got carried away with my ramblings)

Well, hopefully, one day some pissed-off programmer will create the ultimate in distributed bullshit detector networks, where the cream of unbiased truth, wisdom, and great deals(!), rises to the top, thanks to the dynamic input of people all over the world who have earned collective trust as clued-in in each subject area. All of the bullshit that business once had no problem pulling over peoples' eyes, gets red-flagged (in a seamless GUI kind of way), and it sinks to the bottom of the heap.

• Here's a few examples of what I'm talking about...
• "Buy a Widget at our rock bottom sale price of only $39.95!!!" **** BULLSHIT DETECTED--"User `TheDealHunter69' notes you can buy this same Widget for $9.50 at the WidgetWharehouse.com, and it also turns out that their resellerratings.com is HIGHER than WidgetRipoffs.com."
• "CNN reports on a new diet drug that actually works!" **** BULLSHIT DETECTED--"Dieting drugs are a scam; there is no magic pill. Want to lose weight? Stop eating like a pig, and get off your fat ass more often. i.e. burn more energy than you eat."
• "Altavista Search: 'best credit card offer'--Result 1 of 10: "Get low, low rates at lowlowlowrates.com!" **** BULLSHIT DETECTED--"User 'AVWatchDog100' points out that lowlowlowrates.com's rates are never the lowest; that their service IS the lowest; that they sell your information to anyone with a buck; that they pay Altavista for top10 placement; and they are also a known email SPAMMER. AVOID!"

"'(4) Competitor consideration prohibited: In making the determinations specified in paragraph (1) or (2), the Commission shall not consider whether the public interest, convenience, and necessity might be served by the grant of a license to a person other than the renewal applicant.'. "

No. I don't think people generally want to take from artists, but they don't seem to mind getting what they can from 'the man'. When did this seem acceptable? At what point did a schism between people and corporations occur? I think it is borne from the abrogation of a social contract between corps and people. Once they were perceived to act in their most craven interests to the detriment of people, people turned on them. What the hell, Welcome to the Machine. I don't think corporations know how to restore people's faith in them; in any case it would be bad business. The best way to regain power, for the people, is to undermine that profit-driven system. It is an anti-capitalist concept, but it is not necessarily evil, though it may be a serious threat to the status-quo. For instance, the rise of communism was at least partially a result of the fears of Eastern Europeans about capitalists. If you read Das Kapital you will learn that the persuasive argument of Marx centered on stories of sweatshops and usury and indenture: basically human misery at the hands of capitalists. Only the sound of lady garment workers hitting the sidewalks reached the government's ears. My point is that people perceive corporations as being craven, self-interested, and dangerous, no matter how many "People Do" ads we see.

So we feel justified, nay, in fact Glorified! when we beat the system and stick it to The Man. Tell me: why is Courtney Love suing the RIAA? Why did Pearl Jam try, unsuccessfully, to stop Tickemaster's monopoly on concerts ticket sales?

What true artist who hasn't lost his soul to the capitalist ideal wouldn't attack the current system?

Here, I want you to read what Robert Fripp of King Crimson has to say: Go Here. And then try to understand why we believe that once the distributor is out of the picture, then the artists will be better off than ever.

The reason is, to use Marx's words, that the distributor once possessed the "Ways and Means of Production", whereas in this day and age we all possess them, on our desktops. So the threshhold should have come down. But corps somehow convinced our elected officials to be their personal pit-bull lapdogs. I hope that it is a case of a desperate and futile trying to hold back the floodgates that will soon prove too time- and energy- consuming for our government to continue to fight, but, when I realize that this generation has allowed for more of their rights to be taken away than any other, I have less hope for the outcome. People are losing power daily.

I remember when this Napster thing was in it's infancy, before the dotcom gold rush, the attitude here at /. was one of hubris: "Those idiots can't figure this internet thing out like we can and we can always remain a step ahead of them." But I suspect that that attitude has been mollified somewhat, as the descending team of lawyers, entrepreneurs, con artists, and newbie hackers without a code, without loaylty to an ideal, took the net and re-made it into something I frankly should have, but didn't anticipate: a cultural wasteland as vapid as a TV with a mouse attached.

Well, heh, it's not all that bad just yet; the net is a great source of raw information, but I don't like the trend I'm seeing...

Who was it (McLuhan? Adbusters?) that said that television shows are produced for the sole purpose of keeping viewers' attention long enough to show them some commericials?

You are the product.

"I wish the book publishers would start reprinting more books about good children who sit still and devote themselves to watching Disney cartoons. If kids must get off of the couch, they might devote themselves to collecting Disney beanbag dolls or maybe those plastic action figures for Disney characters."

Hell yes!

We all *know* those MSC kids would have grown up to be cyberterrorists, drug dealers, money launderers and child pornographers (did I leave anything out?). They might even have done things like code free and open operating systems, in an attempt to destroy prefectly good American institutions like Microsoft; disrupted the smooth functioning of universities like MIT, with so-called "harmelss yet educational" acts of violence and danger, as documented here, here and here; or even subverted the messages of honest hard-working advertisers through blatantly anti-capitalist and possibly Communist-supported billboard vandalism! And they would have tried to justify it with names like "hacking" or "pranks" or "social commentary"!

Books like these should be banned! Kids read this stuff and get ideas into their heads, and that inevitably leads to Columbine or possibly even "thinking for themselves" and (selfishly) having "fun"!

Now stop wasting time reading Slashdot and get back to work making your corporate masters wealthier!

....when you are in a car crash and die, the GDP goes UP; when you are in hospital with cancer, the GDP goes UP; when you bury a newborn with a birth defect caused by pollution, the GDP goes UP; when you propagandize that the health of a culture is directly and linearly proportional to their GDP, the Fucking GDP goes UP UP UP!

Economists need to learn to subtract. See this http://www.adbusters.org/oldwebsite/Articles/rowe. html article please.

Being a big fan of Adbusters and their clan, I have to say that seeing this story on Slashdot makes me feel a trillion times better than reading its likeness in Adbusters. Adbusters, besides being a whup-ass, well-put-together mag, is a full-steam-ahead revolutionary organization. They already have the numbers, they're already convinced, and they're already fighting. All of that is nice, but to see them talking openly about issues like this is (duh) commonplace. It's when those issues pop up in widely-circulated, not-primarily-revolutionary media like Slashdot that there seems to be a little hope, and the little revolutionaries like me get the warm-fuzzies. Whatever anybody thinks of Jon Katz, he gets my solemn kudos for tackling an issue that a) means something and b)needs tackling. Go Jon!

As far as (c)BigMedia(tm) goes, you won't believe me if I try to just tell you their track record for refusing to allow Adbusters, and others, to publish anything resembling a non-corporate point of view (including a lot of surprising issues). Just take your most sickening estimate and triple it. Suffice to say, you won't see this story on ABC or in Time magazine, nor would you, I bet, if Madonna'd co-written it with the Dalai Lama (no offence to Jon).

Hit their site for the whole gruesome shebang, or if you don't like good graphics (*snerk*) take my Reality Test, and see if They've Affected Your Brain Yet!

(No) Peace (Without Justice),
S.T.

Situationist
Adbusters
CorpWatch
AllYourBrand

etc.:
Independent Media Center
Metropolitic.net
You May Be An Anarchist And Not Even Know It (I too thought the "anarchy movement" was a load of crap from bored aggressive adolescents (they really spoil it for everybody don't they?) until reading this and realizing there really is a legitimate coherent philosophy behind it)
Mother Jones
In These Times
Poliglut
Protest.net (yes, sometimes there are actually legitimate reasons to protest)
PigDog journal
Unabomer Manifesto (he may have been labeled a wacko, but read it - he's not stupid and he does sorta have a point.)

adbusters is one of the most interesting anti-corporate sites that i've seen - i'm just wondering how long before there's a magazine that's the technological version of the same thing... hey, there probably already is.

anyway, visit adbusters - i'm sure you'll find it interesting or funny or both.

i was angry:1 with:2 my:4 friend - i told:3 4 wrath:5, 4 5 did end.

On the site is a .pdf of a phoney "Corporate Charter Revocation" form that some Canadian activists posted all around the headquarters of a mining company, and the stock market. The company's share too a dive.

The reasoning behind real corporate dissolutions (besides the joke ones) is that corporations have massive power, have the same rights as natural humans and because of their massive wealth still manage to evade the laws. There is no real accountability from corporations. Having the threat of dissolution return could cause some of them to smarten up, ie. tobacco companies, Avant!, FireStone, etc.

The american bill of rights applies to corporations. That's odd to say the least, and it's one of the love-to-hate objects of Adbusters and Kalle Lasn.

...it's called revoking a corporation's charter, and up till a hundred years ago was done when a corporation was found to be no longer serving the public good. There is currently a petition underway to revoke Phillip Morris' charter.

For more on this, see the AdBuster's web site:
http://adbusters.org/campaigns/corporate/tour/1.ht ml
--
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

Corperations are made of people who are remarkable like you and I, and run by people who actually grew up pretty much the same as you did..

Yes, corporations are people, just like you and me! From Adbusters' history of the corporation :

President Abraham Lincoln foresaw terrible trouble. Shortly before his death, he warned that "corporations have been enthroned . . . . An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people . . . until wealth is aggregated in a few hands . . . and the republic is destroyed." [...]

Then came a legal event that would not be understood for decades (and remains baffling even today), an event that would change the course of American history. In Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, a dispute over a railbed route, the US Supreme Court deemed that a private corporation was a "natural person" under the US Constitution and therefore entitled to protection under the Bill of Rights. Suddenly, corporations enjoyed all the rights and sovereignty previously enjoyed only by the people, including the right to free speech.

This 1886 decision ostensibly gave corporations the same powers as private citizens. But considering their vast financial resources, corporations thereafter actually had far more power than any private citizen. They could defend and exploit their rights and freedoms more vigorously than any individual and therefore they were more free. In a single legal stroke, the whole intent of the American Constitution -- that all citizens have one vote, and exercise an equal voice in public debates -- had been undermined. Sixty years after it was inked, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas concluded of Santa Clara that it "could not be supported by history, logic or reason." One of the great legal blunders of the nineteenth century changed the whole idea of democratic government.

So by virtue of this VC being Bush's advisor, all the corporate ``persons'' his company funded get to have lunch with the president every day. But non-billionaire ``persons'' made of flesh and blood will never be heard.

"`I have great access,' said Kvamme."

> Since when do companies enjoy the rights of individuals?

In 1886, the US Supreme Court ruled a railbed dispute titled Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad. The ruling held that a private corporation was a "natural person" entitled to all the rights and privileges of a human being.

You can read how the history of how corporations acquired their ill-gotten rights here:

http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/corporate/index .html

NOW you know why certain "informed" (rich) people become a "Corporate Sole" (A Corporate Sole exists for perpuitity. Read Black's Law dictionary for more goodies. i.e. The Queen is one.)

One campaign being run by adbusters is called the corporate crackdown. My personal favorite bit is the Charter Revocation Notice. Without a charter, a corporation ceases to exist as an entity. I'm not really sure what happens after that, but at the very least that corporation can no longer do any form of business. Perhaps sending charter revocation emails to gracenote and the california attorney general describing this insane lawsuit might get some notice. In principal a corporation exists because the people, through the government, have given it permission to exist. Prior to the 1886 Supreme Court case Sante Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad, corporations had a limited list of activities they could engage in and a limited life span. After that court case the corporations have increasingly utilized their hordes of lawers and large financial resources to solidify their power base in our government and get ever more legislative benifits for them passed. One of several possible ways to reclaim power for the people instead of the "corporate republic" is to reclaim the power of life and death over corporations. Though needless to say revoking charter is really difficult at this point. A group has been working on taking out philip morris for some time. Petition to revoke Philip Morris' corporate charter in the state of New York. diane

One campaign being run by adbusters is called the corporate crackdown. My personal favorite bit is the Charter Revocation Notice. Without a charter, a corporation ceases to exist as an entity. I'm not really sure what happens after that, but at the very least that corporation can no longer do any form of business. Perhaps sending charter revocation emails to gracenote and the california attorney general describing this insane lawsuit might get some notice. In principal a corporation exists because the people, through the government, have given it permission to exist. Prior to the 1886 Supreme Court case Sante Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad, corporations had a limited list of activities they could engage in and a limited life span. After that court case the corporations have increasingly utilized their hordes of lawers and large financial resources to solidify their power base in our government and get ever more legislative benifits for them passed. One of several possible ways to reclaim power for the people instead of the "corporate republic" is to reclaim the power of life and death over corporations. Though needless to say revoking charter is really difficult at this point. A group has been working on taking out philip morris for some time. Petition to revoke Philip Morris' corporate charter in the state of New York. diane

One campaign being run by adbusters is called the corporate crackdown. My personal favorite bit is the Charter Revocation Notice. Without a charter, a corporation ceases to exist as an entity. I'm not really sure what happens after that, but at the very least that corporation can no longer do any form of business. Perhaps sending charter revocation emails to gracenote and the california attorney general describing this insane lawsuit might get some notice. In principal a corporation exists because the people, through the government, have given it permission to exist. Prior to the 1886 Supreme Court case Sante Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad, corporations had a limited list of activities they could engage in and a limited life span. After that court case the corporations have increasingly utilized their hordes of lawers and large financial resources to solidify their power base in our government and get ever more legislative benifits for them passed. One of several possible ways to reclaim power for the people instead of the "corporate republic" is to reclaim the power of life and death over corporations. Though needless to say revoking charter is really difficult at this point. A group has been working on taking out philip morris for some time. Petition to revoke Philip Morris' corporate charter in the state of New York. diane

One campaign being run by adbusters is called the corporate crackdown. My personal favorite bit is the Charter Revocation Notice. Without a charter, a corporation ceases to exist as an entity. I'm not really sure what happens after that, but at the very least that corporation can no longer do any form of business. Perhaps sending charter revocation emails to gracenote and the california attorney general describing this insane lawsuit might get some notice. In principal a corporation exists because the people, through the government, have given it permission to exist. Prior to the 1886 Supreme Court case Sante Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad, corporations had a limited list of activities they could engage in and a limited life span. After that court case the corporations have increasingly utilized their hordes of lawers and large financial resources to solidify their power base in our government and get ever more legislative benifits for them passed. One of several possible ways to reclaim power for the people instead of the "corporate republic" is to reclaim the power of life and death over corporations. Though needless to say revoking charter is really difficult at this point. A group has been working on taking out philip morris for some time. Petition to revoke Philip Morris' corporate charter in the state of New York. diane

Q: When is a message hidden in a picture relevant to steganography but not an example of it??

A: When it's this one.


S.T.

I would say "unregulated corporations" that has more rights than an ordinary citizen is what's wrong. Of course the DMCA is some whore of a law that the corporations can sink their teeth into, that my own Senator Hatch is responsible for.

I guess that this ad campaign is lost on me... I guess that it is trying to capitalize on the free-software-foundation-open-open-source-hippie vibe that people associate with linux, I guess. Are they pitching this to the pointy-haired managers or something? Not that ad campaigns generally make sense to me anyway.

The invasion of public space in cities by creeping advertising of this kind, stencilled graffiti-like ads (no, this is not the first of this kind), are another symptom of the malignant ad creep being experienced in major cities...

And whay, exactly, is so dang peace-love-linuxy about buying a server with linux over some other flavor of unix? I am for spreading linux as much as the next advocate, but when you are presumably paying for support AND the OS, where is the hippie philosophy?

Maybe I am wrong - is IBM advocating ordering their big iron servers and then downloading an ISO of the new redhat distro for S/390...

an adbusters link seems appropriate here somewhere.

Unrelated comment first - You're looking for comments from a major publisher where they admit to pirating the works of freelancers? That would be like getting Shawn Fanning to admit that Napster exists primarily to pirate copyrighted music. Not going to happen...

That's not unrelated at all. It's the whole reason it's going to be next to impossible to find decent coverage on this issue. Media outlets, like any other business, will do what they must to remain in business. In this age of giant conglomerates, they'll do what they must to keep their parent companies and their parent companies' other companies in business.

By way of example, notice how the definition of the word "stealing" has suddenly been changed by the mainstream media? Since when is making an unauthorized copy stealing? It's piracy, sure, but when I copy something, I'm not taking anything from the original owner. There's the specious argument, "you would have GIVEN them something otherwise", but of course that's generally false-- people who pirate hundreds of games or CDs weren't planning on buying all of them. But once major media started tossing the word "stealing" into their reports on Napster et. al., it went by almost unnoticed, until it had seeped its way into the standard discourse. Napster isn't stealing. It's piracy.

More blatantly obvious is this article, about a major case where Fox was sued by its reporters when they were fired for refusing to distort a story. The reporters were awarded $425,000. Sound familiar? Probably not, because few people reported on it. But it sure was a big story to me. But perhaps this quote from Fox's defense team will shed some light on the subject: "There is no law, rule or regulation against slanting the news."

They tell you what they want you to hear, and they just ignore what they'd rather you didn't know. As long as you keep that in mind, you can usually dig through all the bullshit and find out the real story.

I agree, and as someone that has read animal farm, I agree more than most can. Just remember, "two legs bad" for now then when the RIAA is on two legs we will see the otherside.
eg: "The net is bad!!!" untill we control it.

IF your really afraid of corps ruling us, read http://www.adbusters.org




Fight censors!

my housemate (whose an idiot) loves the show, thinks it is incredible.
to be fair, i sat down and watched it. it's so cheesy and predictable,
really below the intelligence level of most geeks i would think.

here's an idea: turn off your tv.

why are most slashdot users so cheap?

i always wonder this. it seems that the majority of people here want everything for free. it's one thing to dislike corporate America, but most of what i see here is childish "gimmie gimmie gimmie!"

examples:

• free sites put up large advertisements
  great, let's block those ads! it's my God-given right to have free Internet content!
• commercial software (especially MacOS X for some reason)
  open source it! now now now! and not so that we can add better functionality and improve the product, but so that we can port it to Linux (ie, steal it).
• secure music/content
  rip it! crack it! (but only after it's in the marketplace). we have a right to free music and movies!

seriously people, this is getting disturbing. there's a difference between fighting a misuse of technology, but many people here have gone way beyond that into a "me! me! me!" attitude that make middle-age yuppies look like ghandi.

personally, i'm not keen on advertising, i despise over-consumption, and i don't own a car for purely ethical reasons. heck, i don't even own a television for christ's sake! but i still don't see what's wrong with putting some advertisements, no matter the size, on commercial-provided free content. people: advertising is not inherently evil. if you don't want to see advertising, don't read sites that have advertising: that's your choice. there's good reason to get pissed off about billboard advertising, as you can't "opt-out," but reading sites with advertising and purposefully blocking out that advertising is extremely immoral.

there are ways to properly fight the misuse of advertising, including ignoring advertising-sponsored content. but blocking that advertising is nothing but stealing. (and yes, it is stealing despite the fact that it's "digital." it's stealing bandwidth).

seriously, grow up.

- j

Excellent points - that is the most salient and aware writing ive read in this thread.

Capitalism in its Western incarnation is a straw-man. You cannot spend your capital (oil, ore or mineral) and call it 'income'. This is like my basing my future on the sale of my home - it works for a few months (where im spending the cash that i'd saved into my home) but quickly becomes a problem when I have no other home to sell...

On a similar note - the Capitalist measure of the economy is not a measure of 'success'. The GDP is another display of 'wrong' thinking inherent in the capitalist system. When a person gets cancer - the GDP goes up. When we are in a car crash - the GDP goes up. What about our real goals: happiness, peace, love, understanding, joy and their ilk? I propose we organize a system that only serves those goals.

See a link at Adbuster that deals with some of these ideas - much better than I can explain them ;)

Simply: Join the effort to End Plutocracy.

Kalle Lasn is the editor for Adbusters magazine - another counter-culture mag with stories and insights you definitely will not find in the mainstream media.

-------

Kalle Lasn is the editor for Adbusters magazine - another counter-culture mag with stories and insights you definitely will not find in the mainstream media.

-------

I've heard that a corporation can be de-chartered, the equivalent of a death sentence. I've never heard of it being applied.

It has been applied in the past, but not for around 100 years give or take. The legal mechanism to do this is still available. I've come across some campaigns to impose a "corporate death penalty" on various businesses here and there on the web.

For a general primer on the history and evolution of corporate power, along with a call to arms to fight back, check out the Corporate Crackdown at the Adbusters website.

Trickster Coyote
The power of illusion. The illusion of power.

I've heard that a corporation can be de-chartered, the equivalent of a death sentence. I've never heard of it being applied.

It has been applied in the past, but not for around 100 years give or take. The legal mechanism to do this is still available. I've come across some campaigns to impose a "corporate death penalty" on various businesses here and there on the web.

For a general primer on the history and evolution of corporate power, along with a call to arms to fight back, check out the Corporate Crackdown at the Adbusters website.

Trickster Coyote
The power of illusion. The illusion of power.

"Regardless of what Channel 1 says you can and can't do, most schools just don't care"

Most schools might, but others will send you to jail. The colonization of our minds by advertising is proceeding apace. Sleep soundly citizens!

• There is something to be said for a guarantee of free speech.. (try going into canada with safer-sex pamphlets targeted at a non-straight audience and enjoy entertaining threats of prosecution for smuggling and obscenity-- whether or not the court has ordered an improvement on this long-standing issue the border-guards still routinely harass and hold-up shipments (and for that matter, visitors) with materials already judged 'not obscene' after being held by the local office of the purolator) (or for that matter, look to censorship in a variety of locales.. not to say that factions in the US of A don't try..)
• Goverment subsidies of some industry (let's say dairy) makes for both an unhealthy industry (insofar as competition with extranationals goes) and a situation where the government is forced to suppress competition from within the state to avoid payment increase (alternative being a collapse of the industry to supportable levels)
• There is the point that media 'bombardment' can go two ways (check out AdBusters for a bit of Canadian infiltration into the American meme-space).. but honestly, it doesn't seem as though non-Québécois Canadians have much of a distinctive culture to 'jam' with. (ok.. it was petty and misleading.. and the Canadian modern/post-modern dance scene is great.. but the 'artifact producing' media definitely seem under-represented.) (let's not debate whether American culture is any better)

Ever heard the term "GDP growth

Do you understand that GDP growth is a measurement of a self-affirming group? GDP Growth does not relate in a linear manner with 'quality of life'.

"same amount of wealth in existence today as there was 100 years ago"

You are not claiming that the improvement in the standard of living for the last 100 years is a simple product of 'Capitalism'? Capitalism is a mere market construct - it is artificial. It has been chosen. There are other systems. Some have more reasonable long-term prospects for success (read: Communism). I would suggest it is Science, Culture and Knowledge. Humanity has the good fortune of experiencing a massive growth in the three afore mentioned facets of culture - the same would have happened if 'we' were not ruthless corporate whores... there is no proof of the two being absolutely related. I would guess that Americans perceive there present 'power' as a testament to the 'rightchiousness' of Capitalism, that it is the 'best system - just look at how terrific we are'.

I would counter that America has the good fortune of being living on a previously un-exploited landmass and never having to fight a modern domestic war. Dont be so sure of the ultimate 'success' of Corporatist Capitalism. America may be the 'wealthiest' nation - but it also enjoys *ALOT* of major social problems: Puritanism, Intolerance, Religious Zealotry, Legislated Morals, Crime, Cultural Myopia, Racism, Corruption, Consumerism and Apathy. These things are a result of individuals being convinced of their self-importance, and their greed being encouraged. This aids in maintaining the all justifying 'profit motive'. Dont confuse random good fortune with destiny - and dont let propaganda and public hysteria confuse your judgement. Look outside your borders and realize that the reason the rest of the world hates Americans is there hubris and lack of perspective... just what your post displays.

Oh and btw: GPD Growth != Success.

Note: If you happen to not be American, your opinions exemplify one.

i agree with you completely about the kids thing. now the Max Headroom world of "illegal off switches" on televisions doesn't seem that funny anymore.

by the way, there are some organized folks as worried about corporate control as you (we) are. i'd encourage people to pay a visit to Adbusters. their print magazine is good, too.

safety Sorry No. Go down and have a look at the 'murder' columns, shows a value of deaths per 100k. US ends up w/ double digits with countries like the USSR, Latvia & Brazil - Drastically higher than sub 2 values of star performers like Canada, Belgium, Greece and Japan..

freedom Sorry No. Have a look at the Corruption Index (Scroll to Table 1), American Imperialism (and here), McArthyism.. I wont bother with the links: DMCA, Marijuana Prohibition, Prostitution, Collusive Monopolies (RIAA/MPAA), The Cuban Embargo, Kent State Massacre, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bay of Pigs, Iran-Contra Affair, Watergate, Assassinations of John/Bobby Kennedy & MLK, Invasion of Granada, The War on Drugs, Internet Censorship in Schools/Libraries, Consumerism, Work holism, Invasion of Dominican Republic, Gulf War, Systemic Racism (weak gay rights)... etc etc

quality of life Sorry No. Canada has the highest Standard of Living on the planet - 7 years running...

I went to Chicago for NewYears eve to visit some friends. On the way home we heard a news reporter 'lead out of a story' by saying "...and after all; we are the richest and most powerful people in the world." What I began to think is that Americans have begun to treat their 'democracy' (*ahem*) like a Religion. There is no debate. They have enjoyed a very good 150 years - and like all successful civilizations; it will eventually end. If America didnt have such a large piece of 'virgin' North America to exploit for natural resources, and did host a World War (or two) Im betting the world would be a very different place. The 'success' of America dosnt prove the 'rightness' of Capitalism - so get that out of your head. America's 'success' is not success at all! (See adbusters.org about consumerism and mindlessness). America would do itself a favour and learn a little collective humility. Surely the last election has taught you something...

The system has been horribly corrupt by politicians and business people 'on the take'. Their is no longer anyone in Washington who intends to lead Americans. To help America lead and become better global citizens - and try their best to help set a good example - and take examples from those who are already doing good. No person on this planet should be without the rights described in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the US Constitution (or similar documents written or yet-to-be written). Like it or not this is a Global Village and we should be working together for the good of us all.

I refuse to become cynical and jadded. People will respond that this is 'The Real World' - to that I suggest people decide what we are choosing to make this 'Real World' become? Like it or not our collective action/inaction everyday sets the course for the future. We need to stop the 'present' America from setting the course that it is now (and using arms/propaganda to force others into capitulating). (I wont bother with the globalization/imperialist/enslavement/end-of-the-p lanet scenario that is our current future).

Please American PEOPLE do something about your government.

YOU GOT IT

While I won't argue with the modding down of everything else this guy has posted (after his initial post,) I wonder if this one might've been done a bit too hastily.

Yes, he's wasting your bandwidth. Yes, he's wasting space in /.'s db. Yes, he making this page take longer to load. Yes, he's starting to piss you off (if he hasn't already.)

But he does make a point. And AFAIK, he's not selling anything. Nor is he providing penisbird links.

I'm not sticking up for his method of doing this by any means, but I think the argument could be made that what he's done here is akin to the attempts of AdBusters; using the advertising of an idea to deflate or defeat advertising (of material concerns.)

As I said above, pissing people off isn't the best way to win hearts and minds, but sometimes its the only way to get attention. Cyclists where I live used to get together every Thursday during rush hour and intentionally slow traffic to draw attention to the need for alternative transportation. I got held up because of this, and I was pissed off, but I also understood why they were doing it. They knew they were angering people, but also realized that writing letters to the editor wouldn't do a damn bit of good, even if they were published.

I'm not equating this guy with any civil rights hero; I'd be a bit surprised if he'd had this strategy mapped out from the beginning. I simply find this post interesting from a rhetorical point of view, and wonder if anyone else does.

The reaction here closely resembles that to responses to spam; I can't decide if this means all unsolicited communicatons are bad, or just the commercial ones.

Ouch - thats http://www.adbusters.org
Apologies all...

1. Open source library of knowledge for developing nations (making the world's intellectual wealth available to all)
http://www.oneworld.org/globalp roj ects/humcdrom/
http://www.oneworld.org/globalprojects/& lt;/a>
http://www.oneworld .or g/globalprojects/humcdrom/copyrigh.htm
http://payson.tulane.edu:8888/
; http://www.globalprojects.org/
; http://www.humanitylibraries.net/ http://www.villageearth.org/
http://www.villageearth.org/ATLi bra ry/cdrom.htm

2. Open source knowledge management systems
http://www.bootstrap.org/
http://bootstrap.org/colloquium/ar chi ves.html
http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion /

3. Self-replicating space habitats (support trillions of humans in style without overrunning the earth)
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/
http://www.ssi.org/
http://www.ssi.org/alt-plan.html http://www.spacedev.com/
http://www.spacehab.com/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

4. Pursue the "Ecocity Berkley" vision in the book by that name by Richard Register and look for related visions of sustainable development
http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob ido s/ASIN/1556430094/
http://www.co-intelligence.or g/y 2k_commtyorgs.html
http://www.fuzzylu.com/greencenter/h ome .htm
http://www.ulb.ac.be/ceese/meta/sust vl. html
http://www.rmi.org/

5. Work towards ending the drug war and pardoning hundreds of thousands of Americans imprisoned on non-violent drug charges. (I believe drug use is wrong and should be avoided, and by all means as it is now illegal, so don't do drugs! But as with alcohol and tobacco and caffeine, drug abuse should be considered a medical problem, not a legal one (except when like DUI it hurts or puts at risk others directly)).
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pag es/ frontline/shows/drugs/
http://www.drcnet.org/facts/

6. Teaching tolerance and compassion
http://www.splcenter.org/
http://www.splcenter.or g/t eachingtolerance/tt-index.html

7. Open source educational simulations and simulation construction toolkits (one of the most meaningful ways to use computers in the classroom).
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/ http://riceinfo.ri ce. edu/armadillo/Simulations/simserver.html
http://www.creativeteachingsite .co m/edusims.html
http://www.workingmodel.com/
http://www.idsia.ch/~andrea/simtools.h tml

8. Preserving biodiversity (when it's gone, it's gone forever)
http://www.tnc.org/
http://www.environment.about.com/newsissues/enviro nment/library/weekly/aa091700.htm

9. Develop any specific sustainable technology in energy (e.g. solar), recycling (e.g. recycle computers), materials (e.g. plastics from starch), society (e.g. participatory democracy & social justice).
http://www.google.com/sear ch? q=sustainable+technology
http://www.edf.org/issues/Recycling.htm l
http://www.sustainable.doe.gov/

10. Make corporations more accountable to human needs
http://www.adbusters.org/inform ati on/foundation/
http://www.adbusters.org/c amp aigns/charter/death.html
Previous link vanished, try instead:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.adbuste rs.org/ campaigns/charter/death.html+corporate+death+penal ty&hl=en
http://www.cwsl.edu/news/n_corpo rat e_death.html
http://monkeyfist.com/articles/340& lt;br> http://www.chaordic.org/

11. Reform the "Intellectual property" laws and their related organizations, perhaps so that copyrights are for a couple decades and most patents are for a dozen years and only for true innovations. Ensure that any IP developed with any government money is immediately put into the public domain.
http://danny.oz.au/fre e-s oftware/advocacy/against_IP.html
(Lots of other Slashot links!)

12. If you don't want to get you hands dirty volunteering your own time, look around and find good people (not organizations, although the people may be in organizations) already doing good things. Pick people with a track record of years of fighting for the common good or who have already made a major accomplishment demonstrating commitment and just anonymously give them $100K without strings attached. Example: Marty Johnson at Isles, Inc.
http://www.isles.org/mileston.html& lt;br> Find people just starting a career of public service or a charitable venture and struggling to do good things and give them $20K and tell them you believe in their promise and cause. Expect a bunch of the money to be wasted but give it anyway and learn how to give effectively. For ideas, look at the grantees list of any foundation. Then ask those people who they know who are just starting out and trying to do a good job.
http://www.beldon.org/grants2000_07.htm l

When I was about thirteen, I got about seven books out of the library on money thinking I wanted to become a millionaire. Six told me how to get rich (start a business and run it well.) One of them asked me "why do you want to be rich?" That is the one whose name I remember and the ideas in it have changed my life. For advice on setting a direction of what to do with wealth, read the Book "The Seven Laws of Money" by Michael Phillips and Sally Raspberry, especially the chapter on how foundations fail in their mission and how grants go to people who sound good but usually can't deliver (i.e. how hard it is to give money away).
http://www.seeingmoney.com/SevenLaws.ht m
http://www.hallbusi nes ses.com/biographies_primers/1420.shtml

My wife and I are working on a few of these issues ourselves (and a few example links are to our stuff). We make money contracting and spend it to "buy" our own time for making quality software the market can't or doesn't seem to want to pay for. Even without IPO riches, any competent software developer can make $75K-100K in today's market. Graduate students can live on $20K a year, and so can many software developers (kids make it harder) if they follow the path of Voluntary Simplicity. It's a question of priorities.
http://www.life.ca/subject/simplicity .ht ml
http://www.simpleliving.net/slj/ http://www.scn.org/earth/lightly/ http://www.thegarden.net/simplicity/

Voluntary simplicity leaves a lot of funds for doing good deeds - even if they are done on your own time by using your own money to take time off and develop open source software or do other worthwhile ventures. Or take a job that doesn't pay as well but involves helping an organization that you believe in.
http://www.idealist.org/

There are awesome things happening over the next twenty to forty years. According to Moore's law, desktop computers in twenty or so years will be a million times faster than today's. Already computers can drive cars somewhat well and identify vegetable better than humans.

http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/magazine/199 9/number_3/machine399.html ;

Other breakthrough innovations are happening in technological areas like energy, materials, nanotechnology, communications, agriculture, biotechnology, and robotics. Use your wealth to think deeply about what all this means and do something to ensure human survival with style.

It is saddening to see people spend so much money on less important stuff (another night club in this case). Now if it was a night club where these issues are discussed, then maybe it makes sense.

Capitalism without charity is evil, because capitalism only meets the needs of people with money.

1. Open source library of knowledge for developing nations (making the world's intellectual wealth available to all)
http://www.oneworld.org/globalp roj ects/humcdrom/
http://www.oneworld.org/globalprojects/& lt;/a>
http://www.oneworld .or g/globalprojects/humcdrom/copyrigh.htm
http://payson.tulane.edu:8888/
; http://www.globalprojects.org/
; http://www.humanitylibraries.net/ http://www.villageearth.org/
http://www.villageearth.org/ATLi bra ry/cdrom.htm

2. Open source knowledge management systems
http://www.bootstrap.org/
http://bootstrap.org/colloquium/ar chi ves.html
http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion /

3. Self-replicating space habitats (support trillions of humans in style without overrunning the earth)
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/
http://www.ssi.org/
http://www.ssi.org/alt-plan.html http://www.spacedev.com/
http://www.spacehab.com/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

4. Pursue the "Ecocity Berkley" vision in the book by that name by Richard Register and look for related visions of sustainable development
http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob ido s/ASIN/1556430094/
http://www.co-intelligence.or g/y 2k_commtyorgs.html
http://www.fuzzylu.com/greencenter/h ome .htm
http://www.ulb.ac.be/ceese/meta/sust vl. html
http://www.rmi.org/

5. Work towards ending the drug war and pardoning hundreds of thousands of Americans imprisoned on non-violent drug charges. (I believe drug use is wrong and should be avoided, and by all means as it is now illegal, so don't do drugs! But as with alcohol and tobacco and caffeine, drug abuse should be considered a medical problem, not a legal one (except when like DUI it hurts or puts at risk others directly)).
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pag es/ frontline/shows/drugs/
http://www.drcnet.org/facts/

6. Teaching tolerance and compassion
http://www.splcenter.org/
http://www.splcenter.or g/t eachingtolerance/tt-index.html

7. Open source educational simulations and simulation construction toolkits (one of the most meaningful ways to use computers in the classroom).
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/ http://riceinfo.ri ce. edu/armadillo/Simulations/simserver.html
http://www.creativeteachingsite .co m/edusims.html
http://www.workingmodel.com/
http://www.idsia.ch/~andrea/simtools.h tml

8. Preserving biodiversity (when it's gone, it's gone forever)
http://www.tnc.org/
http://www.environment.about.com/newsissues/enviro nment/library/weekly/aa091700.htm

9. Develop any specific sustainable technology in energy (e.g. solar), recycling (e.g. recycle computers), materials (e.g. plastics from starch), society (e.g. participatory democracy & social justice).
http://www.google.com/sear ch? q=sustainable+technology
http://www.edf.org/issues/Recycling.htm l
http://www.sustainable.doe.gov/

10. Make corporations more accountable to human needs
http://www.adbusters.org/inform ati on/foundation/
http://www.adbusters.org/c amp aigns/charter/death.html
Previous link vanished, try instead:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.adbuste rs.org/ campaigns/charter/death.html+corporate+death+penal ty&hl=en
http://www.cwsl.edu/news/n_corpo rat e_death.html
http://monkeyfist.com/articles/340& lt;br> http://www.chaordic.org/

11. Reform the "Intellectual property" laws and their related organizations, perhaps so that copyrights are for a couple decades and most patents are for a dozen years and only for true innovations. Ensure that any IP developed with any government money is immediately put into the public domain.
http://danny.oz.au/fre e-s oftware/advocacy/against_IP.html
(Lots of other Slashot links!)

12. If you don't want to get you hands dirty volunteering your own time, look around and find good people (not organizations, although the people may be in organizations) already doing good things. Pick people with a track record of years of fighting for the common good or who have already made a major accomplishment demonstrating commitment and just anonymously give them $100K without strings attached. Example: Marty Johnson at Isles, Inc.
http://www.isles.org/mileston.html& lt;br> Find people just starting a career of public service or a charitable venture and struggling to do good things and give them $20K and tell them you believe in their promise and cause. Expect a bunch of the money to be wasted but give it anyway and learn how to give effectively. For ideas, look at the grantees list of any foundation. Then ask those people who they know who are just starting out and trying to do a good job.
http://www.beldon.org/grants2000_07.htm l

When I was about thirteen, I got about seven books out of the library on money thinking I wanted to become a millionaire. Six told me how to get rich (start a business and run it well.) One of them asked me "why do you want to be rich?" That is the one whose name I remember and the ideas in it have changed my life. For advice on setting a direction of what to do with wealth, read the Book "The Seven Laws of Money" by Michael Phillips and Sally Raspberry, especially the chapter on how foundations fail in their mission and how grants go to people who sound good but usually can't deliver (i.e. how hard it is to give money away).
http://www.seeingmoney.com/SevenLaws.ht m
http://www.hallbusi nes ses.com/biographies_primers/1420.shtml

My wife and I are working on a few of these issues ourselves (and a few example links are to our stuff). We make money contracting and spend it to "buy" our own time for making quality software the market can't or doesn't seem to want to pay for. Even without IPO riches, any competent software developer can make $75K-100K in today's market. Graduate students can live on $20K a year, and so can many software developers (kids make it harder) if they follow the path of Voluntary Simplicity. It's a question of priorities.
http://www.life.ca/subject/simplicity .ht ml
http://www.simpleliving.net/slj/ http://www.scn.org/earth/lightly/ http://www.thegarden.net/simplicity/

Voluntary simplicity leaves a lot of funds for doing good deeds - even if they are done on your own time by using your own money to take time off and develop open source software or do other worthwhile ventures. Or take a job that doesn't pay as well but involves helping an organization that you believe in.
http://www.idealist.org/

There are awesome things happening over the next twenty to forty years. According to Moore's law, desktop computers in twenty or so years will be a million times faster than today's. Already computers can drive cars somewhat well and identify vegetable better than humans.

http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/magazine/199 9/number_3/machine399.html ;

Other breakthrough innovations are happening in technological areas like energy, materials, nanotechnology, communications, agriculture, biotechnology, and robotics. Use your wealth to think deeply about what all this means and do something to ensure human survival with style.

It is saddening to see people spend so much money on less important stuff (another night club in this case). Now if it was a night club where these issues are discussed, then maybe it makes sense.

Capitalism without charity is evil, because capitalism only meets the needs of people with money.

The problem is that you are all confusing the actions of a person with the actions of a corporation. If a person did this, maybe then they would be guilty of a serious lack of humor. But businesses aren't people! They have to act in certain ways because they are required to by law.

caffiene. nicotine. prozac. alcohol. prescription diet pills. viagra. ritalin.

i'm with you, dude, i think commercials, billboards and magazine ads promoting some drugs as acceptable is just plain hypocritical.

My .02,

I realize that Bruce needs to structure some sort of narrative around his article, but this "third wave" of "semantic hacking" is hardly new.

The attack on Internet Wire was just an insider abusing the system. It's been going on for quite a while, and shame on Internet Wire for having lax enough security than an ex-employee could abuse the system. Social Engineering has also been a common practice for years: call the helpdesk from the CEO's phone and demand that your password be reset. Easy stuff, old practices. In fact, social engineering, manipulation of the press, and misleading the public are practices that predate the internet by a few thousand years:

"What of this again, that these people are experts in flattery, and will commend the talk of an illiterate, or the beauty of a deformed, friend, and compare the scraggy neck of some weakling to the brawny throat of Hercules when holding up Antaeus[12] high above the earth; or go into ecstasies over a squeaky voice not more melodious than that of a cock when he pecks his spouse the hen? We, no doubt, can praise the same things that they do; but what they say is believed."
- Juvenal's Satires

What's new is that the interconnectedness of the internet community is allowing these practices to migrate to the internet in powerful ways. At least one person believes that this is cause for deep optimism:

"All the bad things we hear about the Web are true. There really are people online who'd like to lure our children into shadows. There really are hucksters who'll steal not only your money but your identity. There really are people who'll take pictures of you in a public bathroom and publish the pictures to the world. Every human vice
we can imagine finds its way onto the Web, which seems to spur the world's most lurid imaginations even further. But the reason for this should be a cause for optimism."

You can check the article out yourself for more, but I agree with the premise. The internet continuing to mirror the "real" world is generally a good thing, and the "forces of good" can harness those powers as well as the "forces of evil".

Noam Chomsky has worried quite a bit about the power of centralized press.

"Chomsky's central belief is that propaganda plays the same role in a democracy as violence plays in a dictatorship.
In the United States, therefore, you need to be less afraid of the National Guard and more afraid of the manipulation of information by governmental, corporate and academic sources. According to Chomsky, the elites who control and benefit from the American political system preserve that system by marginalizing alternative political views, selectively reporting on the consequences of United States foreign policy, and creating political apathy among the general populace by encouraging them to watch professional sports and TV sitcoms rather than actively participate in the political process."

Bruce Schneier should be less worried about manipulation of public news outlets, stock prices, and the economy by hackers, and more worried about the manipulation of public opinion by corporations and governments. Hackers, by showing people how easy it is to have their opinions manipulated, actually serve a positive purpose. I'm not saying I endorse the Internet Wire hack, real people lost money and that's not good. But, creative hacks, the "jam the WTO" movement in Seattle, cool sites like The Onion and Adbusters are all great ways to wake up an uninterested, uninvolved public.

- Twid

I'll be handing out some of these Christmas Gift Exemption Vouchers during the weeks leading up to Buy Nothing Day.

I'll be handing out some of these Christmas Gift Exemption Vouchers during the weeks leading up to Buy Nothing Day.

It's the entire narration for an anti-commercial produced by the Media Foundation, which can be found here.

Will someone in Redmond please post this?