Slashdot Mirror

http://www.protest.net/

Hmm, at first I thought this was a troll. With all the corrections though, I think you might actually care. So, I'll bite. Honestly, as much as you write about it, I think boycotting Kraft should be your job. People always say to just do something you have fun at.

Also, please don't go and buy a Kraft product just to turn around and explain to the poor cashier why you are returning it. I can almost certainly guarantee you they won't give half a shit and then you are just needlessly inconveniencing others (the cashier and all the people who could care less behind you).

It's like the people who protest the Iraq war on street corners, all you do is have people who agree with you honk (no net gain) and annoy the people who dont agree with you (again, no net gain). Save your protests for the people who can actually change things. People who organize protests have no clue how much they are diluting the power of it.

Most people just don't care about checking all the labels of the food they buy for how much saturated fat they have much less who makes it. The limited audience of people who read your article changes nothing about Kraft and their day to day activities. Please, go and protest in front of their headquarters if you really care so much about it, or at least take it to http://www.protest.net/. Slashdot, home of basement protesters everywhere *sigh*

I think that even if John Q Public knows nothing about open source, if the services he uses are running open source, it doesn't matter.

Lets make them "Usefull Idiots" eh? I am appauled(sp?) that you believe it fruitfull to mislead people to direct their 'weight'.

What is the purpose in advocating the "moral superiority(sp?)" of Free Software" if you are not willing to take the time to discuss it with the "masses" - jesus man, are the unwashed not smart enough to understand what "we" are talking about? Should we just lead them through the dark with half-truths and bullshite?

Im drunk, a little in-=articulate(sP?), and frankly insulted - what makes you the "saviour of people who dont know whats good for themselves"?

I read a .sig here on /. recently that I found very interesting: "anyone who says that "X" is manipulating you is trying to take "X's" job."

Only full disclosure, education and complete honesty will build our desired future.

Hey whatwhat is this? If what you have to say isnt 'self-evident' its not that important... lets find some basic thruths mmmm, kay?

No thank you, if all of slashdot doesn't start civil unrest over this "national card" mail thousands of letters to every government official and basically scream in the streets that we will be looking for senators heads if this even get's entertained then all is lost.


if you do that you'll be a terrorist. To those in power, the wisdom in the the axiom; "One Mans terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" is never gleened.

Protest.net - Indymedia.org

That's a tempting solution considering what is said in some literature circles after a few vodkas.

...what? that all revolutions start in a pub? ;)

Protest.net

A) be 'bought' by the government and offered as a non-profit public service (because the free-market 'advantages' are not at work.. and they are the purpose of this whole capitalism thing (as far as the citizens are concerned))

B) be broken into competing business to encourage/stimulate competition, price movements, innovation.

People have been so polluted by corporate-speak media that they actually feel it is not 'right' to enact law that might effect the economy - free markets rule today - and democracy can take a back seat... "Power" should exist in no entity that is not democratically* elected.

Bollocks to that mess: see here friends

*as in 'real' democracy, not the circus of smoke and mirrors that the Plutocrats of USofAmerica organize every couple years...

Would somebody please explain this to governments around the world? One day the companies will be TOO BIG to enforce anything upon! If one company owns, say 75% of the media, they can make AND break politicians because this company OWNS the public opinion (sad but true).

Absolutely!

When you dominate public opinion, when you are the SOLE arbiter of public discourse, you set the frame of debate, you define all the 'truisms' and allow your 'pundits' to repeat the same unimportant facets of a story over and over and over and over until there is no overcoming the apathy that has been built into the public psyche w/ regards to your issue-du-jour.

I am overwhelmed by the sheer lack of public awareness of all things around them. People have such a shallow understanding of the issues presented to them in the 'Television News' that I am astounded that no one questions its validity - so few people are upset that the media dosnt discuss the GROWING concern of media concentration, plutocratic/corrupt government, American militarism (and how it is used as a tool by American Business), the deafening silence about ECHELON in the USA (surprise! Surprise! Secret industrial-espionage system is being hushed-up by those who wield/benefit from it!), the lack of REAL political debate (republican/democrat domination of politics in america for the last 150 years - that situation is TRULY astonishing, has no one had a good-idea in the last 150 years or have they simply been marginalized by colluding business partners/politicians(really the same thing..)).

Am i paranoid? No. Am i a radical? Yes. The status-quo is building up methods to maintain its domination (allowing mega-super-mergers of this nature) in the face of growing discontent and mistrust. The government - under the direction of the powerful/rich - are not paying attention to the fact that the people are dissatisfied with the present state. People KNOW that the US government is BOUGHT AND PAID-FOR , there is no opposing voice because the 5th Estate (media) is now a mouth piece for said establishment.

In the 60's people raged in the streets, opposing the McCarthy-Inspired aggression in Vietnam && systemic racism.. those people *did* manage to create change - but fell sadly short of a lot of their goals, which was to change the structure from preventing these abuses in future... now weve come again to a place where people - The Anti-Capitalists who now Rage in the Streets - demand change in the face of unjust politics. Join them. Support them. Defend their ideals - these people (myself) included want a democracy restored - freed of capitalist domination of All Things.

There was a time (pre-Regan) where there were effectual regulation that prevented this kind of stifling 'oneness' of voice powered by moneyed-interests in the media - those days are gone... if the Americans dont want to live in a terrifying future of numbness and malaise ala the worst of Fahrenheit 451, I suggest *you* do something about your government.

I hope to hell you do - because the "american empire" is real and powerful, it dosnt so much prove the 'rightness' of your 'system' as it shows, like every empire before it, that history and circumstance makes interesting times - it is truly funny that a people who claim to be the height of democracy and 'open-ness' can really be at the fore-front of this modern delusion. What you are witnessing people, is a very important time in history - people will either look back at this time as an era where people *finally* woke up to discover the Capitalist, King or Church always enslave or a great sleep enters the people as there kept fat, happy and stupid (think bread and circuses)... a dystopian dark age... I sincerely hope its the former.

You can keep your rage against the machine, tool, korn, limp bizkit, incubus, whatever.Common now - i think you are unjustly lumping RATM with these pissants for no good reason. Rage is a Revolutionary band, both socially and politically - they are hardly limp bizkxjkajzquick

otherwise - i completely agree with your take on punk, the ethos you describe and commend your altrusim... maybe we'll see you in Washington later this month...

The Internet is supposed to be...

• TO EMPOWER K-12 LEARNERS
  
• the promise of our future
  
• to save the American medical system
  
• a global, multipurpose, multimedia communications network
  
• to strengthen Hispanic families and communities
  
• to open the door for competition
  
• for English as a Second Language
  
• for freedom from sysadmin
  
• to transfer the power of the high-speed network effectively to society at large
  
• to compete successfully with Fortune 500 companies
  
• To center learning around the student instead of the classroom
  
• to regain the tails of the normal distribution
  
• to test the founding vision of the framers of the Constitution
  
• to propel the economy forward
  
• a truly democratic means of communication.
  
• to increase mail usage and expand paper consumption
  

Congratulations Brazil. Your government, and people should be given a great thanks from the rest of us - YOU have finally started standing up to these capitalist whores.

Come to Washington, D.C., Sept. 28th, to Demand that the Governments of the rest of the planet start ruling on behalf of their citizens as well.

Bravo Brazil!

Why is it that when it comes to anything that has to do with society, the \. editors (yes, the slash leans left on purpose) push forward an authoritarian and often socialist view of government regulation and initiative

Why do you believe extreme authoritarianism is socialism? This is *NOT* true at all. Social Democratic and Communist principles have nothing to do with authoritarianism or Fascism. Stalin may have been a tyrant - but so are plenty of leaders when given an opportunity.

Think Nixon, Think about the AstroTurfing MS is doing in this article, Think about your Government, think about the *REALITY* of American McCarthyism.. (which is alive and well btw) and what *that* really means about America.

Id say that you have a very healthy Authoritarian-Capitalist system in America. You have a body, governing with the tact of Il Duce.

When you ignorantly berate socialism, by insinuating it is an 'extreme form of authoritarianism' is, at best, ignorant and misguided.

Would it surprise you to believe that Socialists have 'personal freedom' as one of its major goals? You do understand that being A Slave to the Bosses vs. A slave to the State vs A slave to the King still leaves you a slave. One of the tenants of Socialism (and Communism) is that the 'economy' and 'means of production' are controlled democratically - by citizens... they are given the additional Civic Right of helping guide their economic destiny, they are given the right to participate in the shaping of their economy.

American Dogma has convinced its people that "economic freedom and free markets mean real freedom, Socialist who seek to heavily regulate and direct the economy are really trying to take away your property && freedom". This is untrue - what Socialists mostly assert is that BOSSES (Capital 'owners') will not be permitted to rule the economy without the input of the citizenry... Everyone must work for a living, and Capital owners, when allowed run freely will incarnate themselves kings and rulers.

What does this have to do with the article? Well, when you think about it, M$, now completely so out of control - seemingly above the law - that it will now replace the political will of * real * people with its own.. you see the final step of Capitalism out of control - the inevitable end of Free Market Capitalism: Plutocracy

This is why people goto Seattle, Genova, Quebec and Washington, D.C. this September.

I am a veteran of a couple large-ish Anti-Capitalist protests (Windsor, Quebec). Let me assure you, there are certainly agent-provacateurs amoungst the crowds. The police badly need to justify their overwhelmning threats of violence. While I was marching with the Windsor-Detroit Communists (we had grown to about 800-1000 on the streets in Quebec) we were joined at the front by someone who was as obvious as could be. He reputed to be a local Communist (though our known-local-contact didnt know him) he was dressed in 'casual wear' like it was haloween and asked *alot* of odd questions with regard to our direction and intent. It was almost laughable. We later made a film and this person features prominently in it.

Now, it is also a known fact that radical movements, like the present anit-capitalist one, will become paranoid and dillusional. Those involved will cease to trust 'outsiders'. The solution to this I fear is absolute honesty, why keep secrets at all? If you are completely honest about your intent there is no need to keep secrets.

What to help ruin the present Plutocratic Picnic? Join the FIGHT! See protest.net.

smell the JAVA and act

Yes, support your local Anti-Capitalist Demonstrators, because after all people, this is all that is about (once again...).

Free Market Capitalism cannot co-exist with Democratic and Free people.

Protest.net && IndyMedia.org

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.)

Well, sorry to deflate your balloon, but our protesting does achieve results, otherwise the Canadian police right now wouldn't be building the Great Wall of Canada to keep us out of their April trade meeting. I speak as an organizer among the protesters and as a hacktivist who runs a popular activist website. I support all forms of hacktivism, although I prefer the variety that sets up web projects that provide an alternative to corporate web space. It tickles me to know that my website went online before most of the dot-coms and that it will be around after most of them cease business.

Most of in the anti-globalization movement are not in it for the sake of protest. Organizing actions and protests is hard work and sometimes involves jail time and getting whacked in the head by the cops. But we continue on because we're finally winning for a change. The capitalists can't have a meeting anymore in any of the favorite spots, so now they hold meetings in inaccessible places like Quebec City, Quatar, Hawaii, and so on. They understand the monetary damage that we've done to companies like Monsanto and McDonalds. The former has seen its market cap drop by billions as a result of effective anti-biotech direct action. Then there are those of us who were involved in the pirate radio movement, which put hundreds of stations on the air and so scared the FCC that they were forced to consider reforms.

This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we've accomplished in the past 5 years. Don't forget that when some of us aren't on the streets, we are busy helping develop Linux and Gnutella and Freenet. We're also building kick ass websites like Indymedia and Protest.net.

What timing-- I was just trying to work out an ideal scenario for event management for the Independent Media Center of New York.We're actually looking for people to help set up this system -- a volunteer effort, I'm afraid, we couldn't pay; you just gotta do it out of love of truth and hatred of corporate misdeeds ;) Most of what we have so far is set up in php or perl, I think.

Indymedia is unusual in that we need a system which is not for a paid staff in an office, but rather for a bunch of freelance volunteers and the activists whose events they cover. Our mission is to get coverage for events and perspectives the corporate media ignore. We do not have an editorial board which dictates content, so we need the calendar for egalitarian coordination of who's going to cover what. We need a better slingshot for David to fight Goliath.

Right now we are working off a calendar at protest.net which serves our needs OK: anyone can post events; the calendar is accessable through the web, and viewable in day, week, and month formats. We just need it to mail out a digest to a) reporters who want to know what is going on so they can cover things and b) other activists who want to be involved in these events too. (The creator of the software that protest.net runs on, which is called Calendrome, is working on this aspect now). We might want to have two different kinds of digest for these two categories of people.

Then we will need to make it so that people can either reply to the email or visit the website to register that they want to work on the article in a print, audio, photo, or video capacity. There should be a page people can visit to see who is covering the event and whether there are gaps in one medium or another. It would be nice if this could be worked seamlessly into a way (web chat? message boards?) that reporters could talk with each other about the event.

Once an event has been covered, it becomes an entity in our article system, where it may be combined with other coverage of that event by an editorial team. People who covered an event should still be able to hunt down the info about the event in the calendar or somewhere in our system, so they can look up who else covered the event to share notes, coordinate how the articles/clips are displayed on the site or used in other media, talk about future collaborations, etc.

I went to the poll in the morning and think I forgot to flip a lever for the President

I went to work and a guy who does job training as part of a welfare-to-work program ordered me to vote Republican-- which would be voting him out of a job--

another co-worker voiced great surprise that the polls were still run on those huge crank-operated machines-- isn't it backward, he said? shouldn't we be using hi-tech styluses on computer pads?

in Jamaica, he said, once you voted you had to dip your finger in indelible red ink so they knew you'd been there, and you didn't want to vote anyway because they would shoot you coming out--

I went to the Green Party headquarters and a friend who had been volunteering at the polling sites in Brooklyn said that whole polling-areas-worth of machines were BROKEN and that as a result hundreds of votes in the area were lost

The talking heads yammered about how it was a dead heat at 242 votes for at least an hour; I am certain they knew who was ahead and only did that for ratings

nader didn't get his 5%, and gore looks like he lost, and I wouldn't be surprised if bush really is a functional illiterate.

some days are bouncers and won't let you in.

The defensive posture of many of the respondents to Jon's article is quite instructive. Indeed, his point "...to be ignorant of the past is to be defenseless against the future..." is bolstered by the feverish reactions of a very priviledged sector of the world's population (I myself am among them).

One respondent asserted how hard we geeks have worked to gain our technical expertise. "Tough Noogies" he says to those who lack an understanding such as his, because they are obviously lazy or stupid if they don't understand email encryption programs.

Most of my tech friends are white, male, middle-class 20-somethings, who benefitted from access to a CS department in some university, parents who paid for their first Commodore, and life in an advanced capitalist economy which values their tech skills. All too often they are unaware of the blood and sweat from which they directly benefit. Arrogantly, they talk of how hard they worked to get where they are.

I don't agree with Jon's praise of individualism, as it ignores the weight carried by those who toiled in some sweatshop to assemble everything from the boards in your PC to the shirt on your back to the coffee your drinking. There is an egregious arrogance in the tech community about the historical role of colonial subjugation, military brutality, and fierce labor exploitation in bringing us to our current state of technical comfort.

What is needed in the opensource community is not a focus on more individualism, but rather an emphasis on how our feelings about freedom of speech and information are directly related to realities of the global economy. What Jon described as a handful of protestors in Seattle was estimated by some to be almost 50,000 mostly peaceful demostrators who were taking to the streets in protest of what the corporations are doing to the planet.

Those of you concerned about freedom and democracy have a lot in common with the people protesting in Seattle, DC and now Philadelphia.

Regarding the letter to the Family Research Council--I honestly wish you the best of luck there.

I also think you will probably have better luck having an in-depth conversation on the merits of Red Hat versus Slackware with the walls of your home than convince the Family Research Council of the fact the software is flawed and even blocks partisan material.

This is largely because the Family Research Council would consider this a feature and not a bug. :P

For those who aren't aware--the Family Research Council is, essentially, the lobbying arm of a group called Focus on the Family. FoF is probably the largest Religious Reich organisation in the US now (yes, even bigger than the Christian Coalition) and basically split off Family Research Council some years back in order to preserve their tax-exempt status. (As an aside, often state FoF branches will operate under different names to hide their affiliation with FoF.)

To be perfectly blunt, FoF and its affiliates have an agenda--to basically get as many raving fundamentalists in office as possible and to get the fundamentalist vote out, in hopes of getting enough people in office to essentially turn the United States into a fundamentalist theocracy. If you want to get a good idea about the "face" politics they support, just look at the political platform of (recently dropped out) presidential candidate Gary Bauer--this is the guy who founded Family Research Council when it was split off of FoF.

To these folks, pushing censorware is just another way of them "saving" us--whether or not we particularly want to be "saved" or not--and making the US into a "nice Christian nation again". (Many of these folks, by the way, also subscribe to "Christian Reconstructionism"--that is, the canard that the Founding Fathers actually meant the US to be a theocracy.) This is also why they tend to run "stealth" candidates (candidates who do not reveal their links to Religious Reich groups until elected) specifically to things like school boards--they want to get them young so they can indoctrinate them young, because they know that if they're gotten young they likely won't walk away. (This is also why they push homeschooling a lot, by the way, as well as vouchers for private schools--it's been the actual stated goal of many Religious Reich groups to get the school system totally dismantled so that kids are forced to go to sectarian schools.)

FoF's president, Bob Dobson, also makes a rather lucrative career selling books on "disciplining your kids"--usually involving a mix of censorship, forcing God down their throats, and liberal amounts of spanking the kids (part of the reason corporal punishment is NOT illegal in the US--or, for that matter, why the US is the only nation besides Somalia which has still not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child--is because fundamentalist groups like FRC lobby heavily against such laws, claiming that it'll take away their right to "spare the rod and spoil the child" or to "raise their kids as they see fit". In some cases where it has crossed the line into child abuse, some fundies have even argued in court that the state prohibiting them from beating the living hell out of their kids is a violation of their First Amendment rights to religion and that beating the hell out of their kids is actually a duty of their religion).

I happen to be a walkaway from what may be described as a "bible-based cult", and I can say that a fair percentage of the harder-core membership of many (if not most) Religious Reich groups in the US happen to be from churches that use coercive tactics on their membership. In other words, the ones who are doing the lobbying are more than likely brainwashed, they have probably already mentally defined anyone who isn't on their side and who dares to tell them about "flaws" in the software is directly in league with Satan (most Religious Reich groups, and most bible-based cults, DO have a very "us-versus-them" attitude--many Bible-based cults even go to the point of "deliverance ministry" (even your doubts are caused by demons, and the only cure is to "pray them out" or get an exorcism...rather like some of the nastier mind-control techniques in Scientology, actually)...). It is going to take a considerably larger clue-by-four than that to make them change their minds.

The FRC has a rather long record of lobbying not just for censorship, but for the entire Religious Reich platform. On occasion, this has even gone to slandering folks who speak against them...don't be surprised if you find possibly much of the town turned against you (I've read in previous reports that the town in general is quite conservative and beholden to the Religious Reich).

Some links so that the curious may learn more (and educate themselves thereby):

Religious Reich Database F section--also info on FoF

Extended coverage of FRC from above site

ACLU's open letter to FRC

People for the American Way speaks out against FRC campaign against hate-crimes laws that would protect gay/les/bi/trans folks

PFAW's "Who's Who on the Religious Right"--FRC section

here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and even here very recently, you can see what the FRC and the rest of the Religious Reich have to say to their own members

QRD's info on FRC--this also has a lot of quotes of the FRC in their own words to their supporters

Info on the FRC from the Matthew Shephard website--more FRC "in their own words" and at their worst

EFF's "Know Your Enemies--includes info on FRC

Walk Away--a good resource not only for those walking away from "bible-based cults" but also gives you a glimpse of the mindset these groups have--important in debating them. (The head of Institute for First Amendment Studies is himself a walkaway from a bible-based cult.)

And since I don't want to just talk about them without providing some way to fight the Religious Reich (otherwise I wouldn't have posted the damn warning about the FRC's agenda ;):

Arguing Against Faith--basically, how to debate fundies

A whole big mess of resources on how to fight the Religious Reich

Another mess of good links

and still another mess of good links

Skipp Porteous (walkaway and head of IFAS) writes on how to win against the Religious Reich

A really good expose of the Religious Reich, including info on the "code words" they use with their members

Defending Yourself Against The Religious Right

11 Things You Can Do To Fight The Religious Right--this is good for regular folks too. (As an aside--Domino's is no longer owned by fundies, but Coors Brewery is)

Major groups fighting the right wing:

EFF (as if you didn't need any more reasons to send that donation in ;)--they fight censorware initiatives)

Peacefire--the source for info on censorware, including how most censorware has just a wee bit of a fundamentalist agenda

Institute for First Amendment Studies--highly recommended. Includes info on the Coalition for National Policy (basically the "think-tank" of the Religious Reich) including membership lists. Head of group is walkaway from a fundamentalist "Bible-based cult".

People for the American Way. Highly recommended is their "Right Wing Watch Online" section.

ACLU

Americans United for Separation of Church and State

The Interfaith Alliance--progressive religious groups united for tolerance

Rock Out Censorship--naturally concentrates on music censorship, but has really good info on other school-related issues, including filtering. (I'm a wee bit biased on this one, much as I am with IFAS--I have done volunteer work for ROC before. They're a damned good group, though.)

In any case, I wish y'all the best of luck in fighting them...I'm not sure you realised just what the hell you were getting into, but if there's anything we can do to help here on Slashdot, let us know.

At this rate, ETOYS will be worthless soon enough. How low does it have to fall before it simply ceases to exist in it's current form? In this age of internet stocks being so highly valued how can ETOYS not realize the damage this has caused them? How can they be so blind?

Perhaps they have forgotten that we talk to each other. Perhaps they have forgotten that we can hear all sides of the stories. perhaps they have forgotten that we could have been their market and their investors had they not done this.

Perhaps they're just blind.

Apparently the possibility still exists of ETOY taking the legal battle to ETOYS. The war is definately not over.

1. Contact you Senator about the legislation that just passed the House banning soft money. Tell him to support it and that you think corporate money has no place in a democratic election.
2. Contact your representatives and tell them that the Nazi's in the Indosian military must be brought to justice for their crimes of genocide in East Timor.
3. Support populist movements in South America, or anywhere for that matter.
4. Go get arrested protesting the School of the America's, the US training grounds for Death Squads in Central and South America.
5. Tell your Congressman and anyone who will listen that $255 Billion is way more $ than the military needs this year and that you object to your hard earned dollars going to buy bombs when our schools are in such disrepair and 15 million US children live below the poverty level.
6. Get pissed off and do something instead of just bitching

The fact is, the government and corporations have LONG been stepping and crushing people, but it's always been the poor. No one cares about the poor! Now they're invading your space. The middle and upper middle class. Crushing your rights and freedoms. Recently large numbers of people have been protesting things like the G8, and in November, the WTO in Seattle. University students protesting against sweatshop labor. Thousands and thousands of people. And they're all involved in these things DESPITE the fact the corporate media never mentions them at all. Somehow, people are fed up and have discovered ways on their own, to try to fight back. Right now the largest community run microradio station, KPFA, is protesting against Pacifica because Pacifica wants to sell KPFA because of it's large audience! People have been outraged and massive protests have been going on there.

Our government hasn't just now decided to become corrupt, it has long been so. it is just now invading the "freedoms" of the middle/upper class of the country, where as before it was only hurting the voiceless poor and people of other countries (and still is I might add).

From killing off native americans in the past and now, to using slave labor in the country, and now using slave labor in third world countries, raping the earth's resources for profits and to feed our addictive consumption rates, suppressing the rights of women, and long promoting right-wing Christian fundamentalism...how can it not be clear the US isn't perfect like they lie and make you believe? The US is f-cking evil...and if you don't believe me now, you will soon enough...when they limit your freedom, or put you away.

http://www.savepacifica.net
http://www.infoshop.org
http://www.protest.net
http://www.commondreams.org
http://www.zmag.org
http://www.fair.org
http://www.foodnotbombs.org/
http://jya.com/crypto.htm
http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointel.htm
http://www.urban75.com
http://www.oneworld.org
http://www.mediafilter.org


There you go. Arm yourself with information. Don't believe the world is perfectly all right. Now apparently the short-sighted people are beginning to see they were wrong. Don't think you're alone for thinking something is wrong, there are millions out there who know it already. From those educated on the subjects, to those experiencing the abuses caused by this horrible corporate owned world, and their servant governments.

I heard about this several weeks ago on protest.net.

I think both capitalist libertarians, people concerned for their own freedom, and those more to the left should all be concerned about this. These corporations are controlling the airwaves and our access to information (what we can know, what music we hear, what words are allowed to be said or not) with the help of our (US) government.

No matter how afraid you are of community owned, non profit things, if you support what the FCC and these companies are doing, you are not supporting (capitalist) libertarianism.

More information on this can be found at here and the micromedia empowerment coalition can be found here.



- Darwin's theory of the struggle for existence and the selectivity connected with it has by many people been cited as authorization of the encouragement of the spirit of competition. Some people also in such a way have tried to prove pseudoscientifically the necessity of the destructive economic struggle of competition between individuals. But this is wrong, because man owes his strength in the struggle for existence to the fact that he is a socially living animal. As little as a battle between ants of an ant hill is essential for survival, just so little is this the case with the individual members of a human community. -- Albert Einstein, from an address at Albany, NY, October 15, 1936

I've been working with some people on building an open source calendar sharing protocol. We haven't gone very far, but it looks like it will be xml based, using a lot of the ideas from the iCal standards. I've written an vCal writer in perl, and a partial reader which helped me get a feel for the standard. The real pain I found was parsing repeating events.

Email me if you're interested in our mailinglist.

We are trying to build a global network where everybody will run a calendar on their website and the data can be shared and used by people anybody who wants to use it. Once we get that up maybe we could build an open source, open content net syndication system for more that just calendar data.

My main gripe with slashdot's performance is the rendering speed. Massive tables just are dog slow. Not that I'm all that much better. It does go to show that performance isn't just about cpu cycles. You can make a linux very slow, and you can make NT scream (shudder), it's just easier to get good performance when you're working on something that isn't based on VMS. O'Reilly has a decient book on web performance tuning if you're intersting.