Slashdot Mirror
UK Newspaper Websites To Become Nearly Invisible
smooth wombat writes "Various websites have tried to make readers pay for access to select parts of their sites. Now, in a bid to counter what he claims is theft of his material, Rupert Murdoch's Times and Sunday Times sites will become essentially invisible to web users. Except for their home pages, no stories will show up on Google. Starting in late June, Google and other search engines will be prevented from indexing and linking to stories. Registered users will still get free access until the cut off date."
While the media divides people into red and blue camps here in the US, it just means that real abuses of power are being ignored compared to partisan hot buttons. While Dems and Reps are pissing on each other ending up with a bunch of wet, smelly Congresscritters, there are a lot of issues that are just completely ignored, such as sustainable energy, national debt, military readiness [1], and other issues that will REALLY impact day to day American life, and not just be topics for ranty blogs. The problem is that news channels make their money by being either left or right, as opposed to trying to be objective and not let political bias taint what is coming in.
[1]: North Korea is a good example of what happens with an issue that gets ignored pops up with a vengeance. With multiple theaters of US conflict going on in the Middle East, there may not be a realistic plan of retaliation if Pyongyang decided to use their immense artillery bastions on Seoul for target practice. While Congress yaps at each other about who is at fault for the economy, real national security issues are being completely ignored. Compared to an ally getting nuked or just conventionally shelled into component atoms because the US just didn't have the military capacity to defend them, most of the divisive issues going on are relatively small.
If you've ever read any of the parent's postings before, you would know that his answer to that question is basically 'yes.' He thinks almost all of those things should be provided for a fee by the market.
I guess the poor can just fuck off and die if they get injured, or their houses burns down, or they are victims of crime. It's their own damn fault, for being poor. The invisible hand of the market will cure poverty by social Darwinism--just let all the poor people die, and then we won't have poverty!