...because you had so many typos and misspellings that it made my head spin. I'm not the type to pick on mistakes like this, but I marveled at the quantity and type of errors in such a short message:
"Th US has always exported jobs. I started in IT in 1989 as an IT Manager and have avoided the development and engineering jobs like the plauge because they where being outsourced. In 1994 I changed my focus from IT Managment to security because better network management tools had arrived an made it easier to outsource IT Management. Through the 90s I watched my IT friends getting laid off as the companies they worked for outsource management to IBM, Exodus, C&W,... In 2003 I took a promotion from Dir of Corp. Security to Dir of Production Operations and was laid off several months later after increasing uptime and everything else. Did I know that I would probably loose my job by taking the promotion? Yup! As a start-up on the decline I realised my director of sec. position was irrelevant so I angled for the Dir of Ops job which was very relevant to the company. I got the job and made improvements which benefited the company and I probably expended my employemt by over a year. Because I took the initiative to provide a service that my company needed I made out pretty well in the severance area.
It's up to me to make my self relevant to US employers and I have found that the easiest way is through being in management (though the politics are a bitch). You can't make an impact or change the world if you are locked in cube coding our trapped behind 15 miles of cable in a server room."
I'm sorry, this is really unfair of me, and I'm not trying to pick on you. But what occurred to me as I was reading your job hopping saga was that it was clear that copy editor never cropped up. All right, I'll shut up now and take the heat for picking on typos. I just thought it was funny. You seem to be a bright guy, you made some interesting points, others commented on those interesting points, and I'm sure when it counts you do an excellent job of communication.
As shocking as it may seem the first time you come face-to-face with PR techniques designed to further a corporate agenda over a public's objection, this kind of stuff is quite typical of today's PR machine. Just read this book on the PR industry to get one side of the story.
Now PR can be used for good reasons, to be sure. So I'm not knocking PR as such. It's a tool, and it can be used for good purposes and bad purposes. But when a company wants to push something that nobody wants, all they have to do is change the wording, create some planted stories, cook some polls, infiltrate opposed organizations, buy people off, uh well, use your imagination. When "...3. PROFIT!!" is your goal, PR can be a very effective tool at the hands of the unscrupulous. This story? Business as usual for PR.
"its the most popular operating system in the world. how do you think it got that way"
According to the courts, in a way similar to how the Mafia takes over a territory: it makes threats, cuts off suppliers, and squeezes out competitors in an illegal manner all while trying to paint a friendly public face to counteract the rough dealings going on in the back.
But I will grant you that they are very good at that public face (read: marketing). Many people simply cannot believe that the company does anything wrong (despite the facts in the courtroom), and that it actually innovates. Now that's marketing!
I laughed hard at this paragraph that I see others have noticed as well:
"We think this is a huge innovation story," said Mario Juarez, Microsoft's group product manager for the company's security business unit. "This is just an extension of the way the current version of Windows has provided innovation for players up and down the broad landscape of computing."
Well! If this is more of that same innovation Windows is known for, we know just how worthless to the end consumer this will be! Thanks for the warning, Mr. Microsoft group product manager. It's not often a spokesperson for a product gives a clear warning to steer clear of his own product like this. We should be grateful for these moments of truth when they arise...
"As for adults not reading as often as they used to - unless you can bring some kind of statistics to the table, I'd have to disagree. Adults this day and age are far more educated than adults at any other peroid in time. To say that they read less is to fall into a stereotype about this generation vs. "the great generation" of yesteryear.:
I agree that education is more plentiful today, and thus that adults are more educated than in the past. But the literacy level (not the number of people who can read, but the complexity of literature) is dropping. Pages are less dense, words shorter, ideas simplified. No, not universally, of course. But if you've been around for more than a couple of decades, you can see it in your lifetime that what people read has been simplified.
"As for the comparison between old literature to modern literature: Of course old literature is harder to read! It was written in a vernacular that is no longer used. People write and speak differently now, and so modern literature looks easier simply because thats how you speak. Old prose being harder to read does not increase its literary merit."
Interesting. You assumed I was talking, say, Shakespeare or Chaucer or someone that far back. In fact, I had in mind literature from, say, 100 years ago or so. I've seen average books from the 1850s-1890s, books you and I have never heard of so I'm not talking about the best-sellers of the time, just average books. The density of the text far exceeds what an average reader faces today. Yet the language used, the words, are identical to words used today.
"What an elitest thing to say. You're assuming that outside of your circle of friends and family, and "present company excluded," America is filled with trailer park trash. And it's absolutely not true. "
Nice straw-man argument you just shot down. But that isn't what I was saying. There is no connection between the global simplifying of literature and saying that people are trash.
"People arn't happy about reading Harry Potter because "Oh! I read a 900 page book! Whoa, I didn't know I had it in me!" No, people are happy they read Harry Potter because it sparks the imagination."
Agreed, and that is what I said. I mentioned that people have told me that they are well-written books, and I assume they are. Just because Rowling was aiming for the youth market doesn't mean her books cannot spark the imagination. Just because an adult enjoys a book designed for pre-teens and teens doesn't make it a bad book. All I was saying is that it was my observation (not fact, just my observation) that this seemed to tie into my other observation that literature has simplified. As I said in my original post, this is something I have been wondering about, I posted my thoughts, and if you wish to view my observations as elitist I cannot stop you.
" I read CS Lewis stories when I was a kid. They were fascinating. But why is this new thing sooo cool? I dont get it."
That's because you are no longer a kid, and your tastes have changed. The Harry Potter books, which I have not read I will admit, are aimed at children, not at your level. From all I've heard, they are written well, but so is, say, the Judy Blume books that kids loved. Doesn't mean adults will find them of interest.
" My wife says its aimed at a lower grade audience, so why does she read it?
This is similar to something I have wondered about for several years: why do adults like the HP books? Cleary they weren't meant for them, and adults were clueless about the books until their kids discovered them and made a fuss. My theory is three-fold:
The hype factor: When anything gets hyped a lot, people join in just to see what the fuss is about.
The quality factor: The HP books are apparently well-written, not just hyped junk. The hype machine came after Rowling wrote the first few books. They are good books, simple as that. Again, I cannot speak from personal experience, but I have friends who have read the books and tell me what they think.
The literacy factor: Adults are not reading as often as they used to, and the literacy level of adult fiction has lowered over the decades to keep up with the times. Compare a newspaper from a hundred years ago to one today. Compare a popular novel to one today. People like easier material. They get lazy. So when they pick up a HP book they find it's easy to read, contains a good story, and they feel as if they are accomplishing something.
"I have read a few chapters of the HP and find it near tripe. I am not a fan of fiction anymore, I am an adult, and find the story to be a waste of time."
Well, I find your concept of adulthood to be odd. Fiction is universally known as a window into the human condition. The best fiction tells us more about the world than the most thoroughly researched non-fiction. It says more in a glance than reams of charts and facts. So to hear you dismiss all fiction tells us why you don't like the HP books, but it also tells us something about you.
"If you're a global company, you can sign a support deal with a company like IBM. If you're a small firm, you might find you can get your support from a recently graduated college student just down the street," he said. "
When the source to the system you are employing is open to all, you have an advantage that cannot be matched by the closed-source vendors: The possibility of having someone local (and cheap) help support your system. It's standard, it's known, it was probably studied at school. Compare that to closed-source where you are dependent on the vendor or its designated partners for support.
Now as the article says, if you are a large corporation you might want to hire another large corporation for support. That's their right, and it's fine. But if you are a small company, or an entity with limited funds (such as a non-profit), it's nice to have the choice to get a local guy to help out instead at greatly reduced costs, and possibly even better quality if he or she is enthusiastic about the program in question.
"Small sites speak directly to the specific needs and interests of a committed user community, and thus have much higher value per page view. A site on growing blueberries can be a must-read service for people who farm them, and thus of immense value as a place to promote blueberry-farming equipment. "
The big boys probably cannot be bothered to put up a site on growing blueberries. Where's the profit in it? Oh sure, if one corner of one portion of one of their consumer outlets of the corporate spigot wants to do a piece on blueberries because their latest polling found a 3.4% increase in interest in a key demographic in a semi-important market for them, they will post some corporate-ugly site on blueberries.
Meanwhile, the guy or gal who really enjoys growing blueberries will put up a site out of the love of the activity -- and it will show in the way they write about blueberries. Those who are interested will seek that site out rather than the Blueberry, Inc. (R) (all rights reserved) (copy anything from us and feel our lawyer's wrath) site. It only gets 100 or 200 hits a day? The site owner is thrilled.
People speaking to people directly. That's the Web, that's what it's for, that's what the megacorps would love to curtail or corral. But the Web will always be about people speaking to people. In that context, small works.
If I recall correctly, it was in connection with the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. A quick Googling found lots of noise due to the later Napster case, but here is a page that talks about what came out of that 1992 case in terms of "fair use." Note the second paragraph.
"I suggest you actually read the Fair Use law sometime. You might be surprised how much it DOESN'T APPLY to anything of this nature."
It was reading the fair use case law that informed my opinion, and tells me that you are wrong. One of the explicit examples in past case law states that you can make a cassette copy of some music and give it to a buddy. P2P is that writ large. At some point it certainly crosses current copyright law. And the powers that be are working hard to extend copyright law so that even previously allowed exceptions are outlawed. But it is an ongoing process, it has not been 100% decided yet, and so what I said is correct.
"Why the quote marks, dude? They *did* break the law. You may not like the law, anymore than you like the speed limit, but it's still the law. "
Uh, not quite. It may be the way you interpret copyright and fair use law, and it certainly is the way the RIAA interprets it, but it is not as cut-and-dried as you may think. Other legal viewpoints say that fair use is still being invoked in many P2P cases, and P2P can be used for obviously non-infringing files. Ultimately things will be decided by conclusive court cases, at which point you may be able to say definitively they broke the law. Right now it's just a point-of-view that is being propagandized to the masses, and to the courts.
And to your point, the propaganda is mostly working.
-----------
A blog is explaining the SCO case inch by inch. Take a look here: GrokLaw. It is, by far, the best examination of the facts from a legal and technical perspective I've seen yet. If you want to know what's going on, I recommend reading it.
No, it isn't my blog. Just a site that is covering this issue very thoroughly.
"Yes, I'm not familiar with this subject, but I just can't accept the idea that something may acutally be unbreakable."
It's not that the message itself is unbreakable, it's the overall system and process that is unbreakable. The great thing about quantum cryptography is that if anyone does intercept and read your message somehow, you can see with complete certainty that it happened. That's the nature of quantum physics -- things change when observed. So if you don't get what you expected, you know the message has been compromised. From the BBC article:
"With quantum cryptography, the very act of intercepting a single photon on its way down an optical fibre would change the information it was carrying. "
Which cryptography would you prefer? One where you can never be sure if someone has cracked the code before it got to you, or one where if that happened you could tell immediately?
" I really don't think having "only" four or five different TV companies available (to non-cable/satellite subscribers) is a problem - especially when so many people have cable or satellite, giving them literally hundreds of different channels to choose from. Not to mention a huge number of newspapers and magazines, and of course the Internet! "
Yes, that is the exact argument Michael Powell of the FCC is making. But the flaw in that argument is that the same four or five large media conglomerates control all those cable and satellite channels, and newspapers, and magazines, and popular Net sites. So what may appear on the surface to be choice is really just a redirecting of the same old corporate spigot into many different rivulets of the same message. Only the pretty packaging changes. The point of view remains the same.
Why does this matter, and how does your UK situation not really apply? Because times have changed. It used to be people got their news primarily from the newspaper, and there was an abundance of papers to choose from, each with a point of view. In the last couple of decades things have changed. Now most people get their news from TV. Just as people are coming to depend on TV the most for information, the sources of information are consolidating into a handful of choices, all controlled by multinational corporations with fiscally conservative perspectives and spin on the news.
What is the future of information going to be like? Look at U.S. radio once Clear Channel leveled the field, smoothing over independence and innovation and leaving only the same choice in each town as in every other town. A homogenization of perspective has happened.
The same is about to happen to national news, or rather an accelerating of this effect is about to be seen. Choice of viewpoint will be reduced and marginalized, and as people get their viewpoint primarily from TV what they will get spoon-fed will be the same everywhere.
Those of us who are tech-savvy can still get alternate points of view on the Net...at least for now. But just wait. As cable companies control more and more of the Net experience, it will become irresistable for them to start tinkering with what we can or cannot see online. Remember, those cable companies are controlled by those same 4 or 5 multinational conglomerates. As those companies control every form of media, they will eventually strike against alternative perspectives that remain. We'll complain, but who will listen? Look at how this FCC decision has gone. Public comment? They don't care! The public airwaves? Ha! Go away, kid, you're bothering me...
" Why are they losing audiences to cable channels?...I mean there's a reason I'd rather watch some longwinded documentary about the treasures of King Razamatooten from the 3rd dynasty; as dry and uninteresting as it is, it's better than anything NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX and the DUBBYA-BEE have to offer."
The FCC is arguing that there is less need for control over media consolidation because of the greater number of choices offered by cable. What that argument ignores is that cable is basically populated by different variations of the same corporate line. The same big media companies provide all those 'diverse' channels.
So they lost you with their NBC advertising-delivery-method, that's fine. They still got you with their History Channel advertising-delivery-method. No matter to them, you're still consuming from mother GE.
" It may not be radio, but consider this: in the 1950's there was only CBS, ABC, and NBC. Our news looked the same. With cable TV there are many more news sources, but it can be argued that our news sources still look the same. My point is that diversity of opinion is not directly linked with number of players. "
But the number of players has not increased significantly with cable television. CNBC? MSNBC? Both owned by GE which owns NBC. Yes, CNN came along, and Fox, but primarily those extra cable channels are still controlled by the same few media giants. Same corporate message fed out with different spoons to the consumer.
The/. crowd is hardly typical of the business world as a whole. Kids today are growing up with tech tools as their play things, but for many small business owners they did not have that environment growing up and they don't want it now.
From the article: " In the focus group, a woman who manages a bridal shop said she was concerned because customers asked if she has a Web site, and she has to tell them no.
"You hear that all the time in these sessions -- the customers are asking," Mr. Bricklin said behind the mirror. "Having a Web site has become a generational necessity for a lot of businesses. You lose the people under 30 without it."
You sure do lose people without a Web site. For us it would be unthinkable. You begin with a Web site and then build your company! But the average small business owner who is computer-phobic or at least computer-neutral doesn't think that way. And furthermore, even if they do decide to get with the program and get a Web site, they probably don't know what to do about it.
I see some touting the ease of HTML -- "They can make their own site, it's easy!" Well, no, HTML may be easy for us, but for someone who views computers as mysterious boxes the very idea of general programming concepts is beyond them. "I never was very good at math," they mumble when you suggest they learn HTML.
So what is a win-win situation? Suggest to these small business owners that they get some college kid to create a web site for them, and if price is an objection they can pay little and advertise it as a way for the kid to build his online portfolio. Hey, building a web site may be child's play around here, but you gotta start somewhere in the job market, and plenty of PHBs will be impressed at your extensive portfolio.
"If you do nothing else, check out Art Lebedev, a group of Russian artists that manipulates photos to reveal hidden bar codes."
If you do nothing else, be sure to raise the hair on the heads of these unsuspecting Russian artists as they see the traffic on their server spike beyond reason or expectation...
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Slashdot Mirror
"Th US has always exported jobs. I started in IT in 1989 as an IT Manager and have avoided the development and engineering jobs like the plauge because they where being outsourced. In 1994 I changed my focus from IT Managment to security because better network management tools had arrived an made it easier to outsource IT Management. Through the 90s I watched my IT friends getting laid off as the companies they worked for outsource management to IBM, Exodus, C&W, ... In 2003 I took a promotion from Dir of Corp. Security to Dir of Production Operations and was laid off several months later after increasing uptime and everything else. Did I know that I would probably loose my job by taking the promotion? Yup! As a start-up on the decline I realised my director of sec. position was irrelevant so I angled for the Dir of Ops job which was very relevant to the company. I got the job and made improvements which benefited the company and I probably expended my employemt by over a year. Because I took the initiative to provide a service that my company needed I made out pretty well in the severance area.
It's up to me to make my self relevant to US employers and I have found that the easiest way is through being in management (though the politics are a bitch). You can't make an impact or change the world if you are locked in cube coding our trapped behind 15 miles of cable in a server room."
I'm sorry, this is really unfair of me, and I'm not trying to pick on you. But what occurred to me as I was reading your job hopping saga was that it was clear that copy editor never cropped up. All right, I'll shut up now and take the heat for picking on typos. I just thought it was funny. You seem to be a bright guy, you made some interesting points, others commented on those interesting points, and I'm sure when it counts you do an excellent job of communication.
Now PR can be used for good reasons, to be sure. So I'm not knocking PR as such. It's a tool, and it can be used for good purposes and bad purposes. But when a company wants to push something that nobody wants, all they have to do is change the wording, create some planted stories, cook some polls, infiltrate opposed organizations, buy people off, uh well, use your imagination. When "...3. PROFIT!!" is your goal, PR can be a very effective tool at the hands of the unscrupulous. This story? Business as usual for PR.
According to the courts, in a way similar to how the Mafia takes over a territory: it makes threats, cuts off suppliers, and squeezes out competitors in an illegal manner all while trying to paint a friendly public face to counteract the rough dealings going on in the back.
But I will grant you that they are very good at that public face (read: marketing). Many people simply cannot believe that the company does anything wrong (despite the facts in the courtroom), and that it actually innovates. Now that's marketing!
"We think this is a huge innovation story," said Mario Juarez, Microsoft's group product manager for the company's security business unit. "This is just an extension of the way the current version of Windows has provided innovation for players up and down the broad landscape of computing."
Well! If this is more of that same innovation Windows is known for, we know just how worthless to the end consumer this will be! Thanks for the warning, Mr. Microsoft group product manager. It's not often a spokesperson for a product gives a clear warning to steer clear of his own product like this. We should be grateful for these moments of truth when they arise...
I agree that education is more plentiful today, and thus that adults are more educated than in the past. But the literacy level (not the number of people who can read, but the complexity of literature) is dropping. Pages are less dense, words shorter, ideas simplified. No, not universally, of course. But if you've been around for more than a couple of decades, you can see it in your lifetime that what people read has been simplified.
"As for the comparison between old literature to modern literature: Of course old literature is harder to read! It was written in a vernacular that is no longer used. People write and speak differently now, and so modern literature looks easier simply because thats how you speak. Old prose being harder to read does not increase its literary merit."
Interesting. You assumed I was talking, say, Shakespeare or Chaucer or someone that far back. In fact, I had in mind literature from, say, 100 years ago or so. I've seen average books from the 1850s-1890s, books you and I have never heard of so I'm not talking about the best-sellers of the time, just average books. The density of the text far exceeds what an average reader faces today. Yet the language used, the words, are identical to words used today.
"What an elitest thing to say. You're assuming that outside of your circle of friends and family, and "present company excluded," America is filled with trailer park trash. And it's absolutely not true. "
Nice straw-man argument you just shot down. But that isn't what I was saying. There is no connection between the global simplifying of literature and saying that people are trash.
"People arn't happy about reading Harry Potter because "Oh! I read a 900 page book! Whoa, I didn't know I had it in me!" No, people are happy they read Harry Potter because it sparks the imagination."
Agreed, and that is what I said. I mentioned that people have told me that they are well-written books, and I assume they are. Just because Rowling was aiming for the youth market doesn't mean her books cannot spark the imagination. Just because an adult enjoys a book designed for pre-teens and teens doesn't make it a bad book. All I was saying is that it was my observation (not fact, just my observation) that this seemed to tie into my other observation that literature has simplified. As I said in my original post, this is something I have been wondering about, I posted my thoughts, and if you wish to view my observations as elitist I cannot stop you.
That's because you are no longer a kid, and your tastes have changed. The Harry Potter books, which I have not read I will admit, are aimed at children, not at your level. From all I've heard, they are written well, but so is, say, the Judy Blume books that kids loved. Doesn't mean adults will find them of interest.
" My wife says its aimed at a lower grade audience, so why does she read it?
This is similar to something I have wondered about for several years: why do adults like the HP books? Cleary they weren't meant for them, and adults were clueless about the books until their kids discovered them and made a fuss. My theory is three-fold:
- The hype factor: When anything gets hyped a lot, people join in just to see what the fuss is about.
- The quality factor: The HP books are apparently well-written, not just hyped junk. The hype machine came after Rowling wrote the first few books. They are good books, simple as that. Again, I cannot speak from personal experience, but I have friends who have read the books and tell me what they think.
- The literacy factor: Adults are not reading as often as they used to, and the literacy level of adult fiction has lowered over the decades to keep up with the times. Compare a newspaper from a hundred years ago to one today. Compare a popular novel to one today. People like easier material. They get lazy. So when they pick up a HP book they find it's easy to read, contains a good story, and they feel as if they are accomplishing something.
"I have read a few chapters of the HP and find it near tripe. I am not a fan of fiction anymore, I am an adult, and find the story to be a waste of time."Well, I find your concept of adulthood to be odd. Fiction is universally known as a window into the human condition. The best fiction tells us more about the world than the most thoroughly researched non-fiction. It says more in a glance than reams of charts and facts. So to hear you dismiss all fiction tells us why you don't like the HP books, but it also tells us something about you.
Namely that you are probably just trolling. :)
When the source to the system you are employing is open to all, you have an advantage that cannot be matched by the closed-source vendors: The possibility of having someone local (and cheap) help support your system. It's standard, it's known, it was probably studied at school. Compare that to closed-source where you are dependent on the vendor or its designated partners for support.
Now as the article says, if you are a large corporation you might want to hire another large corporation for support. That's their right, and it's fine. But if you are a small company, or an entity with limited funds (such as a non-profit), it's nice to have the choice to get a local guy to help out instead at greatly reduced costs, and possibly even better quality if he or she is enthusiastic about the program in question.
Open as in free. Can't beat that advantage.
Prior art that!
The big boys probably cannot be bothered to put up a site on growing blueberries. Where's the profit in it? Oh sure, if one corner of one portion of one of their consumer outlets of the corporate spigot wants to do a piece on blueberries because their latest polling found a 3.4% increase in interest in a key demographic in a semi-important market for them, they will post some corporate-ugly site on blueberries.
Meanwhile, the guy or gal who really enjoys growing blueberries will put up a site out of the love of the activity -- and it will show in the way they write about blueberries. Those who are interested will seek that site out rather than the Blueberry, Inc. (R) (all rights reserved) (copy anything from us and feel our lawyer's wrath) site. It only gets 100 or 200 hits a day? The site owner is thrilled.
People speaking to people directly. That's the Web, that's what it's for, that's what the megacorps would love to curtail or corral. But the Web will always be about people speaking to people. In that context, small works.
You're thinking small potatoes. I'm gonna go buy thousands of truckloads of these babies and retire.
Which turns out to be a miserable technique when you are trying to sculpt a monkey...
-------------
-----------
It was reading the fair use case law that informed my opinion, and tells me that you are wrong. One of the explicit examples in past case law states that you can make a cassette copy of some music and give it to a buddy. P2P is that writ large. At some point it certainly crosses current copyright law. And the powers that be are working hard to extend copyright law so that even previously allowed exceptions are outlawed. But it is an ongoing process, it has not been 100% decided yet, and so what I said is correct.
---------------
Uh, not quite. It may be the way you interpret copyright and fair use law, and it certainly is the way the RIAA interprets it, but it is not as cut-and-dried as you may think. Other legal viewpoints say that fair use is still being invoked in many P2P cases, and P2P can be used for obviously non-infringing files. Ultimately things will be decided by conclusive court cases, at which point you may be able to say definitively they broke the law. Right now it's just a point-of-view that is being propagandized to the masses, and to the courts.
And to your point, the propaganda is mostly working.
-----------
No, it isn't my blog. Just a site that is covering this issue very thoroughly.
-----------
One rack to cluster 'em,
One rack to render them all,
and in the darkness draw them.
-------
It's not that the message itself is unbreakable, it's the overall system and process that is unbreakable. The great thing about quantum cryptography is that if anyone does intercept and read your message somehow, you can see with complete certainty that it happened. That's the nature of quantum physics -- things change when observed. So if you don't get what you expected, you know the message has been compromised. From the BBC article:
"With quantum cryptography, the very act of intercepting a single photon on its way down an optical fibre would change the information it was carrying. "
Which cryptography would you prefer? One where you can never be sure if someone has cracked the code before it got to you, or one where if that happened you could tell immediately?
-------------
Yes, that is the exact argument Michael Powell of the FCC is making. But the flaw in that argument is that the same four or five large media conglomerates control all those cable and satellite channels, and newspapers, and magazines, and popular Net sites. So what may appear on the surface to be choice is really just a redirecting of the same old corporate spigot into many different rivulets of the same message. Only the pretty packaging changes. The point of view remains the same.
Why does this matter, and how does your UK situation not really apply? Because times have changed. It used to be people got their news primarily from the newspaper, and there was an abundance of papers to choose from, each with a point of view. In the last couple of decades things have changed. Now most people get their news from TV. Just as people are coming to depend on TV the most for information, the sources of information are consolidating into a handful of choices, all controlled by multinational corporations with fiscally conservative perspectives and spin on the news.
What is the future of information going to be like? Look at U.S. radio once Clear Channel leveled the field, smoothing over independence and innovation and leaving only the same choice in each town as in every other town. A homogenization of perspective has happened.
The same is about to happen to national news, or rather an accelerating of this effect is about to be seen. Choice of viewpoint will be reduced and marginalized, and as people get their viewpoint primarily from TV what they will get spoon-fed will be the same everywhere.
Those of us who are tech-savvy can still get alternate points of view on the Net...at least for now. But just wait. As cable companies control more and more of the Net experience, it will become irresistable for them to start tinkering with what we can or cannot see online. Remember, those cable companies are controlled by those same 4 or 5 multinational conglomerates. As those companies control every form of media, they will eventually strike against alternative perspectives that remain. We'll complain, but who will listen? Look at how this FCC decision has gone. Public comment? They don't care! The public airwaves? Ha! Go away, kid, you're bothering me...
------------
Sorry to tell you, but when you watch that doc about Razamatooten, you are sipping from the same GE spigot that also spews into NBC.
The FCC is arguing that there is less need for control over media consolidation because of the greater number of choices offered by cable. What that argument ignores is that cable is basically populated by different variations of the same corporate line. The same big media companies provide all those 'diverse' channels.
So they lost you with their NBC advertising-delivery-method, that's fine. They still got you with their History Channel advertising-delivery-method. No matter to them, you're still consuming from mother GE.
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But the number of players has not increased significantly with cable television. CNBC? MSNBC? Both owned by GE which owns NBC. Yes, CNN came along, and Fox, but primarily those extra cable channels are still controlled by the same few media giants. Same corporate message fed out with different spoons to the consumer.
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From the article: " In the focus group, a woman who manages a bridal shop said she was concerned because customers asked if she has a Web site, and she has to tell them no.
"You hear that all the time in these sessions -- the customers are asking," Mr. Bricklin said behind the mirror. "Having a Web site has become a generational necessity for a lot of businesses. You lose the people under 30 without it."
You sure do lose people without a Web site. For us it would be unthinkable. You begin with a Web site and then build your company! But the average small business owner who is computer-phobic or at least computer-neutral doesn't think that way. And furthermore, even if they do decide to get with the program and get a Web site, they probably don't know what to do about it.
I see some touting the ease of HTML -- "They can make their own site, it's easy!" Well, no, HTML may be easy for us, but for someone who views computers as mysterious boxes the very idea of general programming concepts is beyond them. "I never was very good at math," they mumble when you suggest they learn HTML.
So what is a win-win situation? Suggest to these small business owners that they get some college kid to create a web site for them, and if price is an objection they can pay little and advertise it as a way for the kid to build his online portfolio. Hey, building a web site may be child's play around here, but you gotta start somewhere in the job market, and plenty of PHBs will be impressed at your extensive portfolio.
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Don't be absurd. The MPAA boycott ended yesterday when X2 came out, also about misfits doing cool stuff...
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Dude! That's why they call it a "torture" test!
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If you do nothing else, be sure to raise the hair on the heads of these unsuspecting Russian artists as they see the traffic on their server spike beyond reason or expectation...
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