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  duran 4:28 am on February 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

  censorship by the powers. 

  well, that was an interesting experience.

  just a few hours ago, I took the time to comment on an article posted at http://grouchygeek.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/02/01/yahoo-needs-microsofts-help/ on the effects of the MS purchase of Yahoo.

  I took my time to comment not on the effects of the advertising world, or on the many millions of users who have @yahoo.com accounts who will suddenly find them selves with Microsoft Live accounts… I took my time, and just a few short paragraphs to talk about the severe effect this will have on the Open Source Web Application world that Yahoo has been actually very positive in supporting. Yahoo of course wants to make money. They are a publicly traded company. I can not blame them for wanting to maximize the return on their investor dollars. That is, fortunately, or not, the way the cookie crumbles…

  What I have a problem with is the secondary effects this capitalistic endeavour.

  Yahoo supports a wide range of Open Source Products and projects.
  A number, not all, but some, are in direct competition with various Products that Microsoft carry as principal name brand flag carriers.

  Exchange is one of those names.

  In the CNN article that I listed above, earlier this evening I commented on the news article (from a different computer unfortunately) about the secondary effects of the MS purchase of Yahoo. Not naming anything in specific, I commented on the effects MS might have on this projects. In how that MS buying Yahoo, that a number of these projects will be squished. Destroyed. Removed from the world of corporate software.

  Again, I never named any specific projects, or pieces of software. I was just commenting on the effects this purchase will have beyond the wildly discussed, and often commented on nature of the acquisition.

  Microsoft of course wants the huge number of users that Yahoo has under its domain name.

  My self included, along with MILLIONS of others, are ripe for the plucking as Yahoo has not done a good job in the last few years of becoming a highly profitable company. They have betrayed their corporate promise of being super profitable, and wealth generating for their stock holders… But, they do have *Many* Eye Balls for sale.

  MS wants these eye balls, and they want the corporate customers who pay Yahoo for eyeball time. Its one of the few areas that Google has been trumping MS on. And MS, to their credit, understands that computing in the future… is in the cloud.

  But thats another discussion for every other blog on the planet… This one is about me.

  I’m increasingly, beyond the obvious nausea, annoyed, frustrated, pissed off, and furious at the Mass Media.
  As much as I am not a fan of Hillary Clinton, I’m angry at how they have treated the idocy of Bill Clinton.
  I am agast at the ignorance they play at when discussing the War in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  I am stunned by the lack of any conscious reason the show when our civil liberties are threatened by anyone who rules us.

  And now, they’ve censored my comment.

  *man* I wish I had copied my self on the comment at this point, instead of just hitting submit blindly.

  As I stated earlier, I commented on a cnn article.
  I did this from a friends house, where I lacked any backup, or any easy way of saving my comment to a personal space.
  30 minutes later, I return home, and hit the same news site, and find that my comment is missing.
  Why? Who knows.
  All I know is that I commented something that directly challenged the logic and integrity of the entire purchase offer of Yahoo by MS, and… Now that challenge is missing from CNN’s website….

  I will take this entire post, and copy it over to the same CNN posting comment section, and see if they comment that as well.

  I implore the editor who removed my comment, to restore it to the comment section of that article, as it is nothing but a comment. And nothing more.

  I have to laugh though, at the cognitive dissonance of the situation.
  CNN offers up comments.
  CNN censors comments.
  CNN prentends to be a “web 2.0″ environment, encouraging the comments from the audience.
  CNN censors the comments prensented from the audience, even though they are presenting the web 2.0 ideal on the same page.

  When you say the dialog is shaped by the audience.
  Actually let them shape it.
  Don’t shape it your selves.

  EDIT: 45 minutes later….
  CNN seems to have restored my comment, even in its late night poorly written state.
  I hope it stays there.

  credit karma, app code, resa till usa and 21 others are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Tony 12:06 pm on February 11, 2008 Permalink

    Have another drink, man. You know all too well that comments on web sites aren’t intended to give voice to people. They aren’t some social networking democratization of free speech. You’ve been around the web block. It’s about a sticky feature that generates revenue.

    So get off your preacher’s pulpit about how The Man is keeping you down through censorship. Stand up for yourself and recognize that by posting a comment to their site you have played into their game TWICE. You visited the media company for information, then you let your own passions be used as a ring through the nose to get you to post and keep coming back.

    (Please delete this comment in 3..2..)

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    Cav 5:17 pm on February 17, 2008 Permalink

    Well, did they delete the second comment?

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    duran 5:52 pm on February 17, 2008 Permalink

    a day or two later I checked the site, and both of my comments were posted there.

    Sorry for being the idealist tony

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  duran 8:01 pm on August 4, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

  Our Collective Debt. 

  I’m just going to copy this in whole, but this is where I got it from. It’s a good read. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robbie-gennet/rich-people-use-bridges-t_b_59167.html

  Let me start off with a blunt statement: Debt is slavery. When you are in debt to someone/something, you are slave to them until that debt is repaid. Millions of Americans are in debt to credit card companies and cannot get out from under. Everything they own is at risk to be taken away. I worked for a few years as a paralegal to a Bankruptcy Trustee — my amazing grandfather, the late Irving Gennet- and saw time and time again what the end run of debt looks like. It is ugly and scary and much more common than it should be. But even uglier and scarier than anyone’s individual debt is our collective debt: The National Debt. Most people don’t care because they don’t think they feel its effects individually. Much to the contrary, they actually do feel it in so many aspects of their lives; they just don’t put the big picture together. Let’s look at a few basic facts, shall we?

  1. Our National Debt is about $9 trillion. That’s almost $30,000 for every man woman and child in the US. The National Debt is owed by the “General Fund” which is funded by our income tax. Most of that goes to the ever-rising interest on that debt and to the military.

  2. The three largest holders of that debt are (in order) Japan, China and the UK. As long as they hold our debt, they OWN us. Interest to Japan alone is $30 billion. (Comparatively, the entire No Child Left Behind costs $6 billion. We cut funding for Head Start by $11 billion and we pay over $100 billion on our debt to foreign interests.)

  3. We borrowed much of that money to pay for the Iraq War and for wartime tax cuts.

  So we go into huge debt to fund a “war” that has thus far not only failed but made us more vulnerable to terrorism. At the same time, BushCo cuts taxes for the rich, which has never ever happened in a time of War in this country. And the rich got their tax breaks, and all were happy. But the bridge collapse in Minneapolis shone a light onto an aspect of all this that may be the beginning of a Great Reckoning.

  Our nation’s infrastructure is underfunded, sometimes dangerously so. Our government can’t afford to fix roads and bridges at the rate that they are deteriorating, leaving us open to more Minneapolis-like disasters. It’s only a shock that it’s taken so long for this to happen. But our government has been put under so much debt that it can’t afford the things that affect us all, rich and poor alike: maintaining our nation’s infrastructure (roads, bridges, sewers, etc), securing our borders, guarding our chemical plants, nuclear plants, refineries, ports and airports adequately (if at all), protecting our food supply, funding the public education system, getting off the oil teat and becoming energy independent or even helping it’s struggling citizens after a disaster like Katrina. People think these things just magically work without realizing that the money to make it all happen comes from somewhere and right now, that somewhere does not exist. Iraq and wartime tax cuts have helped suck it dry.

  The point in all this is that when a bridge collapses, or a chemical plant is blown up, or a nuclear bomb is shipped into our country and utilized, it won’t matter if you’re rich or poor. Whatever you may have saved from your tax cuts you will pay for in so many other ways, quite possibly with your life. When a bridge collapses in Minneapolis or any of the thousands of other sites deemed unsafe, those who suffer won’t suffer because of their income level or tax cuts. They will suffer because they sold out our true security- our collective security- for a little piece of their own. And whatever money you saved on your taxes won’t bring a loved one back from death or spare your own life.

  Minneapolis is a horrible shame and we hope it is not the first of many signs that we need to see in order to realize that we are fiscally killing our true security and our country. Until we recognize the huge changes and discipline needed to restore our country to good health, we will all be nothing more than a nation of slaves at the mercy of our masters. And you can take that to the bank.

   
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  duran 1:41 pm on July 21, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

  Hey google, way to go. 

  Google’s $4.6 billion plan for an open wireless Internet — machinist.salon.com

  In an effort to improve our telecommunications industry, through openinig standards and bandwidth to services, opposed to keeping them in monopolies, google has just stepped up to the plate and dropped a 4.6 BILLION offer to bid on the 700mhz frequency range that the FCC is going to auction soon.

  Would that all kings were so benevolent. Google announced today it would set aside at least $4.6 billion to purchase a slice of the public airwaves in an upcoming government auction of radio spectrum. The company is imposing one condition on its money: It will only participate, it says, if the Federal Communications Commission requires that all bidders for the radio waves be forced to adhere to principles of Internet “openness.”

  If google can pull this off, it will be a major benefit to the end user, reducing the strangle hold that most of us exist in, unbeknowest even to our selves, thanks to the major tele-com companies such as the re-emergent AT&T and ubiquitous Verizon.