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| Thursday, September 25, 2003 |
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Frontiers of aversion 
| | There should be a warning label on IMAX DVDs that have no chapters or scenes, and therefore disallow searching any faster than 4x fast-forward, which means (on my computer, at least) spending almost nine minutes holding down two keys, just to reach the spot where I stopped viewing near the end of a 36-minute movie. |
Public as a verb
| | - Powerful forces will profit if the Internet is privatized
- Companies and governments that benefit from a privatized Internet will support this "improvement"
- Others will be frozen out of the standards process designed to "upgrade" the Internet
- The only force strong enough to keep the Internet free is the police power of the U.S. Government
- Which of the current 11 candidates do you most want in command of Federal Internet policy?
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| | When you make a public good private, it's said that you privatize it. So if you rescue a public good for the continued use of the public, doesn't that mean that you publicize it? Yeah. It's time to publicize the Internet... |
| | The Internet must be publicized because it's way too vulnerable to privatization. It's encroached upon more each week, with the latest assault being the awful Verisign dereliction of its stewardship of .com and .net domains. We know that Microsoft will do everything it can to make the Internet its private sandbox. Telecoms have proven that they will do anything they can to avoid commoditization. The only force on earth that can stop it, sad to say, is the police power of the state. Lilly-livered libertarians like me hate that truth, but truth it is. |
| | Earlier I believed there was no way to put the Internet genie back into the bottle. In this document I will provide a road map of precisely how I believe that could be done, potentially setting the stage for an authoritarian political and intellectual dark age global in scope and self-perpetuating, a disempowerment of the individual which extinguishes the very innovation and diversity of thought which have brought down so many tyrannies in the past. |
| | Walker is the founder of Autodesk, an iron-livered libertarian, and one of the world's most articulate iconoclasts. His dispatches have always made excellent and mind-opening reading, and this one is no exception. |
| | Back to Britt, who has a "Virgin's Plea": |
| | I've never done anything with politics, except given money to the Repubs when strong-armed by business associates. But the Internet is the right cause and it turns out that this week is the last minute. |
| | This is the quarter that can demonstrate to the public and the press that the Internet candidacy is serious and inevitable. The leading Dem candidates are inside-the-beltway pros looking to put another notch in the handle of their ego. If one of them sneaks past Dean and beats a declining Bush, the Internet is just as vulnerable as if Rove keeps calling the shots. |
| | So I've put up a Free the Internet donation site at Dean for America . That's a big step for a guy like me. My habit is to sit on the sidelines and pontificate on how things ought to be done. I've primed my Free the Internet contribution site with $1,000. That sounds grand, but it's about a year's worth of lattés or of a broadband blogging presence. |
| | If you're reading this, that's the level you need to be standing up for. 3 bucks a day. Do the math. |
| | So it's up to us to put up some serious money. Your limit is $2,000. Contribute as an indicator of your clue inventory. |
| | If you comprehend the threat, you know it's real. If you understand this race, you know that just one candidate stands to gain from a free Internet and all the others can only lose. Free the Internet! |
Burning Bush
| | For Sale: A fertile, wealthy country with a population of around 25 millionŠ plus around 150,000 foreign troops, and a handful of puppets. Conditions of sale: should be either an American or British corporation (forget it if you¹re French)Š preferably affiliated with Halliburton. Please contact one of the members of the Governing Council in Baghdad, Iraq for more information. |
| | It's depressing because she was actually one of the decent members on the council. She was living in Iraq and worked extensively in foreign affairs in the past. It's also depressing because of what it signifies- that no female is safe, no matter how high up she is... |
| | Everyone has their own conjectures on who it could have been. Ahmad Al-Chalabi, of course, right off, before they even started investigations said, "It was Saddam and his loyalists!"- he's beginning to sound like a broken record... but no one listens to him anyway. The FBI in Iraq who examined the site said they had no idea yet who it could be. Why would it be Ba'athists if Akila herself was once a Ba'athist and handled relations with international organizations in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before the occupation? Choosing her was one of the smartest thing the CPA did since they got here. It was through her contacts and extensive knowledge of current Iraqi foreign affairs that Al-Chalabi and Al-Pachichi were received at the UN as 'representatives' of the Iraqi people. She was recently chosen as one of three from the Governing Council, along with Al-Pachichi, to work as a sort of political buffer between the Governing Council and the new cabinet of ministers. |
| | But there has been bitterness towards her by some of the more extreme members of the Governing Council- not only is she female, wears no hijab and was the first actual 'foreign representative' of the new government, but she was also a prominent part of the former government. The technique used sounds like the same used with those school principals who were killed and the same used with that brilliant female electrician who was assassinated... I wonder if Akila got a 'warning letter'. She should have had better protection. If they are not going to protect one of only 3 female members of the Governing Council, then who are they going to protect? Who is deemed worthy of protection? |
| | Yeah, Baghdad is real safe when armed men can ride around in SUVs and pick-ups throwing grenades and opening fire on the Governing Council, of all people. |
| | Near as I can tell, BB and SP (Salam Pax) are the only native bloggers reporting from Iraq. (And Chief Wiggles is the only American soldier blogging from there.) I expect we'll see more, as the major media begin to develop a blog-based news-source farming system. They'll keep leveraging Reuters, AP and blogless stringers, of course; but there's no way they can keep disregarding the increasingly useful role bloggers play in the news ecosystem. |
| | In other words, the majors will maintain their role in the news food chain (one step below the reader); but they'll feed with their readers on many of the same abundant sources. |
| | During the course of my daily activities I often take time to glance through the headlines of the so-called news being reported by our own media back in the states. The constant barrage of negative news the media chooses to report on bothers me, depicting quite a different view of what is transpiring over here. |
| | I am forced to ponder the value of a news-media that only reports a distorted view of events based on what they determine will sell papers and magazines or news that supports their own biased political attitudes. What is the value of news that doesn't tell the true story, but only a one-sided biased interpretation predetermined before the news events even occur. Why should the political bias or personal agenda of the news agency be so intertwined with the facts of the event, so as to purposely influence the attitudes of the reader? |
| | I personally do not want my news to be contrived or purposely limited so as to sway my own political views, in order to achieve someone else's own personal agenda. I am disturbed by this attempt by the media to deliberately direct the attitudes of the people of America and the world by preconceiving the interpretation and selection of what they determine to be news worthy. |
| | Where is it stated that news needs to be limited to only those transpiring events that are negative in nature, using sensationalism as the criteria by which events are judged to be news worthy? |
| | Where is the complete story of events, both sides, all aspects of what is really transpiring so as to paint the total panoramic view, allowing the reader at that point to interpret and create their own meaning of the reported events? |
| | With that in mind, are not the positive aspects of what is transpiring just as critical and vital as the negative? Are we going to allow others to determine what we think about, as if we are sheep to be herded by the media? |
| | Once again, when the demand side gets the power to supply, revolution happens. |
American Crapmail Loading Union
| | In Nettle vs ACLU, Brian Dear (of Denounce fame) levels a jeremiad against the ACLU. Seems his card-carrying membership has earned him a torrent of junk mail — not only from the ACLU itself, but from a widening assortment of other junk mailing organizations to which the ACLU gave his name and address, against his wishes. |
| | He documents his market conversation — and his broken relationship with the ACLU — extensively. It's required reading for all the big .orgs that remain addicted to junkmail marketing. Time to wake up and smell the clues. |
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