Hoby Posts

Glenn Beck has no legitimacy

2009-09-23T12:47:00.000-07:00

Written to the Seattle Times and Los Angeles Times:

Having never heard of Glenn Beck until a month ago, suddenly I find this hateful racist being listened to by some of the most publicly influential people in US politics. Why on earth is his idiotic vitriol reaching our leaders and causing them to react?

Why does anyone care what this liar, fear monger, conspiracy theorist, obnoxious pea-brain has to say?

I assume whatever tv ratings he gets are the same reason why people can't help looking at a car crash. That doesn't make his opinions valid and it certainly doesn't make his show, news. His words are poison. But since all he has is words, he should simply be ignored. There is no legitimate reason why anyone should pay attention to this Glenn Beck, because he offers none.

Pet Peeve - East coast-centric naming of state locality

2009-08-14T10:17:00.000-07:00

So I have this pet peeve.. I get annoyed whenever people call places like Chicago and St. Louis "mid-west". It bugs the hell out of me.

I mean.. look, here's a map of the U.S.. If we measure out the regions in equal parts we can clearly see that these places are not even close to being mid-west.. they're in the mid-EASTern United States.

So whenever you refer to one of these states or cities as mid-west, now you can know precisely how very wrong you are.

I know where it comes from through - it's a obviously remnant of the westward land rush, an east-coast centric way of seeing North America.. back when basically all there WAS in white peoples' reality, was the east coast.

But that doesn't excuse the fact that over 200 years have passed since that kind of talk was relevant.

How profitable is overworking and underpaying workers?

2009-07-19T12:08:00.000-07:00

I was just thinking about why there's such a constant process of employees being overworked and underpaid.. and so I thought I should run a what-if scenario with numbers - see just HOW profitable being cruel to your workers is and how you can pull it off without being lynched. Here's the results of that:

__________________________
Say you have a job that should require 10 people at $40,000 per year costing a total of $400,000 per year to do correctly with happy workers. You want to reduce that cost and not have to deal with so many employees. You could plan for each person to do two people's jobs, employing only 5 people - and you can pay them less, say $30,000 per year. Doing that could result in mutiny though and what's more, you don't want to interact with their newfound animosity.

So to solve both problems you insert a middle manager at twice the reduced workers' pay ($60,000). This overpaid manager is there to obscure you and ride your 5 overworked & underpaid workers so they don't mutiny. This person will be willing to do that because you're paying him or her bank and they have this false sense of authority. Your cost equaling what would be 7 employees, is a new total of $210,000 per year, nearly half of your original operating budget.

If you had 7 underpaid workers with no manager (same operating cost), you still might have a mutiny and you still have to interact with all of them. If you cut 5 jobs but kept their salaries the same (within $10,000 of the same operating cost) then there's still a risk of mutiny and you have to deal with their woes of being overworked.

But with the original cuts and manager method you get your $190,000 (almost $200k) in savings without serious risk of mutiny or needing to interact with anyone besides your toady manager.
__________________________

That's why it's so profitable for CEOs to make your life hell, even in this one scenario they can nearly double their profits if they ride the fine line between mutiny and obedience.

Letter to USA Today - Healthcare Reform

2009-06-17T17:07:00.000-07:00

The healthcare industry has no use for the greed and heartlessness of the for-profit insurance companies. Since the Nixon administration put these HMOs in place in 1973, they've been working hard to deny care and drive America into bankruptcy. While it took them a few years to get a stranglehold on our hospitals and private practices, their influence has most certainly hit the fan these days... and they still don't care. What are they doing with all of our money? Pampering and promising the world to our Congress and our President - spending billions of dollars to keep laws favoring their needless and inhumane role in our great nation's medical field.

Aetna, Cigna, Anthem.. patients despise them and doctors abhor them. Our politicians need to cut their financial ties with these corporations and do what is right for the American people - declare for-profit health insurance illegal, liquidate their assets, and put these billions (trillions?) of dollars into a for-care healthcare system that works for patients and doctors.

Medicare is such a system here in the US, use that model to extend cost coverage to the rest of us. The answer is staring us right in the face - as long as our elected officials are willing to look past the dollar bills being fanned in their faces by insurance corporation lobbyists. Most people call it single-payer, because as with Medicare, the government is the only entity that pays doctors on our behalf.

These health insurance scoundrels have had their run and it has turned out very badly. They were created by law and they should be removed by law, now.

Congress.org on Banker Bailouts

2009-06-15T14:02:00.000-07:00

The bankers have proven themselves to be.. not just uncaring but entirely incompetent to manage commercial investment. The "system" does not work - it is intrinsically flawed by its current design and needs to be replaced with more granular and socially just structures. It can be done with some careful planning and a few strokes of the pen. Our current failure of economics came into being with the same actions - the difference being what the policy changes do: either make gains in the short term or long term, either benefit the few or the many.

We're long overdue for our financial policies to make long term gains for many. That can only happen if we replaced these failed, wrong-headed guidelines with better ones - look past the dollars that contribute to the next election, that money is dirty and its source should not be perpetuated.

Selfish crowds don't work

2009-05-08T13:20:00.000-07:00

reply to ZDnet post "Using selfishness to put crowds to work for you"

Self interest is only one of many factors one must factor in attaining a goal with other people - a detail which must be balanced along with everything else.

Seeking to promote selfishness as the prime mover is an inherently flawed tactic. Using the stock market as an example - hello Enron anyone? Even with all the criminal prosecutions every year from constant policing of Wall Street, there are still countless acts of swindling and corruption that plague this market and as far as choice of investment goes - we've all now seen where the self-interested masses have placed the most "value": the hollow future payments of predatory loans, price-fixed commodities (diamonds, oil, etc), war profiteering, and book-cooking corporate monopolies. The market turns out to be unfairly anti-competition, completely corrupted, and driving the world economy off a cliff. Great.. good job, capitalism. Unregulated self interest at work.

But back to coding..

The main reason why documentation doesn't happen is because of a combination of culture clash and isolation.

The personalities of people that like to code are not the same as people who like to document. People who like to document don't gravitate toward code people, the code itself, or seek to understand code. People who like code gravitate toward function, and any documentation that appears to serve no immediate function is dismissed as superfluous. There are of course, rare individuals that span both sides of the fence.. but they're not the norm.

Many coders are also traditionally solitary or a small isolated group. Isolation not only discourages empathy but it acts to remove it from a person's reality - therefor making it an irrelevant factor.

So the proposed suggestion of encouraging the clash and isolation will just lead to further instances of esoterica being driven into the outer reaches of specialization - doomed eventually to be lost in obscurity. No matter how good the code is, if its pushed out of reach for future understanding then it will be forgotten - only to be needlessly re-invented later on.

A better path is to recognize the many factors of human nature and personality culture to build and maintain inclusive community. I say inclusive because community with a purpose must have enough diversity for empathy to stay relevant between all personality types, making a complete project a common goal. That way, self interest, group interest, project interest, and outsider interest are all taken into account and real factors for every member of the project. A balance of self-to-other.

So with an intelligent mix of coding types, documenting types, and the various other types of personalities being intentionally "included" in a project community, there is translation between the specialties and basic knowledge spreads. Personal culture lives inside of project culture.

Altruism is not just sacrifice for strangers, it's sharing your own interest with the interest of others. It's tapping into the (usually present) innate human capacity to relate to other people and realize/simulate how you would feel as them.. knowing the joy and pain of others as you do your own.

And besides that, altruism isn't even necessary for many forms of people doing things for others.. many people either by ideology or by circumstance are just compelled to assist others because it is entertaining to do so. Maybe it's a talent, a hobby, a way to socialize, a means to another end.. a thousand reasons could be in the mix.

"Hey, you want a beer, too?" - Altruism at work.

Security is not Friendly

2009-05-08T10:29:00.000-07:00

(comment on ZDnet about security admin pet peeves)

Of course people don't like security, it tends to be obtrusive, unfriendly, difficult, oppressive, and demanding practices that are very un-human. It also is something that can often be bypassed with varying ease by anyone determined to do so.

For any kind of security to gain real traction, it has to be tailored to people and become extensions to individuals as much as possible. Remove the oppression. Imagine for instance, being able to remotely "feel" if your house is being intruded.. see and hear who they are, and if you want them out, being able to do so as easily as moving your own body. Your house would know you, it becomes part of you. Regulations should keep it non-violent but no agency would dictate your interactions with your house.

That's the kind of sci-fi that should be the goal with security for a variety of functional and ethical reasons.

zdnet, the eager harbinger of doom, as usual

2009-04-24T12:23:00.000-07:00

What exactly is the source of ZDnet's obsession with attempting to strike fear into the hearts of everyone who uses digital technology? Why must they constantly push the "you will be attacked" and "there could soon be a virus that does this" angles?

The mundane truth is still that most security breeches are from disgruntled employees (a result of corporate abuses) and most intentional cracks are done solely for the purpose of sending spam (a result of public gullibility).

Real breeches are about the almighty dollar, not destruction.

Congress.org Support allowing bankruptcy judges to reduce mortgage

2009-03-13T21:19:00.000-07:00

I support allowing bankruptcy judges to change the principal owed on mortgages because the banks have not geared loans to facilitate greater home ownership, they've geared them to maximize profit. Since regulation has not kept banks in check, the situations are hitting the fan within the courts.. so judges are now on the front line of keeping people in their homes. Allowing judges to make loan payments affordable will keep A LOT of families in the homes they've purchased - and it will have that effect immediately.

Congress.org Deficit Survey

2009-02-23T23:10:00.000-08:00

1. Which actions do you support for reducing the budget? Why?

Phasing out the war in Iraq

Ending tax cuts for the wealthy

Because the Iraq War is the biggest money pit in the U.S. budget and tax breaks for the rich are our biggest loss of revenue. Turning around our policy on these two situations could flip the deficit into a surplus as quickly as the changes can be implemented.

2. Should Social Security and Medicare, which comprise as much 33% of the federal budget, be reduced to lower the deficit and the pressure to raise taxes? Why?

No

Because these programs serve positive functions for our society. They are what government is for in the first place. As even more of our population become seniors, these programs will only gain importance.

3. What do you think needs done to reduce the deficit?

Outlaw off-shore tax shelters for the wealthy, re-regulate foundations to mandate they spend a higher percentage of their holdings on charity, end all our wars, shut down most of our foreign military bases, end all war profiteering contracts, cancel most "defense" contracts, investigate and demand re-payment for breaches of government contract, cut pork earmarks, shut down the health insurance industry, build solar and wind farms to replace coal, imported oil, and nuclear energy sources, end subsidies for crops that we don't need, return money printing authority to the Congress and liquidate the Federal Reserve.

4. What do you consider your political philosophy to be?

Government should provide basic assistive services for its citizens and regulate "sandboxes" for competitive commerce. It should be as rations are to the military and the NFL is to football. Little more and no less.

Democracy is what is at stake

2009-02-13T20:23:00.000-08:00

The Internet is the last bastion of freely diverse communication. Radio and TV have been de-regulated (both officially and through lack of enforcement) to the point where differing viewpoints are squashed under a sea of propaganda. People running for public office are not afforded the air time that by law, the radio and tv stations were supposed to provide for free. The list of negative situations goes on and on.. and now that the Internet is popular, the rich information mongers who seek profit at the expense of Freedom, Democracy, and Public Welfare - have every intention of doing the same thing they've done with Radio and TV, to the Internet.. only worse, because of the advanced auditing capabilities of fully digital communications.

Currently on the Internet, news from around the world can be broadcast, seen, shared, commented on, and replied to.. news that DOESN'T appear on TV or Radio. Also on the internet, political candidates can post their speeches, policies and campaign messages in a variety of media, all potentially for free.. anyone wondering about what the various candidates are likely to stand for can view this material just as easily as any other candidate, regardless of how much money those candidates have at their disposal. The same is not true for TV and Radio.. or even often, in-person. Candidates are frequently now, barred from attending debates and rallies if they don't have x amount of dollars to PAY for a seat in the debate.. which is horribly corrupt.

On the Internet however, all these viewpoints can still be expressed on a much more equal basis. Aside from the basic Internet connectivity (which really by now should be free for all U.S. citizens.. much easier to build than interstate highways) or hosting charges, there are no other mandatory costs associated with making your views available to others via the Internet. If you have connectivity or hosting through a provider that has a certain transfer rate, that rate is the same for all customers, no matter what the subject matter or content of their messages are. Many providers operate through advertising and allow "customers" to post their text, audio, or video for free.. for all to see at full speed, all the time.

So obviously, rich social oppressors who are friends with the rich owners of media and connectivity companies will want to squash this source of diversity, free expression, free reporting, and free democracy (voting can also happen over the internet!). And what better way to squash than through monetary restriction! More profit for their corporate pals and more oppression of opposing viewpoints for them. A win-win solution for them.. a big fat lose-lose for everyone else on the entire planet.

You at the FCC should also realize that your very jobs are tied into this as well. You're appointed by elected officials. If the officials who appoint you are unable to compete with other candidates who have more money than they do, you'll be out of a job as soon as a richer candidate comes into office... What's more, if the political landscape is further made into a dictatorship, the role of the FCC will likely disappear completely.. it will just be the Media Broadcast division of Blackwater Homeland Security and will have no need for regulation of any kind.. merely heavily armed raids inflicted upon any persons who are deemed enemies of Broadcast Corporations.

Wouldn't you like to keep your jobs and your role as a regulatory commission? Don't you think that Democracy and Freedom are more than buzz words? Do you CARE about the future of this country? Do you realize that through the Internet is one of the last ways that the defining principles of our Constitution can be practiced?

Well for that to continue, we need some things called equal access, free speech, and what is now being called Net Neutrality. If you allow the telcos and the social oppressors to shut down freedom on the internet.. that's it, game over. The only way freedom within U.S. borders can continue is through underground, grassroots efforts. The technological equivalent to the pony express. TV, Radio, and Internet will be utterly and completely useless for real communication, real news, and real democracy... because diverse viewpoints and diverse candidates will be shut out by the power of the dollar.

_________________________

Net Neutrality is essential to free speech, equal opportunity and economic innovation in America. Since the FCC removed this basic protection in 2005, the top executives of phone and cable companies have stated their intention to become the Internet's gatekeepers and to discriminate against Web sites that don't pay their added tolls.

This fundamental change would end the open Internet as we know it. It would damage my ability to connect with others, share information and participate in our 21st century democracy and economy. The FCC must ensure that broadband providers do not block, interfere with or discriminate against any lawful Internet traffic based on its ownership, source or destination.

Congress.org - 2009 Priorities

2008-11-24T18:41:00.000-08:00

Next year, I want Congress to focus on the following easy to understand, two word issues:

- Green Jobs

- End War

- Health Care

- Net Neutrality

A collection of comments and feedback..

2008-11-23T19:20:00.000-08:00

For some reason, right now as an experiment, I want to start a publicly viewable collection of things that I post to web sites I visit. I tend to save posts that I want to reference or keep track of later.. but I keep them on my computer, where no one would see them en masse unless they search and find all the web sites I happen to mouth off at. Also.. sometimes what I keep wouldn't be read by anyone besides whoever is answering the feedback form of their site. So, I'll give it a shot.

to Obama - Jobs and The Economy plan outline

2008-11-22T16:35:00.000-08:00

Greening Jobs
        Federal and State Departments for employing people directly
                For centralized services mainly
                Track everything to measure success
        Loans, Tax Breaks, Grants, and Contracts for companies/people
                For individuals and small regions
                Guard against monopolies
        Job Categories
                Research - reviving old tech and finding new tech
                Design - making what is built the best it can be
                        Non-toxic fabrication methods
                        Recyclable materials
                        Power/battery efficiency
                Construction - manufacturing and building new solutions
                Installation - putting new solutions directly into use
                Retrofitting - replace innards with green tech, melt/recycle old tech
                Maintenance - keeping centralized, business, and home solutions running
                Trade - exporting services, technology, and equipment internationally
        Job Industries
                Power Generation from Wind, Solar, Thermal, and Tidal
                        Dual focus on centralized and home/business generators
                                Decentralization reduces transmission waste
                        Australian Power Tower Design
                        Cut subsidies for toxic dig & burn sources
                                coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear
                        Cut subsidies for ethanol crops
                New Power Storage
                        Hyper-efficient batteries
                        Hydrogen Fuel Cells
                        Flywheels
                        Rain Collection
                Electric Transportation
                        Bikes, Scooters, Cars, Trucks, Busses, Trains
                        Focus on fully Electric Vehicles
                        Power management intelligence
                        Retrofitting used cars with new fuel/engines
                        Cut subsidies for gas, diesel, and ethanol vehicles
                Carbon Neutral Building
                        Green Materials
                        Energy Efficiency
                        Water conservation
                        Green Roofing
                                Grass, Garden, Function (rain to power conv.)
                Water Purification
                        "Amphitheater" and other designs
                        Reduce waterway contamination
                                from farmland, industrial, and residential waste water
                                renegotiate/enforce pollution agreements
                Greener General Consumer Goods
                        electronics, clothing, furniture, etc.
        Organization and Transparency
                Invest in transparency network for governmental funding tracking
                Fund a universal citizen participation network
                        (of my design: swiftmouse.com/icare/ )

Education Jobs
        Grade School
                Federally fund public schools
                        Boost teacher salaries
                        Reduce administrator salaries
                        Reduce class sizes
                                Build more schools
                                        150 students max
                        Replace outdated materials
                        Develop admin software to reduce waste/corruption
                        Broaden subjects taught
                Increase support staff for students
                        Shift style from industrial-lecture to "coaching" model
                        Create more types of counselors
                                for students
                                for teachers
                        Focus on participation instead of assessment
                        Mandate paid leave for parents to participate certain days a week
                Regulate out corporate influence
                Increase food self-sufficiency
                        school gardens, cooking, and nutrition
        College and University
                Increase subsidies
                        Encourage lower tuitions
                        Offset textbook costs
                Increase financial transparency
                Reduce administrator pay
                Increase instructor and assistant pay
                Federal grants for more domestic students
                Reduce interest rates for student loans
                Build additional colleges
                Promote continuing education
        Trade School
                Validate/Accredit certifications
                Build some federal trade schools for industries in this outline
        Adult School
                Fund night-time working family education
                        Community promotions
                        Modernize courses
                        Increase teacher pay
        Free School ("teach-in")
                Subsidy funding
                Promotion grants
                Certification and accreditation
        Prison and Jail Schools
                Create one or more in every jail and prison
                        both state and privatized
                Fund and manage separately from prison/jail budget
        Textbook publishing
                Research and Develop electronic materials technology
                Encourage younger authors to publish
                Re-assess copyright law to make developing coursework easier/cheaper


Agriculture
        Break up and auction off farming conglomerates
                Fund small farmer buy-back programs
        Subsidize smaller and independent farms
        Encourage more employment and less equipment
        Research and Educate for best practices
                Encourage systems-based "grass farming" approach
                        Organic growing
                        Locally consumed
                        Humane livestock conditions and waste management
                        Increased crop/breed diversity
                Gather and compile local/cultural wisdom
                Employ ex-farmers as educators
                Ban genetically modified food and open-air testing
                Tax sale of nonreproducible hybrid seeds heavily
        Create subsidies/policies for decentralized farming
                Urban gardens
                        Commercial building roof gardens
                        "pea patch" community gardens
                Organize farmers markets
                Organize/assist CSA programs
                Create a federal farmworker job type
                Create federal farming exchange programs
                        land owners open specific acres for outside farmers to grow on
                Expire patents on all "living systems"

Healthcare
        Grow Medicare jobs and eligibility to replace Insurance for all ages
                Treat all citizens automatically for basic care
                        consider most women's treatments as basic care
                Treat immigrants and foreigners with some conditions and charges
                Normalize practitioner salaries for basic care
                Offset cost of "optional" medical care with federal funding
                        Working class pays moderate amount
                        Rich pay more
        Set up little state run clinics in communities without nearby hospitals
                mobile and in unoccupied buildings
        Develop open source tools for medical information management
        Provide incentives for doctors and nurses to return to general practice
        Ban Insurance companies from healthcare
                Liquidate assets of healthcare portions of insurance companies
                Replace with loans/savings programs for costly optional treatments

Employment Quality
        Streamline federal employment hiring procedures
        Cap executive pay maximums
        Raise minimum wage
        Increase vacation time
        Increase national holidays
        Reduce weekly hour maximums
        Regulate against "crunch times"
        Create incentives for co-op style businesses
                Everyone is paid the same
                Everyone has a vote for important decisions
        Encourage "monkeysphere"-aware organization sizes
        Ensure new programs reach the most marginalized populations
                American indian, african american, latin american, immigrant

My Obama Cabinet Picks

2008-11-20T17:19:00.000-08:00

Here's what I wrote in to Obama's transition site regarding picks for the upcoming administration's cabinet appointees.

White House Chief of Staff
                Dennis Kucinich - Senator

Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency
                Al Gore - Speaker

Director of the Office of Management and Budget
                Ralph Nader - Senator

Director of the National Drug Control Policy
                Cynthia McKinney - Green Party

United States Trade Representative
                Noam Chomsky - Writer, Analyst

Secretary of State
                Michael Frente - Musician

Secretary of the Treasury
                Jimmy Wales - Wikipedia

Secretary of Defense
                Jeremy Scahill - Reporter

Attorney General
                Steven Shapiro - ACLU

Secretary of the Interior
                Lawrence Lessig - Creative Commons

Secretary of Agriculture
                Michael Pollan - Reporter, Writer

Secretary of Commerce
                Naomi Klein - Writer, Reporter

Secretary of Labor
                Mary Beth Maxwell - American Rights at Work

Secretary of Health and Human Services
                Eric Schlosser - Writer

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
                Jesse Jackson - Speaker

Secretary of Transportation
                Chris Paine - Filmmaker

Secretary of Energy
                Cathy Zoi - ACP

Secretary of Education
                Nicholas Negroponte - OLPC Maker

Secretary of Veterans Affairs
                John Kerry - Senator

Secretary of Homeland Security
                Barbara Boxer - Senator

Congress.org - Oppose $25 Billion Auto Industry Emergency Loans

2008-11-18T18:36:00.000-08:00

I oppose the $25 billion in emergency loans to the auto industry because these companies got themselves into this mess with a short-sighted, unsustainable, and inconsiderate business model that should not be rewarded in any way.. and that's what this would be, a reward for bad behavior.

If they'd spent their money making cars made to last, cars that used less and alternative fuels, cars that were still made in America - they wouldn't be in this mess. If they hadn't spent billions of dollars lobbying to fight regulation for greater fuel efficiency, paying their executives 400 times more than their employees, and gambling profits they would never earn on the stock market - they wouldn't be in this mess.

If they'd still been making fewer, quality cars and earning steady, modest profits held responsibly, then they'd instead be weathering through this downturn in purchases without suffering any "crisis".

So they want billions of our hard-earned tax dollars? How about they stop making cars we don't need and start making wind, solar, and thermal generators that we DO need?

to Obama - Chief Technology Officer

2008-11-11T16:33:00.000-08:00

Net for neutrality, jobs, education, voting & free access

The internet has the potential to be an amazing means to right the wrongs of the past and remain an agile society faced with resource depletion.

Network transmission must be kept free, open, and unbiased - that makes the rest possible. National effort must be put into solving some of the employment crisis by hiring people to build free access hardware, educational materials, independent media, governmental transparency, and bring it all back together with Democracy 2.0 online.

Power that with electricity from "green economy" energy infrastructure and you've got a bright future for this country.

For various reasons, these would be my picks for CTO in order of priority:
Brad Templeton of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia
Lawrence Lessig of the Creative Commons
Brewster of Internet Archive
Craig Newmark of Craigslist
Rob Malda of Slashdot.org

to Obama - my vision of the future

2008-11-09T16:32:00.000-08:00

My vision of the future is about a change of national and international priorities from empire, conquest, profit, and control; and into making our cultural goals being sustainability, tolerance, balance, culture, and awareness.

As for actions, they can be prioritized into the following categories:
1. Diverting funding from the absurdly rich to the working class.
2. Turning our foreign actions from aggression to healing.
3. Holding the crimes of the Bush administration to account.
4. Healing our population and planet.
5. Reforming our government to fully represent us.

My expanded action list can be found at ihoby.com/plan but I can also summarize further in future posts.

1. Diverting Funds - Bankers and Billionaire Corporations have been receiving free handouts in the form of subsidies, bailouts, tax breaks funded by the hard work and tax dollars taken from the majority of Americans. This has gone too far for too long. While Americans are increasingly prudent and in need, they are being neglected by the collusion of business and government setting disaster capitalism to run amok. Business is treating government and government is rewarding business.. this exclusive relationship is poison for this nation's people, land, sea, and air. It's a poison that has built slow but it's effects are unmistakable in causing this financial crisis and climate change. Trickle-down economics has been proven time and time again to never work. Trickle-up however, obviously works very well.

The rich have this power because we are allowing them to keep it - either from kindness, obedience, or ignorance. The time has long since past when we need to claim our eminent domain on the hoardings of the rich, to cut off their supply of corporate entitlement programs, corporate welfare, corporate socialism. They have enough money to be just fine while we route our federal spending back into America's communities:

- bail out the families facing foreclosure, make their mortgages be affordable
- start the Green Economy with jobs building wind and solar generators
- supplement medical costs to make health care affordable
- increase the minimum wage and lower taxes for smaller businesses

All this and more can be funded by cutting off the corporate free lunch and requiring the richest CEOs and bankers to pay their fair share.

2. Foreign Actions - Our wars of aggression into Afghanistan and Iraq (among other places) are clearly both internationally illegal and extremely immoral. They were started out of a series of dysfunctional world views and need to be ended immediately so that pacification, reconciliation, and healing can bring about the changes and improvements that war can never, ever accomplish.

- remove combat from countries we've invaded, replace with infrastructure services
- cut aid to countries who are committing atrocities
- halt all contracts to mercenary, service, and construction profiteers
- cut spending on military procurement programs

3. Holding Accountable - Many many people in and well outside of the Bush administration are clearly guilty of some involvement in War Crimes, Treason, Crimes Against Humanity, and other more minor but serious breaches of law and moral turpitude. Since these crimes were not thwarted at the time or dealt with swiftly after through impeachment - they'll have to be treated to justice slowly and carefully over the next few years. The perpetrators of these modern atrocities have done these deeds in our name, with our flag, and they must not be allowed to continue their evil deeds under new titles.

- set Congress to investigate War Crimes, Invasion Pretext, War Contractors and Mercenaries, Election Crimes, 9/11 "false flag" evidence, Domestic Spying, etc.
- prosecute perpetrators of crimes being investigated in federal and international courts
- draft regulation to help keep these tragic atrocities from happening again

4. Healing - The endeavor of medicine should simply not be run by organizations who's primary goal is to maximize profit. That is unfortunately what we have and that is why our medical system is failing to meet the needs of Americans. We also have industries trampling across our fragile earth in a reckless surge of exploitation and pollution. Our natural systems, our global ecosystems cannot handle this level of abuse. We must enact ambitious programs to provide free healthcare for all citizens, affordable healthcare for all people, and a livable planet for ourselves and our successors.

- build a free, universal healthcare system
- dismantle the insurance companies and replace them with assistance programs
- ban the building of any new "dig and burn" plants
- build "green" sources of energy
- shut down the existing "dig and burn" plants

5. Progressive Reform - The Bush administration has been the most secretive, corrupt, criminal, deadly, and unrepresentative office ever. They have privatized, militarized, and marginalized more aspects of our country than ever should have been. All of this has to stop, all of it must be reversed. We want a government who is accountable, transparent, just, peaceful, respectful, and receptive.. a government who spends our money wisely and truthfully.

- do all of the previously stated action items
- expand citizen access to continually participate through democracy
- regulate yourselves
- solve problems instead of creating or exacerbating them
- declassify, declassify, declassify

Congress.org - How could you vote for the bailout?

2008-10-07T18:36:00.000-07:00

How could you or anyone vote for this terrible, horrible, worthless Bailout Bill? These banker and wall street crooks have already taken and lost our money once. You have to give them MORE of it? You think they'll give any of this back to us, the American people? Fat chance..

To every senator who failed to stop the war(s), impeach the Bush administration, this and all the other failures of congress, don't expect to get re-elected.

Congress.org - Oppose the $700 Billion Mortgage Bailout

2008-09-24T18:36:00.001-07:00

I oppose the proposed bailout plan because it gives evil, reckless, rich swindlers even more profits from their irresponsible gambling with our money, with guess what, tax dollars which are again, our money.

The general public.. the working class, is getting screwed over TWICE if this proposal is enacted.

If rich people are gambling futures on payments they knew we'd never be able to pay - THEY are the ones who should be tapped to bail US out. Not the other way around.

Ever heard of fiscal responsibility?

Palin puff piece and ignorant comments

2008-09-15T16:29:00.000-07:00

This piece was about as puff as one can get.. serving to do nothing more than plaster images and keywords of a very bad candidate on more web pages.

Regarding lost elections, when there is significant fraud in 2001 and 2004:

- ballot miscounts, caging lists, and supreme court "arrangement" in 2001
- voter harassment both via phone and while waiting in line to vote
- voting machine shortages in poor neighborhoods
- voting machine "glitches" that always favored republicans
- central tabulators that were wildly different from exit polls for the first time since they've been recorded
- programmers hired by republicans to write programs for swapping voting totals
- absentee ballots from soldiers overseas being thrown out
- and these caging lists consisting primarily of names common among black and hispanic democrat voters (which, when found and checked for accuracy by county officials, turned out to 95% WRONG on listing people ineligible to vote)...

..well, there's certainly cause to cry foul. There is also plenty of reason to question how well our votes will be accounted for in this year's election. Most of these insecure, compromised, or buggy voting machines and central tabulators are still being used. The caging lists are still growing, being filled with even more names of people who have every right to vote. Polling stations have not been given more resources. The people who harassed voters were never found and stopped.

If the loss had been fair and square in either case then we'd have no one to blame but ourselves. But when there is so much thwarting of fair elections by the people in charge of providing them, the burden of responsibility rests overwhelmingly with the cheaters.. cheaters who have used their false-win to undermine everything that America is supposed to stand for - turning us more rapidly than ever from a nation of Freedom, Justice, Opportunity, and the pursuit of Happiness into a nation of Oppression, Secrecy, Occupational War, Torture, Neglect, and rampant Corruption.

All of the major problems being faced by the US: Iraq, Afghanistan, Torture, Katrina, Gas Prices, Mortgage Crisis, Lending Crisis, Food Prices/Shortages, Climate Change, Federal Overspending, National Deficit, Outsourcing, Low Wages, Unfair taxes, etc. etc... these are all present or worse from the direct decisions made by Republicans on behalf of corporations and other sources of privately held wealth.

They don't care about the future and they certainly don't care about you. They think of you as a national resource, something to be neglected and exploited... like a feedlot animal, a strip mine, or an oil well.

Palin is no different in that respect, in that she has no respect for life or dignity beyond her own inner circle. She sees herself as a Christian Soldier.. a General even, ordering all women to be mothers - be they poor, abused, raped, or otherwise - so they may give birth to fodder for endless war and corporate servitude. She believes it to be God's will that the rich be powerful and pampered; and that the Earth and its poor are here to be neglected, controlled, and exploited for the whims of the powerful.

In Palin's vision of the world, every mother is on her own.. as is every child, once born. When they leave the womb, their right to life and happiness ends.

Then in her ideals, your children may be allowed to starve on the street, die of a preventable illness, treated as a criminal, tried as an adult, put on death row, sent to war, accused of being a terrorist, abducted and held in secrecy, tortured, deported, harassed, or drown in the aftermath of a hurricane.

No help from the government.. because helping a nation's residents is not what McCain, Palin and the rest of them see the role of government to be.

Congress.org - Support Alternative Energy Incentives First

2008-09-10T18:36:00.000-07:00

Alternative energy IS the answer both in the short term and especially in the long term. And by alternative I mean energy derived from the wind, tide, sun, and thermal vents - energy that is infinitely renewable, does not pollute, and has the potential to be generated as well as consumed by the general public,

Drilling is NOT the answer for anything but higher gas company profits, higher gas prices, more oil spills, and rampant exploitation of land, sea, air, & people that should be protected forever. Once areas are lost, they may never fully come back.

Other forms of digging for energy that aren't answers are nuclear, coal, and in a way, ethanol. These are dirty forms of energy, which not only damage the Earth but keep the process of generating power out of the hands of the public - making us all needlessly dependent on for-profit corporations who are the only source of fuel.

Congress.org - Why Obama

2008-09-02T18:36:00.000-07:00

I will vote for the Obamiden ticket for President because they are by far the lesser evil.. also because there is much more of a chance that if elected, Obama will be receptive to the needs of citizens who pressure him to make our policies better serve the people of this country - all the people of this country. That chance will not exist with McCain and his token running mate.

I have plenty of criticisms surrounding all four of them (Obama, Biden, McCain, & Palin) that I wouldn't have if better candidates had not intentionally excluded from the running (like Kucinich, Nader, McKinney.. maybe even Paul) by media and political - for lack of a better word - elites. But far more criticism can be heaped on the Republican ticket, McPalin and everyone surrounding them are some of the most evil people on the planet; we can't let them continue the shameless inhumanity of leadership which defines the Bush administration.

With Obama, I have some hope of not just change but improvement, of the chance that he and his administration will listen to us - we the people, not we the corporate lobbyists.

I know he's making a lot of concessions to gain support from the owners of powerful industries.. but I also know that he has a shred of compassion for people beyond than his inner circle. If he doesn't lose that on the way to the white house, then we have a chance to start saving this country.. this planet, from significant disaster. Because the road to disaster is what we are on, what Bush has accelerated, and what McCain would continue if he had a chance of being elected.

So it's not all tea and roses.. but that's why Obama and Biden will have my vote. They're the best choice that industry has allowed us to vote on. They are the best chance we have for a better future.

Tracking Web Users

2008-08-26T16:26:00.000-07:00

It would be one thing if this tracking was being done for scientific purposes.. or social research, even some sort of altruism. But it’s being done for the sake of profit and illegal authoritarian spying.

It would also be defensible if users had access to the data being collected on them - to be able to turn the tracking on and off, to delete data they don’t want or isn’t theirs. But it’s not being made that way - it’s being constructed to operate secretively, with no regard to our wishes or well being.

It’s basically predatory. If it’s one thing we don’t need, it’s another way for people to prey upon each other.

“Just how do they expect the online world to pay for itself?”

How about using some progressive corporate taxes (Exxon’s consecutive record profits anyone?) to subsidize websites instead of war? Plenty of untapped Billion$ there each quarter.

Another funding source could be similar to how the TV cable companies were required to provide public access channels and fully equipped stations to towns that had no airwave TV access.

If the web site or service can be deemed an asset to the public, it would be a viable choice for funding as a public service.

Congress.org - Allow Voter Registration Drives in VA Facilities

2008-08-19T18:36:00.000-07:00

I support voter registration in these facilities because if they're in the military, hurt or not, they're citizens and have every right to be able to vote and have that vote count.. particularly since for many of the injured, the reason why they're currently being treated is a direct result of decisions made by elected officials.

Please help reverse this decision to prohibit voter registration in VA funded facilities.

Congress.org - Energy Plans

2008-08-06T18:36:00.000-07:00

Though the Democrat standpoint is far from ideal, it's certainly better than what's being proposed by the Republicans.

Contrary to the lies they're trying to propagate: drilling in Alaska won't make gas any cheaper at the pump, nuclear power is just as flawed / wasteful / dangerous as it ever was, and the criminal business practices of the oil companies should be stopped - not encouraged.

Congress.org - Support Another Middle Class Tax Rebate

2008-07-22T18:34:00.000-07:00

I am writing to you about the proposed economic stimulas package being considered in the Senate Appropriations Committee this week.

I support the economic stimulas package, especially any tax rebate for middle class taxpayers.

I'd especially support any legislation that DIVERTS subsidies intended for ultra-rich corporations (esp. oil, ethanol, nuclear, war contr. etc.) and instead, puts that money into the pockets of Americans who actually NEED those subsidies.

The "middle class" is now the "working class", which is a politically correct way of saying "working poor". We are not having record years of massive profits like these subsidy-subsuming corporate giants..

Government's purpose is to care for its citizens. WE (actual people) are the the citizens.

Congress.org - GAO Ruling on Tanker Deal

2008-06-24T18:34:00.000-07:00

Military operations should not be privatized - pure and simple.

Congress.org - OPPOSE the bill allowing immunity for telecom companies

2008-06-23T18:34:00.000-07:00

This bill is criminal in the form of tyranny, police-state, and fascism in the worst way. It should not have been passed.. or even considered.

Elected officials are SWORN TO PROTECT THE CONSTITUTION and in passing this bill they have FAILED to do so - deliberately damaging a core principle of what America stands for: Freedom.

In passing this bill, congress has condoned tyrannical corruption - the unlawful, wholesale spying on our country's own people without guilt, suspicion, or probable cause.

The Founding Fathers are rolling in their graves.

Congress.org - Oppose stronger sanctions against Iran

2008-06-19T18:34:00.001-07:00

Sanctions aren't the answer.. they'll hurt the nations poorest women and children while any nuclear programs will remain unaffected.

Congress.org - I SUPPORT the Resolution Calling for the Impeachment of President Bush

2008-06-19T18:34:00.000-07:00

Impeachment NOW! It's never too late to impeach.. and once Bush and gang are impeached, it's never too soon to prosecute them for high crimes and misdemeanors in the form of: war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes against our constitution, treason, election fraud, and very likely many other charges.

They should have really been stopped before doing as much damage to our country and our world as they already have - putting an early end to their corruption now would still be an infinitely honorable event.

Congress.org - OPPOSE drilling in ANWR

2008-06-10T18:29:00.000-07:00

Keep their greedy, oil-bloodied hands off of Alaska. No drilling for oil. Ever.

AT&T policing the internet?

2008-06-08T16:24:00.000-07:00

NO, no no and NO

They should not. Ever.

Why? For several reasons:

1. Filtering is error-prone.. it will end up blocking or letting through information that it shouldn't - and the fixes might create more problems than they solve.

2. Filtering with ease opens up the door for abuses. Carriers will be tempted and succumb to temptation to filter what they're not supposed to. That can ruin fair competition, people's lives, and even Democratic process and Freedom.

3. Policing should never be given to a for-profit entity with no civic transparency. If we can't obtain their records, control their funding, or vote them in and out of "office", they certainly should NOT be in charge of policing. Judicial corruption is bad enough already, we don't need net-cops "maximizing profit" at our expense.

4. AT&T is already guilty of enabling the illegal NSA spying on Americans.. these are federal crimes.. Treason crimes! There is NO WAY we can trust people like this with positions of legal authority.

the Hacker Myth again

2008-06-04T16:22:00.000-07:00

Well you know.. 99% of all instances of data loss and data theft come from the mistakes or misdeeds of employees who work in these places.

Hackers account for 1% of these problems. The only reason networks and systems are cracked these days (and for many years before) is to send SPAM everywhere.

The whole hacker scare is a myth, so that know-nothings calling themselves Consultants and Security Specialists can make money frightening CEOs and Congress people.

Firewalls and SSL don't mean a thing unless your company's employees are well paid and proficient. Most every "security breach" comes from the inside.

Congress.org - No, I am not satisfied with the price of my health care

2008-06-03T17:15:00.000-07:00

While my experience with injury and treatment were very good, I've also had to pay a lot for health insurance and car insurance - both of which have come into play in order to pay the doctor bills.

Neither of these expenses are really justifiable in a modern, wealthy country.

The experience of others, many many others are not as happy as mine. They would best be described as horror stories - whether they have insurance or not.

The time for a better health care system is long overdue. Whether you call it Single Payer, Free Healthcare, Socialized Medicine, or otherwise - it's all the same thing: necessary.

Congress.org - Veepstakes

2008-05-28T17:15:00.000-07:00

My dream ticket for a while has been Obama for President and Kucinich for Vice President. They could be the dynamic duo of progressive improvement. The antithesis of Bush and Cheney - undoing all the evil they have wrought upon this world.

Obama is the sweet talker and Kucinich is the man with the plan, the brains of the operation, and the Jiminy Cricket.

Together they could turn wars into peace, enemies into friends, unite the union, and make policies to repair the most recent and significant damage which has been done to our constitution, our environment, our economy, our global climate, and our quality of life.

Ultimate Education Portable reply

2008-05-07T16:16:00.000-07:00

give them fish, or hand them a fishing pole?

While I agree that the OLPC should be part of a larger effort to improve and fund international education, aid, and especially debt relief - your position is sadly naive.

It's basically like the old choice of either helping by giving out food or by giving them the means to provide themselves with food. But in this case it's about tapping into very powerful intellectual resources. The most important part of the OLPC is not the hardware, it's how the software maximizes the hardware for collaborative learning, exploration, and culture bridging.

Also the role of organized religion in your post is flawed. Programs run by a certain faith push that faith's interests above others. Higher paid Christian teachers using brand new bibles will not help children think for themselves, collaborate freely, learn all they can learn, or bridge cultural gaps without prejudice.

An XO in their hands however can allow them to learn about the world (wikipedia, etc) and with the world (chat/collaborate with children in other countries) in the most rapid, transparent, and diverse way in history. The software can not only maximize the hardware their given, but also the teachers, school materials, and anything else surrounding the child who's using it. An XO can make a more empowered teacher that much more effective.

Your only valid point is that not everyone needs a computer. This is true. But there are millions of people.. mostly children, that could significantly benefit from having the right kind of computer available to them. Their future is the world's future. If we are to overcome the real and present dangers that threaten our very existence (global warming, resource depletion, economic oppression, fascist oppression, etc) then we need to create the best tools we can for our children. No one will be able to save them but themselves.

Microsoft says open source violates 235 patents

2008-05-03T16:14:00.000-07:00

This proves that many patents shouldn't be filed and accepted by the patent office. If there are this many way-after-the-fact patents for software functions that have long become standard practices - they shouldn't even be accepted for companies to start suing for.

Back when the web was just something fringe geeks did, I and many other people did a lot of innovation in the "open source" environment of HTML and Javascript.. Now, I've seen versions of the code we wrote show up in all kinds of commercial products from Adobe, Microsoft, and scores of others. Now that I see all these companies making money off of our inventions, should I start filing patents with my 'prior art' and become a patent troll?

No. It's too late now. What we wrote has become standard practice and it has allowed The Web to flourish bigger and faster than any other communications medium. What's more, if we'd filed patents back when we made those code bits, we would have stifled the pace of creativity that has made the web what it is today. I would love to have some credit for my contributions and some extra cash if people are making money off of them.. but trying to get that now would be childish and petty.

What MS and other overly-competitive businesses are trying to do with these patents are far too late, bad for their own industry, and basically immoral. It would be nice if they would just stop. Aren't they rich enough? Success is fine.. but success at the expense of everything and everyone around you is evil.

Congress.org - that's not the kind of voter fraud that happens

2008-04-29T17:15:00.001-07:00

Take a look at all the cases of voter fraud in elections going back years and years. Instances where people went in to the voting booths and pretended they were someone else in order to vote more than once amount to about ZERO PERCENT and have had next to no effect on election results.

If however you look at all the instance where Voter Fraud (also now called Election Fraud) was not committed by the Voters but instead by the Counters and Harassment Groups - you see all the instances where their crimes have skewed results heavily, over and over again. When the counters throw away ballots, introduce fake ballots, rig the machines, break machines, harass voters, mislead voters, and so on.. those are the election crimes that we need to concern ourselves with because THOSE ARE THE CRIMES BEING COMMITTED. And those crimes destroy democracy.

Congress.org - international policies have created this crisis - fix it now

2008-04-29T17:15:00.000-07:00

The WTO, IMF and the World Bank need to be reigned in.. they've gotten the world into a food shortage - millions of people facing starvation - by the most horrible of badly laid plans. Greed has played too large a role in these international "trade agreements" (economic bullying tactics) for too long.

It has hit the fan, people are now starving. More are predicted to become starving soon. People will start dying the most horrible deaths as a result of these trade policies of greed.

American business driving government policy is squarely to blame and so that's who should be REQUIRED to send immediate hunger relief to these countries hardest hit - and should also be required to fund the shifting of agriculture in these countries back into a capacity where they may regain self-sufficiency in the production of staple foods.

Fix the immediate crisis and fix the long term problem. Action should be taken NOW.

Congress.org - NAFTA was bad from the start

2008-04-22T17:15:00.000-07:00

So called "free trade" is responsible for the soaring food costs, bankrupt farmers, mexican pollution, and many other issues that are hitting the world hard right now.

It's only "free" for companies that want to maximize profits over the welfare of people in general.

Congress.org - The "Bailout"

2008-04-01T17:15:00.000-07:00

The Fed helping one multibillionaire lending firm to feast on the corpse of another while ordinary people struggling to own homes are being left out in the cold... is just plain evil.

The borrowers need to be bailed out.. they've been put between a rock and a hard place. The hard place being the economy and home loans being the rock. Millions of people are being and face being kicked out of their own homes.

The lending firms don't need help and the predicament of the small number of people they employ pales in comparison to the loss occurring to the borrowers being hit with foreclosure.

Pedo imagery and Prosecution

2008-03-28T16:10:00.000-07:00

This is a very complex issue - one that needs thorough examination.

What I see going on now are multiple trends happening in unison, most of which are ultimately bad for children. Whether or not there is in fact a boom in pedophilia or even child molestation, it is certainly something that has become a "hot button" topic with a large portion of money and time spent on the issue that could really be better spent on breaking the cycle of abuse and neglect that leads to these crimes. Instead, it is spent on the following:

On one hand we have for the first time, special and extreme attention aimed at pedophilia and sex crimes. We have a situation where it's being sensationalized beyond the scope of reality. We have tv shows and special police forces who are not only aiming to catch actual pedophiles but actually luring people into being far bolder than they would have been in order to permanently ruin their public life.

This is bad for children because for the most part, they aren't stopping 90% of child abuse and molestation.. they're just making examples out of the fringe cases from internet chat rooms, most of whom would never have strayed beyond their keyboards.. so they go to jail and have their info posted on the sex offenders list, while the real sex offenders.. the people who take photos of the kids they abuse, they walk free.

Another ingredient: commercialism. Corporate advertising is becoming increasingly aimed at sexualizing younger and younger kids, girls especially. All for the sake of profit, companies in all kinds of industries (clothes/fashion, pop music, magazines, movies, tv, toys) are targeting our children with laser beams of overtly sexualized media. This message attached to any product (a person, a wearable, a consumable, etc.) says the same thing to girls: "You will not be liked/loved/noticed unless you dress like a slutty adult, act flirty, and fit in to the culture we're trying to manufacture with this marketing campaign. Buying our product will help you to do those things and attain the recognition you desire." A similar but decidedly less oppressive message applies to boys.

This kind of commercialism is probably one of the most influential drivers of producing new predators and victims.. and it's only getting worse. Psychologists and criminal lawyers alike report that sexualized and explicit media are one of the tools that convicted child molesters use to influence their victims into thinking that their sexual advances are okay, acceptable, and even desirable.. and that's exactly what the world of business is providing.

Another bad thing is how "the scare" is being presented, yet again. 90% or so (maybe more) of even reported cases of child molestation occur between a child and adult who already know each other.. family or family friends. This boogyman of the lone stranger pedophile molester is largely a myth.. and a particularly damaging one for our children because once again, it focuses on the fringe cases while most of the men (most child molesters are men) who are exploiting kids are free to keep molesting.

So in light of all this.. I think that if a person is caught with abuse photos they didn't take - they should be given a stern warning and be periodically monitored somehow.. if they paid for the photos then maybe include a fine. It's the people that are actually molesting the children, the ones taking the photos that people should be more concerned about.. and that includes corporate america. They need to be held accountable for what they're doing.

Regulation thread on ZDnet

2008-03-14T16:08:00.000-07:00

Don't draw the wrong conclusions from history.

Railroads were undone by a first a corrupted monopoly and then by the post-war interstate highway initiative championed by all the war profiteers hoping to profit further in peace time.

Deregulation of the Airlines has resulted in massive layoffs, instability, increased mechanical failures, delays, and horrible customer service (tacked on charges, re-schedule charges, no refunds, longer lines, passenger harassment, removal of amenities like food and water, etc.) with not enough change in ticket value to justify any of the other deficiencies. With the fleets continuing to age, we're only going to see more mechanical problems in the future.

Looking to the sorry examples of deregulated TV or Radio will find you nothing good to report.. several hundred channels and nothing on, propaganda machine for war, corruption and self-descructive consumerism.

Regulation in most cases, provides the only preventative protection available to the general public (or as industry would call them, the customer). Why do we have a list of ingredients on our food packages? Regulation. Why is "price fixing" (a secret agreement between competitors to artificially inflate prices) prosecutable? Regulation. Why do we have an 8 hour work day? a 40 hour work week? workplace safety standards? It's all various forms of Regulation.

Caps on what big business can do are necessary because otherwise, they WILL eventually increase the severity of immoral practices to make bigger and bigger profits. History is RIFE with examples of this.

Seattle Indymedia - FCC Town Hall Hearing

2008-02-12T16:05:00.000-08:00

The FCC hearing tonight at the Seattle Town Hall went pretty well for the public - it wasn't so good for the handful of media conglomeration advocates who spoke. Kevin Martin got an earful of our discontent, our hopes, our accomplishments, and our strong opinion against media consolidation.

I was present in Monterey, CA at that leg of the 2004 hearings.. and I'd have to say that this recording of public and panel comments was as good or better than that one. There weren't as many people (given the short notice) but the people who where, gave solid and passionate testimonies to not only commissioner Copps but also Kevin Martin! Can you believe it? Now, Martin didn't stay at the commissioners' table the entire time, nor was he paying attention 100% - but he DID keep coming back and listening. I left a little after 9:30 pm so I don't know if he stayed in his chair until the end but he was CERTAINLY subjected to hours and hours of people telling him that the previous FCC decisions concerning consolidation have caused so much harm and any future loosening of consolidation restrictions would cause even more - that it is NOT in the public interest, it is NOT what we need, and it is NOT what we want.

There were speakers from diverse backgrounds, ages, shapes and sizes - all giving the same opinion but from their own perspective, in their own way. In a discussion of media diversity, we gave them public diversity.. in person and en masse.

Probably one of the best (there were so many memorable speakers) angles of perspective came from a middle aged woman with a british accent. She got up and told the commission that she was "shocked.. that there are so many people here tonight, BEGGING to you - for what should be their right." (not sure if I'm quoting exactly)

It's something that no one else spoke of and I myself hadn't backed out of the moment enough to realize the absurdity of the entire situation. Why ARE we needing to fly, drive, bike or run in from across town or across the country with a few days notice, just to have the chance to jostle in line for a chance to beg to this appointed commission? Why aren't we being asked what's in our interest before-hand? Why aren't we polled? Why aren't they coming to US to make their decisions?

Why must we be forced to beg for what is right? To beg for them to do what is right?

It's an important point that I'm glad was made. Within the sea of other statements that comprised some of the finest public feedback I've witnessed from a group as large as this - it wrapped it all up, back to a point where all of the impassioned pleas from us were suddenly in a greater perspective.. That it's come down to this now. That we're being treated this way. It's simply inhumane.

How could ANYONE after hearing everything that was said tonight, go back to their office and still side with corporate media on this? How could they live with themselves?

I guess we'll find out when Kevin Martin gets back to D.C.

Congress.org - State of the Union

2008-01-29T17:12:00.000-08:00

The 2008 State of the Union address was chock full of lies and half-truths.. deceptive statements and sugar-coated names for evil promises. What's worse, this dictation of past and future crimes are the kind which cause the death of hundreds of thousands, the suffering of millions.. and the slow erosion of this entire nation. Like all of this president's speeches, I was sorely disappointed by his brazen disregard for humanity and his inability to own up to the horrific misdeeds of this administration.

In short, it was a waste of time, a boring puff piece, a corrupted sales pitch for an American Dream being pushed ever farther from reality.

Bush should be ashamed of himself. I saw no shame in his deceitful eye.

John Kerry discussion on Save The Internet

2008-01-09T16:02:00.000-08:00

As I see it, the internet is the most important communication medium that we need to protect, expand, and enhance - both nationally and internationally.

IMPORTANCE

Democracy is at stake. Being the only uncensored means of high speed communication, it is the only place candidates and ballot measures have nearly equal footing for the public to experience what they're about and make an informed vote.

Freedom is at stake. Through the internet you are free to express nearly anything you want to potentially anyone in the world, unbound by corporate suppression. True information, whistle-blowing, investigative reports and so on are necessities. Creativity, entertainment and cultural records are enriching. The ability for us to do EXACTLY WHAT WE'RE DOING NOW on this website is at stake.

Once again, community and human enlightenment are at stake. As with other means throughout history with which people gained new abilities to communicate and interact across previous barriers, we are at a point where the internet has the potential to let us realize how similar all our hopes and concerns are, how little we really need borders, and how once enough of us realize that - then it's obvious that we can start making life better for everyone.

SOLUTIONS

Many years ago, a plan was called for and drawn up. It was said to be the most ambitious project ever attempted, the man who drew up the plans did not have confidence it could really be done. But the government was determined and the resources were allotted. The project was to build an Interstate Highway system.. and guess what - they succeeded. And with the exception of turnpikes, U.S. roads are free for everyone to use.

That's how the "last mile" of internet should be - and CAN be. If all the necessary people in our government can ignore the corporate lobbyists for a minute and LISTEN TO US instead, they could see that we want this. They could pick a plan to do this and they could build what needs to be built for us to have free, nation-wide internet access.

People of government should realize that if they don't listen to the citizens who elected them and are corrupted by corporate interests (who are by definition and legal charter, dictatorships with a single goal of monetary profit over all other concerns), THEIR VERY JOBS ARE AT STAKE. The system in which they're employed as "public servants" will continue to slide into a republic not based on democracy but on despotism.. exactly the abuses of power that the U.S. rebelled against Britain for so many years ago.

So they need to take a new look at who they're supposed to be serving (hint: us). They need to realize that if they save and expand the internet for all, they won't NEED to be funded by corporate interests to appear on TV because people will get their information from the internet - and you won't NEED millions of dollars to appear on the internet. You can campaign all you want on the net without spending much at all, and reach thousands, millions of voters without the TV and Radio networks chopping your message into half-second bites.

So if you don't need millions of dollars to reach millions of voters, you don't need corporate campaign funders looking for special favors.. and you can listen to who you're supposed to be listening to, to make your decisions on what bills should pass and fail - the American People.

An economy based on fleecing citizens for corporate profit and fighting war is not sustainable. An economy based on bankers controlling all is not sound. A culture based on capitalism is not humane. We need to stop this direction while we still can, before it all comes crashing down.

The first place to start is with the last bastion of free speech, high-speed communication, and potential for true democracy - the internet. It can be the main conduit between the people and the government to get things on the right track.

Freepress and TV 2.0

2007-12-26T15:59:00.000-08:00

One alternative could be a mixture of electronic democracy and either pay per view or state funding.

With digital TV and Radio (and of course, net-based entertainment) there could be added, a rating functionality. The audience could casually participate in providing democratic feedback of anything that is being broadcast. It would be great if the ratings were not just a simple up or down vote but could also be in the form of a 1-5 or 1-10 rating - or be in the form of emotion (joy, disgust, sadness, etc.) and concept ("I feel informed", "This is important", "This is disappointing", etc.) buttons. Along with this ability to give pertinent but simple feedback, the results could be made transparent as well. There could be a view mode that would show current feedback statistics for the broadcast.

That would handle one aspect of opinions of how valued a broadcast may be to the public.. the other side is where the funding for these programs comes from. You could either go the capitalist or the socialist way.. or both.

In the capitalist method, everything would be pay per view. The price would probably have to be low or not many people would watch. Life with that would most likely be similar to using cell phones without "plans".

In the socialist method, taxes would pay for the programming and voters would control what shows or stories (or general styles/genres/subjects) actually get the funding.

In either method, advertising could be excluded entirely to remove that source of bias and influence. The programs might not be as well funded.. but I think in most cases, current programs are over-paid and the broadcasting industries are rife with wasteful excess.

---
As for how to prevent propaganda.. the best way is probably through diversity of viewpoints broadcast. And the best way to increase the diversity of viewpoints is to reduce the cost and difficulty of creating contents and broadcasting them as much as possible.

If it's cheap enough and easy enough for someone to argue with what you say, they'll do it.

---
You probably shouldn't use the word "filter" in this context because in the larger picture it amounts to censorship and informational fascism.

What could be implemented for net-info though, are protocols for increasing the ability to quickly/easily verify information and for certifying credentials or building cumulative "street cred" for a given source.

I can think of a couple ways of doing this - and I think these sort of systems would give the greatest benefit without needing to form armies of corruptible moderators or attempting to develop impossibly smart artificial intelligence programs.

The Knowledge Paradox

2007-12-22T15:57:00.000-08:00

This situation definitely centers around the "knowing about knowing" paradox that allows them to - among other things - make us believe that we are part of an ideological minority, when in fact the direct opposite is probably true.

By controlling the means of mass communication, they can make us feel more isolated and alone than we really are.

Education and health are probably the key methods for societies to realize self-empowerment. And since communication is most of what education is, that makes mass communication a critical device in how each one of us formulates our view of the world around us (especially beyond us).

Right now the Internet is the only means of mass communication still dominated by diverse and opposing viewpoints.. I think it's for this reason that we have a movement as massive as we do, trying to counter forces of oppression. The internet is the only place where we can FIND OUT about opinions and reports that contradict what is being broadcast on TV, Radio, and Print. It is the very means with which we even know that things like media consolidation / net un-neutrality / etc. are happening and that there are other people out there who don't like it either.

Remember there is no such thing as common knowledge, only what is either experienced directly or passed on from one person to another.

If there is a question of focus, that could go in several directions. Either we fight to protect the internet over all else and branch out from there.. or we get some other medium up and known as fast as we can before they shut down the open internet.. or we give up both to take over TV or Radio.

I don't know. Neither of these focus actions sound as good as keeping at all fronts.

I guess the biggest thing to consider is that we HAVE to keep some line of communication up between all of us, whatever it may be.

FreePress.org and efficacy

2007-12-10T15:55:00.000-08:00

It is apparent to me that besides the efforts of small collectives of relatively poor and unconnected people trying to turn the tide of tidal waves like corporate propaganda environment we have today - the two ways we have left to affect significant improvements to the communications landscape is by making friends with people who are one or both of the following:

1. Rich

2. Connected

Organizations like MoveOn and even the ACLU have only persisted at the level they have because of one or more wealthy benefactors who agree with their way of thinking. Somehow these orgs and their silent sponsors found each other and I think more of this needs to happen.

If this isn't on the table as an important course of action, I feel it should be. While I don't generally favor fighting fire with fire (and in this case, money with money and clout with clout), it can have the effect of leveling the playing field.

I'm wondering if anyone has ideas about who we could appeal to? Possibly disheartened members or former members of major corporations, banks, the federal reserve, or so on? Maybe on the side of influence there are people in the congress, lobbyists, newspeople or military officers.. I'm sure there are some of them who don't like what's going on, or at least some aspect of it.

Maybe.. maybe some of those contractors in Iraq that received portions of that "missing" $9 billion a couple years ago? I mean, if two guys with no experience or staff can get paid $100 million for "securing" an airfield that no aircraft used - I'd think either some of them might be feeling guilty and want to give back a little, or we could get even a fraction of that kind of money from someone else.. which would amount to far more money than could ever be raised by donations from us, the fantom that used to be called the middle class.

I mean $100 million.. one hundred million. Can anyone even visualize that kind of money? It doesn't even sound like a real amount.. a zillion kadjillion.

But that's what we're up against.. people that have that kind of money and people that were willing to do just about ANYthing to get that kind of money.

So if any of those people in that strata might be willing to confront their peers with our help - either openly or discretely - that would be an opportunity that could change everything.

They might need us just as much as we need them.

War Economy Explanation

2007-11-05T15:51:00.000-08:00

"can someone explain how a 'war economy exists'? how could the economy revolve around war? that makes no fucking sense?" -some gamer

We in the U.S. already live in a war economy. It's been called the Military Industrial Complex and it's been around for a long time. It's one of the main reasons why we are considered a rich nation, yet we have such a massive percentage of people below the poverty line. Here's how it works:

During Peacetime
1 Corporate Taxes ---fund---> Military & Contractors
2 Lobbyists of Military Contractors --fund---> Politicians
3 Politicians --divert further taxes to---> Contractors
...repeat steps 2 and 3

During War
1 Politicians --declare---> War and "Police Actions"
2 Taxes --- heavily fund---> Military, Contractors, Mercenaries
3 Military and Contractors lose equipment and personnel
4 Lobbyists of Military Contractors --fund---> Politicians
5 Politicians --heavily divert taxes to---> Contractors, Mercenaries
...repeat steps 3 through 5

So the flow of money is primarily from the corporate and property taxes of the citizens, through the government, and into the military contractors. The "economy" is considered sustained because all that money starts in a bank and ends up in a bank - at the expense of you, the working Joe. In a war economy, the working public is considered nothing more than a bottomless well of money and soldiers to be used for making war at a high profit.

to Worker Rights rally members in DC

2007-10-07T15:50:00.000-07:00

Workers' rights are fundamental ingredients to a civil functional society - and most importantly, not something that has had a very long existence in this country.

We as a nation seem so quick to forget that we've not always had even the bare-bones niceties that workplaces are now required to provide. Child labor, 8 hour days, minimum wage, and so on? Many of these changes are only as old as our grandparents. Murders, beatings and massacres of union leaders and striking workers? That only slowed down in the 50's..

We haven't had these rights for very long at all, and getting them cost the lives of so many good people.. people risking everything for a better common good.

To let this country slide into the past, into the dark days of inhuman working conditions - it's a tragedy. A tragedy to let this happen around us, and even to FORGET the deadly sacrifice our parents, grandparents and great grandparents made to get every little step closer to a civil society. It's the worst possible end to our struggle for basic worker rights..

The rich are rapidly eroding every right and every regulation we've risked and lost with our lives to attain. This is happening right now, all over the country. They seek little more than personal gain to come directly at your expense. Their tactics are insidious, their purpose is callous if not sadistic, and they use the very qualities that make you human against you.

They MUST be stopped at every turn. There are more of us than their are of them.. and they need us for them to be who they are. Without us, they're nothing. We can win again. We can always win again. We just need to remember our past, be aware of our present, and be willing to risk what they haven't already taken from us - for a better future. Sometimes that will be our time, sometimes that will be our safety.. but if we don't stand up to risk everything, then everything is eventually what they will take from us all.

to Cafferty File on CNN about Obama running for 08

2007-06-03T15:48:00.000-07:00

Obama should definitely run for president, and Kucinich should be the vice president. That would create a dynamic fusion of kindhearted beauty and progressive brainpower never seen before in our presidential office. That's a pair of candidates I would actually WANT to vote for, instead of the common task of trying to choose the lesser of evils.

Online vs Paper News

2007-05-20T15:47:00.000-07:00

"Online, free media is one of the contributing factors to the shrinking circulation of good newspapers,"

THAT is a reversal statement.. The reason there is such an upsurge in Online/Free media is because the 'good' newspapers and tv stations turned to crap long ago. If traditional media is starting to mimic online media now, that's only the most recent step in their own decay of utility.

Online media is a REACTION to bad traditional media, not the other way around.

The AOL Effect

2006-04-14T15:43:00.000-07:00

Ah, the endless struggle... I like to call what happens to systems, places, anything that groups participate in - The AOL Effect. I call it that because whenever there is a jewel of participatory coolness created, it is often later crushed by a flood of abusive population when the gates are opened to them.. Like what happened to just about everything (irc, email, usenet, etc.) when AOL users were granted access to the rest of the internet.

I have three theories for how participatory systems can be built to deal with this effect.

Build the system, enjoy it while you can, then run away and build the next version in secrecy.. enjoy until the flood arrives there. Repeat forever.
Build semi-closed systems where a small dictatorship of admins have godlike power. Delete, confine, limit, and exile as necessary.
Somehow build systems that simply make it infinitely more desirable to participate in the system in ways that are not abusive. Systems that make abuse ineffectual and intended use work nicely. Preemptive enticement and positive results to keep the system healthy, instead the traditional (and failed) methods of constructing artificial walls and punishment.

Theory solution 3 I think is the best way to go with social ills in the physical world as well.

Apple Monitors and DRM?

2006-02-19T15:42:00.000-08:00

Just what we don't need.. DRM, especially tied to hardware is always a bad idea. Not only is it needlessly restrictive to the creative process these industries OWE THEIR VERY EXISTENCE TO - but they're frequently based on flawed or buggy code.

DRM, or Digital Rights Management is also a misleading term. These systems don't MANAGE the rights at all.. they just restrict fair usage. It should really be called Gratuitously Restricted Electronic Entertainment Detention or GREED for short.

to MacFixit - Noisy fan fix

2006-02-15T15:40:00.000-08:00

I just found a fix for a horribly noisy power supply fan and I figure I should write this somewhere, since I didn't find any direct information on it when I was searching for clues.

I've been running an 8600 as a server for.. MANY years. So for these many years straight it's been operating 24 hours a day without rest or even very much attention. A few months ago it started making more noise than usual but it wasn't too bad, as it was in a closet. This last week, it began making loud, horrible, and finally unstoppable noise that pierced through walls, air, and my sanity. Inspecting the machine led me to believe one or both of the fans needed oil or cleaning or something. I also knew I didn't have time to pry everything open and mess with the innards for a couple days. I was nearly hitting a deadline on a project until today so I had to just try to ignore it until this evening, when finally I was able to dig around inside it.

So I spun the fan mounted on the door and all it made was a very slight hissing sound.. well, must be the one in the power supply. Partially opening this dangerous little box, I slipped the fan out far enough to clean the blades (which like the rest of the machine was completely filthy with fine dust) and then give it a spin. That was definitely it.

After struggling with the half open power supply for a while, I realized I needed to just fully disconnect it and take the U shaped casing piece all the way off. So now that I could mess with it easier with only two hands, I tried to get into the fan. I saw pretty quick by looking into the space between the mounting and blade-cap that there wasn't simply a spindle right there that I could oil.

I searched the net for maintenance instructions on that type of fan (a Sensflow) and found nothing. I searched for anything on how to open it, take it apart, oil it, anything.. I found nothing.

I figured the fan was toast anyway, so if I break it trying to fix it.. at least I'd have tried to fix it. There was always the other fan, and since we've had a high and low temp of 33 and 20 degrees out here in Seattle - I wasn't too worried about the machine overheating before I could get a new fan. So I tried pulling it apart. I tried prying it off but it didn't feel like it would give.. so I kept inspecting the damn thing for another way in..

There was a sticker on the other side, so I pushed at the middle of it.. and it revealed a divot of some kind, maybe a screw. So I peeled back the sticker and found a spindle, overflowing with a red powder.

Hmm..

I searched the net for any instances of powder based lubricants.. red or otherwise. I found nothing... The only thing slightly helpful I found during this whole operation was the Wikipedia listing for Computer Fans. This fan before me most likely had a sleeve type bearing.. and the article said that those kind were prone to eventually drying out... and this thing was most certainly as dry as one could get.

I dropped some oil in and let it work into the rest of the bearing. I gave it a few spins.. it got quieter and quieter - and I was very relieved. I sealed up the sticker and put my computer back together. I hooked it up back into it's closet home and powered it up.

Whisper quiet... Fixorated.

So if your computer fan starts making horrible squeaking, whining, moaning sounds - try peeling back that sticker and see if it needs some nice fresh oil.

Either that or it's possessed.. in which case you must then chop off the computer's faceplate and drive a stake through its motherboard while chanting "In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida" and emptying your thoughts of all things Cool Whip.

on Ubuntu boards about WPA bounty

2005-04-08T15:35:00.000-07:00

I think the main point in this issue is that it should just work. We don't have to mess with Ubuntu to get Ethernet working, the same should be true for Wireless.

When key drivers, WPA, and other wireless add on bits are available but not installed, enabled, or mentioned during install - that's not helpful for everyone, and it particularly doesn't make sense when other less crucial software IS installed and enabled by default.

If someone has made WPA work in Ubuntu, that should get folded into the next update/autoupdate/release. If someone else sees problems and finds a fix, same deal.

That's SUPPOSED to be what open source is for, right? Not for everyone to keep re-inventing the wheel when there is really, truly, no need for it.

to Cnet about games

2005-03-21T15:34:00.000-08:00

Cooper's article basically is saying game developers (publishers and their shareholders) aren't listening to lawmakers in washington (well, christian lobbyists really).

He's TRYing to say that game makers aren't listening to We The People, but anyone who knows how D.C. works also knows that very rarely do the needs and desires of The People get put first. What this is slanted opinion piece is doing in a News section, I have no idea. He's taking sides with the moral elitists and doing very little reporting... BAD journalist!

So, in this battle between a small cabal of shareholders seeking infinite profits and a small cabal of neo-christians seeking a Stepford Wives society, you're never going to have a truce when the subject at hand is what the general public is going to purchase or consume.. regardless of whether it's something they really want, or the plethora of products that appeal to the 'must look at the car crash' instinct.

The real conflicts, issues, and potential dialog of this matter are almost completely outside of everything Cooper just wrote. Obviously Cooper doesn't get it and surely, he can do better.

About Spotlight

2005-03-07T15:32:00.000-08:00

Both Spotlight and anything appearing in Longhorn were ideas stolen from (in order of development):

- Kickstart (1995)
- SpeedApp
- LaunchBar

Kickstart was a rock star. I'd carry it around with me on a floppy disk, for anyone's Mac that I'd use or be asked to fix. I would copy it on and after a very quick index scan, I could launch any program without knowing where the hell it had been installed. 18k of pioneering genius.

to htmlfixit about .xxx

2005-02-14T15:30:00.000-08:00

Well, ICANN doesn't listen to public suggestion. More than 6 years ago I submitted a couple of letters to them suggesting among other domain choices, that .xxx be used as a new top level domain. I wrote that the best course of action would be if .xxx were made available and provided free switch overs from their com/net/org based domains to xxx.

Back then, it would have worked. The web was different then, the porn sites operated differently and didn't build markets by relying on the tricks they do now (spam, domain typo, unrelated domains, etc.). The hubs, portals, and outlets didn't exist in the same complexity. Less was centralized, indexed and organized. All the .com domains were rapidly being snatched up.

Adult sites would have welcomed both the exposure (to their audience) and freedom (from groups of the offended) that this top level domain can provide. As long as the non-switch price stayed affordable, .xxx tld could even be used for individual objects of content.. for instance, sites that have some adult material mixed with much that is not, simply have that content linked from their .xxx domain - automatic child-safe exclusion. All groups involved would have benefitted from the line in the sand drawn by the tld.

But much time has passed.

Now it seems to me that it's too late. Especially if they're going to charge more for it than other domains. With methods changed and price not attractive, there is little incentive now for porn sites (or any sites with some amount of adult oriented contents) to purchase or consider switching to .xxx anymore. I still foresee there being some usage of this better-late-than-never tld but I don't expect it to match level of success that it would have so many years ago. Too bad, really.

to Verisign survey

2005-02-09T15:25:00.000-08:00

Because over the many years I've been a customer of InterNIC, Network Solutions and Verisign, I've been treated to a long and steady series of unpleasant customer experiences.

        ⁃        First there was the "we are God, we'll do what we want, when we want" mentality that has persisted in some form to the present day.
        ⁃        Then there was the "we need to start charging, though we don't know the first thing about running a real business" stage that was marked with high prices and some of the worst customer support in the world.
        ⁃        Then there is the current stage of "we've got all these gobs of cash from charging people so much in our market monopoly but now we're being under-cut, so we'd better use all that money to bludgeon everyone with high-priced marketing ploys instead of improving the value of our products and services" that has only slightly improved with the better-late-than-never enhanced web account tools.

The only reason I still use Verisign Secure Certificates is because competing certificates don't yet have enough browser support and the general public is uninformed about web security.

(in the final bit of irony, a couple years later, Verisign's own root certificates lost all browser support all over the world - requiring every single web master to modify their server setup to make up for this error in planning)

abortion thread posting

2004-09-02T15:23:00.000-07:00

I completely agree with her. True that my opinion in this matter doesn't mean as much since I'm a man, but I would also like to add a couple more points:

Concerning photos of abortions, EVERY surgical proceedure looks horrifying. Doesn't matter whether it's an abortion, a heart transplant or a root canal. They're all bloody, messy operations that show parts of us we don't like to see. Even natural birth looks horrific. Using photos of abortion procedures in this way is a dim-witted scare tactic that only plays off of our reflexive reaction to a disturbing image.

In a similar way, how would you pro-lifers react to giant photos of neglected, starving, abused, malformed children that were forced to be born unwanted as a result of poverty, inscest, rape, assault, pollution, or anything else that would make them come out alive but unwell. Perhaps we could show pictures of the assault and rape as well. We have quite a few children born this way in our country already, pro-life laws will only make the number of those children rise from thousands to millions.

So should the government do what she offered, send all these forced-birth children to live at your house?

FCC Indymedia Report

2004-07-21T15:20:00.000-07:00

In my first bit of news to report, I'd like to say that the Federal Communications Commission Localism Public Hearing held last night in Monterey was a success. The three commissioners present were greeted with a nearly unanimous 5 hour wave of disapproval concerning the effects of their deregulation of media consolidation.

Person after person voiced unique, eloquent, and emphatic remarks of why it hasn't worked, what has been going wrong and what ideas the FCC could use to fix it. I'm very happy to report that even though I didn't have enough time to prepare anything worthy of the open mic on this topic, I wouldn't have had to. Other attendees of the public did for the most part, a splendid job of concisely presenting the opinions and facts that the FCC - and everyone really - should hear most..as well as ripping media power abusers (like Clearchannel, Murdock, etc.) a new ass hole. The only other facet I could have spoken on was how these and other rulings spelled the demise of internet radio's former glory. Everything else was said and said well.

Our level of energy, unanimity and intelligence was inspiring. We know now that at least at this one event, we the people were heard. Loud, clear and in person. Copps, Adelstein and Abernathy have several hours of west coast public and industry discontent to shove in Powell's orifice of choice.

I'd like to make a more complete report, one with quotes and greater depth. Apparently there will soon be a streaming video webcast of the event, so I should be able to do that. But also, if anyone has their own complete footage of the event - my own is shaky and woefully incomplete - a best-of video would also be great to make and release.

Side Points of interest:

- A couple people from the SF Indymedia were there. Liam who spoke at the mic and the girl who wore little pink piglet ears.

- For some members of the hearing staffers and conventional media, the energy of turnout was apparently frightening. People in suits nervously described us as "Quite a lively crowd" and stayed quiet after the talks began.

- Dozens of useless city police were scattered inside and out, with trucks and barricades. They stood around, bored out of their minds for the entire event.

More information on this and the other six hearings around the U.S. is available at this address:

http://www.fcc.gov/localism/hearing-monterey072104.html

to Forbes about broadband

2004-01-15T15:17:00.000-08:00

(responding to a badly written, wrong-headed article)

There are several major points given as reasons in this article, which I don't feel ARE the main reasons behind various events and decisions.

1. Near the beginning of this piece, it is mentioned that reasons for customers not adopting broadband were cost and content, being further narrowed to lack of content being the only reason. In my experience reading of satisfied and unsatisfied customers broadband, I've found the main inhibiting factors to be Cost, Availability and Hassle. For VERY large number of people trying to get broadband, it simply costs too much, they can't get it at their house and they've had all sorts of trouble with customer service, reliability, contracts and line speed. I've never heard anyone complaining about or praising an ISP because of 'content'. The Industry Watchers, whoever they are, are obviously smoking crack.

2. The featured success story of SBC and Yahoo and it's rise in number of customers has nearly everything to do with the FCC cutting off third party access to phone company switches and millions of dollars in marketing than it has to do with this supposed list of unique content and features. When local ISPs are barred from providing and the only choice is the heavily advertised SBC-Yahoo DSL, that's the only place customers CAN go.

3. The reference to "what happened to the music companies" is also a crock. The reason why record sales are down is mainly because they illegally raised their prices way too high, they're producing fewer and fewer artists and those artists are making less and less compelling music. In short, maximizing their profits with minimal investment. If anything, internet-based mp3 swapping has HELPED record sales because it's free promotion for artists who the RIAA is not actively promoting and distributing. The Big Labels are gouging themselves out of their own market and lynching their customers in a spiteful abuse of power simply because the public wants music that is diverse, available and affordable..something the RIAA is not willing to provide. I see the same thing coming into play with Hollywood.

What really needs to happen for broader broadband to take off in the U.S., is that the ISPs need to counter the FCC monopoly ruling to allow access and competitive pricing/features, the government needs to provide fat subsidies for last mile wiring, and mega-corp content publishers need to keep their greedy mitts out of the DRM schemes. People want hassle-free, affordable broadband wherever they live. If they choose to download sounds and videos, they want those as well to be affordable and hassle-free.

Choice, after all, is what separates us from the inanimate. And a forced choice is not a real choice at all.

Response to jailing p2p students

2004-01-08T15:15:00.000-08:00

This is one of the dumbest plans I've heard yet, regarding users of peer to peer networks. Carter's opinion that 'making an example out of people by imprisoning them will act as a deterrent' is nothing more than an abuse of power. The first reason being, the threat of punishment has never been a reliable method of instilling appropriate behavior. If it was, our prisons would not be bursting at the seems with over 1.4 million people and 6.6 million people on parole, probation or in jail..and growing at a rate of 3 and a half percent every year. This means 1 in every 32 adults, it hardly appears to be a successful means to deter. Carter's plan is obviously one to build more prisons (increasing state revenue), stock them with educated young boys and girls (further state revenue) and put them to work in new areas of the established prison workforce (yet more state revenue). Not to mention that it does wonders for beating down the creative spirit of the individual and helping the heavily corrupted record industry to further narrow the availability of diverse of musical talent into the handful of half-rate pop "artists" (I use the term for lack of a fittingly descriptive one) which are rammed down the public's throat through every media delivery method which they own.

If the goal is to rid the world of intellectual property theft - if there is such a thing - I would instead recommend the following courses of action:

1. Lower the cost.
Insane prices of anything that can be copied are the number one cause of both Real Piracy - that which is copied by, sold by and/or a profit solely made by someone with no personal or financial connection to the author/creator of the material - and Fake Piracy - that which is copied for personal enjoyment or copied to give away freely for another person's enjoyment. Lowering prices makes people astonishingly more willing to buy authentic copies for themselves, because that makes them realistically attainable. Consider the situation of attempting to get 5 albums on CD. Let's see, should we buy them all new at $100 and not be able to buy food for this month? Hmm. How about buy them used for probably around $35 and still be able to eat? Still stuck eating raman but much better overall. I'll assume you get the point.

2. Pay the artist, not the promoter.
The high prices combined with the fact that the artist receives such a small portion of the profits, makes the choice not to by a new a frequently easy one. Why not buy a used copy, download a compressed version or trade tapes with someone? Most of your money goes to the promoter, the label, the publisher if you buy new. The answer is to do away with these bohemoths. They were a good idea when they started but they've outlived their use in this world. Artists need studios and a certain level of promotion and distribution; but beyond basics that could be provided by freelancers or small agencies, the music should speak for and sell itself. The Internet allows for a means of distributed commerce that would have been impossible in years past. We can now built standards for interactive listening, purchase and even electronic distribution that could potentially allow the public find all the new music they could hope to find and pay the artist directly for every copy of the album or even individual song that is purchased..either new, used or downloaded. This leads into step 3.

3. Embed the copyright, free the audience.
When media presentation is enjoyed digitally, you have the unique ability to invent a new method of intellectual commerce. How?

3.1. For starters, you can embed complete creative ownership information into the file and keep it there no matter how many subsequent copies are made or how it is transmitted to the audience - i.e., CD, Minidisc, DVD, Internet Radio, Digital Radio and so on.

3.2. Provide a per-piece purchase price for copied products. This can be both an embedded, time depreciated rate for disconnected network copying devices and a market value rate for networked copying devices; via an artist/item identification string that acts as a homing pigeon for payments to find their author(s).

3.3. Device support. Playback/Copy devices would need four things: a manufacturer/device serial number, a resettable ownership ID key, an internal clock and internet networking support. This would allow the copyrighted material to know where it is, if it should be charging for usage and give the ability for the charge to be initiated.

3.4. Last piece of the puzzle, dedicated servers. A scalable number of servers dotted around the globe could be in charge of maintaining the status and grouping of IDs, placing charges and initiating media transfers.

At this point, I must stress that the technology is less important than the way it is implemented. It could either be used to freely seek out and share entertainment while giving credit and payments to the authors or it could be used to imprison creativity and the enjoyment of expression within a digital hell that nobody wants.

If this technology is used correctly, it can allow the audience to experience the work of the artist/author/creator for free via public delivery, purchase a copy of the individual work or collection (an album, series, etc.) from information embedded in the data stream, make copies to replay the work on other devices they own for free, make exact copies for other people to purchase, and make lower quality copies for others to experience for free. When a payment is to be made on a work of the author, it can be executed directly from the device to the author. No question of authenticity, no bogus charges, no needless limitations for playback, no need for middle-men and less starving artists.

Used incorrectly, this could be the means by which to lock down everyone's ability to copy, trade and enjoy copyrighted material to the point of futility.

Example: Bob buys an album and plays it on his stereo. Yay, he's happy. He thinks his friend Sue would might like to listen to one of the songs, so he tries to record it onto a tape. His stereo says "Error - Violation of Copyright. Further attempts to illegally duplicate will result in Fine or Imprisonment. This attempt has been logged and sent to the appropriate authorities." Whoa, says Bob. That doesn't sound like a good idea. He decides maybe he should just make her an mp3 of it on his computer. He gets the same error. Strange, thinks Bob. He tries to play the music from his computer. Error, with an additional message that if he wishes, he can purchase a license to play the music on his computer as well. Buy the same album twice? No thanks says Bob. He decides to go over to Sue's house and just play her the song from his album, directly on her stereo. As he's leaving the house, the stereo flashes on with a new message, saying that the one time purchase of his music will now be a subscribed service, with a monthly charge of only $59.99 for unlimited playback on his authorized stereo. In the car, Bob starts wanting to hear his new record again and pops the CD into his car stereo. Error it says, and tells him that he's just been fined $300. Three hundred dollars? That has to be a joke, thinks Bob. He arrives at Sue's house and tells her about this great song that she should just love listening to. He pops in the record and excitedly presses play. "Error - Violation of Copyright. A warrant for your arrest has just been issued. Please stay where you are. The term of your incarceration is set for 3 months."

Overall words to remember: Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
Networked digital entertainment allows distributors to be able to track and punish whoever they feel like messing with at the time. It also allows the public to copy and trade copyrighted material at a much faster rate than before. Both are an abuse that the technology affords. Neither side can fully justify carrying on because of actions taken by the other but I personally feel that the side of the rich and powerful, the record companies and the lawmakers, is one that inflicts a greater detriment to the common good. The reason why is because their final intent is one of restriction, control, benign censorship and greed. The final intent of the file-swapping public however is one of high entropy, community, happiness and freedom. Now I don't know about everyone else but I tend to see humanity having the traits of the latter. In case this doesn't ring any bells, I must put forth the reminder that being inhuman is a bad thing.

about the Induce Act

2004-01-05T15:13:00.000-08:00

If you try to imagine a world where, from the start, everything invented had exclusive ownership of the person or company or origin.. You end up in a world without the richness of art and innovation. It's one thing to give credit, it's quite another to demand indefinite intellectual ownership under threat of grandiose punishment.

Imagine for instance, if long ago, a guitar player in the southern united states thought up the walking bass riff and immediately copyrighted/patented it. That would mean very little if ANY blues music would ever be recorded, depending on if he was open to licensing. No blues music means no country, no r&b, and no rock & roll! Basically, no american music! No american music, no Recording Industry Association of America! Without the free sharing of intellectual "property", the corporations bent on utter monopolization of industries built on those artistic and intellectual materials, there would be NO INDUSTRY TO RULE in the first place.

The RIAA owes its very existence to the process it is trying to outlaw and all the devices which have made the audience/creators of american music grow to the level of involvement it is today. The record labels' level of inhumane greed and bills such as this 'Induce Act' which seek similar ends are of no benefit to the common good, nor to the actual creators of american music. Such thinking is fundamentally flawed.

to iTunes

2003-11-03T15:11:00.000-08:00

The iTunes store should evolve out of being another lackey for the RIAA, in order to sell a SELECTION of music instead of the narrow force-feed of less than stellar material from the biggest record labels.

In a spot search for music I've been looking for, I found 2 artists out of my list of 100 I've heard and like on Internet Radio.

In spot browse of the latest music added, I found nothing I'd ever want to hear again.

It was good strategy to get the RIAA on Apple's side but in the end, it will take the wind out of iPod sales when people still can't download the music they want.

Mac Game Piracy

2003-10-20T15:08:00.000-07:00

How on earth would anyone know that the number of unpurchased copies is rising or falling?

This is not a hollywood movie where there's some fanciful PirateNetWatch 3.8 (tm) showing a red progress meter with a flashing, beeping "Not Profitable!" warning above and below.

My take is that this is a scare tactic. The game industry (rapidly becoming the most profitable in the area of entertainment) needs to just do the following:

1) Make better games
2) Always release demos
3) Price them affordably

As far as I know, most games get borrowed because they're amusing but not good enough to buy, there is no demo to try, or the person just can't afford it at the time.. or all three combined.

And one other thing, we're not living in a time of vast riches and fair earnings. We're living in a depressed economy with more people under the poverty line - both in number and percentage (which IS something we can gather statistics for) - then ever in US history. This is not the time to squeeze out a market because it's not making a game publisher as rich as could be with an optimum profit margin. This is the time to ease off a little, treat your customers as people.

to some local newspapers

2003-10-15T15:06:00.000-07:00

Dear Editor:

I would like to raise public awareness of a real and present danger to our Sierra Nevada forests, threatening to rapidly increase the rate of destruction far beyond what the forests can ever recover from.

The Bush Administration has announced plans to TRIPLE the logging levels, and focus that logging on bigger Old Growth trees, ruining the delicate and unique ecosystems that have made this mountain range their home since before human history.

This land and the life springing from it is, remember, a National Forest. That means it is owned by the public, not the government. That means you and me, we all own that forest. When private and even foreign logging companies cut down OUR TREES from our land, they then turn around and SELL US OUR OWN TREES BACK TO US for greasy buck, or they sell even more of our trees to other countries for fatter profits.

Bush gets money from the logging companies and the logging companies get money at our expense. All we get out of the deal is a lot of clear-cut mountain wasteland where an ancient, beautiful and thriving forest once stood. We don't benefit and our forests don't benefit.

Say goodbye to your clean air, your clean water, your natural parks, your wildlife, your potential cures for disease and the ancient forests you've inherited. Say goodbye to your american eagles and purple mountains majesty.

Say goodbye that is, unless we raise our voice in number to protect our forests from Bush's destructive plans. Head on over to http://environmentcalifornia.org/ add your voice to the growing rumble of Californians not content to let our forests be gutted and left for dead by the greedy hands of industry and government.

Dear George W Bush

2003-09-11T15:02:00.000-07:00

I think it's about time you turned yourself in for your crimes against humanity and the world at large. Publically state all of your most recent and atrocious crimes of war and oppression, all of your most destructive lies, then get out of our White House and into prison. Or, since I'm sure you support the death penalty and because you're responsible for the death of over 600 US troops and over 13,000 Iraqi soldiers and civilians - commit yourself to a death sentence. Electric chair, gas, lethal injection, hanging..either way is up to you.

If this idea doesn't appeal right away, think of it as confessing your sins and receiving judgement from God. You owe it to us as well as yourself. For once, do the right thing.

What is being taught

2003-08-19T14:45:00.000-07:00

I agree with the problem of what is being taught. If you're idea of learning is the precise regurgitation of information, that makes computers geniuses and humans (except the few with 'photographic memory') utterly stupid. This then, obviously, is not the measure of intelligence and learning.

If you teach something in a way that recording and playback devices of whatever kind allow the student to pass a test with better scores than someone without such a device, that means you're attempting to teach either the wrong things or the wrong way. Tests should assess what someone has learned, not what they've blindly committed to memory. Knowledge is nothing without active thought. It's high time our crippled school system starts adopting this philosophy (among others) when (or perhaps, if) it springs forth from the ashes.

Copyright Violations - posted to Macteens

2003-07-18T14:41:00.000-07:00

While I agree that stealing things is a very unkind thing to do, the difference between what P2P sharers, professional "pirates" and copyright owning mega-corporations are doing, is what really needs to be looked at before discussing the right and wrong of file swapping.

Let's start off with terminology..
The terms PIRACY, STEALING, THEFT, ROBBERY or even BURGLARY simply do not mean what the RIAA, SPA and others portray them as meaning. Downloading copyrighted material is not an act of murder or robbery on the high seas, it is not taking money or property from a person by threat or force, nothing physical is being removed and no one is being deprived of the original material. They mis-use those words constantly and it pisses me off. The ONLY thing you can call the acts they're deeming as illegal, is Copyright Violation.

Next, let's outline the market..
In 2002, the RIAA complained of around a 4% drop in sales. They blamed this drop on activity of file-swappers. Two problems with this. First, I doubt anyone with a few brain cells wouldn't agree that the recent economy is doing very badly. Second, the recording industry did some pretty wacky shit by themselves.. They decided to do several things at once:

-Disregard the tanked economy
-Raise the price of CDs from expensive to ludicrous
-Encode copy protection in any CDs they could
-Cut their number of yearly releases by about 12,000 albums
-Not report on or release most singles for sale
-Viciously attacked internet-only radio stations

Now unless you're totally stupid, you can probably see how these points above are what hurt their sales the most. Because if you have no money, the prices have raised, you can't make tapes or mp3s of what you bought, you can't find the artist/album you want and you can't even buy a CD single..obviously you're going to be more reluctant to buy new CDs.

Another couple of interesting facts.. The decline in sales didn't happen until well after they had Napster shut down. Also their price raising tactics got them in trouble with the Federal Trade Commission, who ordered them to discontinue the cooperative Minimum Advertised Price program which may have cost consumers $480 million in illegal charges.

Next item? Evil Intent...
So with the companies under the RIAA doing all of these bizarre and nasty things, you might pose the question..."Why?"

The answer is simple. Greed through control. What they're doing is actively narrowing the variety of music available for broadcasting and sales. This maximizes their profits: Less operating costs from fewer artists to sign, manage, record and promote. More profit per sale through pricing monopoly. No competition in sales, because the radio and television don't broadcast anyone else but the select handful of most profitable pop stars. They control the market with an iron grip and take as much money as they can squeeze out. No choice for us translates into higher profits for them.

They're committing artistic censorship in the name of a greasy dollar. It's anti-freedom, anti-choice, anti-capitalist, anti-competitive and basically anti-consumer. They're making an evil musical dictatorship, built to force-feed the american public with 100% soulless top 40 crap. The only reason they're getting away with it is because they expensively lobby to the government and lawmakers - all with the money they're making off of YOU the consumer.

Are you disgusted yet?

Copyright Violations...
Now that I've outlined the lies and selfishness of who is causing the biggest stink about lost profits and violations of copyrights, I can talk about what I think of amateur (P2P jockeys) and professional (so called "pirates") copiers of copyrighted material.

First, the professionals. People who copy material of a certain value and sell those copies solely for their own profit are in my view, the only real criminals outside of the recording industry. Particularly if they do so without any form of credit available of the artist who created it. It's very clear that this is not okay legally, financially, or karmically. They are willfully undermining the creativity and/or monetary livelihood of the artist who made the material.

Second, the amateurs. My opinion about people who acquire and share copies of music (or software, etc.), is that it's more an issue of etiquette and degree. A good analogy is email. Like file swapping, people use it every day to send eachother things and frequently you can encounter cases of bad etiquette. When you use email, it's bad form to spam people with loads and loads of old jokes, chain letters, huge letters with way too much information. It's also bad to send what other people wrote without giving credit. It's unrespective and needlessly excessive. Those things are annoying, they're not done out of necessity, they're impersonal, wasteful and don't inspire the cherishing of individual items.

Going back to file-swapping, if you're copying massive amounts of songs just for the sake of copying massive amounts, if you are acquiring songs for free that you could just as easily buy, if you are distributing digital copies of songs without including the artist info; you're abusing your freedoms in a manner disrespectful to the artists. I consider that stupid and mis-guided, but I wouldn't consider it wholly illegal.

Now moderate amateur use of music or file swapping I feel to be the equivalent to sharing physical things and analog information. You buy some music, you sample some music, you share some music with friends, you find some music that you can't buy because it's out of print. Copy just enough music to listen to it where you want, hear music you wouldn't otherwise hear and allow your acquaintances to do the same.

Sure, there are lost sales but the same thing happens with dubbed tapes and borrowed or swapped gadgets. Lost sales happen every day with used products. Whenever you buy a used CD, software title, chair, anything really, not one cent goes to the original artist, manufacturer or publisher. Same as file swapping! The only two differences are, file swapping can happen between more people that don't know eachother and file swapping is cheap to track. It would cost the RIAA billions and billions of dollars to pay people to try and track physical and analog used products, which is why they don't do it. Internet-based used copies of products though they can easily track down with a meager budget and a few lawyers. Massive profits and tyrannical control through fear.

For this reason of already accepted leniency through practicality, I don't feel moderate swapping should be considered illegal or immoral. It's just the way it is in the analog world.. It makes people happy and is culturally beneficial. It stimulates active diversity and spurs commerce of the arts. Most if any lost profits through swapping, wouldn't have been attained anyway.

Another thing moderate sharing does that they don't like to admit (which also is a major benefit of Independent Internet Radio, IIR), is it acts as free advertising for the artist and anyone who wants to be associated as a licensed seller of their work. For instance, when I started hearing new music through file swapping services and especially IIR, my musical horizons widened tenfold. I found I could Get Info while songs played and jot down the names of the artists, songs and sometimes albums I listened to; then go out and buy them. My CD collection grew by leaps and bounds, and I was VERY happy with most all of my purchases. And if I hadn't heard them through these means, I wouldn't have known to look for these albums. I would otherwise still be stuck in Top 40 Hell, disenchanted by the lack of any new and good music...life, dry and pointless. Hence, P2P and IIR are good for both consumers and artists because they allow low quality versions of songs with info of origin to spread through the world and form an emotional and commercial link between the creator and the audience. Once that link is made, culture grows and people are happy to pay money for more of the music they like at a higher quality, and/or hearing the artists live. Artists that otherwise, would never be heard by so many people.

to Adobe Creative Suite Feedback

2003-03-06T14:59:00.000-08:00

It is stated on the Creative Suite pre-order page that there are upgrades only from a pre-CS version of Photoshop. While that is a good start, what about people that own older versions of some or all of the other applications bundled in CS?

For instance, I currently own older versions of Photoshop, Acrobat, Illustrator and GoLive. Each pre-CS Adobe app I own should incrimentally reduce to the cost of the Creative Suite Upgrade. I don't think it's a very good business practice to disallow upgrade value for products your customers have purchased in good faith.

Cheating your customers with outrageous upgrade prices and practices for barely improved software will only result in lackluster sales and increases in cracked copies. The economy is in a horrid state and us creative professionals are getting poorer. This is not the time for such foolishness. Give us upgrades we can afford.

Real Software "Piracy"

2002-11-14T14:38:00.000-08:00

One day I set out to buy a used piece of software (since I couldn't afford it new) and found a seller. This seller was asking an okay price that I was to pay for with a money order. I get one of these for the amount, send it off and in return I get.. O! Not what I paid for but a badly copied non-commercial CD-ROM of the software, a sheet of paper with a hastily scribbled registration number and no manual! What a surprise! Well, seeing as how I could barely contain my joy, I took all of this and any relevant information (the person's supposed name, mailing address, email, etc.) down to the local police station. Upon showing all of this to both the Sergeant and the Lieutenant, I found that they (gasp) (and pardon my french) didn't give a flying shit in the wind about it! Isn't that great?

So here I was, presenting the police with a real live intellectual property pirate right here in the US of A, handfuls of evidence and even an ADDRESS where I sent the money order to. Not only did the police not care at the time but they never did anything about it. Ever. So all this BS about law enforcement and other government agencies being so concerned about piracy and intellectual theft is just that, bullshit with a capital B. It's all about greed and control.

Internet Radio Letter 2

2002-10-24T14:25:00.000-07:00

I would like to urge you to vote against financial burdens being imposed upon Internet Radio Broadcasters. It has recently come to my attention that airwave radio stations are exempt from royalties or such from the record companies, on the basis that they provide Promotional Value. As Internet Radio actually provides more Promotional Value than airwave radio - listed in the following ways below - I see NO reason why Internet Broadcasters should be targeted for payments of any kind to the record companies. If anything, the record companies should be paying the Internet Radio stations for promoting their artists.

The ways Internet Radio provides superior Promotional Value over airwave radio:

1. it can be listened to world-wide
2. it can include full Artist, Title and other information of the currently playing song
3. it can include a link to BUY the album from which the song originates

Other ways Internet Radio (IR) is just better than airwave radio:

4. IR stations most often play nothing but music, no talking and no advertisements
5. IR stations play an extremely wide, eclectic range of music
6. IR stations are not in it for money, they broadcast for free because they love music
7. IR stations allow artists to be heard that wouldn't normally be able to be broadcast
8. IR stations can bridge political and cultural divides the same way that web pages can

Internet Radio is a beautiful thing the way it is. It's active, it's diverse, it can expand people's minds. It's freedom. It's auditory freedom. What the record companies are trying to do is remove our freedom from Internet Radio and replace it with greed. Doing so will only spoil its beauty, it will become repulsive and dictated. This country was founded on freedom, yes? I personally do not want my freedom to be turned into a dictatorship.

In closing, I'd like re-state that Internet Radio provides superior value and promotional value over other radio delivery methods for everyone involved (artists, publishers, broadcasters and listeners) and should be kept free from needlessly imposed charges. Forcing money from stations that aren't making money from broadcasting will kill them. Please don't allow this to happen. Keep creativity, diversity and the love of music alive.

Internet Radio Letter

2002-04-06T14:22:00.000-08:00

I am writing to you in regards to the soon to be decided issue of Internet Radio, what is being proposed by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and the CARP report issued by the United States Copyright Office (Docket No. 2000-9 CARP DTRA1&2) and the Notice and Record keeping for Use of Sound Recordings Under Statutory License (Docket No. RM 2002-1 37 CFR Part 201).

I strongly urge to you not let this pass into law for several reasons, both from the perspective of a producer and of a listener:

1. Restricting independent internet radio will stifle musical culture.
Currently, music of all kinds from around the globe are available to be experienced. History, culture, art and diverse points of view are contained in the music and spoken word being broadcast. I personally have enjoyed a dramatic widening of my musical world view since finding particular independent internet radio stations - stations which are coincidentally, free from annoying advertisements and pointless disc jockey talking. Restrictions will act as a censor to this new range of cultural diversity and further deaden our society with the status quo of inbred corporate selections of what music is most likely to return the most profit.

2. Restricting independent internet radio will re-establish an unfair advantage the major record labels have over independent labels and artists.
Internet radio is one of the few places that new, underground or international artists can be heard by large potential audiences in a non-live performance format. Cutting that off will drive those artists into obscurity, just because they're either not independently wealthy or backed by a major record label pushing for guaranteed sales figures reaching deep into the millions.

3. Restrictions of this kind are monetarily pointless.
What people would this restrict from broadcasting? Answer, people that are running internet radio stations for free..or at least, not to make money anyway. Is anyone losing money by having any given group of songs broadcast over these stations? No. Are the artists and music publishers getting free advertising by having these songs play with full track and artist information visible in the player applications? Yes. Are these stations committing intellectual property piracy by charging for redistribution of copywrited material that they don't own? No.. Every internet only radio station I've listened to has not charged or even run advertisements. They broadcast because they want to broadcast the music they like. There's no money to be made or lost in this activity, or for that matter, the proposed restrictions I'm advising against.

4. Restrictions in the US will only cause the small/free/hobbyist stations to broadcast from other countries.
So the process of broadcasting whatever you want will just be a little more irritating, you'll have to use a non-US server. Will that added difficulty discourage some people from setting up little stations? Sure. Will it discourage everyone? Certainly not. The people that want to continue to broadcast free of censorship will do so from anywhere outside our borders.

The very reasons I had stopped listening to airwave radio - narrow & repetitive playlists, frequent and annoying advertisements, pointless DJ talking and lack of available song/artist information - are the very reasons why I enjoy listening to Internet Radio nearly every day. Internet Radio does not suffer from those deficiencies. It's only problems are net congestion and dependance on internet connected devices, which have nothing to do with the content being broadcast.

Currently I as a listener can call up any number of specialty or eclectic Internet Radio stations to hear music that I like and have never heard before. I hear the music and only the music. If I like something enough to want to hear it whenever I want, I (most of the time anyway) can bring up the name of the Artist and Song Title - and often the Album name as well - while the song is playing. With that information I can go out and buy it. I can also recommend internet stations to any of my friends, wherever in the world they happen to be. I think this is a wonderful way to experience new music. There is SO much music out there that most of us haven't heard, and it is so nice to be able to hear from a more diverse selection than what appears in the corporate sponsored top 40.

I as a broadcaster enjoy being able to let others hear some of the music I love to listen to, and I also enjoy the freedom to use internet broadcasting to voice any points of view I'd like to express. Free speech, good music, broadcasting for the sake of broadcasting. Restrictions of this kind are going against our constitution, which is a very well phrased document meant to insure our various freedoms. These restrictions are based in greed. i don't support that. Please keep these proposed restrictions from becoming law.

to A&E about Prostitution and Drugs

1999-01-27T14:47:00.000-08:00

(replying to some postings where people were blaming both the women in some random news report where a married man was caught with a prostitute)

I don't think it's not the wife's 'fault' at that point either. It's the husband that is not only being unfaithful, but doing so in a way that is devoid of what you're saying the wife is supposed to do... be attractive and a good lover. All the guy has to have to hire a prostitute is money. He could be a horrible, nasty, rude, smelly, fat, repulsive, murderous bastard.. and if he had enough money, he could screw the most beautiful prostitute in all the land. So saying that the wife needs to do a better job is a moot point, since the only person that does have to do a good job in this situation is the prostitute.

Also, on this level, it's the same as the drug problem. You can fight the war on drugs all you want, but it's never really going to change anything. They will ALWAYS find a way to get the product to the buyer. But if there was no demand, there would be no supply. So it's stupid to prosecute whores any worse than the men that use them. The average street hooker is there because she can't do much else besides be attractive and undiscriminant. Her need for money is the driving force, she needs it to survive. Just about EVERY 'john' on the other hand, is there because they choose to be. They don't have to do this to survive. They do it because they're either too ugly, selfish, careless, or clueless to seduce a woman... probably their own wife most of all. They just want to get off at the emotional expense of others. I mean, it would be different if the husband were going to the hooker for the purpose of self-improvement or therapy. Or if the prostitute were hired by both the husband and the wife for sexual enrichment of the marrige.. But in most cases, it very much is not. If it were, I would then also see even less reason for it to be illegal...which kind of brings up a larger point.

Why is sex for hire even illegal? Why are illegal drugs illegal? In both cases, it doesn't appear to be doing much good. Both problems are rampant in our and other societies, and the illegality creates harbors for violent criminal behavior. Why? Because they're the most profitable things to be illegal. Making them illegal really doesn't solve anything, it just makes them more dangerous. Think if prostitution could become legal to the point of organizations forming for the purpose of training, certifying, sanctioning and unionizing the industry. Pimps would become rapidly extinct, replaced by trained security. Gone would be the abuse and danger in the prostitute's profession. At this point they could be seen and hired in the same way as doctors and psychologists (or, well..psychiatrists). I think that would be a healthy improvement for both all the people involved and the society that contains them. They would have a recognized purpose, and be regular productive members of society.. In other words: paying taxes, keeping the place of business up to code, and providing a range of other jobs maintaining the day to day operations of the establishment. Also for all the girls that fall into this world because they have no other place to go, this could provide (if they chose to continue with it) actually, a good place to go. Instead of wandering the street and dealing daily with the possibility of being killed, raped, robbed, or any number of other things; they could be getting student loans or scholorships to study to become certified in the field of sex. I mean, if it's the best thing they know how to do or enjoy the most, they should be able to get the proper training to be as successful as they can be in order to pay back the (government or institutional) subsidies that gave them the leg up. Good for the people, good for the economy. More money in circulation and less homeless on the streets. No need for the mixture by location of sex and crime.

Being secretive and criminal about providing sex (or drugs) for hire only encourages other forms of crime, because of the mind-set that surrounds most things of a criminal nature. Gangs wouldn't grow as large or have as many reasons to shoot eachother if you could buy drugs at the drug store. Pimps and street hookers would be out of a job if you could hire sex specialists at the sex clinic. Organized crime, really can't be a very powerful force if it can't traffic something that is both illegal and highly in demand. If drugs and sex for hire became legally providable by everyone else, the price would go down, the danger level would disappear, and the government could actually DO something about the problems that do exist with addictive behaviours. Just think if all the money that currently goes into manpower and weaponry for fighting the 'wars' on drugs and prostitution could instead be spent on programs to provide aid to the people that are destructively addicted to one or the other (or something else entirely). That would take care of the problem at the source, not by trying to fight the supplier..which is pointless. And why would this be easier? Because there would be no need for secrecy by either of these businesses. Their records by law would be as open as any other business, and their clientel could be easily referred to or found by these programs. With disclosure comes the ability to track down problems..and track them, to the very place they begin.

Where would the organized crime lords go in all this? The only illegal things they could make a profit with then would be assassinations, selling stolen objects and selling stolen people..and all that, is a lot harder to do. With their bread and butter gone, they'd have to either change their operation to meet government standards, or change their damn industry. They just couldn't make a profit otherwise.

So with the danger of the supply problem out of the way, what about the demanding masses of 'johns'? Well which would you rather hire the services of:

1. A trained, certified, accountable Sex Specialist

or

2. An uneducated and possibly diseased hooker operating without a business license/permit, who could cost you trouble with the law and/or your health

I think most people would choose number one. Why take needless risks when the service provided will in all likelyhood, be better than the illegal alternative? Also with an open market, the rights to referral (to other specialists or self-help programs), refusal (rules of the establishment that have the backing of the law) can be things posted and available to the owners/employees and the clients of the sex for hire businesses.

Maybe then, the word prostitute will incur a new meaning, or be replaced by a new one.. devoid of the old one's stigma.

But going back to the main question of this section (with the law as it is, not as it should be), the only difference in treatment I feel the police should enforce between prostitutes and 'johns' is that the prostitutes could have to serve more jail time, and the johns could be heavily fined. If the prostitutes don't have anywhere or anything better to do with their lives, they should be given a place to stay and opportunities in that environment to aquire the training to do something else for a living. If the 'johns' have enough extra cash to be spending on illegal, non-consented extra-marital sex.. then they evidently have money to spare.

Anyway, I'd better stop before I make a tome of this.. at least here anyway. I guess I just needed to read someone's brainless opinion to spur me into writing my immediate thoughts on this and related matters. Hopefully I've expressed my points clearly, and with the totality that this subject deserves.