progressive politics and regressive entertainment. like peanut and butter.
January 3, 2012 Leave a comment
Over the holidays, Marcus Books attempted to fight back against Amazon. The nation’s oldest black-owned bookstore added a Chrome extension called, “Amazon, huh?” which pops up with the following message for those browsing Amazon.com:
December 30, 2011 Leave a comment
In the last week, Go Daddy has switched from supporting the pro-corporate big government anti-open Internet legislation SOPA, to being neutral on the pro-corporate big government anti-open Internet legislation SOPA, to now opposing the pro-corporate big government anti-open Internet legislation SOPA. The reason?
December 28, 2011 Leave a comment
The backlash continues against Go Daddy’s support for tightening government and corporate control of the Internet. Activists have proclaimed Thursday “Move Your Domain Day” and PC World has a round-up on the costs of the different options for doing so.
December 26, 2011 2 Comments
Okay, so the internet isn’t a free zone. You certainly have to pay for access. It takes millions of dollars to start up a website like The Huffington Post and pressure has put constraints on what Craigslist can list and who can use PayPal. Still, there’s been nothing so far like the legislation currently being proposed in the misguided Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. Congress. It’s another power grab by corporations and their government.
December 22, 2011 1 Comment
Last night Louis C.K. told Jimmy Fallon how he would donate about $280,00 of the money he made from selling his Live at the Beacon Theater concert online. The interview starts out as fairly standard mainstream sit-down late night stuff, and becomes interesting once Louis starts talking about how he started the Beacon show straight from the street. No warm-up act, no big lights up moment.
Louis talks about the sales process in Part 2. You get a hint of his cutting edge when he starts talking about the money he gave away, because he jokes about the plight of the people to whom he donated the money.
Jimmy interviews Louis, Part 1
Jimmy interviews Louis, Part 2
December 10, 2011 Leave a comment
Jay Ackroyd over at Eschaton has some alternatives to shoveling money to the banks and the telecom industry, but it’s too practical to be done.
If it were up to me, internet access would be treated as public infrastructure, like public roads. Failing that, I’d have the government provide some baseline service, like pulling optical fiber to every post office, and allowing local governments to use it for municipal wireless, to create competition with telcos. (I’d do the same with banking–a Fed ATM in every post office. Likewise, the public option.)
via Eschaton: Players.
December 7, 2011 Leave a comment
I haven’t dropped out of Facebookworld, but I did remove all private information back when they took all of our privately listed interests and used them to automatically enroll us as public fans of those politicians, bands, and porn stars. Really, do I want everyone in the Worldworld to know what my favorite band is?
Digital Life – Facebook glitch reveals private photos — including Zuckerberg’s
December 6, 2011 Leave a comment
A pretty good rebuff to the paranoia surrounding kids being lost to the internet.
December 4, 2011 Leave a comment
Of course, the Music and Film Industries don’t actually care about art or artists, just about control.
Boing Boing: Swiss gov’t study: downloading leads to sales, so we’re keeping it legal.
