Archive for the Digital Category

Pulchritudinous Pay Walls (July 26, 2021)

Posted in Digital, Internet, Journalism on July 28, 2021 by e-commentary.org

. . .

K          “Beautiful, baby.”

J          “If you barrier it, they will not come?  Hopefully.”

. . .

K          “We should be so lucky.  Some sites are bivouacked behind a paywall of some sort that may limit their fan base without expanding their profits.  That is promising.”

J          “If you build it behind a barrier, they will not necessarily come.  There is hope.”

. . .

K          “The barriers used to mine the viewer’s wallet are varied.  Either there is an absolute pay wall, or a pay wall that applies to articles on one walled day but not on another open day, or a part one ‘teaser’ and a blocked part two promising all the salacious insights, or a plebeian site that is a ‘come on’ to a patrician product accessed by a secret code available only to club members.”

J          “Some sites require one to be a premium member to view or post comments.  Easy enough.  I don’t view or post comments.  I don’t participate.  I boycott.”

. . .

J          “When you black hole yourself into a vortex, your own computer is instantly infested and infected with something quaintly called ‘cookies’ and other technological cancers.  Ads drop from above and rise from below and are hurled from the left flank and the right flank.  Things explode from nowhere and everywhere.  The assault does not end until you manage to crawl out of the maelstrom.  The Internet.  It is not a pretty place.”

. . .

K          “The few stray Prophets With Honor out there are not making much profit.  They deserve support.  They are not getting it.”

J          “They deserve a listen.”

. . .

Bumper stickers of the week:

DON’T CLICK ON IT!

If you are not paying for the product, you are indubitably the prey

The Internet.  It is not for the fainthearted.

Leave a comment »

“Analog Knowledge Devices” (“AKD”):  The Next “Currency” (July 10, 2017)

Posted in Analog Knowledge Devices, Collapse, Currency, Digital, Internet, Money, Technology on July 10, 2017 by e-commentary.org

. . .

K          “When they folded the book store, they unloaded the stranded volumes by the bushel basket for a dollar.  What was not unloaded by the end of the day was given away to anyone who would haul them away.  Some just recycled the paper for a few paper dollars.”

J          “Running with the big dogs was just too tough.  Prepping is nuanced.  They are always thinking ahead.  They exchanged a few sheets of paper for many sheets of paper.  Their tiny house is now an enormous storehouse and warehouse of knowledge.”

K          “They now have a private library with attached living quarters.  Preppy prepping, perhaps?  How many preppies really care about books and knowledge?”

. . .

K          “The possibility that an EMP or some such interruption in service could descend upon the land seems just surreal enough to be plausible.”

J          “Taking down the grid may not come from on high.  Someone could bring it down and not even know it.  A lowly mouse could short a sub-station and subvert everything.  A line of bad code could take down the line.”

. . .

K          “The Internet is pernicious in so many ways, yet, like life, you need to thread your way through and around the porn and propaganda and pursue the positive possibilities.  Despite all the inaccurate information along the gauntlet of the search, enough accurate information emerges.  However, when the current light goes dark, that also goes.  We revert to older technologies.  . . .  Analog Knowledge Devices.”

J          “When the current is interrupted, we may get a new paper currency.  Cash will be confiscated by the authorities, but no one may care about books as books or books as currency.  Except, however, leaving books in circulation leaves the ideas advanced in the leaves of the books in circulation.  It is inevitable when you think about it.  All paper will be banned in time.” 

. . .

K          “You may be able to exchange a copy of Catch-22 and a box of 22s for a copy of Fahrenheit 451 and a hand full of .410 bore shells.”

J          “Or a box of condoms and a copy of the The Joy of Sex for a dozen eggs and a tattered edition of the Joy of Cooking.”

K          “Gets you wondering which is the product and which is the lagniappe in the deal.”

J          “When we get there, joy of any kind and kindness in any form will be cherished.”

. . .

K          “Is the AKD mightier than the AK?”

. . .

[See the “e-commentary” at Beans and Bullets (April 6, 2009), On Entitlements (July 19, 2010) and Girding For The Going Grid (October 11, 2010).]

Bumper stickers of the week:

Analog Knowledge Devices:  The Future Of Technology

From Analog To Digital To Analog:  The Arc Of Civilization

Leave a comment »

A “Journalist” Declares War On Journalists . . . And Journalism (November 28, 2016)

Posted in Blog, Cyberactivities, Digital, Facebook, Google, Internet, Journalism, Newspapers, Press/Media, Truth, War and Wall Street Party, Writing on November 28, 2016 by e-commentary.org

. . .

K          “The article may be the single most outrageous and egregious defamatory screed in the history of American journalism.”

J          “And it is irresponsible, inaccurate, unfounded, unfair and wrong.”

. . .

J          “The corporate media are now at war with independent commentators.  It is all about money and power.  The corporate players see a growing challenge to their hegemonic control of opinion and the profits that flow from purveying and controlling opinion.” 

K          “He indicted 200 sites on the basis of a website that is dubious at best.  I doubt he even uploaded a dozen of the sites. Review a few of them.  Charles Hugh Smith over at ‘Of Two Minds’ ventures trenchant commentary with supporting graphs and tables and light asides about life in Hawaii.  Chris Hedges and the folks at ‘Truthdig’ provide more substance and depth than ‘Newsweek’ and ‘Time’ in their prime and actually ferret out the Truth.  Yves Smith and the ‘Naked Capitalism’ team offer thoughtful and thought-provoking essays and commentary and have supplanted the ‘Wall Street Journal’ as America’s leading financial news source.”

J          “And interject cute pictures of puppies and other critters.  However, the ‘Tyler Durden’ chap at ‘Zero Hedge’ is the edgy and enigmatic bad boy who must be sampled cum grano salis.  The motley assemblage occasionally strays near the truth, yet there is a dark and disturbing undertone.  The right-leaning websites are also under assault.”

K          “The title of the ‘Ron Paul Institute For Peace and Prosperity’ directly challenges the one political party system in America – the ‘War and Wall Street Party’ system.  Wall Street is precluding and preventing Americans from achieving prosperity.”

J          “Both Paul Craig Roberts and David Stockman held positions in Republican administrations and now challenge the neo-liberal economic policy and neo-conservative foreign orthodoxy strangling the Republic.” 

K          “The author of the article goes for the throat and challenges each author’s patriotism.”  

. . .

K          “Ben Norton and Glenn Greenwald cogently and succinctly characterize the assault in their observation that the ‘Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes A McCarthyite Blacklist From A New, Hidden And Very Shady Group.’  The paper I delivered has so deteriorated over the decades.”

J          “Yet something funky and disturbing is going on out there.  We are in a new era of ‘antisocial media’ concocted by admixing Facebook and Google into a vile and evil brew dispensed anonymously.  A journalist getting it fundamentally wrong does not aid in getting it right.”

. . .

Bumper stickers of the week:

So many words, so little Truth

Facebook + Google = Trouble

Mass Media Breeds Mass Deception

1 Comment »

Net Neutrality (April 20, 2015)

Posted in Consumerism, Digital, Google, Internet, Less Government Regulation Series, Net Neutrality, Privacy, Society on April 20, 2015 by e-commentary.org

. . .

A          “The business model is built on two pursuits:  the profitable and the prurient.”

B          “The prurient is the profitable.”

. . .

A          “The first image from the ‘Gaggle’ search revealed pictures from her ‘Spring ‘Show Us Your Tats’ Break ‘77’ revelry.  The announcement of her Nobel did not surface until page 3 of the search.”

B          “There is no profit in Nobels.”

A          “I just cannot ‘friend’ Gaggle, because Gaggle is not a friend.  For a decade, Gaggle allowed access to the site.  Then Gaggle blocked access to the site likely because Gaggle was not making any money by providing access to the site.  Even if I used the full HyperText Transfer Protocol address, namely http://www.myinsignificantwebsite.org, Gaggle still revealed nothing.  Darkness.  Only the honest search engines such as ‘Ixquick’ and ‘DuckDuckGo’ reveal what is really there on the Internet.”

B          “And those two search engines do not track your searches.  Hard to develop search engine optimization (SEO) when Gaggle calls the shots and practices website nullification.”

A          “The Internet is a collection of monopolies and is in effect a ‘public utility’ that needs to be regulated by the public.  Net neutrality sounds like a sound idea.”

. . .

Bumper stickers of the week:

If Google does not allow one to access a website, does the website exist?

Net Neutrality Soon

Leave a comment »

YouTube:  Your University:  America’s Community College (December 8, 2014)

Posted in Bush, Digital, Education, Football, Schooling, Torture on December 8, 2014 by e-commentary.org

. . .

Y          “When I got home years ago, Junior asked if I knew how to circumvent parental controls on the computer.  After pausing for an answer, he answered that he simply typed in ‘how to circumvent parental controls’ and was provided a plan pronto.”

T          “Hard to fault initiative.”

Y          “YouTube has emerged as the University for the masses by the masses.” 

T          “The Community College for the public.”

Y          “Sharpening a knife or sharpening skills, just type something in and a member of the public commons has probably uploaded a useful video.  Everyone can be a professor, a pundit or a poet for 15 seconds or 15 minutes.”

T          “And no tuition, books or fees to fund the futball team.”

. . .

[See the commentary proffered ten years ago at “Bush: “Torture our kids, s’il vous plait” (January 31, 2005)”.]

Bumper stickers of the week:

How do you dovetail the theory of relativity and string theory?

Knowledge Is Good

Leave a comment »

Digital Deception (August 5, 2013)

Posted in Consumerism, Digital, Economics, Perjury/Dishonesty, Pogo Plight, Privacy on August 5, 2013 by e-commentary.org

. . .

1          “I mentioned to a close friend privately that digital is holding its own against analog.  However, digital has some downsides.”

2          “I call it digital deception.  Digital allows for so much more deception because nothing is permanent.”

. . .

1          “I clicked ‘add to cart’ to add a product on the ‘Styx’ e-commerce website, jotted down the price and noted the free shipping on a sheet of paper.”

2          “Which gets us back to the need to make a written record that is permanent.”

1          “I minimized the site on the screen, called a local store for comparison and then maximized the site on the screen.  The price was the same, but the free shipping was changed to a much more substantial cost.”

2          “Bait and switch transcends technology.  You may find that the shipping is free, but the shipping date is in a month or longer.  That may prove to be an unprofitable stratagem because it goes against the all-consuming desire for immediate gratification.”

. . .

1          “Now it is offering free shipping and delivery in a week.  It is almost as if the system detects that I will purchase the product if the shipping is free.”

2          “If you leave the site for a period of time and then return, the algorithm may reset to bait you with free shipping.  Switch from the site for a while and see what happens.”

. . .

1          “The ‘Fly By Night’ travel web sites provide the best price for a flight and then in a subsequent visit to the site a few minutes later increase the price or offer less appealing routes.  Once they have gotten you, they have got you.”

2          “Unless you don’t let them get you.”

. . .

1          “The ‘Pillow’ real estate website regularly changes and updates information including what it represented to be historical data.  The predicted price for my house in 2007 is now materially different.”

2          “I can predict the closing price of the Dow last week.”

1          “Taking a screen shot requires a clever workaround.  I filed a printed screen shot of my property and then compared it a year later.  The figures and historical graph were different.  I printed the subsequent results to keep a record in a printed format and then check later.”

. . .

1          “I checked on the availability of a website address and was shocked at this late stage of web address homesteading that it was still available.  I then checked the availability of another more general website and discovered that it was already staked.  When I returned to purchase the first website, it was not available.”

2          “If I find that a website address is available, I immediately purchase it.” 

. . .

2        “You could use another computer and search for a product or flight without revealing your identity or propensity until you sign in to make a purchase.  However, the dubious real estate data appears on every computer screen.”

. . .

Bumper stickers of the week:

Clio needs to clutch the parchment scrolls tenaciously

Let the buyer be aware and be wary and be weary

Mano-a-mano with a machine

Leave a comment »